Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Focus on Mobile Avatars - Mobagetown Japan

After answering a few readers queries through email, I realized that there is a growing reader's interest in mobile offering of avatars. Therefore, I decided to reply in a series of posts for the benefit of others who might be interested as well.

One of my favorite examples of a smart business model and a VERY successful avatar service is Mobile Game Town (Mobagetown) from Japan. It is the largest and fastest growing mobile Social Networking Service (SNS), available only on mobile. The site is a blend of casual games and social networking, multiplayer and singleplayer games coupled with chat, blogs and avatars.

An interesting fact is that Mobile Game Town is offered by DeNA, a Tokyo-based e-commerce company that runs virtual auction sites and shopping malls. This fact leaves a notable footmark on the business model (and makes a differentiator from other SNS sites). DeNA hooks the users with free mobile games with over 30 titles to choose from, supported by advertisement. Users buy from mobile e-commerce sites and get “mobile gold” which is then used to dress their avatars; by spending in the real world users get virtual money to dress their virtual alter ego, their avatar.

[via DeNA]

Mobile Game Town’s success is overwhelming: 5 million users with over 400 million daily page views back in May in less than a year from its official launch. Just to put the numbers in perspective, Mobile Game Town’s stats are four times larger than that of Yahoo's mobile portal! 

And to give you a sense of latest (brilliant) marketing activities:

In June, DeNA announced "an interesting summer Yukata campaign. In co-operation with Aeon  dept. store the companies have set-up a virtual avatar catalogue from which members can build, for a modest fee, their outfit based on actual products complete with best dressed contest prizes. This would seem to be a rather slick ad campaign ultimately designed to drive purchases of the real thing just in time for the summer matsuri (festival) season. The company ran a similar campaign for Nike where customers who bought physical goods were rewarded with virtual prizes."

[via Wireless World Japan]

And a special treat from the Wireless Watch Japan - a video demo of both "Mobile Game Town" and Disney's "Wonder Days" (which will be reviewed here on its own in one of my next posts).

Levi's Goes Mobile

Levi’s, best known for jeans, was known for getting into the mobile phone business with a couple new hand sets. Yesterday came more details about the phones themselves. Levi’s says that their phone embraces mobile technology and enables young people to connect, enjoy music, images and video.

The adults might not understand the fuss around a Levis mobile phone and would say to their teenaged kid "who needs it?!", however mobile phones offer far more than simply a means of voice communication. They can provide entertainment, convey social status, and express one's individuality. It is known that "trendiness" is of high importance when selecting a mobile phone.

The Levi’s look brings a riveted looking case to the phone and a detachable chain that can hold the phone to your pants like those biker style wallets. ”Technology is at the heart of today’s youth culture and mobile phones are the ultimate accessory. Adding a mobile phone to our collection is a natural progression for Levi's®, a brand that is driven to meet the desires of young people”, says You Nguyen, Senior Vice President of Levi's® Product.

The phone will be offered in metallic silver, black and brown copper. Editions aimed more at the ladies will be shiny silver and shiny sand. The phone is made under license from the ModelLabs Group and will be available in stores in Europe in September of 2007. No word on when it will come state side, or any specs other that what colors the thing will come in.

[Via Levi's]

Seamus McAteer of M:Metrics on the Ringback Tones' Consumer

Hi all,

Today I have the honor to host Mr. Seamus McAteer at Xellular Identity. Seamus is a co-founder, chief product architect and senior analyst at M:Metrics. Seamus McAteer has covered the wireless industry since the early 1990s and has earned a reputation as one of the most respected and credible analysts in the industry. He held director and research fellow positions in several corporations analyzing internet and communications technology before founding his own wireless and telecommunications advisory services firm. He is frequently sought by the media for expert commentary on wireless, Internet and related technologies.

First time our paths crossed was when M:metrics published their report about the ringback tones market titled "Ringing(back) into the year":

According to M:Metrics, the mobile market authority, while ringtone purchasing declined in Europe and leveled out in the U.S. market, a new star was rising: the ringback tone.

The mobile measurement firm found that ringbacks have grown most aggressively in the United States, at a rate of 225 percent from the quarter ended January to the quarter ended November. Ringback subscriptions grew across Europe, at a rate of 150 percent Germany and 146 percent in the U.K. during the same period. Between July and November, ringbacks grew 12.8 percent in France and 11 percent in Spain.

“The rise in ringbacks indicates that personalization remains an important motivation for mobile content purchases,” said Jen Wu, entertainment analyst at M:Metrics. “While we see a decrease in ringtone purchases, we do see an increase in user-created ringtones. Since it’s impossible to hack a ringback tone, this growing market is not threatened by piracy and end-user savvy.”

[via M:metrics]

After reading the report I really wanted to interview Seamus about it; then I was very lucky to actually meet Seamus in person and hear his presentation about the ringback tones market in the USA at the Fun Dial Marketing Seminar. His presentation was very interesting and I really appreciate Seamus' willingness to put the time and effort to convert it into an interview and share with all of my readers.

Getting to Know Seamus

Hi Seamus. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
Good… jetlagged after a trip to China, but otherwise all is well.

What brought you to the world of mobile?
I covered the mobile sector as an analyst since the mid-90s when I was with SRI International, a big technology think tank. I wound up picking up coverage of mobile data and handheld computing for a number of syndicated services which were offered by the Business Intelligence Center. I was more of a generalist technology forecaster at the Center before I fell into a specialization in mobile.

What takes up your time other than mobile?
Since I founded M:Metrics in 2004 I have had limited time for a lot of things that I enjoy outside of work. Time with friends and family are a big priority. I love to run trails in the Bay Area, enjoy studying history, and love live Jazz.

Something interesting to share with the world about you?
I have 8 sisters and 2 brothers. We are all close, like an Irish clan, and family gatherings are a lot of fun.

The ringback tones' Consumers

What is offered in this market today?
M:Metrics tracks the market for mobile content and applications in the US and leading markets in Europe. In the US about 10 operators offer ringbacks branded using various monikers such as Calling Tones from Sprint, or Answer Tones from AT&T, and Calling Tunes for T-Mobile. All of these names for the same generic category have got to be confusing for customers.

How users become aware of the ringback tones service?
Ringbacks have built in viral adoption appeal. I think that most people learn about ringbacks when they hear it when they call a friend. Awareness differs significantly by operator which shows that marketing must also have something to do with building awareness.

Who buys ringback tones?
Subscription to ringback services is gender neutral almost 50:50 male to female adoption in the US. Consumption skews young with a median age of about 28 but it is older compared with ringtone purchase, which has a median age of under 27, or listening to music loaded over the air which has a median age of close to 24. African Americans are more than 2.5 times more likely than the market average to subscribe to ringback tones.

Thank you Seamus :)
Seamus will be here next Tuesday with more of M:Metrics insights about the American market of ringback tones -- so don't forget tune in!

Invent Yourself

Doing some spring cleaning at my files I've run into this cool video we made a while ago in order to present the Klonies concept.

Let me provide some background info for those of you who are not familiar with Klonies; Klonies is a new service of personalized avatars by the mobile solutions provider Comverse, that enables the creation of avatars from a big content library of body types, eyes, hairstyles, hats, glasses, moods, clothes, branded accessories, etc., which can be used in traditional web forums, as well as to extend this experience to the mobile arena. Comverse has created a mobile Caller ID service, by which a user can create his Klonie either on the Web or on his mobile handset. Klonies let youth segment do something they could never even dream of doing before: create expressive avatars that represent them on other people’s phones. Klonies give the users extended means for self expression: they define how they are seen by their friends, on their phones.

What I liked in this video is that it literally presents the idea of 'inventing oneself' that usually is happens online, when the information about one's identity is very limited. Enjoy! :)

Mix Sherpa: A New Mobile Music Discovery Service

Hi all,

Today I wanted to review a very creative campaign done by Sprint to promote its new mobile music store called Mix Sherpa.

Sprint was looking for a way to create buzz and raise awareness for their recently launched Music Store in an already very crowded space with Verizon's, T-Mobile's and The New AT&T's (Cingular) music download stores. Also, the audience of "Advanced Connected", which Sprint wanted to reach, is extremely averse to traditional advertising and blatant promotion.

So how did Sprint manage these challenges?

The human\social angle - Sprint invented a whole story about 2 characters:
Ias Westbury, a washed up pop star from the 1980s running a record store on Melrose and DJ Supahboy5 who works at Ian’s store. To make the story seem more real, Ian even has his own myspace page and a music video for Ian’s one and only hit from the 80s called “Under the Moon” [which was directed by the music video legend Nigel Dick, (Tears For Fears, Guns N’ Roses, Britney Spears)].

The added value to the user - Sprint integrated a discovery and recommendation engine into the story about Ian:
Users engage with Ian and the DJ by creating their own playlists and in return getting an “expert” review of their choices. Users also get recommendations based on the newly created playlist. The added value for the users is the discovery of new music that fits their tastes and the reaffirmation of who they are and what their musical taste says about them.

Finally, piling a playlist and getting exposed to new music while interacting with a cool character will (hopefully) generate Sprint music downloads! Who wouldn't want to take the playlist to the mobile? Especially if the recommendations will prove themselves as precise, or in Ian's words:

"You go to the site and select your own custom playlist. Through the magic they call a “logic engine” - I'm able to analyze your playlist - and maybe analyze what's going on in that head of yours too. I'll offer you everything in my arsenal with humor, wit and charm - naturally. My longtime employee DJ Supahboy5 is also online to interject with his own opinions on songs and styles. We've got information on bands and songs, and links to download everything you need to take your mobile phone to the next level“.

As for the mobile part, Sprint offers "Sprint Music Manager" which is PC client that helps you sync your music from your PC to your mobile using a USB cord. As I don’t have a Sprint phone (I don't live in the US) I asked to get a demo account to try the new service. However, if someone gets the opportunity to play with it in the meantime, please share your experience and insights! :)

Klonies For Adults? -Yes!

I was reading some very interesting bloggers' opinions about the Klonies service at Skype by Jean Mercier and by Phil Wolff and wanted to answer both. As my comment was becoming longer and longer, I decided to post it here and offer a bonus - Klonies pics!

Before actually addressing the points raised by both Jean and Phil, let me provide some background info for those of you who are not familiar with Klonies; Klonies are a new service of personalized Avatars by the mobile solutions provider Comverse, that enables the creation of Avatars from a big content library of body types, eyes, hairstyles, hats, glasses, moods, clothes, branded accessories, etc., which can be used in traditional web forums, as well as to extend this experience to the mobile arena. Comverse has created a mobile Caller ID service, by which a user can create his Klonie either on the Web or on his mobile handset. Klonies let youth segment do something they could never even dream of doing before: create expressive avatars that represent them on other people’s phones. Klonies give the users extended means for self expression: they define how they are seen by their friends, on their phones.

Both Jean and Phil talk about the workplace and the adult Skype users segment; both raise a certain feeling of discomfort with the young looks of the Klonies; this feeling is associated to the older users (of Skype and in general).

As a member of the Klonies team at Comverse, let me share some insights: at a trial we had at a European TIER 1 mobile operator a few months ago, we received very enthusiastic responses from young adults (19-24) and adults (25 and up) participating the trial. Both young adults and adults participants replied that they find the Klonies content to be appealing and fun to use and that they would be willing to pay for this mobile service.

As for the Klonies looks, yes, Klonies are good looking and juvenile, as they are primarily targeted to the youth mobile market. Klonies are good looking as they are our alter ego, our “wanna be web\mobile persona”. Klonies are also means for playing with our identity. Over the web we can “try” different characteristics as if they were different outfits (or costumes), we can express hidden parts of our personality that we don’t expose in daily life, such as our desires.

As for "rugged", "mature", "experienced", "damaged", “fat” avatars, the question is who would want to have his exact body shape and look to be his\her web representation? Imagine yourself this situation: I’m a very cool teenager but my face is all covered with pimples. Would I want my avatar to be polka dotted as well? -of course not! Would I want to have a button that adds zits to my avatar’s face? -no!! Nobody thinks zits are a good way to promote yourself. We all prefer to show an improved image of ourselves. If an “add a zit" option exists in the avatars building studio, and I’d deny its existence because I want my avatar to look cool and hip (who wouldn’t?!), my friends would say I’m lying about the way I look. The bottom line is that no button that adds flaws is welcome in avatars world. Better not have this possibility\option.

And last note about the Klonies looks - we are working on different skeletons to address different market tastes:

Also, different cultures have different conventions of how to present our body and how to pose:

 

Thanks Jean or sharing your thoughs and Thanks Phil for raising great ideas (I tried to reply to all of them at the comments section).

The Push Ringer

Just got the word about a cool new mobile personalization service called “Push Ringer”:

Push Ringer reverses the common ringtone model. It enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to the receiving phone allowing the caller, not the called person, to set the tone. The chosen Ringer is transmitted to the recipient's handset and temporarily overrides the phone's pre-set ringer. The ringers can comprise audio, video, animations, avatars or flash files. Closing the loop, if the called person likes the ringtone, the service also enables him or her to instantly buy a copy of the ringtone for his or her own phone. Emotive's Push Ringer moves beyond traditional mobile personalization by both adding value to the ringtones users purchase for their own phones and providing content recommendation and impulse-purchase opportunities to the users' friends, family and coworkers. This new technology represents a vastly more active, expressive and compelling form of call personalization than exists in today's ringtone market which is otherwise showing signs of leveling off at only about 6% of mobile subscribers, worldwide, The Push Ringer leverages rapidly emerging broadband wireless telephone and wire-line VOIP networks.

[via Mobile Tech News]

This idea was actually presented here, at Xellular Identity, long time ago by Assaf Katan. Interesting how ideas spread around. So here is Tom Sella's comment given to Assaf at the time, that still should be taken into consideration:

"well, considering most (ok, i'm a nokia nut, so strike that "most" and read as "nokia", since that's almost all i've used for the past 10+ years) already have profiles (with timed activation) and groups to which you can assign a ringtone, and yet, most people (i know) don't bother with them, i'm not so sure you'll be able to find a justifiable market size to support such an application.

that, coupled with the fact that the phone maker actually manages the ringtone app (with the possible exception of the smarter phones), i have to say i'm a nay-sayer."

Special: A Sneak Peak at the mobileYouth report 2007 (Part II)

Hi everyone,

Continuing with a great success, let me welcome here again a dear friend of mine. Please welcome Savka Andic, Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Savka has agreed to share some insights from the upcoming mobileYouth 2007 report! If you missed the first part of this interview, just follow the link.

Savka, the stage is yours!

Which handsets are popular among different age groups and why?
There is a whole school of “handset anthropology” devoted to the study of how mobile handsets mark out group identity. Handsets are not only associated with different age groups but also with different lifestyles and aspirations. One recent Australian survey I came across drew the following conclusions about the identity of handset owners:

Handset	Typical Owner
Motorola	Fashion-conscious under 24s
Nokia	Family-minded, middle-aged managers
Sony Ericsson	Ambitious young men trying to make their mark
Samsung	Career-minded young women
LG	Mothers

According to this survey, I would be an ambitious young man, given that I’m the proud owner of a Sony Ericsson Walkman handset -  It’s a great handset and I would recommend it to music lovers everywhere (Sony Ericsson are not sponsoring me to say this!).

Notice that Motorola is very much seen as a youth handset, particularly in the United States. This is due largely to the success of the slim and zippy Motorola V3 RAZR handset. The handset’s status as a badge of inclusion among youth made it into an iconic youth handset. Nokia, as always, is renowned for its durability and reliability, and for this reason is favoured by more active youth with a propensity for breaking things!

Which services appeal most to different age groups and why?
Pre-teens and younger teens will favour services which allow them maximum communication with their friends. Services such as Boost Mobile’s Loopt service are popular with this age group. Boost Mobile customers can download Boost Loopt on its existing Java- and GPS-enable handsets. Once you activate the service, Boost Loopt can use GPS to locate you and others who subscribe to the service and have accepted your Boost Loopt invitation to list them as friends. When Boost Loopt is running, a map appears on screen showing your own location. Up and down hardware navigation controls on your handset cycle through your friends' locations, from nearest to farthest or from farthest to nearest. Left and right navigation buttons control the zoom view of the map.

Like some instant messaging clients, Boost Loopt lets you scribble a short status message about what you're doing; you can also broadcast messages to groups of friends (which you can define by name, using a desktop browser) or to all friends within a certain distance. Boost Loopt lets you bookmark locations and define events to which you can then invite your friends. The service expects to introduce additional community mapping features--such as the ability to tag, blog about, and annotate locations with images and videos--later on.

Older teens and young adults will favour services such as Chaos Mobile, a portal for mobile music and content based on punk and rock music, skateboarding and other extreme sports associated with the “Vans Warped” tour. On Chaos Mobile, consumers can download songs, related content such as ringtones and wallpapers and find additional music and artist information exclusive to the portal. This age group also favours MVNOs such as Amp’d Mobile, which creates and delivers exclusive mobile content to its subscribers (such as the Li’l Bush series). These kinds of services are more geared to a youth expression of individuality and desire for unique content than simply to satisfy a need for belonging.

What can you say about issues like texting and linguistic degradation?
The results are inconclusive. While some studies have shown that youth linguistic skills are adversely affected by text messaging and we hear that “txt spk” is showing up with disturbing frequency in school essays and exams, other studies have shown that the children who text most frequently are on average stronger readers and writers than the less frequent texters. So texting doesn’t have a noticeable effect on the language used by children with pre-existing stronger literary skills. What still needs further investigation is whether children with weaker literary skills are more adversely affected by texting.

Thank you Savka for this great interview :)

A Jump Into the Future - Multimedia Ringback Tones

Hi everyone,

Today I wanted to share with you a new and sexy service that according to one of the Product Managers at Comverse will be the natural evolution of the ringback tones. To do things right, I'll begin at the top :)

Once, there was no choice but to hear a dull ‘ring ring’ when you waited for your friend to answer the phone. Now, follow this carefully: Tomorrow, you place a video call to your friend. Suddenly the amazing top hit by the new hip-hop group The Beatz will fill your mobile screen. You are enjoying a great top 10 video clip until your friend answers the phone. Wouldn't that be a better way to wait?

The Multimedia ringback tone takes the very popular musical ringback tone service to a whole different dimension, from the audio space to the visual video clip arena. It allows you to enjoy watching a video clip while placing calls, as well as to entertain your callers with video clips to watch while calling you.

Sounds great? I haven't said the final word yet, which is content. There are 3 types of optional content:

• Users' content - music clips, Klonies customizable avatars, self generated content, corporate content... All depending on the segment.
• Operator content - branding (logo), promotion info, operator prompts.
• Advertisement - advertisers fund phone bills in return to placing ads at the multimedia ringback tones space. Less desirable for the callers, but it's an option.

We all know that personalization is a key growth engine to mobile services and applications and it will probably keep being a key factor in the future. Having said that, the multimedia ringback tone leverages the ringback tones' success and promotes the video arena\ tusage of 3G. It harnesses the human need to self express and provides a new and creative outlet for that. Smart!

What are your reactions?

Content Is King - The making of Klonies

Lately, I keep getting readers emails saying that I haven’t written about the Klonies for a while now… So I decided to give you a peak of the Klonies backstage. I’ll start with the Klonies content and continue with the making of in my next post.

We all know that when it comes to mobile, content is the king. You can have a cool sharing app or community but if you don’t have attractive or compelling enough content - you’re doomed.

Just a quick note - Klonies, for those who don’t know, are a new service of personalized Avatars by the mobile solutions provider Comverse, that enables the creation of Avatars from a big content library of body types, eyes, hairstyles, hats, glasses, moods, clothes, branded accessories, etc., which can be used in traditional Web forums, as well as to extend this experience to the mobile arena. Comverse has created a mobile Caller ID service, by which a user can create his Klonie either on the Web or on his mobile handset. Klonies let youth segment do something they could never even dream of doing before: create expressive avatars that represent them on other people’s phones. Klonies give the users extended means for self expression: they define how they are seen by their friends, on their phones.

To be able to cover the Klonies content I met Ronen Ventura, the Klonies Chief Graphic Designer and Tali Perel, the Klonies Styling Adviser. Here’s what they told me:

Usually we start with a meeting of the designers, Styling Adviser and Marketing for a brain storming, to raise upcoming events (Valentines, Halloween, spring break etc’), topics, characters and that sort of leads. For example, when we launched the Klonies on Skype last year, we offered a wide collection of Football Mania clothing as it was only a few days before the world cup.

Other lead is analyzing users downloads; we can share with you that we were amazed to find out that men and women are very different in their preferences:

Most women want to be either bad or cool:

We see a lot of laid-back men:

As for dressing up:

Also, sport is the strongest theme amongst males, which nonexistent with the ladies. So, by analyzing downloads we get to learn a lot about tastes and trends. Also this is a great pointer of which areas to need to be broadened.

Apart form events, locals fashion also inspires the Klonies content. Our styling adviser explores fashion and teen magazines to get the sense and taste of specific audiences. Klonies sales people usually buy local magazines as part of their tasks when flying on business trips.

And you'll have to tune in later on for the second part of 'The Making of Klonies' :)

What Motivates Mobile Phone Buyers? Self-expression

Once again, self expression is one of the main motivations when buying a new mobile phone. According to NPD,

“What motivates buyers when they choose a new mobile phone? Many factors come into play, of course, but having the desired capabilities and a flip-phone form factor rise to the top most often.

With a couple of exceptions, buyers have ranked these two criteria highest (roughly 40 percent) over the past seven quarters. That’s testament to the fact that experienced phone buyers know what they want in a phone and make purchases based on these factors.
The third most often cited reason for choosing a particular phone is that it is a “good brand,” which again reflects a mature market. Buyers have obviously come to trust certain handset makers over others.”

Also, when drilling down, we see that self expression is rated the highest among the youth age group:

“Age can play a role as well in the purchase of a handset. Among the various age groups, different profiles emerge based on the top purchase motivator. For example, buyers 18 to 24 chose “it’s a cool phone” as their top motivator for buying a handset during the last year. Those 25 to 44 most often chose “had the capabilities I wanted.” And consumers 45 and older chose “flip phone / can be closed” as their top criterion for purchase.

Based on age and the top purchase motivator, three distinct target groups emerge:

• The youngest buyers seek a desirable device that reeks of “cool” (design is key, but the phone has to deliver on functionality, too).
• Young to middle-aged buyers want a wide range of capabilities. Getting just the right combination is the trick, so the device must strike a balance between popular must-have features and those that might just be nice to have.
• For people just past middle age and the older crowd, a solid flip phone will suffice; however, it shouldn’t lack basic capabilities and the brand is still important, too.”

[via NPD]

Mobile Phones as Multi-Functional Accessories

Based on a survey of U.S. users who have a wireless phone, comScore Networks, released yesterday a study that analyzes differences in behavior and attitudes among the following key wireless consumer segments:

• The Cellular Generation - Ages 18 to 24, these young adults grew up with cell phone awareness, experiencing cell phones as a part of their everyday lives.
• Transitioners - Ages 25 to 34, these people fall in between two distinct groups: those who grew up with cell phone knowledge and those who did not. Cell phones began to infiltrate everyday life during their teen years and early adulthood.
• Adult Adopters - Age 35 or older, this group was not exposed to cell phone until adulthood. Adult Adopters tend to have the most functional view of cell phones, with many requiring just the basics and showing limited interest in emerging technologies.

""During the past decade, cell phones have dramatically changed the communication habits of American consumers," said Serge Matta, senior vice president of comScore Telecommunications Solutions. "While the youngest consumers grew up with the technology, those just a few years older did not, resulting in some pronounced differences in attitudes and behaviors towards cell phone usage across the various user segments. As cell phones continue to evolve in terms of design, functionality, and features, it is vital that cell phone providers and manufacturers understand the differing needs and desires of these distinct consumer segments.""

Cellular Generation Views Their Cell Phones as Accessories

"Cell phones offer far more than simply a means of voice communication. They can provide entertainment, convey social status, and express one's individuality. While consumers in both the Cellular Generation and Transitioners are likely to view their cell phones as multi-dimensional devices, adult adopters tend to have a more functional view. Approximately one-quarter of both the Cellular Generation (26 percent) and Transitioners (25 percent) said that "trendiness" was of high importance when selecting a cell phone, as compared to just 10 percent of Adult Adopters. Additionally, 41 percent of Cellular Generation consumers strongly agree with the statement "I like my cell phone to be personalized" with options such as color schemes and ring tones, while only 19 percent of Adult Adopters feel the same."

[via Cellular News]

U-DOO - New Avatar Ringtones

I was tipped about the launch of the talking avatar ringtone application called U-DOO. U-DOO is a ringtone application for mobile phones that allows users to create talking animated avatars with their own voices and use the characters as ringtones on their mobile phones and send them to friends. In addition, U-DOO lets users publish the talking avatar to their MySpace web pages. The company behind the taking avatars is no other than web avatars provider Oddcast, which is looking for new partnerships to expand to the mobile arena.

How does it work? U-DOO users can create personalized ringtones and avatars with their own voice or from pre-recorded messages, and email them to friends, who can then download the ringtones to their phones. The phones can be set to sound the ringtone whenever the friend associated with the avatar calls. This means I create my avatar ringtone and I send it to you and hope you'd associate it with my profile, so whenever I call you, you'll see and hear my avatar. So I need my friends' cooperation in order to decide how do I look when I call them. Other thing is if I'd have several different ringtones, each associated with a friend, how would I know my own mobile is ringing? Each time I choose to change my ringtone it takes me a few seconds to realize that the mobile ring actually belongs to me... I guess more people will use U-DOO to make their own personalized avatar ringtone and leave the Caller ID function aside.

The email and MySpace options are free to end users, but the wireless download option is offered by subscription through wireless carriers under a 60-day free trial, with a $5 monthly charge after. Enjoy!

Thanks Katie! :)

 

NY: Babysitting Children's Mobiles

Anastasia Goodstein covers the ongoing story about the NY ban on cell phones in the nation's largest school system.

“The decision by Mayor Bloomberg to enforce the ban of cell phones in New York City public schools originated as part of a 1987 decision to prohibit all electronic devices that was part of a metal detector process meant to discover weapons. School safety officers began confiscating all electronic devices including phones, pagers and iPods being brought to school. The ban has parents up in arms because they are afraid they won't be able to reach their children in case of an emergency or terrorist attack and is being challenged in court.”

[via Totally Wired]

It seems that officials are now signaling that there may be room for compromise. They are exploring the option to install lockers outside schools to store the devices. This development has delayed recent court arguments on the ban.

When I was a teenager we didn’t have mobile phones (and I’m not THAT old). My parents bought me my first mobile when I joined the army and as a soldier I had only one free hour to take a shower, get ready to sleep and to stand in line for the 3 payphones available in the military base. So, yes, the mobile gave me the opportunity to use the free hour more efficiently and stay in touch with my family. This doesn’t mean that today’s parents should give up on the ability to reach their children. Just get some perspective and remember that while being at school there are many adults around which are in charge and also parents can always call the office and leave their kids a message (as we used to do not so long ago).

However, students will remain students and teacher will always need to deal with disciplinary issues; if it won’t be a mobile phone ringing it will be other communication device/tool (remember the paper notes we used to pass around?). It is the essence of being a kid.

Relevance Marketing - The Messengers

Sony Pictures is a great example of clever segmentation of target audience and a great example of leveraging segments’ needs and behavior to promote a new product; in this case, the upcoming thriller movie "The Messengers".

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

“To promote the upcoming supernatural thriller "The Messengers", Sony Pictures has included in its dossier of digital-marketing tools a ringtone only young consumers can hear.”

"The ultrasonic ringtone -- ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not adults -- are a featured aspect of the film's promotional campaign, which is geared toward a teen audience.”

Understanding youth’s need to belong to a peer group and the place the mobile phone holds in the lives of youth as a tool to make a personal statement about themselves, Sony Pictures is promoting its new movie through a ringtone that only teens can hear. Besides having a thematic relevance to the movie since “the movie's story line about a young female protagonist insisting she hears voices that her parents cannot hear”, the ringtone has huge relevance to youth’s psychological and behavioral needs.

And Sony Pictures don't settle down with just ringtones to promote the movie,

“Along with the thematically-integrated ringtones and online interactivity, Epstein [executive director, worldwide digital marketing strategy, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group] also noted a blog on the Weblog community Xanga and an eventual 1-800 number as other communicative features tied to the film's marketing efforts. The hope is that it feels like one continuous conversation with Jess [the main character in the film] -- you see her profile on a social networking site, you call her and IM her -- as she draws you into her current situation," said Epstein, noting the intent of the campaign is to have users transcend a couple of digital mediums.”

And if you're interested in more about relevance marketing and youth - here's a link and my previous thoughts about the ultrasonic ringtone.

Youth Mobile Trends Summary

Hi everyone,

Many have asked me to summarize the very interesting and value-added knowledge resource published here during November; so here are the links to the mobileYouth interviews:

• Nick Wright on: What is Mobile Youth?
• Jan Kuczynkli on: Mobile Music and Youth
• Savka Andic on: Mobile Marketing and Youth
• Nick Wright on: Mobile Services and Youth

Enjoy! :)

Nick Wright on Mobile Services and Youth

Welcome to the fourth and last part of the mobile youth trends and behavior coverage. Today, Nick Wright, a Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is a co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report will be visiting here.  Also, recently Nick has started blogging and you should pay a visit and read his insightful Virtual Marketing and Media blog!

For those of you who missed the previous parts of the mobile youth trends coverage here are the links: Nick Wright talked about mobile youth trends, Jan Kuczynski talked about mobile music and youth and Savka Andic talked about mobile marketing and youth.

Well, let's give Nick a warm welcome!

N: It’s great to be back again on Xellular Identity, Xen. As you know, last week we were frantically preparing for the mobileYouth summit, so I didn’t have time to visit here. As it turns out, waiting turned out to be the best move, as the summit itself provides a great talking point about mobile services.

X: How was the event? Did it go well?

N: It was great and the stimulating panel discussions provided plenty of healthy round-table discussion about the youth sector and the problems facing the industry in general. One of the highlights of the event is covered nicely by Bena Roberts on GoMo News, involving the final panel discussion of the afternoon between Jonathan Jowitt (formerly with Orange but now independent) and Raimond Scholze, VP of Customer Insights at T-mobile. The topic of this spirited debate surrounded the issue of youth churn amongst operators and the inability of the mobile industry to drive their young consumers towards adopting mobile services outside of voice and text. Raimond was arguing that with 40% market share, T-Mobile could not be concerned with micro-segmentation without alienating large parts of its audience. They were rolling out music services because that’s what their customers wanted but it was clear that T-Mobile did not consider music an essential revenue-generating service for operators. The music industry is worth US$30 million, Raimond pointed out, but the mobile industry is worth US$40 billion: the implication is that music is a “nice-to-have” rather than a “need-to-have” service. However, at this stage, the problem is not so much in generating revenue from youth customers (though that is obviously something mobile services are trying to achieve) as with actually keeping them on your service.

At 33%, the UK mobile operators not only have the highest churn rate of any country but this is also the highest churn rate of any service industry in the UK. That’s one third of youth in the UK changing operator at least once a year and that alone represents an estimated US$1.8 billion in lost revenue. There is also the cost of acquisition which amounts to at least $250 for each new subscriber including advertising costs, handset subsidies and customer service costs (a dissatisfied or confused customer costs far more to maintain than one who is well-informed and satisfied). A study of American companies in 90s shows that even a 5% increase in customer loyalty can amount to a 25-80% increase in profitability. Music’s value, or the value of any mobile service, should not be measured just in terms of its ability to increase youth ARPU but in its ability to keep the young consumer satisfied and therefore loyal - that in itself is likely to create more profit than a high-cost service that is rarely used.

X: So why have mobile operators failed to get youth to engage with mobile services?

N: It’s largely due to a very introspective approach that operators continue to adopt. This is still manifested in the language with which operators still address their consumers and the very channelled, inflexible “value chain” that exists. One of the most amusing but shocking revelations from a podcast I heard recently was that there is only one other industry that views its consumers as “end users” - the drug industry! The youth consumer has a need for a mobile service to improve his existing communications or provide significant entertainment within his peer group and if that is not achieved then they will not care about it. Part of the problem is the “if we make it someone will use it” mentality, which still needs to shift towards “if you want it, we will make it happen”. The issue can be most obviously explained by looking at the example of MMS.

MMS was subject to huge industry hype but once it was released consumers gave it the cold shoulder, failing to find any real use for it. In 2001, industry analysts predicted that MMS would overtake SMS as the preferred means of data communication by 2008. 83% of consumers still use SMS, whereas only 25% use MMS. SMS is still responsible for 90% of data revenue, despite predictions that MMS would generate 66.3% of mobile messaging revenues by 2006. Here it is important to distinguish between industry “hype” and consumer “buzz”. The industry was excited but consumers couldn’t find any use for it, mainly because they hadn’t asked for it and it didn’t improve any existing behaviour.

Mobile TV is currently undergoing similar industry hype and is also generating a fair amount of consumer buzz but whether consumers will be satisfied by mobile TV services is still unclear. Extensive consumer surveys seem to show considerable interest but it seems to me that the idea is appealing than the potential reality. BT Movio’s survey found that 59% of consumers would pay £8 a month for mobile TV service on their current network, while an O2 survey showed that 85% were satisfied with the service and that 57% would take up the service within the next 6 months. However, BT Movio’s is purely a broadcast service and, as such, its appeal will be limited unless the youth consumer is watching live events (which may have an additional pay-per-view cost). Why watch a snippet of your favourite TV show half-way through when you can use TiVo or Sky+ to record the show in full and watch it at home?

Operators need to think through the reasons why consumers want mobile TV and provide a service that fulfils that unanswered need. Do youth really have £8 a month to spend on a service that adds nothing except mobility into the equation and which they get for free at home? Can Mobile TV not more usefully replace youth spending on video rental services, for example via a video-on-demand service with a fixed-fee monthly subscription? There are plenty of unanswered questions about this service.

X: How can operators successfully position themselves to appeal to youth with their mobile services?

N: How about entertainingly educating their consumers on how their services can socially benefit them? We ran a workshop last week prior to the event, something we hope to make into a regular event, and showed the difference between an advert by a Western operator (02) and one by a Japanese one (DoCoMo). The O2 advert is fairly generic with no specific mention of any benefits the service offers, with a high-production feel but without any real message. The DoCoMo advert, while perhaps lower in production value and less polished, uses its special effects to clearly highlight all the benefits that its mobile services can offer the young consumer. DoCoMo is not even particularly youth-focused in comparison with its competitors but already it’s clear (even in another language!) that the mobile can give you what you want when you want it and simultaneously provides a guideline as to how to use it.

Operators often tend to highlight the technological advances in their phones and services involving a lot of numbers, capital letters and technical jargon that mean little to anyone, especially the young consumer with limited attention for details. All young consumers want to know is “what can I do with it that’s better than what I can do now?”; it’s not an unreasonable question and it’s up to the industry to answer it, rather than “improve” the technology of existing features.

Another issue that was highlighted at the Trends Summit was that operators believed many content providers were being “impatient”, that it took time to turn a traditionally technology-focused industry into a consumer-focused industry. In fact the impatient ones are not the content providers or the software companies it’s the consumers that these companies are trying to serve. Try telling that to someone young: “We understand what you are saying and we think we can do it: but it’ll take 2-4 years.” Will that young customer still care by that time? The customer demand will have moved on.

X: Would you say that operators have to treat their youth demographic differently?

N: To an extent, yes. Obviously telcos cannot abandon their other customer segments but they can market more specifically at their youth segment. It’s important to remember that simple “youth demographic” customer segmentation is fairly limited in its effectiveness. This “youth segment” is one of the most diverse and fragmented of any age demographic and if you adopt a “one size fits all” approach to the demographic you may as well not bother segmenting at all. Different youth groups require different approaches and the youth MVNOs Amp’d and Boost have already shown considerable reduction of churn (down to 2%) and increases in ARPU (Amp’d claims its average ARPU is $100, twice the average for other operators) by appealing to their fairly niche youth segments (athletic, interested in sports like surfing and snowboarding).

Appealing to youth involves speaking their language, allowing them to participate, creating relationships and allowing for creative experimentation. If you want to see examples of successful youth services, take a look at the internet right now. Social media is not just a buzz word, it’s the online language youth are using to connect to each other in new and diverse ways. Helio, another youth-based MVNO, aims to facilitate this new development by providing their consumers with mobile MySpace and most importantly it uses its website to communicate with its consumers directly and gain feedback to improve its services and gauge customer satisfaction. Operators need to consider rewarding youth loyalty more actively, as Japanese operators have done. Use of operator and partner services need to be promoted and consumers must see the benefits in the form of real discounts. Reward schemes are known to increase sales and decrease churn, as in the case of Tesco’s Clubcard which increased sales by 28%.

X: Thank you Nick for this interview!

I also want to thank Nick Wright, Jan Kuczynski and Savka Andic of the Wireless World Forum for the most interesting and eye-opening coverage of the mobile youth market during the last month.

Don't Let Your Private Life Hang Up By Your Career

These tips for job applicants concerning your mobile self expression were caught in one of my news alerts:

"Your cell phone is ringing. If you are job hunting, the person calling may be your future employer. If it is, you have obviously impressed them with your application or stellar resume -- you don't want to ruin your chances by handling the call unprofessionally.

"In recent years we have found a majority of applicants list only their cell phone number for direct contact. However, some applicants are too casual when using their cell phones. Often, recruiters are greeted with voice mail messages that should never be heard by a prospective employer."

"While the latest trend is to personalize your ringback tone with the hottest music download, usually it does not reflect a professional image. Your friends and family may enjoy listening to your favorite song before you answer, but a prospective employer may not."

"Select an appropriate voice mail message. Keep it short and include your full name so the prospective employer knows they have reached the correct applicant."

[via KOTA]

The article describes the inevitable encounter of the professional and private spheres. While it advices to pretend that we don't have a private life, I think that if someone calls my personal mobile phone, it is only natural for the caller to be exposed to private aspects of my life\personality.

Very popular online news narrative is the story of applicants who weren’t hired due to facts\personal opinionswritten in their personal blogs\mySpace profiles etc'. Also, many experts advice us to be very careful with what we put online. While I agree that we should think before publishing personal content online -- if someone knocks on my door in the middle of the night, why would he\she be surprised to find me in my polka doted pajamas?! Should I deny having one or quickly change to my business suit? -- I hope you all agee that this is ridiculous; Likewise, if someone calls my private mobile phone, he\she have to realize that he\she is stepping into my personal world and that he\she will hear my personal greeting or my personalized ringback tone. We all have a professional persona and a private one at the same time. By no means it should disqualify an applicant from getting hired for the job.

Having said that, if this still bothers you, you don't have to get rid of your ringback tone. Today, you can have multiple ringback tones and multiple voice mail greetings set according to the person calling you. So you can set up “How I wish you were here” for your girl\boyfriend and “Work All Day” for your prospective employer. There's no need to hide.

Interviewing Jan Kuczynski on Mobile Music and Youth Trends

Welcome to the second part of the mobile youth trends and behavior coverage. Today, Jan Kuczynski, Associate Manager at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report will be visiting here! Jan has been with Wireless World Forum for almost a year with a focus on emerging mobile trends and technology. Prior to joining W2F, Jan spent two years in snowy northern Japan and one year in the sunny south of France “I can personally recommend the Jurançon sec to anyone into their white wines”.

For those of you who missed the first part of the mobile youth trends coverage: Nick Wright, Jan's colleague, visited Xellular Identity last week and we had a great conversation - you can read it here.

Well, enough said... Jan, the stage is yours!

-Hi Jan, how are you?

Good thanks, Xen. Thanks for inviting me at Xellular Identity!

-How’s the weather in London?

We’ve been really lucky recently actually - it’s another bright and sunny autumn day!

-What got you interested in mobile?

I’ve always had an interest in the latest technology, but I suppose I really fell in love with my mobile when I spent two years living in Japan. There were some great handsets and services over there which kept me busy during my daily train commute. I would always be using my mobile to shop on Amazon, check maps using GPS or just browse around. Since I came back to the UK, I’ve stopped using my mobile so much. I still like to keep my eye on some of the new mobile developments back over in Japan - though sometimes it makes me just a little jealous…

-What takes up your time other than mobile?

Reading (I’ll have to look into your recommendation of Murakami’s “Wind-up Bird Chronicle”!), rugby league, skiing and getting out of London now and again to see the rest of the world. I’ve also been in big trouble with my housemate recently for repeatedly stealing their new Nintendo DS with tetris!

-Today’s topic is mobile music - do you use your mobile as a music player?

Actually, I don’t! The biggest deal breaker is that my handset doesn’t have a regular headphone socket. I really hate the standard headphones that come bundled with most ‘music phones’ these days so I would only use my phone as a music player if I could use my headphones. The other issue that holds me back is the lack of a good all-in-one music service that will let me use my mobile music on my PC and not cost me a fortune in data charges for OTA downloads from my phone.

-OK, not a mobile music convertee yet ;) but you’re a music fan, right?

Yes I am - and so it was fun to do research into the new trends in youth music consumption and try out some of the services that are so popular with today’s teens - in fact, I even went to two concerts of artists that I found out about on MySpace!

-Does music take a different role in the lives of teenagers and adults?

Yes, it does. As we grow older, we tend to have smaller groups of close friends, but for teenagers, friends, peers and social groups are the most important things in their lives. Music is a powerful social tool for teenagers - it gives them something to talk about, social status from knowing about the newest and coolest bands and the type of music you listen to can even define which social group you belong to (in my school you were either a metal-er or a raver based on your music tastes - I’ll let you guess which one I was ;) ).

-What are the key drivers for music’s appeal to youth?

Youth don’t just play music - they explore, display and share music. Firstly, youth can only use music as a social tool if it’s up-to-date, so unless youth constantly put feelers out to explore new music, they get left behind. Secondly, teens like to display their music tastes - whether it’s through their CD rack, their Coldplay t-shirt or simply by turning up their headphones so everyone can hear. Thirdly, youth like sharing music as it earns them social currency and reinforces peer bonds - that’s why teenagers spend time and effort burning compilation CDs for their friends.

-Has the way youth consume music changed over the last 10 years?

The key drivers haven’t changed - youth still want to explore, display and share their music - but the music industry itself has undergone a big transformation over the last few years. Music formats have shifted from analogue to digital and sources of new music have become more diverse. When I was younger, there was only one music chart, one MTV and just a handful of radio stations for youth. Now there’s the internet, a whole spectrum of music charts and channels and more and more specialist music genres (HipHopera or Neo-Rave anyone?).

-What music services are most popular among teens?

The most popular teen music services now are internet services which help youth best explore, display and share their music in the new fragmented, digital music world. Some services focus on improving one of these aspects (for example, Last.fm focuses on exploring, BBC’s Musicubes are a new way of displaying and Kazaa is mainly about sharing), whereas some enhance all three. MySpace, for example, is all about exploring for new music through a social network, displaying your music tastes on your homepage and sharing new tracks with a community of peers.

-How can we make mobile music more appealing to youth?

I think we need to move beyond the “mp3 playback” mindset to make mobile music a competitor for other popular youth music services. Just adding mp3 playback to a handset doesn’t exploit mobile music’s potential to let youth explore, display and share their music.

I’ve started to see some great new mobile products and services which do exactly that. For exploring, mobile technologies such as QR codes, image and audio recognition provide really interesting opportunities to use the mobile to discover new music. For displaying, there is a growing market for Bluetooth speakers which help youth make a display of their music collection, and there’s a great handset called “Neon” in Japan which shows the track title and artist in glowing LEDs along the side of the phone. For sharing, Vodafone have developed a DRM system where young people can swap music over Bluetooth, MMS, infrared and memory cards and there are some new music services that let youth share playlists with friends.

Mobile music has great potential, but I think it’s only by using mobile technology to build on the key drivers of exploring, displaying and sharing that we can make mobile music services more appealing to youth.

Thank you Jan! :)

* *** * *** * *** *

Next week there will be a new guest visiting here and talking about the art of marketing mobile services for the youth segment. Wanna know who??? - don't forget to tune in next Thursday to find out!

Interviewing Nick Wright on Mobile Youth Trends

For quite some time I was thinking about covering a wider scope of the mobile youth trends and behavior. Reading and looking for a body of knowledge, I got to know Nick Wright, a Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is a co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Nick has a BA in English and has worked in film journalism, English teaching and publishing. He joined Wireless World Forum in 2006 after a year living and working abroad in Russia and Turkey. Having made an incredible gesture, Nick will be my special guest at Xellular Identity during the month of November. First, I will be publishing the email interview conducted earlier, and later on Nick has agreed to answer your questions(!)

Well enough talking, let’s give Nick a worm to the stage!

Getting to Know Nick

-Hi Nick, how are you?   
Great, great to be here :)

-What brought you into the world of mobile?
What appealed to me when I joined Wireless World Forum 2 months ago was the consumer focus inherent in their approach to research. I had just finished a period teaching English to kids in Russia and Turkey and I knew the importance of appealing to young people and getting their attention. When I joined I knew as much as the next person about mobiles but within a very short time I discovered that this was an area where huge leaps in development were possible on a daily basis. It’s an exciting area to be involved in and it’s rare to see an industry so passionate about the possibilities that their medium offers. What we are trying to do with the mobileYouth report is refocus that passion to keep it relevant to the youth consumers so that all that energy isn’t lost.

-Other hobbies, fields of interest?
I’m an avid film buff but I temper the long time spent sitting in front of the screen by keeping active though running, rowing and yoga. Recently, it’s been an exciting time for me since the London Film Festival has been showing all over the city. The new, the strange and the classic jostle for attention around London and I’m frankly spoilt for choice. Last Sunday it set a world record for showing its much-anticipated, completely unknown “Surprise Film” on 50 screens at the same time (including a hospital, a prison and some lucky person’s living room). It turned out to be Robert Altman’s hilarious and touching new film “A Prairie Home Companion”, his first for 5 years. It was worth the suspense!

-3 birthday wishes?
1) A solution (or a basket of solutions) to solve the climate crisis we’re facing right now. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth comes at an all-too convenient time.
2) The persistence to train for the London marathon for next year
3) The Complete Stanley Kubrick Collection on DVD.

-What did you get for Christmas last year?
A Russian chapka from my parents: I was in Moscow teaching English and the benny hat wasn’t doing the trick any more!

mobileYouth

-High influence of the peer group, the need to build an independent personality, search of identity… adolescence was always about those burning questions, so what has mobile to do with it?
The relationship between youth and their mobiles is not necessarily based on being “fun, cool, or entertaining”. It’s a key social tool employed in the dynamics of the peer group. Youth consume mobile products - as they do others - to make statements about themselves and their relationship with their peers.

Self-expression is such a key aspect of young people’s lives that they would rarely choose a non-branded alternative over an identifiable brand. 98% of teens for example would choose a brand/logo designed T-shirt over a plain one.

Mobile is most importantly a symbol of belonging to a group, both as a physical product (you must own a phone to be part of our group) and its communicative possibilities: texting is essential to youth not because of the content (very limited) of the texts themselves but because each text is a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you”.

If mobile operators are to make the most of this underlying desire for social interaction amongst youth peer groups, then they need to ask how they can benefit youth and improve their communication. So far the emphasis has been more about giving young people things to play with on their phone which don’t enhance or build on existing behaviour. The result is, at best, small-scale adoption and faddish blips but no long-term successes beyond texting.

-How is the mobile phone changing the lives of teenagers?
A pretty broad question! I think it’s fair to say that it’s allowed youth to remain hyper-connected at all times, to the extent that 14% of US mobileYouth surveyed admitted that they couldn’t live without their phones. Other surveys point to the fact that an increasing number of young people are bing admitted to clinics as “text-addicts”. Overall, youth may be building up a dependency on mobiles which have increasingly become a sign of social status and self-esteem: many admit to feeling depressed if they pass a whole day without receiving a text.

We found something similar in the recent vox pop survey we caught on camera last week. One person admitted that he didn’t know “how people survived before mobile phones” and almost all admitted that they loved texting. If you’d like to see what other information we gathered from the video interviews please visit this link.

However, overall it is fueling the more extrovert and allowing shyer teens to communicate more easily. One of the more interesting findings is that mobiles have come to take the place in youth culture traditionally held by cigarettes. They provide or allow private communication, the activity is carried out largely unsupervised and they effectively create a rare private space for youth to interact in.

The most popular aspects of the mobile are features that can be adapted to suit the needs of youth. Texting is easily understood (though it needs practice to reach the blurry speeds of some of the more proficient) and adaptable to the stage where adults find the language unintelligible. Wallpapers and handset choice allow for personalization which allows youth to express themselves and advertise their identity as part of their peer group.

One of the reasons for the low adoption of new mobile services is because youth cannot access the service easily either due to budget or the difficulty of setting up the service to begin with. One of the key factors in reaching the youth mass market is the ease of use of a service which allows it to become widely accepted across peer groups.

- Is there a special usage of the mobile phone when it comes to youth? Usage patterns? How youth’s usage/consumption of mobile services differ from other segments?
Youth are compulsive texters, as I have explained. Globally they spend four times as much  on texting  as the average mobile phone user (US$ 6 a year compared to US$ 1.5 across all ages). 29.8% of their ARPU is on data services, compared to 11% across all age ranges. There is a lot of room to exploit future data services for the youth market as long as operators exploit existing youth behaviour rather than churning out technological features that have little relevance to kids’ lives.

-What is the market size of mobileYouth?
Currently youth from 5-24 make up 28.1% of the mobile phone ownership market. They spend US$ 130 million on mobiles which is 24% of the total spend on mobiles for all ages. Youth spend on data services is US$ 38 million and, importantly 80% of that spending is on texting. Youth spend on data services is 43% of the total, which shows just how heavily they rely on text as opposed to voice to communicate.

-Do culture and orientation influence mobileYouth behavior? How?
Although we argue that the underlying social drivers behind youth consumers are broadly similar, there are superficial cultural differences that have often been given too much emphasis when, for example, some industry professionals dismiss Korean and Japanese youth markets as “gadget-obsessed”.  These markets are far more developed in their adoption of the mobile internet and the uses of camera phones but these are all easily explained in other terms that the Japanese being obsessed with technology.

Japanese and Korean youth have even higher levels of mobile data service ARPU than youth globally: 47.6% of mobileYouth ARPU was data, compared to the global average of 29.7%. One of the most popular mobile services in Korea is a mobile social networking site named Cyworld, which is essentially an extension of MySpace in that it allows youth to create their own virtual rooms and literally buy furniture to decorate it. It’s hugely popular (90% of Koreans in their 20s have used the service) and provides a perfect environment for youth to fulfil five of their basic social needs, as we identified them: Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform.

To explain: Social networking essentially allows youth to keep connected to all their friends, reconnect with older friends (as in the case with Bebo, a UK-based social networking site for school students, for those children forced to move school) and meet new people with similar interests.
Communication is simply the ability to communicate via as many routes as possible: text, voice, IM, PM, e-mail etc. Cyworld allows consumers to interact in all these ways.

Status Display and personalisation are shown by the ability to adapt and personalize in a way that shows off the young author’s identity, likes and dislikes (specifically related to music), friends, profile and the customizable room. As in real life, the virtual world holds virtual objects that convey status in the same way as branded Nike trainers or ownership of the latest music does in real life.

Ultimately, since so many youth are on Cyworld, it essentially forms a behavioural platform for youth as well. By this I mean it presents a set of rules, perameters and structures for youth to interact around. A great way for youth to advance their status is to become a master of a certain behavoural platform. Specific sport varieties are also behavioural platforms so, for example, if you are a great skateboarder you will be given a higher status amongst your skater peer group. In the same way, collective familiarity with a certain platform, when everyone has access to it and understands the “rules”, tends to strengthen peer group bonds and the attachment to the platform itself.

Thank you Nick! :)

* *** * *** * *** *

For the second part of the interview and more insights about the mobile youth behavior, the mobile music market, and the future of this market - don't forget to tune in next Thursday!

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part IV (Mobile Avatars Offerings)

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ve been posting it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part, second part and third part.

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Mobile Avatars Offerings

The medium of avatars is naturally focused on community, since users need an audience to present their character. As such, avatars can increase operator's attractiveness using its viral affect to mobile operators. Also, operators can use avatars in order to utilize the loyalty established by online communities.

However, the mobile industry had stumbled upon barriers to provide a mobile avatars offering: the mobile internet hasn’t reached the web’s speed, latency, and user interface. Also there’s a big difficulty in implementation.

Having said that, there are already some players in the Korean mobile avatars arena. The first player was NEOWIZ which began supplying mobile avatars to KTF in August 2001, to LG Telecom in April 2002, and SK Telecom in August 2002. According to company’s reports, mobile avatar sales grew to over 2 billion won per month in 2004 (which are about $1.5 B).

The second player was NATE. SK Telecom's Nate launched its avatar service in October 2002 and provides avatar service similar to those provided by web portals. This move was the result of the wired-wireless convergence with SK Telecom’s acquisition of a Korean web portal. Nate offers clothing brands for avatars, providing its users with replicas of the genuine clothing lines. The fashion and consumer brands companies enjoy the advertising by increasing actual product sales, while NATE profits from avatar sales.

What avatars demonstrated to the mobile industry is that mobile phones are a strong extension of self for many users. By personalizing the mobile with avatars, the mobile becomes much more than a communication tool. It has become an extension of either how the user views himself\herself, or would like to.

To summarize, avatars should be linked with other services and not just be a cute application to play with. Avatar service has been generating sales related to community-based services like gaming, forums, chats, IM, and minihomepies. Integrating the web and mobile increases the usage of avatars provide the ability to use the digital identity created practically everywhere.

No Mobile? No Social Life

Noted - the mobile is the yardstick of teen's social life:

"78% of 11 to 17-year-olds believe having a mobile has given them a better social life as it meant it was easier to keep in touch with their friends. By contrast, many young people - especially teenage girls - admit they would feel unwanted if the day passed without their mobile ringing."

[via BBC News}

In my days it was getting invited to better Friday's nights dance parties\hang outs...

Gender & Self-expression - Burning Questions

According to survey results presented by Sprint:

"Ringtones are more popular among women - 54 percent compared to 42 percent of men. Personalized ringtones also are more appealing to women."

"Women have unique needs and preferences when it comes to the features and look of their wireless phones and accessories," says Alana Muller, Sprint's director of marketing."

[via Wireless Week]

• How come women use the mobile phone as a utility for self expressing more than men do (ringtones as well as mobile accessries)?
• Do women have a stronger need to express their uniqeness than men? If so, why?

Technorati Tags: women, gender, self-expression, personalization, ringtones, mobile accessries, user survey, sprint

Teen BuzzTones

we all agree that the mobile is more than just a mobile... it's also a personal statement about us, about our tastes, fashion, lifestyle etc… and not just the mobile itself; ringtones have played a major role in this trend as well. If you think about it, music is actually a fashion and personality statement as well, so the combination of mobile and music as means of conveying a message - turns the ringtone into a powerful tool for self expression purposes.

Having said all that, how can the latest teenage trend of using a high-pitched sound which can’t be heard by adults as a ringtones* (so they can use phones during classes) fits in this equation?

This high-pitched ringtone, a.k.a. TeenBuzz, is a personal statement as well. A teenager who uses it conveys the following message:

• I’m cool
• I’m tech savvy
• I’m very in - I’m familiar with all the latest trends
• I’m part of a social group - the group of teens who use the mobile in class (= I’m not a geek)
• I’m reinforcing my belonging to that social group
• I’m more interested in my friends than in the class/teacher
• I’m willing to take risks in class, but in a smart/sophisticated way

All that in a single action of changing the polyphonic ringtone to the high-pitched ringtone during class!

I wish that in my school days I had a cool toy like that! :)

*Mosquito

Technorati Tags: mosquito, teen buzz, youth, mobile trend, mobile behaviour, ringtones, self expression

Bug Found - Mobile Operators As Brand

For quite sometime, my mom’s mobile battery was sending its last vital signs… realizing there’s no other option but going to Orange’s service center to get it fixed/replaced after spending hours of waiting for her turn and later – spending hours for the repair… armed with a heavy book and assertiveness she did it. She planned to spend time but she didn’t have an intention of spending money on a new HS. And yet, Nokia has its own magic on people, *including* on my mom, and she went home with a new one.

But there was another thing she didn’t plan… After opening the box and starting to play with her new toy, she saw that it has an Orange icon on the top right corner of the HS. Unwillingly, she was turned into an Orange walking ad. Yay! I’m not talking about the money issue of buying something for your own use and self expression while in return you become an ad - because in other areas of life we’re actually WILLING to pay more for the visibility of the brand name (on cars, clothing, fashion accessories, personal electronic gadgets, etc); While having your Gucci or Nike brand name visible is a totally wanted thing by many people, being a walking ad for Orange (or any other operator for this matter) is not.

What troubles my mind about this issue is  - why? what’s the difference between clothing/ car manufacturer and mobile operator brands? Why fashion/car brands provide an added-value for self expressing human needs while mobile brands don't? There's probably something operators are doing wrong when it comes to their existence as a brand...

Thoughts are very welcomed! :)

Technorati Tags: brands, mobile brands, orange, nokia, mobile operators, self expression

Mobile Elections?

Yesterday it’s was one of the most interesting Election Days in Israel. In general, for those who haven’t visited Israel, I can honestly say that Israelis are very hot blooded and politically involved people. Everywhere you go you always hear people arguing about politics and security issues. Many times it sums up in giving hot compliments about each other’s mamas…

Knowing my people, I was very surprised to learn that only 63.2% of voters have voted on current elections. In contrast, the final round of the local version of the famous “American Idol” has generated so much more voting, emotional involvement and participation. The voting was held via SMS, yet each viewer could vote only once.

Politics isn’t a singing contest (though you can see so many politicians trying thir best to dictate the tone to the choir), so it’s hard to compare the two. But maybe if we could vote through SMS the voting rates would grow… I searched the internet to see if it has already been done, and it seems like there was a trial in the UK back on 2002 that aims

“To boost the proportion of people who bothered to vote in elections. […] There would be an "ever more extensive" programme of pilots to open the possibility for an "e-enabled" general election some time after 2006.  In some wards in Liverpool and Sheffield, electors will be able to vote by digital television as well as via mobile phones.

There will be a touch-tone phone voting system, […] and pilot elections where people can only cast postal ballots.  A variety of other measures include extended voting hours and mobile voting kiosks. The whole package is designed to get more people to "re-engage" with politics in the wake of tumbling turnouts at recent elections. The text messaging system will work by voters being given PIN numbers to use if they want to vote by text message.”
[via Cellular]

I think it would be great to be able to vote digitally, and not having to drag my self to the ballot so I could spend the entire day-off having fun. Yet there’s always the little fear from the George Orwell’s apocalyptic vision of “Big Brother’s inspecting eye”… If you have more info if and  how this has been done you can e-mail me or leave a comment. Thanks :)

Technorati Tags: elections, mobile, mobile + elections, voting

Big Little Helpers

A bit late, but I just had to comment on something I’ve read on Ad Age. The recent post of “Media Morph” covers the phenomena of Avatars, from marketing point of view. Yet it did that only to a very poorly extent, the concept was so reduced and badly presented…

First, Avatars are a visual mean of self representation in a limited environment, where we can’t use our physicality as our representation. The environments vary from virtual games, to chats, instant messengers, forums, different social softwares and they have even reached the mobile sphere.

Avatars can be used also for interacting with friends, like in more evolved instant messengers (IMVU for example), or like in virtual societies (“Second Life” for example). On these platforms, avatars can have all kinds of interactions with other people’s avatars: they can go on a date over a cup of coffee, shake hands, hug or kiss... Avatars can have formal interactions like buying or selling stuff too. Whatever comes to your mind – your avatar could interact for you!

And to the marketing perspective: Since avatars are our representation, we want them to be as close as possible to the way we are, as close as possible to what we wish to be. That is why from consumer’s perspective, there is no difference between branded content for  avatars to other branded merchandise (clothes, gadgets, cars… you name it). Whatever brands we own in real life we’ll probably want to have for our avatars as well. Here lies the big benefit to marketers - make branded content to be used in the virtual sphere. This can advertise and promote the consumer brand in real life. But it could be another major route for revenues.

So, don't just go underestimating Avatras (or you'll get me writing another post about it! ;-))

Let Your Avatar Call in Sick for You

I was reading Stowe Boyd's post about face-to-face technology (a.k.a. F2F). He thinks that real time F2F technology will be the next hit, using video chat through PCs and mobile phones. According to Stowe Boyd, the only hurdle is the lack of interoperability which is needed to be cleared out of the way. Looking at Google’s last moves, it’ll happen sooner than we think. Stowe also brings great examples of situations when you would prefer to use F2F communication.

I’m sure F2F will become more popular over time, but what about all those instances that you don’t want to be totally exposed? Like when...

• You’re calling sick from an exotic island or you're really sick in bed with high fever.
• The phone has woken you up and you don't want your partner to see your puffed eyes, your messed hair and your polka dotted pajamas.
• You’re answering the phone in the toilet (I know, nobody does this kind of disgusting things… absolutely n-o-b-o-d-y…).

I believe there’s another channel of communication that we should consider here, and that is communication through Avatars.

Avatars are our web representation. We can personalize them to better fit our look & feel; we can choose their clothing, hair styles, accessories and scenery… absolutely everything! The ease in changing appearance allows us to use this sphere to explore ourselves. In every social encounter we can change our appearance\ characteristics: a hippy, a gallant cavalier or a rapper, and define who we are and who we aren't.

But actually, we can use these avatars for communication everywhere: on the web (IM, blogs, forums, greeting cards, signatures), on the mobile (wallpapers and screensavers), on daily interactions (business cards, ads, bumper stickers… you name it). Think of the day that your Avatar could stand in for you absolutely everywhere…!

What would that give us? Avatars can stand in for us when we don't want to disclose ourselves. They can easily represent us when we want to separate our real life from the social impression we want to make. So next time the phone wakes you up, friends would see your neat and tidy Avatar. I guess when you’re reading these lines now you come up with a lot of more good examples too.

We can communicate using Avatars on the web and in real life when communicating visually. The mobile phone links between these worlds. And this is where the Mobile Avatar is utilized to bridge these spheres. A Mobile Avatar can be your caller ID, so when you call a friend, he will see your personalized Avatar on his screen, just like on the web. This way, your web representation could serve you over the real world as well. Needless to say, that you can use this avatar wherever else you want (like on your business card, etc…).

So… back to F2F communication. Avatars aren't F2F communication by all means; they are just part of widening visual communication. Yet, Mobile Avatars will integrate the web and the real world.

Mobile Identity

Since long ago, mobile phones have grown to be another organ of our body; we carry them everywhere with us. Moreover, mobiles have become an extension of our identity; they give information to society about us (gadget-freak, tech-savvy, hip teenager, etc…) the same way our looks and our body language do.

SIM cards initial purpose was to be our mobile identity, carrying subscriber’s identity module. With late technology developments, SIM cards allow more storage space, and are a platform for different applications. SIM cards manufacturers are developing a lot of new functionalities like controlling the light bulbs around the house, or enabling users to make secure payments. IMHO, the most impressing functionality, that we all should give a second thought, is the process of making mobile phone to be a proof of identity. Is this new functionality for our best on the long run?

Technorati Tags: mobile, identity, mobile identity, sim, mobile payments