MEX – the Mobile User Experience – is an annual affair hosted by Marek Pawlowski and held in Central London. It's a kind of mixture between a conference and a technical workshop. Some figures which Forsyth shared with us included the fact that the Top Five handset vendors were launching a new model around once a month in 2000 only to see this increase to around 1.5 models a week until there was a peak around 2006.

Another fascinating point Forsyth revealed was that while he maintained a database of some 20,000 requirements from a typical mobile operator, the handsets which fared best in the market met the fewest number of required attributes. This was a thinly disguised dig at the Apple iPhone, I reckon.

Essentially he sees the operators' fixation with a 'tickbox' culture as stifling innovation in the handset arena. He joked that the one software platform would be the ideal solution – because obviously the winner would be Symbian. On a more serious note, however, he conceded that two to three different platforms would be good for the entire mobile software sector.

Forsyth joked that the Symbian foundation's major goal is to be both neutral and independent. Yet most observers see Symbian as being biased. Obviously a lot of good PR needs to be done to rectify this image.

The essential message Forsyth was putting across is that bug fixes are consuming too much R&D/software budget, whereas what the handset market needs is for a lot more imaginative ideas to reach fruition. That means overcoming the industry's current inertia.

What struck me is that handset manufacturers could benefit from a modular approach. It's a concept successfully proved by Triumph with motorcycles, for example. Consumers should be able to take modules which they want – say a Wi-Fi capability while omitting other capabilities they don't want – like a camera.

The resulting handset would be easy to maintain because there's just one basic engine and a concise set of modules which would interact predictably. That just leaves the thorny question of taking the pain out of upgrading the handset.

It struck me that handsets could be supplied with a very basic configuration and the owner's preferences could be pulled down off the Internet. That's not just obvious items like content – photos, ringtones and addressbooks, but also the choice of browser and UI, even. If you don't want touch-screen, you don't have to take it.

There was an impressive turn-out of delegates at MEX from all walks of the mobile industry – although operator representatives appeared to be most in the firing line! I definitely recommend it for next year.