A post from The Feature indicates that the mobile market might be waking up to presenting better value propositions to users. The signs mentioned in the article are great, and I’m happy to hear about it. But I would personally like to see many of the crappy mobile service commercials (here in the US) turn into real marketing attempts. The way that data services are presented tries way to hard to just be hip. People in the most ridiculous situations sending text messages and images to each other, no description of mobile access to the web or other services. Being cute and somewhat flippant is fine, an occasional off-the-wall commercial is fine. Spice things up a bit, I’m down with that. But the last serious mobile data services commercials I can remember seeing are from when mLife hadn’t yet failed horribly. Is everyone still reeling from that flop? Sure, it was a spectactular failure, but that doesn’t mean that the only way to sell mobile services is by telling jokes or appealing to the youngest crowd you can find. Maybe now that handset providers have gotten over selling acronyms the service providers will get over selling humour.