It is even more interesting to notice how some markets have implemented this in the past:
* Back in 2001 DoCoMo and KDDI implemented the network support for profiles like “driving”, “personal”, etc. The drive mode for example will not disturb the person who is driving. Instead, the calling party receives a voice response stating that the called party is driving. This must have lowered the road accidents.

* Few years back, I was part of a team that developed an integrated contacts app to show presence information (status icon) from multiple IM clients. Network level service/support was not needed, as it is purely the application that aggregates the presence information from multiple IMs and display it against the contact in your phone book on a phone. For example, if I am trying to reach Raju and his Skype and AOL status is away, I could see that below his name in my phonebook (assuming he is listed in my phonebook).

* As an extension to the presence support described in bullet 2, we added some intelligence and called it context-aware application. For example, what this could do is to check the calendar and switch your availability/presence to “no calls, may be IM or email” during the period of your meeting. Again this is customizable. This could also be linked to your location, network strength, network status, etc to create more awareness to the context.

While these are either existing or have existed (commercially or prototypes), there hasn’t been enough push from either the carriers or the phone manufacturers. I think it is mostly due to lack of strong demand from consumer point of view and hence it didn’t come up in the market research. Sometimes, consumers are not aware of the possibilities and it is the innovators (carriers or manufacturers) job to create awareness in order to create the demand. On second thoughts, if only I had time, I think I should write an app that does this on android and iphone.

We definitely need one such feature in phone.