James Kendrick has had a very good stab at identifying some common types of mobile device users over at jkOnTheRun today. He lists 6-types of user that he has refined through his experience with mobile devices and the large mobile user-base he has come into contact with over the years. He has the Email consumer, the Information consumer, the Information creator, the Professional information creator, the Professional mobile worker and the Professional writer. James has matched some device categories to the users too.
I would add ‘mobile media creators’ into the list. I tend to agree with Richard Brown when he talks about the new-wave of mobile media creators and editors that take images, audio and video and process them on the spot to capture a moment. What did I call it before..ah yes, ‘On-The-Spot Creativity.’ There’s aren’t many people that do it though and most attempts, including my Solar ultra mobile PC tour, are just tests and demonstrations of the capability but we are definitely starting to see moblogging and similar media creativity taking off. I would also change the ‘Email consumer’ to ‘Internet consumer’ in-order to include the growing use in mobile Internet activity which includes presence, messaging, browsing, geo-info and very importantly, searching. For me, this is one of the most exciting areas as it includes mobile Internet devices.
What I don’t see are many mentions of UMPCs, which begs the question – What sort of user uses a UMPC?
