The wireless world is a mountain of confounding complexities.
Consider the bewildering, frenetic, and financially stressful situation gripping mobile handset manufacturers and service providers all around the world. Most have no choice but to indulge in a never-ending race to pack handsets with more and more functions at lower and lower retail prices -- all while trying to reduce their research and development costs.
Across different and often incompatible operating systems, around countries of varying languages, for idiosyncratic personalization needs, and amid quality and brand perception pressures, these manufacturers are trying to produce handsets ranging from low-end voice-and-data  models to the most sophisticated smartphones -- and to get them to synchronize to carrier networks all over the world. The industry can be thought of as a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
One of the most fiendishly complex parts of this puzzle is the testing of handsets and software applications before they become available to consumers. Testing deficiencies of many types are systemic and rampant throughout the industry, which drives development costs much higher than necessary. According to a new survey from Accenture, 88 percent of companies surveyed don't do an adequate job of testing, which typically consumes about one-third of the product development process and has a major impact on quality, cost, and time to market.
What's worse, testing of the rapidly rising number of -- and increasingly complex -- mobile handset applications is becoming much more expensive. Based on insight from industry analysts and Accenture's own experience and customer research, mobile handset application testing costs grew from 3 percent of overall testing costs in 2004 to 20 percent in 2008. This number is expected to continue increasing over the next two years, to more than 30 percent. Handset manufacturers now spend millions of dollars testing a device, not just before market launch but even post-launch.
Nobody Wins
Wireless-service providers, handset manufacturers, and consumers are caught in this lose-lose scenario. Carriers have handsets in their networks that may not work properly or reliably. Phonemakers can't sell as many units as they would like because the cost to develop each new model is higher than necessary, pushing retail prices too high for many consumers who want phones but can't afford them. And consumers are often stuck with faulty, pricey handsets that won't perform certain functions or that drop calls, thereby hurting their overall experience with mobile communication. (continued...)
© 2009 Business Week Online under contract with MarketWatch. All rights reserved.
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