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Carnival of the Mobilists #88 is Here

Welcome to the 88th edition of carnival of the mobilists!

Sit comfortably and get ready for a blast of the best mobile writing of the week :)

Let's start with my pick for the best post of the week:

Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens asks us if at the next time we upgrade, will we choose the device first or will you choose the network? And answers how it will affect the mobile market, Fascinating!

Mobile Content and Apps

Nick Cowie shows a very convincing (and funny) video demo of why should we build mobile specific websites.

Dennis of Wap Review reviews FeedM8, which creates mobile sites from RSS feeds.

New comer (welcome!) Rita El Khoury of Dotsisx shares from her experience handling a new WM mobile handset in comaprison to Symbian OS.

Kevin Fleming of Satellite TV Guru explores DirecTV Sat-Go which is portable satellite television for your mobile.

Mobile Marketing

Debi Jones of Mobile Jones brings a great overview of Nokia's history of failures with marketing in the US market and Nokia's latest decision of launching the new US market device, the N95 3, in London(!).

C Enrique Ortiz of ...About Mobility raises the importance of pricing models as one of the main obstacles to adoption of new mobile applications and services and shares some tips for mobile software product developers to reduce costs.

Tim Trent of Marketing by Permission brings "hot from the press" the insights of Renzo Marchini and Kate Tebbutt of Dechert LLP, London about the legality of Bluetooth spamming.

Mobile Industry

Paul Ruppert of Mobile Point View raises the question of whether multimodal messaging is the death of mobile text messaging and answers in a solid overview of the market divided to 2 parts (don't miss part 2 later on this week).

Stephen Johnston of ThreeDimensionalPeople presents “Enterprise2.0” and what it means for mobility in a very thorough and worth reading overview.

Abhishek Tiwari illustrates why should we (the consumers) care about Sprint’s XOHM. Great post explaining how the WiMax will affect all of us.

Jason Devitt of Skydeck responds to Tracy Ford's (one of the editors of RCR Wireless) article where she suggested that allowing any device to run on wireless networks would make life harder for developers and not necessarily increase the choice of handsets for consumers.

Ian Welsh of The Agonist also talks about the need for openness in the mobile industry.

And if you are an environmentalist, Kevin Bedell of 21st Century Citizen presents how you can recycle your old mobile phone.

Well, that concludes this edition. Have a great week and hope to catch up next week at my dear friend Dennis @ the Wap Review :)

Blog Meme - Send Someone A Cup Of Coffee

My friend Ricky Cadden, who you probably know as the Symbian Guru, started a cool new blog meme! He sent me a cup of coffee, or better said, a pic of his favorite mug and a signed napkin (you can see my cup of coffee is right in front of my screen with his blog post at the back).

According to this new blog meme, if you receive a cup of coffee, you should forward it to a blogger friend from a different country, How? Simply, by taking a pic of your favorite coffee mug, writing on a napkin of your choice his\her name and URL and finally - post it @ your blog.

I decided to send my favorite cup of coffee (with low fat milk) to my friend C Enrique Ortiz. Enrique, who are you passing your cup to? :)

College Students Are More Open to Mobile Advertizing

According to a new study from Ball State, "Technically oriented college students are increasingly receptive to receiving advertising via text messages on their cell phones and other mobile devices".

"An analysis of mobile communications by college students during 2005-07 found that 56.3% of respondents would accept ads if they would get something free, said Michael Hanley, a Ball State advertising professor and mobile marketing researcher.

About 37.4% of college students said it would only take the offer of a free ringtone for them to would accept advertisements on their cell phones while 21.4% preferred a discount or coupon to a restaurant, movie or grocery store and 20% wanted free minutes, upgrades, access to the Internet or music."
[via MobiAd Network]

Update: Continuing on the search for analysis about mobile advertizing I found this (which I think supports the findings from above):

Acording to a study by media agency Universal McCann "people always complain about things that are interruptive - it still works in traditional media but in this environment consumers have so much choice where they source content from and if it detracts from the experience they will go elsewhere.

The survey, which covered 9,500 people with a mobile phone and an internet connection in 21 countries from the UK to Mexico, suggests the marketing opportunity to reach gadget users is bigger than ever.

Consumers in the developing world were the most receptive to advertising, particularly Mexico, China and Thailand, while the US, France and the UK were the least receptive markets. On a mobile phone, the best forms of advertising were opt-in Bluetooth formats that provide information or vouchers direct to the mobile, popular with 72% of the global sample, and sponsored search results. Adverts on mobile internet pages and TV adverts on mobiles were rejected by 61% of respondents.

For podcasts and videocasts, sponsorship was the most valued form of advertising, followed by brand recommendations from presenters. Adverts at the beginning of the clip were acceptable but interruptive ads in the middle of a video or audio clip were not."

[via The Guardian]

Carnival of the Mobilists at Darla's

Hi all,

Better late than never, right?? (these summer vacations, I tell ya'...)

The Mobile Diva, our beloved Darla Mack, has got the 87th Carnival of the Mobilists up at her site, so be sure to check it out!

Oh, and don't worry, tomorrow's edition will be posted here :)

Harnessing Blogs for Marketing Campaigns

Hi all,

I was invited to give a presentation about blogging from a marketer's perspective. As a blogger, I get many press releases sent to my inbox everyday, hoping to get featured. However, many of them are irrelevant to my field of expertise and to the topics I cover at my blog. Eventually, many of those press releases find their way to my trash can...

At the ordered lecture, I want to present examples of smart and creative marketing campaigns that harnessed the power of popular blogs for marketing goals. I started to search the web and found this amazing story at Word of Mouth Marketing Association website:

"Toyota recently completed a campaign in which it engaged a team of Greek bloggers to spread the word about its new hatchback model, the Auris. Toyota wanted three things from its Greek Auris campaign. One, it needed to be digital. Two, it needed to put the car's interior -- its "cockpit" -- front and center. And three, it needed to inspire test-drives and get consumers into the driver's seat.

To achieve its goals, Toyota decided to let its customers market the Auris for it. It invited 15 Greek bloggers to test-drive the car for a week, and encouraged them to post their findings to an official Auris Blog as well as to their own blogs. The results:

* Bloggers wrote 55 posts about the Auris.

* Readers posted 175 comments to the bloggers' posts.

* The Auris Blog received 52,000 visits from 41,000 unique visitors.

* The campaign generated 2,000 test-drive requests -- 50% of all test-drive requests."

[via WOMMA]

If you have more examples of this kind of marketing activities - please contact me. I promise to give you full credit for it :)

Carnival of Mobilists at MobHappy

The Carnival of the mobilists makes a stop back in its hometown at MobHappy! Go ahead and follow the link, you don't want to miss the best of the mobile writing of this week edited by the wiz Carlo Longino.

The Mobile Content Market - Moving Into An Off-Portal Eco-System

Mobile Content Market - 30,000 ft. View 

Communication, entertainment, information… consumer interest in using mobile phones has amazingly grown worldwide over the past few years. Mobile Content, the fast growing market in mobile, is expected to grow from $18bn in 2005 (Informa Telecoms & Media, July 2006) to $42.8bn in 2010:

• Music - $11.4bn
• Mobile Games - $11.2bn
• Gambling - $7.6bn
• Adult Content - $2.3bn
• WAP Browsing, Infotainment, dating and other applications - rest of market

The mobile industry lead by the mobile operators has spent a lot of $$ to encourage growth of the mobile content market. By establishing the first content-based services, operators put the cornerstone and made content available to their subscribers through their own web portals both for the web and mobile.

all rights reserved to John Puterbaugh, Nellymoser Inc.

[Figure 1]

Initiating the first content-based services has positioned operators as the storefront of the mobile content stores, offering a wide offering (see figure 2 and 3).

[Figure 2]

all rights reserved to John Puterbaugh, Nellymoser Inc.

[Figure 3 ]

Operator portals have been important for being the first milestone, however they have provided limited opportunities. Operators maintain a wide portfolio of mobile products and services while maintaining a reach portal is too demanding for most. This has led to a gradual opening of the market to many more players who share the load (and profits).

The Off-Portal Eco-System

Thanks to this process operators have witnessed that content providers ultimately sustain consumer interest by providing a large variety of compelling content, being constantly updated with the newest hits. Today, the appetite among content providers to leverage the mobile outlet is higher than ever, seeing each month new content brands entering the mobile market. Just as in the early days of the Web, when users initially experienced the online world through a web portal before exploring out to find what they seek, we are now starting to see increasingly wide browsing behavior amongst mobile users.

This consumer activity is increasingly channeled outside of the operator portal. These two channels to market - through an operator portal, or directly to the consumer by the brand itself - are complementary drivers to the total growth in mobile data usage. In most of the off-portal services, the operator is still part of the billing process, providing a simple payment experience. The differences are that the operator does not promote the service in its own portal, and the marketing is managed by the content provider.

The most popular discovery method for off-portal services is the common short codes which enable users to interact using SMS as an entry point into content/services provided by parties other than operators. Phone users then are charged directly to their mobile phone bill. The main services powered by common short codes today are ringtones, wallpapers, games, news alerts and voting applications.
Today, common short codes are the only ubiquitous cross-operator method of marketing off-portal content, being available to all mobile subscribers.

Off-Portal: Everybody Wins

The off-portal channel to market is very attractive; it brings more brands and services into the mobile market, providing wider choice and usage opportunities for mobile users. It also provides a route into the market for more specialized content providers that cannot access the market through operator portals.

Brands of all sizes can invest marketing dollars into campaigns with a single call-to-action that works for practically all mobile users using short codes. They can also leverage their websites traffic to generate mobile usage. And most important for consumer brands, it enables them to clearly differentiate from their competitors through creative marketing.Operators on their behalf, enjoy a growing income from SMS and data traffic with 0 cost of marketing since content providers take care of the marketing to the end consumers. And consumers, from their point of view, enjoy the same mobile services across multiple operator networks.

The off-portal mobile content market is a vital part of the mobile data market. The marketing benefit – reaching mobile users everywhere, regardless of their network, is a strong driver for brands to route their marketing efforts to the off-portal channel and to incorporate mobile services to their marketing campaigns.

*Figure 1 and 3 were used with the curtsey of John Puterbaugh from Nellymoser Inc.

Your Help Is Needed

Hi,

I'm back from a short vacation (I moved to a new apartment) and found this ringback tones commercial of Hutch in my inbox. The problem is that I don't know Hindi... so if any of my dear readers can help with the translation, it will be very much appreciated. Thanks :)

Carnival of Mobilists at Mobile Point View

Hit the beach scene for this week’s Carnival at my friends', Paul Ruppert's Mobile Point View. Carnival goers join some of the best global mobile content, comments and community of opinion influencers surfing the web.