Coors Light is giving beer drinkers a chance to win 6 days in Whistler with 4 friends during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Consumers can enter a pin found in cases of Coors Light, online or text it in to 26677 to gain an entry into the contest. Once a consumer texts in their pin, they are encouraged to earn additional entries by sending their pal a mobile invite. For each invite that gets accepted, an additional point is gained. Consumers can choose to send their pal a Cold Call or a more formal picture invite right to their friends phone. National contest closes December 31st. For more details, text CHALET to 26677 or visit www.coorslight.ca

Da ich zurzeit an einer Präsentation über das Mobile Web arbeite, nutze ich diesen Artikel mal kurz um meine Gedanken zu sortieren.

Im Moment nutzen 13% der deutschen Handy-Besitzer einen mobilen Internet-Zugang.

So gut wie jedes neue Handy, das zurzeit auf dem Markt ist, verfügt über die Möglichkeit mobil ins Internet zu gehen.

Mobile Web != “normales” Web

Durch die zurzeit noch geringe Bandbreite mobiler Verbindungen gelten im Mobile Web die gleichen Regeln wie zu frühzeiten des “normalen” Web: Wenig Bilder, Inhalte auf das Nötigste beschränkt. Jedes Kilobyte weniger ist ein gewonnenes Kilobyte.

Durch die vielen unterschiedlichen Handy-Betriebssysteme, Browser und technischen Voraussetzungen der Geräte ist es extrem schwierig eine Seite zu entwickeln die auf ALLEN Systemen gleich dargestellt wird. Allein die Einhaltung von Standards ist hier noch kein Erfolgsversprechen.

Android ist für mich das vielversprechendste Betriebssystem.

Es fehlt noch eine echte Killer-Applikation, die die breite Masse ins Mobile Web lockt. Bisher wurden meist nur bestehende Websites für das Mobile Web “konvertiert”, allerdings bieten diese keinen Vorteil gegenüber der Standard-Version im “normalen” Web, außer dass diese eben mobil erreichbar sind.

Soviel erstmal dazu, vielleicht folgt in kürze noch mehr. Ich bin gerade dabei, mich in das Thema einzulesen und finde es wirklich interessant. Kommentare erwünscht

If you run a business or a marketing and promotions program based on a loyalty card, rewards card, points card, advantage card, club card, credit card or debit card then very soon (if haven’t already) you’ll be thinking about the benefits of migrating your customers to New Plastic.

New Plastic? You guessed it, the Mobile Phone.

Now your “New Plastic” strategy could take shape in one of two ways.

• You could just build lots of Mobile Apps and distribute them to all your members (Thereby adding to the costs of managing the program), or
• You could turn your Loyalty Program Cost Center into a Profit Center by offering your customers the opportunity to sign up to your branded mobile phone network.

Interested in Plan B? Let’s show you how and why you should be thinking about becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).

First, let’s deal with the obvious question. What is an MVNO?

If you take a look at the diagram of the MobCon value chain below you will see a group of activities called Service Provision (i.e. Customer Care, Billing and Marketing). In this MVNO model a third-party steps in and takes over these functions from Telco and “owns” the retail customer relationship.

What this means is you own the customer and the Telco owns the transport system. You provide your customers with mobile phones and plug them into the Telco’s network. You buy wholesale air time and then bill the customer based on the network data records provided by the Telco.

Sounds simple in theory? Obviously it takes some effort to implement but as you will see much later on the financial benefits can make it worth the effort.

Why would the Telco allow this to happen?

Historically the Telecoms industry has struggled with 3 key aspects of customer relationship management.

Firstly their customer acquisition costs are very high. Secondly they struggle to retain these customers. Customer loyalty is poor and consequently the industry suffers from a high level of churn. Then there is the ongoing problem of billing.

The final problem the telcos face is the Voice problem. Essentially they need to increase ARPU on Data to replace the trend downwards in Voice ARPU.

In a nutshell Telcos are very good at building, maintaining and managing the “Dumb Pipes”. What they are not very good at is Customer Relationship Management.

The reality is any organisation operating an efficient and successful loyalty program can address all these issues of Customer Relationship management more effectively than the Telcos.

To begin with the Loyalty program operator has already resolved the customer acquisition and retention problem. They also have an effective customer service and billing platform. The challenge for the operator of the loyalty program is to add value to that customer loyalty by providing them with goods and services which will help keep the customer sticky and more profitable.

Mobile phones add value, deliver a new revenue stream and provide the perfect platform for mobile communications and mobile web commerce applications.

Properly implemented and managed, the SmartPhone not only becomes the perfect customer loyalty platform it can also add tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to your bottom line.

The MVNO model is not for everyone. There have been some well documented disasters over the past 5 years. The most notable being Disney and ESPN. (Om Malik’s piece from 2005 A MVNO Train Wreck Coming?)

The most successful global brand in the MVNO space is of course Virgin. In fact Virgin have been so successful in the US that their Telco has just bought them out. (See Sprint buys out Virgin’s US MVNO business for or around $483m).

The other success story is of course Britain’s Tesco. 2.25% of this national grocery retailer’s profit  is now generated by its MVNO business Tesco Telecoms.  Today they are seeking to significantly expand their market reach with their investor announcement of plans to double their profits in the sector by pushing into traditional sectors of the Telco market like broadband and home phones (e.g See the Telegraph’s Tesco plans assault on broadband market, The Times Tesco links with Cable & Wireless in broadband and home phones push and UK Compare Broadband’s Tesco aims to be the new BT) and moving into the premium iPhone market (See TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher: The iPhone comes to Tesco — will a price war follow?)

All this success is prompting retailers around the globe to take a good look at the MNVO model. (See Woolworths (Australia) Launches Its Own Mobile Network and Walmart launching own pre-paid cell plans)

Want to see who is getting it right today? Then start your search here at TelecomPaper.Com . Here you will find an up to date list of the MVNO’s and their Telco partners operating in every market around the globe.

So how do you know if you can get the model right? The simple answer is this.

The EGO:ID of CRM or How to profit from managing the customer lifecycle

If you have the EGO:ID of Customer Relationship Management in place then you are ready to profit from introducing a MNVO loyalty program (See Customers for life?).

The quickest and biggest losers so far in the MVNO market (e.g Disney and ESPN) made a fundamental error of judgement. They thought that content was the hook to build a successful MNVO business. As Virgin proved they were wrong. What you need to succeed is great Customer Relationship Management. Get that right and the rest is relatively easy.

The primacy of CRM in the MVNO Business Model is the reason why the MVNO model is not the answer to the future of Newspaper or Web Portals. Yahoo!, MSN, The New York Times and News Corp may have enormous online traffic but they do not have a relationship intimacy with their customers in the same way that a retailer, bank, hotel chain, rental car or airline may have.

I guess you could say they have followers rather than customers. Sadly,the Disney and ESPN experience proves that these online followers do not easily translate into profitable mobile phone customers.

Este es un post que me va a servir para hacer un pequeño recopilatorio de enlaces y revisar las distintas tecnologías disponibles para el desarrollo de mobile web usando ASP.NET. Además de poseer un enlace para poder usarlo en diversos foros.

En principio me gustaría incluir enlaces a los conocimientos y recursos básicos:  GAP un tuturial de Luca Passani, creador de WURFL, w3c Mobile Web Best Practices, dotmobi Mobile Web Developer´s Guide.

La primera aproximación y actualmente no recomendable sería usar controles móviles (System.Web.Mobile), aunque estos controles soportan renderizado en WML, cHTML, HTML y xHTML MP, están muy anticuados y no permiten usar características que cualquier móvil actual soporta. La detección de móviles por defecto se puede mejorar usando WURFL, siempre me gusto Marg.Wurfl.

En este último año parece que Microsoft ha comenzado a tener en cuenta la web móvil, y ha liberado su herramienta de detección de dispositivos: mdbf.

Debido a que los actuales dispositivos han mejorado muchísimo, creo que es mucho mejor usar ASP.NET para la web (webforms) que controles móviles. Para ello tendremos en cuenta que el renderizado sea xHTML MP y controlaremos el código generado para que no se abuse de javascript y el tamaño de las páginas no se haga muy elevado.

En la actualidad la mejor manera de desarrollar aplicaciones mobile web es usar MVC: Mobile Web Application toolkit. También son recomendables los siguientes videos. Incluso podremos desarrollar aplicaciones web para el iPhone.

If you’re looking to save a little time this holiday season by shopping on the mobile web, you’d do well to spend some time on Amazon’s (s amzn) mobile site, according to figures released this week from Compuware’s Gomez division. The online retailer’s destination fared the best in a study of 14 mobile sites studied by the developer of web optimization software, placing first in both response time (averaging 2.85 seconds) and availability (99.86 percent). Mobile sites from QVC and Newegg also performed well, Gomez said, while sites from  Sears, Buy.com and Target each had an average response time of more than six seconds.

Those sites and plenty of others are likely to see a surge in traffic this holiday season. Deloitte found that 19 percent of U.S. consumers plan to use their phone as a shopping tool to find store locations, research prices and access discounts. One-fourth of those polled said they actually planned to make a purchase on their handsets. Of all the mobile sites and apps designed to help users spend their money starting on Black Friday, here are a few of the more notable ones:

• eBay (s ebay) this week released a free app that allows iPhone users to search millions of the site’s listings to find the best deal. Users search by keyword and are alerted when the products they’re looking for come up for auction.
• Toysrus.com has launched a new mobile site enabling users to browse merchandise and make purchases over the phone; the site is also available through the company’s applications for BlackBerry (s rimm) and iPhone (S aapl) users.
• Google (s goog) has joined the mobile coupon space, allowing retailers to add discount offerings in Google’s Local Business Center. The coupons are presented as users search Google’s local listings from web-enabled phones.
• ShopSavvy, which comes courtesy of the developer Big in Japan, allows iPhone and Android users to scan barcodes to find the best prices for both online and local items. Amazon’s iPhone app also includes a multimedia feature, allowing users to snap a photo of a product and submit it to find the item in Amazon’s catalog.
• Even users with lower-tech phones can subscribe to Black Friday’s Twitter feeds, where discounts and lists to shopping guides are posted regularly.
• Frucall offers a multipronged solution, enabling users to comparison shop via text message, the mobile web or with a simple voice call. The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup also offers a social networking component, encouraging users to interact with each other via voice or text message.

There are, of course, countless other sites and services that will happily help separate you from your money this holiday season. And the next few weeks should serve as kind of barometer for mobile shopping offerings, providing yet another glimpse of just how much consumers are using their phones to do more than just talk and text. If retailers and developers truly see a substantial surge in usage — and if their offerings are up to the task — it may bode well for the mobile data market as the economy recovers.

Yesterday tech crunch reported on the latest usage figures of Opera’s mobile web browser.   They boast that nearly 40 million people now use their mobile software.    This is once again more information backing up the rapid growth in mobile web technologies around the world.  Opera’s latest mobile web report focuses on mobile web usage in Latin America with Brazil, Argentina and Mexico unsurprisingly the biggest consumers of web products such as Facebook and Google.

The interesting section of this report comes when the author acknowledges the number of potential web mobile users there are in the world, with around 4 billion people currently owning a mobile phone.  This shows us that firms really are starting to realise the potential mobile web has.   The “Did You Know 4.0” video showcased at the Economist Media Convergence conference (2009) estimates that the “mobile device” will be the worlds primary connection device to the internet by 2020.  The need for firms to be “on board” with the mobile web was also discussed by Mary Meeker at this years web 2.0 conference (2009).  Interestingly she also suggests that mobile network firms my struggle to meet their customers bandwidth needs with the rapid growth in the industry.   Her presentation slides also allude to the future of the mobile phone itself as being a remote control over future cloud services.   With the amount of mash-ups currently available thanks to the iphone apps store, maybe this day is closer than we think?

TechCrunch’s story today that Apple And Android Now Make Up 75 Percent Of U.S. Smartphone Web Traffic provides an interesting insight into the world-wide growth of the Mobile Web.

The report indicates that 50% of the World’s Mobile Web requests are made by iPhone/iTouch owners. Unfortunately what the report doesn’t tell us is what percentage of iPhone/iTouch owners use their device to access the Mobile Web.

As you will recall from a couple of weeks back Apple now has an estimated 2.5% share of the Global Mobile Handset Market. If we had the data on the number of iPhone/iTouch owners who are actively using the mobile web then we would be able to produce a quick estimate of the current size of the Mobile Web market.

At the moment I only have the figures published by Telstra which estimates mobile data at about 2% of Mobile Revenues.

Having said that I do have some old data from 2007 that indicated 75% of iPhone owners send SMS’s and 50% have accessed social networking sites. So let’s assume for argument’s sake that 50% is an active indicator of probable mobile web usage.

This would suggest that the estimated number of handset owners currently accessing the mobile web, at least on Smart Phones, equals about 2.5% of the world mobile phone market. A figure that is pretty much in line with Telstra’s mobile data revenues.

Small change for the Telcos today but,  as I said in More Eyeballs and More Revenues but is it the future of the mass media?, the potential market for the Mobile Web is enormous. It could be at least 3 times bigger than the “desktop” Internet.

The figures are from AdMob’s quarterly mobile metrics report.

Bango, the mobile web payments and analytics company, today announces that it has entered into a multi-territory agreement to provide Fox Mobile Group (FMG) with its mobile web billing platform services worldwide. The move is a result of the rapid growth of internet usage from mobile devices, which is driving publishers and content owners to focus on content delivery through mobile web sites.

“We are pleased to work with Fox Mobile Group to help provide more efficient mobile web billing and an even better user experience,” said Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango. “Bango’s mobile web billing platform technology is designed to give Fox Mobile Group’s customers the best possible payment experiences with their phone.”

“Fox Mobile Group is pleased to work with Bango to bring their mobile web billing services to our Jamba and Jamster customers,” said Soren Schafft, General Manager of Americas for Fox Mobile Group. “We are committed to strengthening the user experience across our services and we are excited to be able to offer our customers a more efficient billing option.”

Mobile internet devices and connectivity are becoming more sophisticated, which presents new opportunities for the delivery of on-line media content. Bango payment is optimized across the range of mass market and smart phones to provide a standardized payment experience for every user. Bango billing is designed to deliver the highest available conversion rates through its unique technology and network operator relationships, ensuring that users can pay on mobile devices, connecting through their operator network, or through WiFi and other routes such as BlackBerry RIM data networks. If operator billing cannot be used, Bango enables payments through credit card and other methods, such as PayPal.

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Bagi kamu yang ingin mengunjungi kami, dapat melalui handphone langsung lho!
caranya gampang!

♥ ketik http://urbanistshoppe.wordpress.com
♥ buka menu ‘pages’

thats it.
Gampang kan? Happy shopping sista brader..

This is the fifth in a series of postings on the emerging business models of the Mobile Web.

Imagine a place where you can pay for taxis, train fares, concert tickets, parking meters, food, drink and clothing simply by holding out your mobile phone. 

Now, Imagine a place where you can also check in at airports, hotels and hire cars simply by holding out your mobile phone. a

Now, imagine a place where you can transfer money from your savings account to pay your gas, electricity, tax and rates bills simply by scanning the bill with your mobile phone.

Now, imagine a place where you can scan the bar code of any item in the shop and check for competitive pricing.

Now, imagine a place where while you are looking at a billboard you can also purchase and collect your concert eTicket simply by scanning the QR Code.

Now imagine how far away that place is?

5, 10 15 years away?

Actually you’ll be surprised just how close and affordable it is. All you need to do is book yourself a flight to Japan and you can be living the dream today.

As RazorFish reported in their 2008 Digital Outlook Report [PDF] …

“Only one ride on the Tokyo subway is necessary to understand how obsessed the Japanese are with mobile phones. The majority of passengers are either quietly looking at their screens or ferociously typing by thumb. 83% of phones in Japan are Web-capable and mobile activity is dominated by Web browsing and e-mail—more than 70% of users spend 10 minutes or less with voice functions daily. The market for mobile content (downloadable songs, games, etc.) combined with the mobile commerce market exceeded $10 billion in 2007. This makes Japan the perfect market to look at when trying to discern the possibilities of the mobile Web.”

And Japan isn’t the only country where this revolution has already happened. As the New York Times explains In South Korea, All of Life Is Mobile.

“If I leave my wallet at home, I may not notice it for the whole day,” said Ms. Kim, 21. “But if I lose my cellphone, my life will start stumbling right there in the subway.”

You don’t have to imagine the future of the Mobile Web. It is already here in Japan and South Korea. 

As the ITIF report released this week observes. It is the  U.S. that now Lags World Leaders. 

“In a small, but growing number of nations the mobile phone has evolved from a simple personal communications device to become both a platform for commerce and an indispensable part of a “lifestyle infrastructure” that enhances personal productivity, manages financial transactions, and makes life far more convenient and efficient. Indeed, around the world, consumers can use mobile phones as electronic wallets to pay for public transit, to check in at airline gates, and to make purchases from merchants, kiosks, and vendors. But not in the United States, which lags behind world leaders in leveraging the mobile phone as a platform to effect commercial transactions. The result is lagging productivity and reduced convenience for America and Americans.”  (Download the complete ITIF [PDF] Report)

Japan continues to define the future of the MobCon landscape.  They have already brought to market and commercialised all the ideas that the investors in Wall St and the Silicon Valley are now getting so excited about. 

Today the only question you need to ask yourself is will you adopt the policy of a “Late to Market ME2″ and follow the Japanese roadmap, or will you wait a little longer, and catch the next disruptive wave of the information revolution in a bold bid for outright market leadership?

What ever road you choose it’s time to shelve the redundant Mobile Media, Mobile Applications and Mobile Relationships marketing strategies.

It’s time to work out how you are going to plug into your customer’s Mobile Life. Otherwise it may not be you who is profiting in the future from the everyday discoveries, transactions and exchanges of their increasingly fragmented mobile lives.

Further Reading:

• How Japan leveraged the MobCon to jump past Silicon Valley
• Is this the day Silicon Valley discovers it is 10 years behind Japan in pursuit of the MobCon?
• Mastercard shows its hand in the high stakes game of Mobile Payments
• A Telco you can Bank on?

<< Previous post in this series

This is the fourth in a series of postings on the emerging business models of the Mobile Web.

I mentioned in an earlier post the killer iPhone app for me was always going to be a hybrid of Facebook and location intelligence that would allow you to discover who was nearby to catch up for a coffee or a beer.

Today this unique blend of contacts, location and context is fast becoming the campaign blueprint for the next generation of creative Advertisers and Marketers.

Mobile Marketing Magazine reports that new research conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), reveals that 73% of marketers believe mobile will be the medium to see most growth over the next five years.

Advertisers and Marketers around the world are clearly hyped up about the unlimited potential of the Six Degrees of Separation and the marketing and promotion of mobile relationships through the merging of the social or business networks of Facebook and Linked In with the mobile phone network.

Couple this referral network with the power of mobile search and location intelligence and you have the ultimate advertising and promotions platform… the mobile phone.

That why the advertising industry is buzzing with ideas to repurpose old technologies like QR Codes and Bar Codes into mobile tagging and branding campaigns. 

These QR tags are very popular in Japan. They allow advertisers to post links to their promotions in every geographical location. Newspapers, magazines, street corners, buses, taxis and even people and T-Shirts become branded homing devices that allow anyone with a mobile phone camera to Point, Click and Discover the message, offer or promotion behind the printed code.

A quick search of TechCrunch for location based advertising will show you just how hot the idea of mixing Facebook and location intelligence with mobile phones is at the moment. ReadWriteWeb has made available a good primer with their article The Future of Advertising is Shakable and Location-Based.

For the more moderate observer mobile might be the most overhyped advertising channel of our time. Chris Lake, the editor in chief at Econsultancy published 10 reasons why mobile advertising is doomed back in 2007. While Andrew Gill’s post last year on what is holding mobile advertising back was an informed discussion on the barriers to entry for the emerging mobile advertising market.

As any mobile phone applications developer will tell you the biggest problem is the proliferation of non-standard devices. Even the over-hyped iPhone fails to address this issue. It’s small market share merely adds to the complexity mix.

There is also the ongoing public debate and calls for stricter regulation and monitoring of the more highly targeted and personalized forms of advertising.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that Mobile has long represented little more than a rounding error in most advertising and marketing budgets, despite the burgeoning number of mobile users and their increasingly sophisticated devices and usage patterns. However a Change Is in the Air for Mobile Advertising and Mobile marketing is here to stay.

That change of course is Google. Google’s $750 Million of AdMob has repositioned Mobile Marketing as a mainstream advertising option.

Why?  Isn’t the Google deal is similar to the mobile advertising acquisitions that AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo have made in the past two years? Indeed aren’t there are more than a dozen mobile ad networks? So what makes this deal so special?

Google paid more for AdMob than what the entire mobile ad market is worth. It was a statement of intent from the internet’s market leader.

Google has paid a very big price to get a strong position in mobile. So it is not going to go unnoticed by the global advertising and marketing community.

As Julia Boorstin of CNBC estimates in her article Why Google is Paying $750 Million for Ad Mob, mobile ads were responsible for just $416 million in 2009 revenue, a tiny piece of the $24 billion online advertising pie. But mobile ads are expected to be one of the fastest growing categories as smart phones become pervasive.  Bloomberg suggests the U.S. mobile-ad market should reach $2 billion to $3 billion by 2013. So will it be a smart buy?

Obviously Google thinks so. It compliments their existing online search engine and aggregated advertising networks and with this acquisition, Google becomes the largest player in the mobile-advertising industry with an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent market share.

Is there a risk with this strategy? Google and the other aggregators clearly see their investment in mobile advertising as an extension their successful online strategies. If the mobile web is just the web represented on a mobile web browser then the risk would appear to be minimal. The problems will arise if the mobile web proves to be something very different from the desktop web.

At the moment though it looks like the future of marketing and communications will be “Google on the move“.

Today, Telco’s are thinking they are in the business of managing Mobile Relationships. Aggregating synergies between their customers and advertisers. The reality is a little different.

Once again, while the advertising and content aggregators manage the low risk revenue flows, the Telcos are left funding the high risk infrastructure and the costs of maintaining the network. Meanwhile the media outlets are reengaged across the network to produce very expensive, but inevitably low to zero value, content .

The new industry model has Google placed in the pivotal position to regulate the flow of advertising and content revenues across the value chain.  

Next post in this series >>

<< Previous post in this series

Mobile ad firm AdMob recently released a study that illustrated the massive growth in web-capable smart phone ownership over the past year. A year ago, the Motorola Razr was the top phone in the U.S., and the iPhone was the only unit in the top ten with touchscreen capabilities. Only a year later, half the phones on the list have touchscreens, six have wi-fi capabilities, and six have app stores.

As mobile web browsers increase in popularity, the magazine and newspaper industries have no choice but to play catch-up. Many magazines now have a digital editions that you can flip through on your phone, and prominently feature downloadable apps as well, like this Better Homes and Gardens app for the Blackberry. E-readers like Kindle are also increasing as popularity. Smart phones have already become part of the fabric of journalism.

Print journalism is still trying to find a way to catch up with the traditional internet; how can it cope with yet another sea change in the way people access content? Just how important is it to own a smart phone if you’re working in the journalism industry?

It is kinda funny how far along my mobile phone use has come along in the last 18 months.

It’s hard to even imagine what phone I had then, and if my memory serves me correctly it was a Windows Mobile 5.0 powered Samsung Blackjack.

At the time, my purchase reason was the QWERTY keyboard. I texted all the time (and I still do), but I dreamed of how much easier it would be over my bright orange Motorola PEBL.

It had 3G (which at the time, I just knew that was “fast”), e-mail capabilities (was not concerned about this at the time), and could surf the Internet a lot faster than the PEBL. Considering I never did that ever on the old phone at all, I wasn’t sure if that was a cool feature.

So the Blackjack had my keyboard that rocked, a decent camera and the familiarity of the ye olde Internet Explorer logo that fired up how I thought the Internet on a mobile phone should look.

I was pretty happy with this phone. As I traveled more for work, I found myself renting GPS units at every airport which invariably got old (as they are not a guarantee, and sometimes I was stuck with a map which sucked).

So my next requirement was a phone that had a GPS built-in, not only so I could quit signing damage waivers and releases at (insert your friendly neighborhood car rental counter here), I could save the company a little money. So naturally, I went to the BlackJack 2 as I was familiar with Windows Mobile, and it had GPS.

Long story short, the phone was terrible. The GPS software, the only reason I upgraded was terrible. So painfully slow. This is the only time I have taken a piece of electronics back.

This resulted in me getting a Blackberry Curve. The only reason I went BB is that it didn’t cost me anything. It was a straight across exchange. I didn’t know much about the Blackberry, but was willing to ditch WinMo for a device that could actually deliver on what I needed it to do.

Around this time, mobile web was really starting to take off, due in part to the iPhone. Now my friends had iPhones, and now as a new found Blackberry loyalist, I naturally told them that Blackberry was the device to have. The only killer “app” at the time that I could mention was BlackBerry Messenger. However, the more I thought about it, the weaker that argurment got. Plus when Oregon Trail, by far my favorite video game of all time came out for iPhone, I quickly fired up Craigs so I could sell my Blackberry to get an iPhone 3G.

Now, I had a device that could surf the net, compose email (as Blackberry brought me back to the email train), GPS with Google maps, AND Oregon Trail? Does it get any better than that?

Now, before I jumped on this bus that I am writing this post from, I was able to see to the minute when my next bus was arriving via GPS in the One Bus Away application. On top of dying from dysentery on the Oregon Trail. What’s next? Being able to do both of those things at the same time.

Will the iPhone bring that, or will it be another stepping stone in my phone evolution?

This is the second in a series of postings on the emerging business models of the Mobile Web.

It has taken the best part of the decade for both the old and new media industries to wake up to the fact the Mobile Phone has more than double the eyeballs and revenues of any other mass or personal communications platform.

Today the mobile phone is being described as everything from the 4th Screen to the 7th mass media channel.  Simultaneously the future of media and the death of media.  What makes it uniquely interesting is simply the fact that, up until just recently, was owned and operated exclusively by the telecommunications industry.

Today media, IT and telecoms strategists are desperately seeking the revolutionary strategy that will turn them into the “Google” of the mobile web.  The market leader of potentially the biggest mass media market of them all.

The Mobile Media channel has been operating as a “Walled Garden” since early 2000’s.

If you wanted to participate you had to be invited. You also had to be prepared to pay for the privilege of connecting into the network and you had to share your revenues with network provider and anybody else who had subsequently moved into the value chain between you and the customer.

The Telco mobile media business model was all about leveraging media content to increase market share and lock customers into valued added mobile media plans that delivered a significant increase in ARPU (Average Revenue per User).

An earlier post describes how Hutchison Australia applied this strategy to achieve just that.

Hutchinson invited selected publishers to join its Plant 3 Portal. Customers signed up for monthly plans to access the premium content and the revenues were split with the media outlets who provided the content.

For the Telco this was a win:win:win scenario. They picked up more customers, benefited 100% from the increase in voice and SMS revenues, and received between 60% – 85% of any content purchased by the customer.

The media outlets, oblivious to the fact they were subsidising the growth of the 4th Screen, were happy to be receiving “a bonus earn” from the repurposed content they had supplied.

So did the mobile phone work as a media distribution platform for 3 Mobile?

Not really. The Plant 3 portal, like a lot of web media, just wasn’t sticky enough. Not that this was a problem for 3. The lack of media sales was more than off-set by the increase in voice and SMS revenues generated by the customers attracted to the “state of the art” service.

The Planet 3 Portal did not perform as well as the leading web portals

It would prove a problem however if you were trying to operate a media company using this model. 15 to 40% of not much is just that: not much.

Any media company that wanted to make a significant “earn” from publishing its media content across the mobile network had to be thinking seriously about becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).

As we shall see later on in this series some big media names did just that. Disney offered their content as the hook to entice subscribers to join their branded mobile phone network.

In the process a new and far more complex industry value chain was created and it is from within this complex, multi tiered model that the new “Google” of mobile media will emerge.

You will always grow your market share a lot quicker by giving the content away for free than you will charging for it and, as I pointed out in How Telstra leveraged the MobCon to retain market leadership, that’s exactly what Australia’s largest telecommunications company has done to win back market share from 3 Mobile.

Media was never really the hook the Telcos thought is was going to be. The bulk of the new media sales from the Telcos’ “Walled Gardens” provided the customers with Music, Ringtones, Wall Papers and Games that enhanced or personalised the handset. 

Mobile Media Revenues

For the customer mobile media was just another fashion accessory. Bling for their phone.

So it should come as no surprise to discover in our next post that the “Walled Garden” has become the competitive edge of not the telco or the media company but the mobile handset providers.

Next post in this series >>

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Oh wireless internet…3G and 4G alike…it all means the same to me. I have no idea of the differences between the father-son duo…all I know is that its;whatever “it” is, “better”, somehow. But there is the “how” , alike; sitting on the same shelf as “what”, and the omnipresent “why”. Why I ask throw me information in Latin(or it may as well be) about the 3g/4g phones/network? And I speak for the everyday community when I say what exactly does this mean again? Well, its quite simple, actually; 3G and 4G only refer to speeds…speeds at which the rate of information travels. Oh Great Verizon and AT&T, couldn’t you just say “faster” or “better” and leave the “geek speak” to the geeks who created the network…while CEO’s make all the money I might add. It’s like Herpes…it’s everywhere.Technology isn’t adapting to humans, humans are adapting to technology…BAD!!!!!! Throwing around words like “bandwith” ,”T-1″ and “megabits” to me would be like me tossing the phrase “free file sharing” to Lars Ulrich…he and I will be dumbfounded just the same (Metallica fans get it). Every time I turn on Sponge Bob(for myself, I might add) I’m bombarded with “Get the nation’s fastest 3G network!” and I’m completely turned off by it… I don’t enjoy having to Google on my iPhone for what 3G and 4G mean…it always says “Hey dumbass…you’re holding it!!!” Okay; I confess, I made that last part up…the whole iPhone and what-not…but it speaks all the same G(r)eek to me.

Adobe (s adbe) today released developer betas of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 and said it plans to extend full Flash support to mobile devices next year. It’s a move that could go a long way toward improving the user experience on the wireless web.

Flash 10.1, which was unveiled last month, is designed to run on platforms including Google’s (s goog) Android, Research In Motion’s (s rimm) BlackBerry, Microsoft’s (s msft) Windows Mobile, Nokia’s (s nok) Symbian and Palm’s (s palm) webOS. Today’s beta releases are limited to devices running Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems, however. Flash 10.1 is expected to be available “across a broad spectrum of smartphones” and other connected devices next year, the company said.

“With the beta availability of Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 today, we are taking an important step toward realizing the Open Screen Project vision to enable rich Internet experiences across any device, anywhere,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Content creators will provide multi-screen experiences with uncompromised Web browsing and standalone applications across desktops and netbooks, and in the near future across a wide range of mobile devices.”

While Apple’s (s aapl) iPhone was once again conspicuously absent from Adobe’s announcement, Adobe has consistently said it has a working relationship with the Cupertino company and would like to bring Flash to the iPhone. (Both of Adobe’s new beta releases support multi-touch input.)

Flash is the centerpiece of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, an 18-month-old initiative aimed at bridging the substantial gaps that remain between the “PC web” and other platforms such as mobile and consumer devices. The lack of support for Flash on mobile devices has been a substantial problem on the wireless web, leading to user experiences on phones that can be vastly different — and oftentimes inferior — from traditional computers. Bringing the technology to a wide variety of mobile phones would be a big step toward the “one web” that today is just a dream for most wireless users.

La aproximativ un an de la relansarea portalului paginiaurii.ro, aceeasi echipa aduce noi servicii, precum versiunea in limba engleza a bine-cunoscutului director si versiunea pentru mobile.

Am utilizat ieri si astazi versiunea mobila si spun ca sunt multumit. Este foarte usor sa cauti ce vrei, unde vrei si asta oriunde te afli. Stai in strada ca nu ti-a venit taxiul comandat? Suna la una dintre celelalte firme! La fel poti face ori de cate ori planurile ti se schimba din mers.

m.paginiaurii.ro incarca usor indiferent de tipul de conexiune (deci nu e nevoie de 3G), este accesibil din Orange World (sectiunea Bazar) si Vodafone Live! (sectiunea Anunturi), sau printr-un SMS gratuit din reteaua Vodafone la numarul 8877. Simplu ca „Buna ziua!”

This is the first in a series of postings on the five key business models that will emerge to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Mobile Web.

In What is the MobCon? I set out the case for the MobCon being a long wave theory that will inevitably lead to consumers benefiting from free Wireless Devices offering free Media, Rich Apps being delivered across free wireless networks. 

In Who holds the key to MobCon profitability? we learnt that the media, IT and telecommunications industries each held  a unique key and a gateway to profitability within the MobCon landscape.

• Media had content (i.e. The Data)
• IT had the applications, databases and the gadgets (i.e. The Nodes)
• Telecoms had the pipes (i.e. The Network)

Finally, in So who is profiting from the MobCon? we discovered that none of the established media, IT and Telco market leaders had profited from the first wave of the MobCon.

The question now is will they profit from the next wave of the MobCon… The Mobile Web?

Today we now know that the first wave (the Desktop Web) was dominated by 5 business models

• eMedia
• eDestinations
• DIY eApplications
• eMarkets
• eAggregators

The biggest winners were the eMarkets (e.g. eBay) and eAggregators (e.g. Advertising Networks and Google). While the biggest losers were the eMedia (e.g. NY Times and News Corp) and the eDestinations (e.g AOL). 

As we move forward into the next wave of the MobCon (The Mobile Web) will we again see these five strategies dominate the landscape? And, if they do, will we look back and 15 years time will it be a case of Déjà vu? Will we see the mMedia stocks hemorrhaging and the mMarket stocks soaring? Or, will new strategies emerge that will be unique to the Mobile Web?

The old mobile phone business model was based around building robust networks that provided adequate coverage to support the voice, SMS and handset deals being offered as bundled packages to entice communities (e.g. Families, Friends, SME’s, Government and Corporates) to sign up for 2 to 3 year fixed plans.

It was all about Connecting People on the Move.

Today the Telcos believe the future of their business is no longer just about mobile communications. As the gate keepers of the network they are seeking to leverage this position to secure and expand their pivotal position within the industry value chain.

They are doing this because thier flagship voice and text bundles have now become a low value commodity and they are looking around for value added services that they can provide to their customers. Not only to retain them but to increase ARPU (Average Revenue per User)

Telcos have found out the hard way that the cost of retaining a customer is substantially less than the initial cost of obtaining that customer. Over the past decade Telcos have been busy building mDestinations. Not only Media Portals but what the industry describes as converged services.

Converged services have become one of the marketing strategies employed by service providers today to grow revenues and subscriber bases, and reduce customer churn. As a recent Frost & Sullivan industry report suggests (Converged services cause less churn for telcos) the bundling two or more services such as fixed voice, broadband, mobile and pay TV into attractive price plans reduces customer churn

However this bundling is just the beginning. As we shall see the Mobile Web offers Telcos a whole new opportunity to provide customers with converged services.

Just like the first wave of the MobCon, the second wave appears to offer Telcos and the other players in the market  5 key business models. 

• mMedia
• mDestinations
• DIY mApplications
• mMarkets
• mAggregators

At first glance it appears self-evident who the winners and the losers will be. So why, as we shall see in my next post, have the Telcos spent the past 7 years chasing mMedia?

Next post in this series >>

Jude Mathurine from Rhodes University has an interesting presentation on the impact of mobile phone based use of social networks in Africa.

I’ve not yet come across a comparable study of new media’s use and impact in Sri Lanka, but the points on slides 3 and 7, noting that the Internet is still an elite medium in Africa, holds true here as well. Jude points to traditional media’s inability to grasp the potential of new media. Many examples of this can also be found in Sri Lanka, including for example this recent post of mine and the use of Wikipedia by the Sunday Times.

Jude’s more interesting submissions are in the slides that follow, looking at the growth of the mobile web in Africa and the use of SMS for citizen journalism. Mobiles in Sri Lanka are still used far more for entertainment and one-to-one communications than as a tool for participating in governance and public oversight. The participation in new forms of journalism through mobiles is not yet prevalent in Sri Lanka, where web access is still largely through PCs. Of late, several mobile phone companies have been running advertisements for mobile phone based Facebook access, but again, the potential of this for organising flash mobs, or even just the dissemination of information, is poor. Services such as JNW pioneered the use of SMS as a platform for the dissemination of news, but few NGOs have picked up freely available technologies like FrontlineSMS to aid their advocacy and outreach. Mainstream media in Sri Lanka remains locked into a PC dominated mindset at best – there is not a single traditional media site that is mobile phone friendly. LBO and Groundviews remain the only websites that render content automatically for mobile phone screens.

Jude’s conclusion that social media can be important space for public discourse on democratisation and development especially among youth is reflected in Sri Lanka as well, through existing examples such as Pissu Poona on Facebook and new forms of dissent online that emerged during and just after the end of war.

Best practices and potential for improved information flows in media and civil society is a field and desk research based report published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives I edited in December 2008 that looks closely at how civil society and NGOs in Sri Lanka can use traditional, alternative and new media techniques in their advocacy. Jude’s conclusions resonate widely and deeply in the recommendations proposed.

Two years ago Apple wasn’t a player in the lucrative Mobile Phone market. What’s more its previous attempt to enter this highly competitive market (The Newton PDA) had disappeared without a trace a decade earlier.

Today, although it is still a very small player in the global Mobile Phone market (See chart below), Apple has sold over 20 Million Smart Phones and has the US media buzzing about the “Game Changing” iPhone.

So why is the iPhone a success? 

A big part of the answer is the app store and the almost 1 Billion downloads it has delivered to iPhone customers since the products launch in June 2007

Last month Apple announced it had approved 100,000 iPhone apps and it now has the fast growing smart phone in the US. Proof that within 2 years Apple had created a gold mine for both itself and its legion of iPhone Developers.

As a result Apples share price continues to perform strongly even while the rest of the US economy is struggling with the fall out of the GFC.

Apples vs Microsoft Share Price Performance since the announcement of the iPhone in Jan 2007

This the Freemium business model in action across both the supply and the sales side of the mobile phone industry value chain. Today Apple has…

The Supply Side Freemium Strategy is all about having other people build a large and profitable new market for you for free!

With the launch of the iPhone product and the apps store Apple has successfully leverage its brand to convince others to freely contribute their ideas, resources, time, energy and capital to build both a new brand and a new market for them.

A couple of years ago I was having a beer with the iArchitect of one of Australia’s Telcos. It was around the time the of the iPhone launch here in Australia and the conversation meandered towards the topic of the Killer iPhone App.

For me the killer app was always going to be a hybrid of Facebook and location intelligence. A Facebook Friends Location Mapping tool if you like.  A simple app that would allow you to see which pub your mates were drinking at if you were working back late on a Friday night.

I felt sure that would be up there in the top 10 downloads and people would pay good money for it.

The iArchitect responded by keying something into his mobile phone. I felt sure I was about to see a demonstration of some ground breaking, super cool piece of technology from the apple store. Instead he just sent me a txt message.

What did it say?

“This is the Killer App for the Mobile Phone”

He was right of course. SMS is the Killer Mobile Phone App and it’s been around for almost 15 years. If anything, as any senior Telco executive will tell you, it has been too successful.

You see, if you’re Texting then you’re not using Voice. Voice delivers a higher Average Revenue per User (ARPU) than SMS. On the other hand mobile content delivers a higher ARPU than both Voice and SMS and that’s why the Telcos are banking on Smart Phones and the next generation of multimedia apps to break the strangle hold that SMS has on Mobile Data Revenues.

The problem is, thanks to Twitter, SMS is now infecting the internet. The Killer Mobile App is now becoming the Killer Internet App.

At a time when the Telcos are banking on bandwidth hungry Web TV being the future of the internet customers are flocking to use the micro blogging engine.

At a time when the industry is anticipating an explosion in bandwidth usage customers seem to be becoming more frugal in their communication habits. All thanks to SMS and Twitter.

So getting back to the original conversation. What about my idea? Did it stack up?  Well kind of… I’m sure you’ll find at least 1,000 different versions of a Facebook Friends Location Mapping app in the Apple store today. All of them free… After all it’s a great marketing tool if you want to sell more beer :)