On handset user interaces: " One of the most frequent complaints of content and application developers is that there are so few chances for their product to be featured on a handset portal's 'landing page'."

I think one of the issues here is that lots of people have gone to the mobile world from the web world, and carried with them assumptions about interface design which no longer hold; for instance, the importance of being on the very front-most toppest page, as a means of driving traffic. This assumption was in turn carried onto the web from print without completely holding; for an example, consider how prominent free-text search changes the way that visitors navigate through your site, or how users ignore navigation tools anyway.

In fact, the challenge with mobile is to provide a structure which works in several different contexts (on the move and in a rush, sitting around browsing, attempting to carry out a specific task, etc.) to provide access to several different types of service (voice calls, data storage, photography, internet access, gaming, etc.), in a way that can be shaped to suit the needs of individual users.

The idea that it's all about shovelling brands as high up the menu hierarchy as possible in order to get recognition, because recognition builds traffic (and traffic *must* be a good thing) just isn't true, and services which respect this by being unobtrusive and polite will be the ones that win out.