Mobile apps are all the rage, right? Yet the reality of the situation is that the majority of people don’t use them, yet. Apps are spectacularly useful when they make life easier – quickly, regularly, efficiently – but for owners of the more popular handsets, this simply isn’t the experience. Just finding and downloading them can often be too much hassle for starters. And the minefield of data plan charges and different operating systems are enough to scare off most people anyway.

Therefore it was good to see a consortium of seven mobile phone manufacturers and networks coming together to announce a new standard system for apps at the Mobile World Congress last week.

As far as we’re concerned this kind of initiative can’t happen fast enough. The average person has no interest in why the technology can’t deliver them a good media experience on their phone, but as soon as it does, they are going to wonder how they ever did without it. In the meantime we’re in the frustrating position where an amazing range of new content, tools and services are only really available to those who own an iPhone.

Despite all the buzz about mobile apps, designing a service that can be enjoyed across all the mobile platforms is still fraught with barriers and expenses. Mobile will only really take off when the focus changes from ‘how’ services are delivered to ‘what’ goes onto them, from the technical to the editorial.

Apple run a restrictive, closed system in an era when pretty much everyone else is working to principles of compatibility, yet theirs remains the platform of choice because they have streamlined the whole experience. Google’s more open, Android system is slowly gaining ground, but it will take a lot more cooperation to bring the overall mobile app/online experience up to the level that people will want to use it on all handsets.

We’re on the right path, but the progress of mobile media has been far too slow. Protectionism still reigns. Now Apple have generated all the interest, perhaps this latest announcement of cooperation will bring forward mobile media’s ‘broadband moment’ of mass adoption, and kickstart the technology/content revolution that is currently only enjoyed by a lucky minority of phone users…