What makes a compelling mobile product offering?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking this summer. There’s a whole lot of really smart folks out there, saying a bunch of stuff that is spot-on. I’ve also had many interesting discussions from which I have picked up further insights (meaning, some of this is mine and some of this is from others). Along the way, I’ve been collecting what I think are attributes for a compelling product (or service) which in my mind is a fusion of the Web, PC, and mobile (especially the mobile part). I’m not saying the product has to have all these attributes, but I think these are important things to consider when creating a product.

Here’s the list (in no particular order).

– Simple – the simpler and easier to use, the quicker to deploy, the quicker it can be adopted.
– Geographic diversity – keep in mind local specificities and regional sophistication.
– Disruption – think differently.
– Consumer electronics – still where the money is at.
– Mobile multimedia – my preference in tech space.
– Connecting people – collaborative filtering, profiles, making your social network work for you.
– End to end user experience – think of the whole solution, but not necessarily on a single device.
– Non-cellular – so we don’t make everything have to go through the network.
– Internet everywhere – sort of true, something to tap into.
– User-created content – where I think the value to the user is.
– No boxes – make it easy for the service provider partner to adopt and integrate.
– Enabling product recommendations – let your users do your marketing.
– Play shifting – don’t lock user media to a single device or format, freedom to the user!
– Play – tie this in and you have an addictive product.
– Mobile communication rituals and social capital – tap into the user psyche, they want to communicate and share, not sit passively and consume, think also of the mobile lifestyle.
– Business of non-consumption – a term from Clayton Christiansen describing an innovation that caters to something that previously could not be done.

I want to keep working on this list, add or remove some attributes, understand what they mean in relation to each other. Of course, I also want to understand what attributes I, myself, could pull together to create a compelling offering. At the same time, I am looking at different companies to see if they are ignoring one of these attributes, to understand the outcomes and consequences.

What do you think? Am I full of it? Clueless? Spot-on?