Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Super Tuesday - Super New Mobile Apps!

A big day like today brings cool new mobile apps!

First, let me share my own news:

As you know, I recently joined MyFrame Inc., who offers you a cool new mobile application called Flixwagon. For those of you who don't know what Flixwagon is, Flixwagon enables anyone with a capable 3G/WiFi mobile phone to broadcast live videos to the internet.

So you're probably saying, "ok, new mobile gig, where's the news?". We partnered MTV. Today, MTV's street journalism team will broadcast from 23 states to ThinkMTV using Flixwagon. Throughout the day, MTV will regularly break into programming and showcase news features from the live reports.

James Whatley from SpinVox shared that that SpinVox has partnered with WNYC Radio to enable greater listener interactivity during the station’s ongoing coverage of the multi-state primary Super Tuesday. Voters will be encouraged to contribute thoughts, comments and observations by speaking messages to a special phone number set up for the radio station. Those messages will be converted into text by SpinVox and will dynamically become a part of the coverage in real time. Hockenberry and Udoji will report on voter sentiments and read select text on-air.

Interesting to see how new means of communication take part in one of the biggest political events. Will follow closely.

Usability Rules!

The common goal of all usability professionals, no matter if they specialize in cooking utensils, clothing or developing mobile applications and services, is to develop products from the end-user needs’ perspective, so they could use them easily and intuitively. Developing products should not be based only on technical possibilities and/or limitations. why? Simply, when it's easy to use, more people will use it and the more revenues the product\service generates. Unfortunately, many products fall at the "technical trap" and leave behind the goal of intuitive usage.

That is why I was very impressed with Hutch (India) “Copy Callertune” feature:

So simple. So elegant. So intuitive. All you need to do is press the * key when the ringback tone is playing. Who wouldn't press * if he\she hears a cool Callertune?

At Hutch’s website I’ve found the following directions:

“How to copy Callertunes Like your friend’s Callertune? Now you can set it on your own Hutch phone - it’s easy! Just call your friend, and while the Callertune is playing, simply press the * key on your Hutch phone. That’s it - the Callertune will automatically be copied and set on your Hutch phone.”

Way to go! And if you come across more cool examples - don't be shy and send me a word about it. Thanks :)

Blogference: Om Malik's Presentation

Om Malik gave an outstanding presentation, focusing on his insights as a professional blogger.

“The early traffic trends of Gigaom made it clear: you can build an audience of a magazine that costs many $M with a laptop, a cellphone and a broadband connection.”

However, to meet these goals you need to:

1. Define your mission statement – what is your value proposition for the end reader?
2. Have an answer to “why are you blogging”?
3. “If you screw up – say that you did, otherwise people would move on to the other 20M places that exist on the web.”
4. “Remember that your readers are smarter than you think and smarter than you think you are.”
5. “People should behave in blogs the way they behave in real life.”
6. “People who disagree with you are more helpful to you in the long run - they say something about you.”

Om also provided some insights for the PR and marketers among us:

1. Marketers don’t put the time to read the blogs and think about the reasons of bloggers to write\think as they do. So, you should invest the time to learn the blogger and only then communicate on one on one basis.
2. Do your homework - sort which blogs you should pay attention to.
3. You have to treat every blogger as a newspaper journalist.
4. Give him\her an opportunity to talk with your CEOs.

As an example of business reaching to blogs "the right way", Om presented the case of Joost. Joost offered GigaOm’s readers 20,000 invites; by doing this Om not only provided an added-value to his readers in the form of his insights but also gave them 20,000 invitations. Joost, on their side, got 20,000 tech savvy users who were eager to take the app for a test drive. It is clear how everybody wins… 

As for GigaOm, Om was asked about his shift from the online media, Business 2.0 magazine, to his private-held blog\business. His answer was that while he was a Senior Writer at Business 2.0 and writing GigaOm (on the same time) he realized that the blog was getting more readship, as well as more recognition and more alert discourse was being held through the blog. And the rest is history...

Putting aside the profession for a moment, I have to say that I was very impressed of Om as a human. There is so much for to learn from him... :)

And last quotation – “Thanks to blogging, I take other opinions more seriously.”

Second Day of Blogference Begins

Hi all,

I just got to Om Malik's workshop about the interaction between blogs, bloggers and business companies. I'll try to update as we go or later on.

Have I said already I'm a big fan of his...? :)

Update: Om just confessed he has a hangover :)

Sprint Offers Pandora Personalised Radio Stream on Mobile Phones

American mobile operator Sprint announced another agreement to eiden its mobile content offering:

In their first mobile deal, Pandora, a personalized online music service provider, is offering to stream radio stations on a number of Sprint handsets via pre-installed or downloaded software. Pandora, which enables its 6.5 million online subscribers to enter a favorite song or artist and listen to streaming content with the same sound and style, will offer the same service to Sprint's mobile customers.

To download the client, take your Sprint phone browser to Pandora.com and you will be prompted to download it. This offer is free for 30 days. After that you must have a Pandora premium account, which costs $3/month with a Sprint data plan (this also removes ads from Pandora.com when you listen there). The service will work initially on five phone models but will expand to all high-speed data phones sold by Sprint by the end of June.

Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, a proprietary system that employs musicians to analyze songs one at a time, identifying musical qualities like melody, harmony, rhythm, arrangement, lyrics and vocals. Information about each current song, like title, artist and album, is displayed on the phone's color screen, and Sprint subscribers may scroll backwards to see the same data for recently played songs. Users may also rate songs to adjust Pandora's programming, pause and skip songs. In addition, Sprint subscribers may bookmark songs, saving title and artist for subsequent purchase at the Sprint Music Store. The Sprint service will integrate with Pandora's online service, enabling users to save up to 100 stations per account. Sprint customers can also create new stations directly on their phones.

[via Press release]

Sprint is the first mobile operator to offer Pandora, it would be interesting to see how other mobile operators will follow...

Coping With Law Enforcement: Second Life and Child Abuse

Over the past day, the issue of simulated and actual child pornography in virtual worlds has attracted the attention of mainstream media. The buzz was provoked by a report of a German TV news program which uncovered the trading group and members who pay for sex with virtual children at Second Life.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Second Life, it is a virtual world in which members create for themselves an avatar and use it to live out a separate existence at the virtual world of Second Life.

Now, Second Life is being investigated by German police following the allegations that some members were having virtual sexual contact between adult avatars and avatars with child-like appearances called "age play"; (which are groups that revolve around the abuse of virtual children);but also claims that photographs of real-life child sexual abuse have been made available in Second Life.

The incidents involving child pornography didn't stay within Second Life though, according to the investigator that carried out the report, Nick Schader, he was offered by this said trading group access to traders of real child pornography. Moreover, there were meetings within Second Life where virtual and real child pornography was shown.

Now, the police are trying to identify the Second Life members involved since under Germany law possession of "virtual" child pornography is punishable by up to three years in jail. In response, Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, said it would help identify users and pass on details to prosecutors.

[via BBC News]

Ever since the first allegation of sexual abuse at Second Life has been published, there is an ongoing debate whether “age play” is legitimate, and whether it is a healthy outlet for sexual fantasies. Virtually Blind states that -

“sexual age play practitioners are quick to differentiate themselves from pedophiles (who, they point out, are sexually interested in actual children, rather than in adults who role play children).”

One of the interesting things, apart from the debate about the legitimation outlawed behavior in virtual worlds is what measures Linden Lab has taken to law enforce within its jurisdiction. Virtually Blind states that

“several months ago, The Register, reported that a Dutch prosecutor was considering bringing charges against citizens of the Netherlands who engaged in sexual age play in Second Life.

Shortly after that story broke, the Second Life Herald reported that Linden Lab had begun quietly contacting residents who appeared to be running businesses related to sexual age play, with the following message:

"Dear Second Life Resident:

Linden Lab would like to inform you that your land or business is possibly not in compliance with Second Life’s Community Standards. The depiction of sexual activity involving minors may violate real-world laws in some areas, and the Second Life community as a whole has made it clear that it views such behavior to be broadly offensive. Linden Lab chooses not to allow the advertising or promotion of age play or related activities in any public forum — including in-world textures, classified ads, the Second Life forums, or parcel descriptions.

Advertisements, promotions, or descriptions of such activities must be removed to avoid account sanctions.

Any account asserting an age that does not meet Second Life’s minimum age of eligibility will be closed.”"

[via Virtually Blind]

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

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!

Savka, the stage is yours!

What can you say about the differences in mobile usage among youth worldwide?
Differences in mobile usage among youth worldwide are due more to differences in mobile industry structure than they are to any underlying cultural differences between today’s youth. In fact, youth are remarkably similar and share the same basic needs the world over; what’s different is how the mobile industry recognizes and responds to these needs. We often hear arguments about how Japanese and Korean youth are more “gadget-crazy” and more likely to be early adopters than American or European youth, or how the culture is simply different in East Asia and youth there are naturally drawn to strange new technologies. This is like arguing that people living in the tropics spend more time outdoors than those living in snowy climates because they are innately drawn to nature, completely ignoring the fact that it’s much warmer near the equator and therefore more pleasant to spend time outside than in the freezing cold! It’s flawed logic which overlooks the generative conditions of youth mobile use.

For example, people used to argue that texting would never take off in the US like it did in Europe or Asia because more people had access to email and wouldn’t be interested in using the phone for sending messages. However, in 2006 texting grew fivefold in the US and is now nearly on a par with texting in Europe after the dismantling of major industry-related barriers such as SMS interoperability and charging models where customers paid to receive text messages.

Youth in Northeast Asia continue to lead the world in high levels of data usage, where on average youth data ARPU comprises 40% of total ARPU. In Europe, America and the Middle East data ARPU still lags significantly behind, comprising about 10-20% of total ARPU. I predict a move towards significantly heavier data use among youth in the coming few years, particularly with the increasing uptake of mobile music.

Where are the emerging youth markets for mobile products and services?
Geographically speaking, China, India and Brazil will continue to be key markets for the next five years, all three of them ripe for growth. In the more mature markets, mobile content is still very much an emerging market for youth with a lot of potential. Operators and content providers are not yet finding the best ways to satisfy youth desire for mobile content, with the notable exceptions of youth MVNOs such as Amp’d Mobile in the US and the East Asian operators. Amp’d Mobile’s success shows the considerable appetite which youth have for mobile content: an ARPU four times higher than the US/European average and content revenues nearly ten times higher than the US/European average.

What are the economic implications of mobileYouth purchasing?
Displacement, displacement, displacement! Mobile’s intrusion into the traditional areas of youth consumption has created displacement in both the financial and the social arenas. The more conventional youth symbols of social status and maturity, such as cigarettes and special clothing, have been displaced to a considerable degree by mobile. In fact, the decline in smoking among UK 15-16 year olds during the late 1990s and early 2000s was attributed in part to the rise of the mobile phone, which not only left youth with less disposable income to spend on cigarettes but also functioned as a tool to define status and signify maturity much in the manner of the cigarette.

Financially speaking, mobile has displaced a remarkable $500 billion worth of youth spending since 1996. In 2006 alone, youth worldwide spent $130 billion of their disposable income on mobile, and by 2010 that figure will rise to $350 billion. Today youth on average spend 10% of their disposable income on mobile, but in certain regions such as Japan, Korea and the Middle East, that figure is as high as 15-20%.

You claim there is a lack of consumer focus in mobile industry. What are the reasons for it?
We identify two basic reasons for this lack: the residual effect of uncompetitive market conditions in early markets and the general attitude of the technology industry towards consumers. Decades ago, the divide between technology and the average consumer was very great. Technology did not make up the fabric of everyday life like it does today and average people had less knowledge and lower expectations of technological products. In turn, the industry did not feel obliged to take consumer needs into account and this fostered an industry push model of technology. The industry assumed that consumers (or “end users” as it still calls them) would eagerly lap up all of the products pushed upon them, a mentality which continues today with concept such as “killer apps” and the like.

Telephony was traditionally seen as a utility, much like gas and water. Gas, water and landlines are commodities, and you really don’t care who provides them for you as long as it’s reasonably cheap and good quality. This telephony-as-utility approach had a residual effect on the mobile industry. However, mobile networks cannot behave towards consumers as if they are providing a mass-produced generic utility - mobile phones are crucial social tools and people are anything but indifferent to them like towards gas or water.

What are the “mobile myths” according to mobileYouth?
The lack of consumer focus in the mobile industry addressed above has spawned a series of myths regarding how consumers use their phones and what they want on mobile. One of the main myths which I touched on above is that consumers want “killer apps” – fun and “cool” new technologies and “feature-rich” phones. The principal message of mobile youth is that “killer apps” and “features” mean nothing unless they are underpinned by a social benefit for the consumer, especially for young consumers, whose universe is tightly defined by the type of social interaction they have. This is why complicated services with no clear social benefit such as MMS have not taken off, despite the industry pitch. Why should kids send expensive and convoluted MMS when they can upload their mobile photos to Flickr using services like Shozu and share them with friends?
This is where Comverse has done a great job with mobile avatars. Mobile avatars recognize youth’s need to extend their self-expression beyond their phone, making the avatar a form of social currency among youth.

Another myth is the myth of mobility – the idea that simply being able to take something with you on your phone is a social benefit. Mobilizing existing services such as TV and social networks is not necessarily compelling for youth – there must be some added benefit beyond mobility which reinforces youth’s existing peer group or helps them interact more effectively with their environment. It is for this reason that PC and mobile social networks are actually quite different, and simply sticking a PC MySpace page on mobile phones is not really compelling or a big deal for youth. This is also why technologies like QR codes can be very beneficial, because the leverage the unique flexibility of the mobile phone to the consumer’s benefit.

Kids use their mobile phones a lot at home where they can easily access PC and landlines, so obviously the appeal of the mobile phone goes deeper than just “mobility” otherwise they would only use their phones when “on the go”

Thank you Savka for these great insights :)
Savka will be here next Thursday, so don't forget tune in! 

Celebrating Early Steps of Openness to 3rd Parties

One of the most promising strategies to increase mobile subscribers’ exposure and awareness to the ringback tones service is opening it to the content off-deck market; i.e. to enable 3rd party retailers and content providers to offer ringback tones content at their portals. This way, there will be more places for users to acquire ringback tones, they could buy them both at operators’ portals and at the content aggregators’ own websites.

Telenor just launched a few days ago its new ringback tone service called Ventetoner which has been enabled for roll out by Telenor’s 12 operating companies across Europe and Asia. The novelty in the current launch is the new technology which lets third parties sell ringback tones that work on the Telenor network. As far as I know (and feel free to comment and correct me if I'm wrong), the precedent of this kind of cooperation belongs to Jamba, a mobile content aggregator, which started a few months ago to promote T-mobile’s and Vodafone’s ringback tones in its German website; but still, at this early stage, every mobile operator that aquires the technology to enable 3rd parties promoting ringback tones is a cause for celebration.

If you're curious to now just how powerful this strategy is and how it helped Jamba and T-mobile to increase their penetration numbers, both T-mobile and Jamba are going to present their success stories at the upcoming Ringback Tones Marketing Seminar in Miami at the 18-19th of April. For online registration to the Seminar, follow the link. Also you can contact me for more information and agenda.

John White: Mobile Messaging Futures (Part IV)

Welcome to the third part of the mobile messaging coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here. If you missed the previous parts you can follow these links: Part I, Part II and Part III.

Let's welcome John:
Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.
Today, you're going to share some more insights about the mobile messaging futures
Yes! Here’s what Portio Research has to say about it:

Why has growth been so slow for mobile email?

Once we understand this argument, we can put mobile email into perspective. Set against an installed base of 2 billion plus SMS-capable handsets, mobile email has only just got off the starting blocks. RIM’s BlackBerry is widely accepted as the market leading device of choice for corporate executives who need reliable mobile email, yet after years of pushing these excellent devices into the market, the installed base of BlackBerry subscribers, worldwide, in mid-2006, reached only a little over 6 million. Taken alone, 6 million or more is a great success for RIM, but compared to the 2 billion souls around the world with SMS in the palm of their hands, it’s just a drop in the ocean.

Looking forward perhaps 10 or 15 years, we should see a future where email becomes the unchallenged #1 most popular form of non-verbal communication on the planet. With billions of people connected to the Internet, wired and wireless, email will surely be the messaging format that most people use, but this is unlikely to be a conscious decision on the part of the consumer. By this time, how an individual is connected to the Internet, and which messaging platform they are using won’t matter - and the user will neither know nor care how it all works. Messages - text or images, moving or still, with or without attachments, sound, colour, etc - will be sent and received by any device, any time, any place, with or without wires, and telecommunications service providers, if they are smart, will not burden consumers by even trying to explain how it all works.

But getting us to that vision of the future from where we are now will take some time, and there will doubtless be some barriers to cross along the way. To move towards a point where mobile email becomes the mass market messaging format of choice will require absolutely seamless integration of competing technological standards, in an industry that so far has a poor track record on standardisation. For mobile email to start reaching deep into the mass market we need widespread penetration of email-enabled devices, we need to see simple, transparent pricing and we clearly need effortless interoperability between telecoms operators, not only mobile network operators but also wireline operators and the broader Internet community as a whole.

So it may be a while before consumers all use mobile email, but what about the enterprise sector?

In the short term, mobile email solutions such as BlackBerry will remain popular tools with company executives, and many operators around the world are promoting their own email solutions, and this should slowly help the sector to grow. But as we learned from MMS, it takes a long time for handset penetration to build a critical mass of users, and a long time for a service to penetrate the consumer masses who are more price-sensitive than corporate users.

Further hampering the take up of mobile email in the enterprise environment, corporate IT departments are unclear about how to integrate mobility in the broader world of the corporate IT infrastructure. Should mobility be bought with other IT and telecom services from long standing, trusted suppliers, or separately, directly from the network? Should corporations equip large sections of the workforce with mobile devices, possibly costing a hefty slice of the IT budget, or can companies tap into the devices these individuals already own? If using their own devices, who should pay the bill and how does the corporation control network security? Corporations are understandably concerned about making these decisions, and so far no clear precedent has been set.

Again this presents an opportunity for SMS, and a problem for mobile email. While big companies can afford complete mobility solutions, for many small and medium sized enterprises that simply is not an option. In mature markets such as Europe and North America, the vast majority of employees already have an SMS-enabled device in their pockets. Solutions are available to offer some email functionality to SMS, such as copy, back-up, archive, forward, auto-divert, out-of-office reply and so on. If enterprises could buy into these solutions from network operators at a fraction of the cost of replacing all those handsets, many SMEs might find that SMS has an affordable place in the corporate communications infrastructure, at least for a few years while the industry hammers out the technical barriers to cheap, widespread mobile email for all.

So mobile email has a strong future, but it would be a mistake to expect it to replace SMS for many years yet, probably the best part of a decade. Mobile email will continue to grow year-on-year and big corporations will start deploying large scale mobile email solutions as time goes by, but mobile email for the consumer mass market remains some years away. Hundreds of millions of email-enabled devices need to penetrate the market first, alongside cheap and easy-to-use services, and technical issues around standardisation need to be ironed out before they have a chance to put people off. Remember ‘you never get a second chance to make a good first impression’. 

And where does that leave mobile IM?

Yet again we find it’s pretty much the same story for mobile IM, plus or minus a few subtle differences. Again mobile IM requires market maturity to make a big impression on the messaging industry globally. Hundreds of millions of IM-enabled handsets need to penetrate the market, interoperability agreements need to be in place and operators need to work together to ensure standardisation and the removal of technical barriers. Much of the promise around mobile IM lies in the argument that hundreds of millions of individuals already use IM services on their PCs, and these people are likely to switch effortlessly to using IM on their mobile handsets instead.

While this may eventually happen, this theory relies on a number of factors. For one, maybe these people use IM on their PCs because they sit in front of a PC all day anyway, so that’s unlikely to change. Secondly, IM on the mobile handset needs to be a perfect replica of the desktop experience, or better, in order to attract users away from a cheap wireline broadband connection to a more expensive wireless connection. Facilitating this experience will mean network operators, handset vendors and IM heavyweights such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN working closely together to ensure standardisation of handset display configuration and so on. Finally, true IM requires presence awareness in order to function as it does in the desktop environment. For operators worldwide to deploy fully IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Services) compliant IM services and have those service fully interoperable around the globe will take some time, and until that happens, without presence awareness, IM offers little more utility to end users than good old SMS, which everyone already has and already knows how to use.

As markets move forwards mobile IM is likely to gain increasing popularity in certain countries, such as the US and some big Asian nations, where desktop IM is already popular. For hardcore users IM is likely to be cheaper than SMS, but in strong SMS markets, such as Europe, operators will keep SMS prices low and IM prices less competitive. Cannibalisation will inevitably happen at some stage, once all-IP based networks penetrate the mass market and IMPS improves the functionality of IM, but until then SMS is likely to continue to wear the crown.

Thank you John for this interview, it was VERY insightful! :)

Tune in next Sunday for the my next visitor!

Music Discovery Channels and The $1M Question

The first five items in the “top ten list” of mobile music downloads usually represent about 40% of all downloads. This outstanding figure raises two paramount questions asked by all players in the music industry: how do people discover new music and how can the players help people discover more and more? For the players in the music industry, discovering more music means consuming more. So how do we really get exposed to new music?

One of the main channels for exposure to new information as well as to new music is the mass media. In other words, who hasn’t listened to the radio while driving and got to hear the new single released by the most popular artist? Another channel of exposure is recommendations. Everyone has a "broker" in his social network, who is someone that really knows music and recommends new music and music worth listening to. Brokers are regarded as unbiased, authentic and reliable. Brokers are people that you trust and like their taste and they can be friends, broadcasters, or even music critics...

So heading to the million dollar question, how can these channels be leveraged to promote more mobile music? The first example of leveraging mass media to discover music comes from South Korea. Korean operators invested in new technologies in order to create a more convenient user experience for buying ringback tones. Both KTF and SKT use QR codes. QR codes are 2D codes which are published in newspapers, bus stops, billboards etc’ and contain information which is captured with a cameraphone (like in the illustration above). The cameraphone reads the information stored in the QR code and the user gets his\her new ringback tone (for a commercial of QR codes follow this link to Youtube). The second example is using video clips on a music channel. While the clip is playing, a bubble of information appears on the screen offering the viewers to get this song as their new ringback tone by sending a short code via SMS. Both examples leverage existing user behavior as well as impulsive buying.

A more “techie” channel of exposure is through several web based applications. These applications are actually the technological equivalent of the recommendation mechanism mentioned above. By this I refer to many cool companies like Pandora and Musicovery that developed web tools to discover new music based on tagging, categorizing (Pandora’s music genome project is really worthy of note) and community’s recommendations (usually done by ranking). Musicovey took it a step further with links to iTunes and Amazon.

In the mobile arena, one of the pioneers is MyStrands which just launched its Social Player last week. MyStrands offers a “music player for mobile devices (Symbian Series 60, 3rd edition) with two main characteristics: it is a music discovery tool and a strong community builder”. As a music discovery tool, it provides real-time recommendations of songs that are similar to the currently-playing song. Also, 30′ clips of the recommended songs can be streamed to the mobile device, and users can always learn more about the songs on MyStrands mobile website. To watch MyStrands' demo and more just follow this link.

Hopefully, in the future we will see more of these discovery applications in the mobile arena. If operators and content aggregators would enter this field, we could enjoy a wide range of new services. Imagine getting exposed to new music through the mobile and then being able to set it as a ringback tone in just one click…

Tell Me Where You Are With Your Ringback Tone!

Usually, when you think of ringback tones you think of music played while waiting for the other side to pick up the phone and answer the call. But there's more to ringback tones than that! I have already covered in the past some study cases of operators who took the ringback tone to the next level with very creative types of content which are not necessarily music. What I haven’t thought of before is using the ringback tone to let your caller know your location!

The Broadband in India blog brings the following story of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) which “has also told the mobile companies to provide a special ring back tone to the calling party when a person is on roaming. This would benefit them as the caller would realize that the person he/she is calling is not in his hometown. TRAI said in its statement: “Mobile users can activate this facility before going abroad. This will enable minimizing calls when on international roaming, if the calling party exercises restraint.”"

[via Broadband in India : India Broadband and Telecom Blog]

I really hope to see more creative ways to leverage ringback tones to provide better services for the ringback tones users. Nice work!

John White on MMS (Part II)

Welcome to the second part of the mobile messaging coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here and covering the MMS. If you missed the previous part you can follow the link.

Well John, the stage is all yours! :)

What is the value of MMS?
MMS generated approximately $15 Bn USD in full-year 2006, and our new “Mobile Messaging Futures 2007-2012” forecasts this rising to almost $34 Bn USD by the end of 2012.
Market size estimates Worldwide, MMS traffic volumes in 2006 reached a little over 27 Bn messages, which demonstrates remarkable growth of over 90% form the year before…when we recorded total SMS traffic at 14 bn messages worldwide for the full-year 2005.

How big is the market for MMS?
We forecast this market to continue growing healthily for several years to come, contrary to some reports than “MMS is all-but-dead”, we disagree and we see MS traffic volumes growing to reach over 131 Bn messages worldwide by the end of 2012.

When will MMS penetrate the mass consumer market?
We believe that the entire mobile industry has misunderstood MMS from the start, including most of the operators who have been working hard to drive higher adoption. MMS was sold from the start as this great successor to SMS, but that shows a complete misunderstanding of what MMS ad what has made SMS such a popular service. As explained previously, SMS owes its success to it’s utility and simplicity, it is useful, cheap, easy, quick and almost effortless. MMS is entirely different, it offers little additional utility over SMS, costs several times as much and is more time consuming and complicated to use. If anything, that makes MMS LESS useful than SMS, as a service, so why would consumers want to pay MORE to use it? We believe MMS should be seen in its own right as an entertainment service and as a premium content delivery mechanism, not as a messaging tool. SMS is all the messaging many people need, and what MMS offers is something else, something fun, the chance to send pictures to your friends…this is nice, but it is rarely an essential activity, the way many SMS messages are. As long as everyone keeps expecting MMS to follow the success of SMS, they will continue to be disappointed, but once the mobile community stops linking the two together and looks as MMS as a separate service, we can that it is a highly successful application.   

What should operators do to overcome barriers to users’ adoption?
Reduce prices, drastically. SMS is priced, in “most” markets at a price level that most people don’t have to think about. Most people just keep sending SMS messages without thinking about the cost. Once MMS can be priced at a level that people can exchange several picture messages per day without giving the cost a thought, then traffic will grow, rapidly.

Thank you John for this interview. Don't forget to tune in next Sunday for some more talkin' about mobile messaging  :)

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?

John White on Mobile Messaging

I'm happy to welcome John White from Portio Research Ltd to review the market of mobile messaging here.

John White is Business Development Director for Portio Research and has over 17 years experience in the technical publishing industry. Working in the IT sector previously and in the telecoms industry for the last 9 or 10 years, John has extensive experience in the mobile sector.

Hi John. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks :)

How big is the market for mobile messaging? What are the forecasts for the mobile messaging market?
Mobile messaging is massive, the total mobile messaging market today is worth approximately $80 Bn USD and in 2007 we will see well over 2.2 trillion messages sent back and forth worldwide between mobile devices. SMS is by far the biggest player in this space, with worldwide SMS traffic volumes exceeding 1,662 billion messages in full-year 2006, generating revenues in excess of $47 Bn USD.

As if these figures are not impressive enough, we see SMS growing for some years to reach staggering worldwide traffic volumes of more than 3.7 trillion in 2012, generating a whopping $67 Bn USD in total revenues.

What are the key country markets?
The Philippines have long been regarded as the “SMS capital of the world” and this still holds true, in fact more than ever as recent changes to SMS pricing on the islands has seen traffic roaring through the roof. Elsewhere in Asia Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and China are all hot SMS markets, and of course China takes the crown as the worlds biggest SMS market due to the sheer size of the market overall. The USA is a very hot SMS market and still growing, and in Europe Denmark, the UK and Spain are all aggressive SMS markets. In Latin America, Venezuela enjoys very high usage levels and Mexico and Argentina are strong markets too.

Who are the leading operators in this market?
In the Philippines – all of them! Elsewhere, Maxis in Malaysia stand out, Telecom Personal in Argentina, O2 in Ireland and the UK and Netcom in Norway all enjoy way-above-average traffic volumes when measures on a per-subscriber-per-month basis.

How do you explain the dominant position of SMS as the worlds leading messaging technology?
It’s simple, it’s all about utility, price and simplicity. We have been saying this and printing this in our reports for some time now – SMS is useful, it serves a purpose, it can communicate a simple message from A to B quickly and efficiently at times when a voice call is not so convenient. SMS is easy, cheap, quick and many people think sending an SMS is fun. It is discreet, private, effortless and only takes a few seconds. There is no “downside” to SMS, it serves a purpose, it does the job well and it is quick, cheap and easy – what’s not to like?

How significant contributor to the overall revenue is the mobile messaging expected to be in the future?
We have not specifically forecast ‘messaging-as-a-percentage-of-ARPU’ going forward so I can’t give you exact numbers, but I firmly believe messaging will continue to be the biggest contributor to non-voice service revenues for some years to come. Currently, worldwide, voice accounts for approximately 80% of total mobile service revenues across the globe and messaging accounts for approximately 80% of all non-voice service revenues contributing to that total. AS other services grow then messaging’s dominant position will decline, but we only imagine that happening at a rate of 1 or 2 percentage points per year for the next few years, then perhaps faster once 3G becomes ubiquitous in the mass market.

What promises to sell in the future?
Mobile email, in the long term, but that’s still a good few years away for consumer mass markets.

John White will be here next Sunday for more talkin' about mobile messaging. Thank you John and see you next week! :)

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part IV)

Welcome to the fourth part of the digital music coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here. If you missed the previous parts you can follow these links: Part I, Part II, Part III.

Let's welcome John:

Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.

Today you’ll present the second part of iPhone…
Yes! Here’s what Portio Research has to say about it:

Top spec = top price

Many analysts and industry observers have suggested that the price tag Apple has set for iPhone is too high. We don’t agree with this, we think the prices set, USD $499 (for 4GB) and USD $599 (for 8GB version) are perfectly acceptably to the kind of consumers likely to be interested in such a top-spec handset such as the iPhone. As Jobs pointed out, the $499 price is approximately equivalent to the cost of purchasing an iPod and one of the current market leading smartphones, and we believe consumers will understand this value proposition. More importantly, Apple is only looking for 1% market share, and those 1% of consumers are likely to be in the very top tier of buyers – the kind of people who want a top spec handset and a top spec iPod are the kind of people who are not put off by a high price tag, they have the cash and they want the latest cool device, and we believe Apple will easily find 10 million such consumers in 2008.

Also, during that keynote address Jobs alluded several times to ‘the future’, to ‘more products’, to ‘changing the mobile phone industry’ and so on. Clearly Apple have plans to roll out a whole range of devices over the next few years, and just like the iPod this range is likely to include both high-end and mid-range devices, to broaden appeal to a greater selection of consumers. Two years from now we could expect to see a super-high-end 3G iPhone, perhaps boasting a 5 mega-pixel camera and a massive 60GB of storage and in-built VoIP capabilities.

Equally, at the other end of the spectrum the range may include an entry-level product with a slightly limited range of features priced lower, perhaps at only a couple of hundred Dollars. While even this lowest priced model will remain a premium product over many competitors, this is congruent with Apple’s brand strength and market positioning.

Market impact

As the months now pass after Jobs’ presentation on Jan 9th, the end-user is unlikely to notice any significant changes in the mobile handset market before 2009. Few of these devices will actually make it into consumer’s hands in 2007, at least few outside the domestic US market, and even when Apple achieves its target 1% market share – which we think it will easily achieve – still 99 out of every 100 consumers will not see any changes to the handsets they are using. However, the real significance of the iPhone will show through in the handsets made and shipped by other manufacturers, mostly those who DO ship hundreds of millions of handsets each year.

iPhone sets new standards and new consumer expectations of what a mobile lifestyle device can and should do, and while Apple defends its patents, other manufacturers will find new ways to deliver better devices with better user interfaces to the mass market. We await the 2008 handset ranges from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and SonyEricsson with great anticipation. The challenge is there to be met, and if these huge players in the handset industry meet it, that can only be good news for everyone, especially consumers.

Thank you John!

This ends up this coverage of the Digital Music market in 4 parts, brought by John White of Portio Research Ltd. Tune in next Thursday for my next series! :)

Enlarging The Pie

According to Cellular News, the mobile content and services market will continue to grow dramatically as services and applications reach maturity and new services begin to gain traction, and the value of the mobile entertainment market, including music, games, TV, sports and infotainment, gambling and adult content is forecast to increase from $17.3 billion in 2006 to nearly $77 billion by 2011, while content aggregators are fleeing the ringtone dance floor and struggling to look for new ways to increase mobile content consumption.

The latest vendor is Moderati, a Santa Monica, California-based ringtone provider. The company has announced that it has been acquired by Bellrock Media, a content company with operations in the in the United States and Japan.

Content Providers should work together with the operators so they could have a better offering for the consumer. What I mean by this is, for example to offer bundle of a ringtone, ringback tone, a video clip and a wallpaper of the hottest music artist on the neighborhood. This enlarges the pie and each player's share of the pie. So everyone wins eventually.

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part III)

Welcome to the third part of the digital music coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here. If you missed the previous parts you can follow these links:

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part I)

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part II)

Let's welcome John:

Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.

Today you’ll be covering the iPhone…
Yes! Here’s what Portio Research has to say about the iPhone:

The day after we published our ‘Digital Music Futures 2007-2011’ report, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. announced the impending release of the new iPhone. What impact will iPhone have on the mobile music market?

It would be hard for anyone to deny that once again Apple have produced a stunningly desirable looking device. The iPhone that Steve Jobs unveiled on Tuesday 9th January, during his keynote presentation at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, looks cool, sexy, fun, easy to use and extremely powerful. Apple has surely set a new benchmark for the user interface. What does this mean for the mobile industry and who will see iPhone as a threat, and who will see it as a reason to celebrate?

Good news all round

The answer is that most players in the mobile industry should find this announcement a good reason to celebrate, as this is generally good news for most players and good news for the industry as a whole. We have argued for years that the user interface on most mobile handsets needs to be easier to use to encourage greater use of non-voice services, and while Jobs stated that Apple have filed many patents with this product, which they intend to defend, a standard has clearly been defined and other manufacturers must now step up and meet the challenge.

The iPhone certainly does not represent a major threat to the dominant position of the leading handset vendors. Apple has set a target of achieving 1% market share in 2008, that’s sales of 10 million iPhones in a market of 1 billion handset sales. Considering the high-profile announcement and the months of rumour and speculation that preceded it, a target of 1% after 18 months in the market seems quite low, but that simply emphasises that the iPhone is not targeted as a mass market device.

One of the defining factors that separates Apple products from the rest of the market is the innovative design and the uber-cool image that consumers attached to many of Apple’s products. If this chic, leading-edge image was lost then a lot of the appeal of Apple, and the premium price fans pay, would be lost, so it is actually not in Apple’s interests to become a mass market manufacturer with double digit market share. Just take a look at what happened to the Motorola RAZR. When it was first released it was expensive, chic, desirable and very up-market, yet within 2 years the device is so widely distributed that it is now considered “old news” and it has lost all its cutting edge fashion appeal. That simply is not a space Apple wants to occupy.

Finding a place in the market

In the broader mobile handset industry, Nokia will ship well over 300 million handsets in 2007 and 2008, Motorola should ship well over 200 million, Samsung over 100 million and SonyEricsson should also be aiming to reach close to 100 million. Compared to these, Apple’s target of 10 million should not be cause for any great concern. Where Apple will be causing major worries is in the high end smartphone and PDA market. Manufacturers such as Palm, RIM, Dell, HP and i-mate have every reason to be concerned, and devices such as the Motorola Q, the Samsung Blackjack and the Blackberry range from RIM now face serious competition from the iPhone.

Apple has a number of challenges ahead, not least the lawsuit launched on January 10th by Cisco for infringement of its copyright name, iPhone. Beyond that legal dispute, Apple needs to ensure it has sorted out hardware issues that have plagued iPod. While most consumers can suffer having no portable music player for a few days or even a week or two, while there iPod is being repaired, such breakdowns are totally unacceptable with a $500 Dollar smartphone. The kinds of consumers who pay top-Dollar for a fully featured smartphone don’t like to be parted from their device for an hour, let alone a week. Hopefully such hardware issues will not be a problem. Apple computers have always met high standards of quality and reliability, and as a niche product hopefully the iPhone will also be built to industry leading standards.

OK Xen, I'll tell you more about the iPhone next Thursday, so stay tuned!

Thank you John!

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part I)

I'm happy to welcome John White from Portio Research Ltd to review the market of mobile music here at Xellular Identity.

John White is Business Development Director for Portio Research and has over 17 years experience in the technical publishing industry. Working in the IT sector previously and in the telecoms industry for the last 9 or 10 years, John has extensive experience in the mobile sector. John has been Editor and contributing author for the newly-released Digital Music Futures 2007-2011 report. 

So first, let's meet John:

XM: Hi John. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
JW: Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks, I hope you are too?

XM: I'm great thanks, great things are happening lately! What brought you to the world of mobile?
JW: I spent a lot of time working in IT and publishing, and I came into the world of mobile through that route about 10 years ago, as a publisher.

XM: What takes up your time other than mobile?
JW: Mostly my three kids, but also my wife, my dog, running, kung-fu, a lot of reading, a bit of rock climbing, fixing up the house, trying to keep my family as ‘green’ and environmentally friendly as possible, enjoying watching lots of movies and many more interests besides…when my children allow me time for them!

XM: Well, heading going to the music market, what are the estimates for mobile music market for the next years?
JW: Overall, we forecast 5 or 6 years of healthy growth for the entire digital music market. How much of that market is mobile will depend on a number of key factors, not least price.

XM: The guys at Mobhappy predict that: “Full-track music downloads over mobile will largely fail, leading operators and content providers to finally realize there are other aspects to mobile music”. What do you think?
JW: Reading that article, I can only agree that IF price and user-friendliness are not sorted out, full-track OTA downloads will never take off as a mass market service. Operators and record companies need to work together to set the price at the right competitive level to stimulate demand. OTA downloads cannot command much of a premium over wireline downloads, as the value-add is pretty minimal. Maybe some teenagers may think that downloading the latest music track from a certain artist is an essential activity that cannot wait a few hours, and so those few may be prepared to pay a substantial premium for the service. But, for the majority of people, if an OTA download is twice the price or five times the price of the same track bought online using a wireline connection, then most people will be happy to wait until they are at home and can download the track for much less. With iTunes setting the $0.99 USD / £0.79 GBP price point as an industry benchmark, we believe that MNOs will be limited to pricing OTA downloads in the $1 to $2 Dollar (approx £1.50 GBP) range in order to remain competitive. MNOs may think this sounds low, but if it successfully stimulates high demand and the MNOs then manage to win considerable market share, establishing themselves as a major route to market for record companies, then the prices should lead to a solid boost to ARPU through growing volumes of downloads.

XM: Lately, I hear many speak about the decline in the ringtones market, is this correct? What is the reason for this trend? What about ringback tones?
JW: Yes, we believe so - let’s face it, if full track downloads are priced at only 1 or 2 dollars, who will want to pay $5 bucks for a ringtone? Of course, we do not forecast instant overnight destruction of the ringtone industry, no, as there will still be huge (and growing) demand in markets where music download services are not yet available. Ringtones and ringback tones will continue to grow in the huge Asian markets (China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc) and in other regions, but in 3G markets such as Western Europe, as OTA music download services proliferate, ringtone prices will surely collapse. Demand for ringtones will diminish in these regions over the coming years.

XM: How does the mobile music industry affect the global music market?
JW: The overall value of the worldwide music industry has been in decline for several years, falling from a high-point of $39.7 billion USD in 2000 to just $32.1 billion USD in
2006. However, we believe that the value of the global music market is set to reverse and grow again back to $38.8 billion USD by 2011. The reason for the growth in the market is the increased consumption of digital music. Revenue from physical sales of music (CD singles and albums) will continue to decline, but the value of digital music will grow over the coming years. Mobile will contribute to this growth, but as mentioned previously, it all depends on getting the price and marketing right.

John White will be here next Thursday for more talkin' about the music market. If you can't wait, you can read more info regarding the report on Digital Music Future by Portio Research, you can follow the link.

Thank you John and see you next week! :)

Communication Technologies in Fiction

I was going through Cellular News and found the following:

"A novel in which the entire narrative consists of mobile phone text messages was published Wednesday in Finland. "The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies, roughly 1,000 altogether, are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in such messages."

[via Cellular News]

This made me try to remember if I have ever read about a mobile phone in fiction (not in professional literature)... I couldn't think of any examples... However, I do remember that the first and only time I've ever read about an IM conversation was in Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" written back in 1995! I don't want to spoil the fun so go grab the book, be amazed from the prehistoric IM chat session described and enjoy.

If you happen to know who was the first author to describe\write about the telephone, mobile phone, TV, PC etc' in fiction\literature please comment or drop me a line. Thanks :) 

Mobile Networking - A Question

I just finished reading an article about the mobile social networking software (MoSoSo) on USA Today and found this:

“The Iowa State University media professor, who has written extensively about the cultural impact of new technologies, suggests that an increased focus on networking only with like-minded folks could diminish the ability to deal with the unfamiliar - a skill that is vital to democratic institutions.”

[via USA Today]

Can someone please explain this to me? I don’t see how networking "diminishes the ability to deal with the unfamiliar." No matter where we are, we get closer and stick to people who share the same fields of interest and are like minded… How networking through the mobile is any different than networking in real life?

Jamba: 3rd Party Players Promoting Ringback Tones

Last week I was talking about the need to increase mobile subscribers’ exposure and awareness to the ringback tones service by opening it to the content off-deck market; i.e. to enable 3rd party retailers and content providers to offer ringback tones content at their portals. The outcome will be more places for users to acquire a ringback tone (both at operators’ portals and at the content providers’ own websites).

When the ringback tones service was launched for the first time ever in South Korea back in 2002, both operators and 3rd Party players made their own heavy promotion. This was one of the main reasons for the high user penetration rates the ringback tones service hit in those regions.

Today we have a great example of first steps taken in this direction. Jamba, a mobile content provider, has started to promote T-mobile’s and Vodafone’s ringback tones check out this video). For now, the figures are very promising and if this cooperation will succeed, this model will be implemented in other markets as well.

Let’s hope this will encourage more operators and content providers to join hands and work together to promote the ringback tones market.

   

MobDreaming

Last night I had a nightmare: I was gun pointed and under a threat. Luckily I had my mobile in my pocket so I tried to send an SMS and ask for help (thought I don’t remember who I was sending the SMS to).

After waking up and feeling relieved it was just a bad dream, I tried to think of the meaning of my dream. I realized, that I could recognize the mobile which I was using (my new Nokia HS). Putting a little more thought into it brought up the realization that this was the first time (that I can remember) that I’ve ever dreamt of my mobile phone and about sending SMSs, even though I work in this industry… Have you dreamt of your mobile, your PDA or something like that?

I wasn’t sure about the meaning of my dream, so assuming Carl Jung's theory of images in dreams (monsters, masks, whatever) representing the same things to all people is right, I tried to search the web for the interpretation of mobile phones and SMSs in dreams. Besides the “The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud, I found many websites containing "dictionaries of dreams" (you can take a look at these if you're interested: dreams at maxabout.com, Dream's Central dream dictionary) but no mobile or SMS and no telephone or TV either(!).

Well, I'm sure there is already a "collective unconscious" regarding telephone, TV and even mobiles. So if you have any suggestions about the meanings of these - you're welcome to comment :)

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.

Ringback Tones Market Challenges (Part I)

After a tremendous success in Asian markets, Ringback Tones are starting to have wide availability in other regions of the world, such as Europe and North America. The ringback tones market is also driven by the disposable incomes rising in China, India and Indonesia. Overall, today, most operators already have a ringback tones service and main mobile industry’s analysts are forecasting that ringback tones global demand will continue to increase in the coming 5 years.

However, Mobile operators, persistently looking for new sources of revenues and ways to increase their subscribers’ loyalty, are constantly launching new services and applications. As a result, in many cases, after launching new applications, operators are finding it challenging to focus on the promotion of the service in the long run. Therefore, operators might face scenarios in which the service reaches stagnation penetration wise but also and especially in terms of usage.

On the same time, with an increasing amount of the Value Added Services (VAS) markets moving off portal, different players in the content value chain (content aggregators, content providers and music labels) have taken over both, the responsibility of marketing services to users and as a consequence, part of the revenues they generate. So far, due to technological constrains, this has not been the case in the ringback tones market.

Taking a look at the ringback tones users, there is relatively low consumer awareness to the ringback tones service, partly because there is no ringback tone generic brand. Many subscribers forget to re-purchase content and need to be constantly reminded about their ringback tones since they never hear it. The more ringback tones will be advertised and its access simplified, the more the number of users registering to the service will grow and the more purchasing ringback tones will become a frequent habit. But operators can’t afford to promote the service on the long run.

Taking a look on its older brother, the ringtone market has had a huge success but so far this success hasn't been leveraged to push the ringback tones service. Unlike the ringtones market, content providers are not “incentivised” to push ringback tones.

Comverse's vision for the future of the ringback tones market is to implement the lesson of the ringtones market success, to promote the ringback tones market. I'm sure you're all curious about what it really means and how it can be done - so tune in next Tuesday for that :)

Understanding Mobile 2.0

An excellent piece written by a friend and mobilist Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org titled Understanding Mobile 2.0 at Richard MacManus' Read and Write Web :

"Mobile 2.0 is not "the Future." it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry."

Phil Taylor on The Mobile Music Market

After getting a few email inquiries I decided that the Mobile Content arena could be a great topic for December's coverage. Searching for industry experts I got to know Phil Taylor, a director at Strategy Analytics, an analyst and a regular speaker at industry conferences. Phil will be visiting Xellular Identity and will talk about the mobile content market every Thursday during December (each week on a different service). You don't want to miss it!

Let's welcome Phil :)

Hi Phil, thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
I’m great thanks. Too busy to feel very festive yet, but certainly looking forward to the Christmas break ;)

What got you interested in mobile?
I started off in general telecoms research and gravitated towards the area with the coolest gadgets! Even though a lot of analysis is very technical and/ or business oriented, almost everyone is interested in mobile phones, what they can do and how much they are paying. I like being in a field of research where developments are taking place so rapidly. Although keeping ontop of it all can be a major challenge.

What takes up your time other than mobile?
I like to spend time in the great outdoors. Not always easy when you’re living in central London. I particularly like rock climbing and mountaineering and wish I had more time for them.

Something interesting to share with the world about you?I share my name with the World’s best darts player, Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor. I’m thinking of changing my middle name to ‘The Power’ as well. I kind of like it!

Mobile Music

What are the market size estimates for mobile music?
We think that the market for music services that are distributed over the cell network will be worth roughly $2.6 billion globally in 2010. This doesn’t include personalization products like ringtones or ringback tones however.

A lot of 3G music services have come to market that focus on over the air delivery. Although there are a few exceptions, most of these are struggling to drive sales volumes due to the price differential with online music stores and poor relative usability.

What are the latest developments in the mobile music market?
A couple of developments are taking place. Price competition is taking place, with operator stores starting to drop track prices from €1.50 down to €0.99, or bundling tracks into music oriented subscription packs. At these kinds of track prices, over the air (OTA) music delivery is a zero profit margin service and many carriers are accepting that offering music is less about profit than about branding, providing a use case for 3G, providing value to customers and (hopefully) attracting some customers from other networks.

Who are the mobile music consumers? What is their buying motivation?
People that buy music OTA are certainly not price sensitive, or if they are then their sensitivity is being overridden by a must have now element to their purchase. We think that OTA track downloads are primarily a substitute for spend on CD singles with sales being driven by younger age groups.

What are they dissatisfied with?
Usability of services remains a problem, particularly for services that have not taken a client based UI approach to delivery. High prices, relatively low on-board memory of phones relative to dedicated MP3 players and restrictive DRM are other problems that we hear consumers mention a lot.

What is the future of the mobile music market?
We think that mobile phones are increasingly well positioned to act as media/ music players but that the cell network is not necessarily going to be the mechanism of choice for getting tracks onto the device. Operators need to add allow users the choice of OTA or delivery to the PC and then upload to their mobile from there. This is what Verizon Wireless is now doing with its V Cast Music service in the US and we believe that this approach positions operators best to drive sales volumes and ultimately give consumers what they want.

What are the challenges operators need to face with in this market?

Mobility is not going to command the premium that operators are asking for. Users don’t appreciate that the transport costs and premium charges are tied together in these price points of €1.50 plus per track, they just compare it with the €0.99 they know they can buy the track for on iTunes or from other online music retailers. I think that operators will ultimately have to separate the transport and premium charges again and use this as a means of up selling users onto flat rate price plans or transport plans that are priced specifically for use with music services. In Canada for example, Rogers Wireless is making a podcasting service available. No premium charges are imposed but a $5 per month flat transport charge is required to consume this bandwidth hungry application. The X-Series announcement from 3 last week is a similar example of operators trying to set flat rate transport plans against specific services. Minimizing their exposure to potentially high backhaul/ bandwidth costs then becomes the challenge.

Any examples of marketing best practices?
I’ve already mentioned that we think that V Cast Music is a good example of an operator that’s taking a different distribution and pricing approach to the majority of carrier music download services. It provides choice for its consumers, who can upload tracks from the V Cast catalog to their mobile via PC or via the cell network. What is just as important is that the price for access via PC is competitive with other online retailers, with tracks sold at $0.99. Over the air delivery is more expensive, and rightly so.

Thank you Phil for being here today!

Don't forget to tune in next Thursday for the second part of the mobile content coverage. Have a great weekend!

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.

Interviewing Savka Andic on Mobile Marketing & Youth

Welcome to the third part of the mobile youth trends and behavior coverage. Today, Savka Andic, Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report will be visiting here!

For those of you who missed the first 2 part of the mobile youth trends coverage here are the links: Nick Wright talked about mobile youth trends and Jan Kuczynski talked about mobile music and youth.

And now, let me welcome Savka Andic!

Hi Xen and all my readers, I’m Savka Andic, colleague of Jan and Nick (who spoke with you previously on Xellular Identity) and co-author of the 2006 mobile Youth report. A relatively new arrival to both the UK and the world of mobile, I completed my BA in Political Science and French  in the mountainous city of Vancouver, Canada earlier this year and, degree in one hand and British passport in another, was lured to the urban bustle of London. Shortly thereafter, I joined Wireless World Forum as a researcher.

-How are you?
I’m great, Xen. Very busy, but I guess that’s not always a bad thing.

-What brought you into the world of mobile?
My job, essentially! Only a few months ago, I knew less about mobile than some of the youth I now interview for research. However, my background is in politics and the social sciences, so I find the social implications of mobile, marketing and social media very interesting.

-Other hobbies, fields of interest?
Politics and international relations remain two great passions of mine, along with skiing, traveling, world music and a rather taxing branch of yoga known as Hot Bikram. I also indulge in the occasional bout of cocktail mixing (and drinking), my favorite being the marvellous Mojito.

-Something interesting to share with the world about you?
This isn’t particularly interesting, but I can read words backwards in full sentences, as if it were forwards. Don’t ask :)

Mobile Marketing

-There are many successful marketing tools. What are the key elements for mobile marketing's appeal?

Good question Xen - you’ve gone to the heart of the matter. In fact, one thing we found over the course of our research is that many marketing tools that were previously very successful are not so effective with youth anymore. There are two reasons for this: the huge volume of advertising messages that youth are exposed to today, and the decreasing time which youth spend exposed to traditional media such as TV.

Youth are exposed to hundreds of advertising messages per day (up to three or four more than 40 years ago), with the result that day-after advertising recall rates have plummeted, from 26% in the 1960s to 7% in 2005.  Compounding this is the fact that youth today simply spend much less time exposed to traditional broadcast media such as TV and radio, and much more time online and on their mobiles. In the UK alone, there has been a 16% TV watching among 16-24 year olds constitutes a 16% drop since 2001. In sum, not only are youth less exposed to traditional media and therefore to the marketing messages which appear on these media, they are less likely to act on the messages they do receive if these messages are not directly relevant to their needs and lifestyles.

Basically, marketers today have a problem getting through to youth. This is where mobile comes in: We can identify three specific areas where mobile will prove invaluable to marketers. Firstly, its ability to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertising on a personal platform; secondly, its ability to build communities around brands, and thirdly, its ability to act as a linchpin between a variety of different advertising channels. More on this topic later – this answer is getting way too long!

-Mobile marketing so far has focused on SMS. Is there more to mobile marketing?

Xen, you’ve raised a great point and highlighted a major obstacle to creating successful mobile marketing.  In our report, we distinguish between two approaches to marketing, “reach” and relevance”. Reach is the traditional marketing approach, whereby the success of a campaign is basically judged by how many (potential) consumers it can reach. On the flip side is relevance marketing, where success is measured not by the scale of the campaign but rather how relevant the message is to specific consumers.

Many consumers today associate marketing on the mobile with a stereotypically reach approach, largely because of the SMS push campaigns of the “text-to-win” variety. In fact, mobile today is the perfect example of a reach approach being applied to a relevance platform – that is, a platform with great potential for delivering individualized and targeted relevance marketing.

This skewed approach to marketing on the mobile is basically the result of a temporary incongruence between the medium and the message. Messages will gradually adapt themselves to best suit the vehicle of their delivery, but like any adaptation, it takes a bit of time and a bit of trial and error. In the question above, I outlined three key advantages of mobile marketing: its ability to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertising on a personal platform; its ability to build communities around brands, and its ability to act as a linchpin between a variety of different advertising channels. For example, marketers can set up permission marketing schemes whereby youth divulge valuable information on their preferences to advertisers in exchange for targeted mobile ads – in fact such a service specifically for youth (the ad-supported mobile) will be launched next year by the Finnish company Blyk.

Mobile also allows brands to strengthen youth loyalty by building communities. A good example is Coca Cola’s “Coke Fridge” in Germany, where consumers collect codes from promotional Coke packs which can be redeemed on Coke Fridge - on either the internet site, or a mobile JAVA application version. Consumers can exchange the points obtained for ringtones, wallpapers and mobile games or music downloads via iTunes. Coke Fridge also features an instant messaging application, which offers youth social benefits of communication and allows youth to invite friends, which spreads awareness of the site virally.

Finally, the portability of the mobile phone means it can fuse together many disparate advertising channels to create interactive marketing campaigns. The “Warren” campaign launched in 2003 by Virgin Mobile Australia was a good example of a successful campaign integrating mobile into marketing, as it combined aspects of TV, online, print, radio and mobile advertising to create an interactive and engaging experience for the consumer.

-Are there different marketing strategies when it comes to the youth segment? How?
Absolutely. As I discussed above, young consumers don’t respond particularly well to traditional reach advertising.  To resonate with youth, marketers must craft relevant marketing messages that speak to their specific interests and preferences. Even more so, marketers must create advertising that involves young consumers in some way - interactivity is a key component of successfully attracting and building young consumer loyalty. This is simply because interactivity makes products more fun and more real. Mobile marketing has shown a great capacity for fun and interactive marketing, which makes it an ideal strategy for the youth segment - both the Coke Fridge and Virgin Mobile “Warren” examples. I also said it’s important that products be “real”, ie. authentic. What authenticity really means is that youth feel they have a certain emotional investment in the product, and that it reflects them in some way. A good dose of interactivity always increases the authenticity of a product. A great non-mobile example of this is Jones Soda, a soft drinks company. Jones Soda encourages consumers to send in their favorite photos, selects the best ones and publishes them on the labels of its soda bottles. Young consumers love this, as they gain status from being featured on the bottle and feel an emotional investment in the product and hence greater brand loyalty.

-What are the challenges mobile marketing faces today?
There are three main ones which we talk about in the report: First is that the marketing industry in general lacks confidence in mobile marketing, and a shift in mindset is needed before mobile marketing becomes more accepted. Marketers are holding back from the mobile platform due to a lack of traditional reach-oriented data to confirm the success of mobile marketing campaigns. Change must come from reassessing the metrics employed for measuring “old media” marketing techniques towards metrics that suit the mobile platform more specifically. We have to start focusing on “share of customer” rather than conventional market share, meaning focusing more on knowing your customers well and targeting them with relevant information than simply trying to grab as many customers as possible with generic, watered-down advertising.

Another problem is that Mobile marketing so far has focused on SMS push marketing campaigns which were initially successful because of their novelty value but have ultimately become annoying.

SMS marketing limits the potential of the mobile to engage consumers. Direct marketing may yield short-term results but there is no motivation for peer-to-peer marketing which limits the lifespan of any marketing campaign. When consumers are motivated to market the product to others, target segments become smaller and the result is more sustainable, leading to long-term yields through organically growing campaigns. Generic campaigns, such as mobile banner ads or TV style advertising, will see diminished returns over time as consumers become less receptive.

The third problem is that mobile marketing is frequently isolated from overall marketing campaigns. Mobile is treated as a separate marketing channel with a more technological bent than other platforms, meaning there is little integration with holistic marketing strategies. Mobile marketers are often more focused on one marketing technology rather than a larger solution and the high operator charges discourage the kind of experimentation needed to view the larger mobile picture. Mobile marketing also remains an anomaly amongst advertising platforms in that the consumer is expected to pay to interact, which is likely to disappoint consumers both in terms of the brand advertised and the advertising medium itself.

-Any interesting examples of mobile marketing best practice?
In the report we have pretty interesting case studies, such as the following McDonalds example, proving how effective mobile marketing can be.

McDonalds Japan used the mobile as the principle marketing channel to target young female consumers for the launch of its limited edition Prawn Fillet-o burger.

Aside from contents relating to fashion and teen idols, the mobile site’s main feature was a flash wallpaper heart motif which consumers could download for free. Consumers could customize the motif, changing the colors used to match their mood and share their customized version with friends, giving the site a viral dimension.

Average monthly page views of the mobile site hit 49,000 and sales of the limited edition burger were nearly four times that of previous limited edition menu items.

Thank you Savka! :)

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

Next week there will be a new guest visiting here and talking about mobile services and youth. Wanna know who??? - Don't forget to tune in next Thursday to find out! Have a great weekend!

Blogli - A New Hebrew Blogging Platform

I wanted to congratulate a dear friend and one of my favorite bloggers, Tom Sella, for launching his new Hebrew blogging platform - Blogli. Together with 2 fellow israeli bloggers Hanit Cohen and Elad Salomons, they've created a very powerful blogging platform based on Wordpress and already have gained a lot of traction.

Way to go Tom! Good luck guys! :)

Mobile Music Market Review

As many of you know, not so long ago I joined the Comverse Fun Dial business unit - who brings you the ringback tones service. One of the first things I did in order to learn the material was to review the services available on the mobile music market today. Thinking it mught be interesting and handy for some of my readers, I’m sharing this brief review - so here we go :)

              ***

The mobile music market is presenting a substantial growth, with key players like handset vendors and operators offering customers communication and entertainment. The mobile music value chain represents key telecommunication companies, mobile operators and handset vendors partnering with record labels to offer music content to the users.

Mobile Handsets

Today, many mobile handsets are able to play MP3 or WMA music files, so the mobile HS is practically an iPod or a MP3 music player together with the “regular” mobile features (voice, SMS, etc'). The dedicated music phones, like the Sony Ericsson’s series of Walkmans handsets, provide up to 4G (~4000 tracks!). Whereas most of the "plain" handsets provide up to 64MB of storage space, which are about 15 tracks.

Operator services

Most of the mobile operators offer music content such as ringtones, real-tones, ringback tones, full-track music download, and music videos through the operator’s portal. To get your music, all you have to do is browse the portal and search through a list of artists\songs, select your favorite and download it straight to your HS.

To enlarge sales and revenues, operators also need to invest in developing different mechanisms to expose users to new music and entice them to download.

Non-operator services

As mobile music is a thriving market, many want to take piece of the pie. Not only operators offer mobile music content, but also many ‘off-portal’ companies like Jamster, Blinko and Moderati, hold a share of the market. By simply sending a short code through an SMS, users download ringtones and other mobile cintent, unaware of the provider's identity.

Mobile Radio

Maybe a little underestimated but still living among us - the radio! A rising number of handsets have an FM radio built in. A cool example of integrating radio streaming with the mobile is Vodaphone's Radio DJ app. It is practically the mobile version of Pandora, that let’s you

“create your own music channels by rating tracks as you listen to them. Then the more you listen and rate, the more personalized the music channels become”.

[via Gizmodo]

As the industry for mobile music content and services keeps growing, network operators and content providers are looking for new ways to maintain connections with music oriented users. For the talented and creative mobile users, one new area is interactive mobile music services such as phone ringtone "remixers". A ringtone remixer is an app enabling users to compose or arrange a piece of music and save the "remix" as a ringtone.

Make your own music

As the industry for mobile music content and services keeps growing, network operators and content providers are looking for new ways to maintain connections with music oriented users. For the talented and creative mobile users, one new area is interactive mobile music services such as phone ringtone "remixers". A ringtone remixer is an app enabling users to compose or arrange a piece of music and save the "remix" as a ringtone.

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part II (The South Korean connectivity culture)

As I told you last week, I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze on the web and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. I started to post it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part and now let’s move forward to the second part:

                                           ***

South Korean connectivity culture

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation and very quickly it has turned to be a very prosperous market for avatars providers. To understand this phenomenon we should look into the South Korean connectivity culture.

South Korea has quickly become the world's most wired nation. A friend of mine who just got back to Israel after being relocated in South Korea for 1.5 years shared that he "couldn’t grasp how much the web had to offer until I got to Korea. You suddenly realize how FAST it can be! An average South Korean apartment has a high-speed Internet connection of 8 megabits per second” - which, just for the comparison, is 8 times the typical broadband speed in U.S. households. That's FAST!

But we’re not only talking about the speed. Korean broadband penetration leads the world being one of the fastest, and its subscription rates which are among the lowest in the world. 78% of the total Korean households or some 11 million homes, have broadband accounts. This makes Korea a fertile land for broadband services.

Massively multi-player online role-playing games or MMORPGs are one of the beneficiaries of Korean broadband’s high penetration. These games form entire fantasy worlds (and economies), where players meet, interact, and even fight (together or against one another). All is done by using their avatars, their web representations. MMORPGs where the first arena where the need for having a personalized self-representation was understood and answered.

The demand for avatars has grown with the fast adoption of online social interactions in a bodiless, ageless and sexless sphere (at MMORPGs and elsewhere on the web). This amorphous presence has evoked the need to establish a visual presence by nominating a visual representant.

Service providers, on their behalf, entered the avatar market to upgrade their web offerings, recognizing that avatars can increase revenues by promoting more frequent and longer visits and by serving as a bridge to additional services; wherever you go, you take your avatar with you. For the different Korean Avatars offerings you'll have to tune in next Thursday... :)

Web 2.0 Awareness

A little off topic link I got yesterday (thanks Darren!) of a cool self test built by Scott Schiller, to determine how web 2.0 aware are you.

Have fun people :)

Girls, Throw Away Your Diamonds (and Get A Plasma)

Girls, if you haven't already done so, throw away your designers shoes, diamonds and romantic vacations in favor of plasma TVs, digital cameras and personal gadgets...! Cuz these days, tech replaces diamonds as girl's best friend. Also, according to a new U.S. study, commissioned by cable television's Oxygen Network,

"the next five years women see themselves increasing their activities in six tech areas: digital cameras, cell phones, e-mail, camera phones, text messaging and instant messaging."

[via Reuters, InformationWeek]

I say this tech mania is a replacement, to a certain extension, of the fashion mania. Both are a personal statement of skills, knowledge and status; And both function as a language of signs, symbols and iconography that visually communicate meanings about their users/ owners. However, since at the internet era our communications is more mediated and less direct/ F2F, we need new  and reliable signs which would indicate (to others) our skills, knowledge and status, as fashion always has been doing.

"Share" Your Personality

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a new friend who shared some of his views about the future of mobile personalization. For Gilad, mobile personalization is all about presence and content sharing. You probably ask – what those have to do with personalization… I’ll explain :)

Remember the days, when the mobile was a newborn, batteries had very short life and we had mentality of wired communication? Oh, we used to turn on the mobile to make a call and then turn it off right away… funny. Thanks to technological changes and improvement of battery life (we still complaint, and yet, they’ve improved…), today we carry it everywhere and always available, sometimes switch to ‘silent’ (still available for SMS) but always ‘on’. It’s interesting to follow how it influences our mobile culture, how our grasp of ‘availability’ changed. First we used the mobile only in emergency, then we demanded everyone to be reachable 24-7 (“why didn’t you answer me when I called? Ha?”). Feeling unpleasant when screened and feeling intruded being called on all hours, we realized availability is fluid and has more then 0-1 sub categories.

BUT… tatatata - imagine that you could get the status (available or unavailable) of friends you want to call without initiating any kind of communication (call or send sms), just like we do today on IM? Even better – imagine that we could get the ‘emotional status’ of them: busy, on the phone, driving, on a date, tired, or maybe pissed off (pls call)… whatever they would want to share about themselves. There’s no doubt that end users would benefit from sparing wasted money on unsuccessful calls, for operators, it’s more complex…

All communication relies on personalization: all I need to do is personalize my profile, express my availability and emotional status and choose who can see/ be subscribed to my profile. As my friends/buddies/contacts, you will probably be moved to see my status changes from ‘cool’ to ‘pissed off’ or even from something very ordinary like ‘at work’ changes to ‘back home’ and initiate communication. Next you could subscribe to my list of 5 last downloaded ringtones/realtones/ ringbacks, learn that I’ve changed my wallpaper and see it, see my location, my last moblog rss… the sky is the limit! Sharing this info with friends is far more reaching self-expression, since more people get to see this mobile content. And from operator’s perspective it could be beneficial too - it urges users to get and share mobile content (the best sales agent is your friend).

Last thing to bear in mind – this is self expression in a non-invasive way, because my friends/buddies/contacts need to subscribe in order to view my content, and I can determine the access or restrictions to it. I guess some of you think – “it’s too much of exposure”… hey, look around at today’s teenagers, the MySpace etal generation, this is how they socially communicate… Be prepared.  :)

Technorati Tags: Gilad De Vries, mobile, personalization, presence, connectivity, availability

Apple's Smart Move

A few days ago Apple and Nike have announced their collaboration with a new sports kit which includes Nike's Air Zoom Moire shoes and a device that collects and presents shoe-data (pace, expended calories, time and distance) on the ipod nano.

two thoughts here:

• from consumer's perspective - this is a great example of integration of lifestyle brands and electronic gadgets to bring added value to consumers.
• from industry's perspective - the ipod becomes so much more... it's turning into a platform for other apps, and therefore a competitor to the mobile industry.

Technorati Tags: ipod nano, apple, nike, brands, mobile industry

Typing or Talking?

Quote of the day:

Roger Entner of the market research firm Ovum:

"What do (customers) do best on the phone? They talk. What do they do worst? Type. Why is every user interface based on typing?" Entner said. "Right now, the software developers take advantage of every weakness a device has and none of the strengths."

[via Wired News]

Technorati Tags: Roger Entner, Ovum, user interface, mobile, mobile operators

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

Reality? Check

"Klonies Blogging Idol" is still running... Causing the participants to nervously bite their nails not knowing who’s winning since many friends want to get the chance to try the blogging thing. For those of you who haven't heard about it, I'm looking for blogging talents among the Avatars Group, to get them blogging in our upcoming Klonies Blog. So let me introduce you to my fourth guest, Tom Sella, a dear friend of the group, a Klonies addict, a regular reader (I didn’t pay him to do so I swear) and a great blogger. Well, enough talkin’... Tom, knock ‘em down!

                                   *******

Several years ago I had a couple of paperback Asimov’s Journal (after looking it up, I think it is Asimov’s Science Fiction zine) editions, or something to that effect. These were collections of short science fiction stories by (I think) both known and lesser-known authors.

One story that I particularly liked was one which, among other things, described a message answering holographic video phone, where your (today more commonly known as “avatar”) attendant would answer, and filter messages. Both the complexity of the system, and unsolicited messages (today more commonly known as “SPAM”), were described, where one would try to fool the other to reveal its true identity – the avatar as message filtering service instead of the targeted “live person”, and the message as SPAM, instead of something of importance to the “live person”.

This would seem to be more science than fiction these days, in so many aspects. To forego the subject of SPAM and SPAM filters, we are now making daily progress in manifesting and/or changing our personal representation. We do this in our instant messengers, e-mail, blogs, and when Klonies and SeeStorm have it their way, on our mobile phone.

How long would it take to bring us, our personal computers, and mobile phones, technology just as recently described as being used in movies, where one can come into the studio, and with no makeup and no special effects, appear 25 years his younger, or in fact, anything else? To judge from technologies brought forth by Logitech [videos here and here], combined with avatar technologies like Klonies, possibly not long at all.

As one Israeli child song goes, with a little twist “whomever stands behind in front of me, does not know who I am”.

P.s. if anyone can remind me of the author of the story, and where it may be found, I would be grateful.

Technorati Tags: tom sella, sciense fiction, avatars, mobile avatars, asimov, seestorm, klonies, logitech,

If It’s A Computer, I Want A Keyboard And Mouse

-What’s in a name? -A lot, actually. and Nokia guys understand that.

“Harry Santamäki vows to take a sip of cod liver oil from the bottle on his desk if he  ever utters the word phone.

That's odd, considering Santamäki works at Nokia, the largest mobile phone maker in the world.

"We are forbidden to call them phones," said the vice president of multimedia strategy and business development. Instead, they're "multimedia computers.””

Today, the company plots its message on the future of mobile technology from Nokia House. The idea, says Antti Vasara, vice president for corporate strategy, is to change the perception of how we use the Internet. Where we now get content from a range of gateways - desktop computers, handheld devices, TV set-top boxes - Nokia is working to make mobile the "one way - the dominant way - to access it.""

[via Seattle Times]

The way you call your product/ service, is how you want it to be defined (and judged). Naturally, Nokia people want to push the mobile phone (have some cod liver oil) further, exploring new capabilities and technologies. But (I'm affraid there's always a "but" somewhere) there's a major obstacle - most people just want a phone (cod liver oil - not drinking that stuff!) "to make and receive calls and SMS". The solution - change the point of reference by changing the name from “phone” (hell no!) to “multimedia computers”. Nice, but as Mr. Glass, a digg member, phrased it - “if it’s a computer, i want a keyboard and mouse!” :)

Technorati Tags: nokia, mobile, phone, mobile phone, multimedia computers, name

The Proliferating Walled Messengers

MySpace launched yesterday their new MySpace IM, right after AOL launched their "MySpace rival web community" based on its AIM audience and Microdoft launched their Windows Live Messenger.

What irritates, bothers, annoys and pisses off the most(!) in this whole IM thing is the lack of interoperability between all the different instant messengers!! I got:

• Windows Messenger (Microsoft's monopoly)
• MSN Messenger
• ICQ (for the free SMS)
• Skype (for the VoIP)
• Yahoo messenger
• AIM (for all my american friends)
• GTalk (comes with my Gmail)
• and now - a new kid on the block - MySpace IM (cause I'm for friends too)

all that just to be able to reach friends...

Making this list makes me think that I might have more IMs on my taskbar than actual friends/buddies/contacts/you-name-it... :-|

Technorati Tags: windows messenger, MSN messenger, icq, Skype, Yahoo messenger, IM, interoperability, MySpace

Relaxation, Technology and Getting Back in Town

Hi everyone,

I'm back from the greatest vacation ever…! No mobiles, no connectivity, no web… just a lot of people that I love (in person, not mediated through ANY kind of technology) and a lot of resting. Hehe, there are no modern technologies for getting a good ol' relaxation, ha? ;-)

Virtual and Mobile Satisfaction (**careful with kiddies around)

More things you can do with your avatar: get satisfacion. Run a romantic virtual/real life. More specifically, you can flirt, court, go on date, cuddle and even have sex.

-Crazy? -Maybe. But it’s real:

IMVU integrated their IM avatars to allow their users to push further their chats into virtual social interactions. Instead of just having a verbal interaction, IMVU enable users to take the “traditional” chat and run it over a cup of coffee on the virtual “Starbucks” or smooch under the moonlight sky.

-Naive? -Maybe, but I’m sure you’ll agree that most people would choose this IM to flirt/ look-for-a-date/ have cyber-sex rather than just to chat with their best friend…

On the mobile sphere, Digital Chocolate apparently targets teenagers and their mobile phones with its new dating video game. According to its last announcement, with “The Hook Up: AvaFlirting” we could create a mobile avatar and flirt with other peoples’ cell phone avatars. No word on how this is going to work, so we’ll have to be patient…

The app that takes it to the verge is “Naughty America: The Game”, a multiplayer online dating game where “players can create their own character and explore an exciting, sexy, and vibrant world. Escape from your day-to-day life by creating a Naughty Persona and interact live with other players from around the world.”

What’s so special you’re asking? Well, while you can have some “ordinary” experiences of a virtual multiplayer world of chatting with people, shopping for clothes or having other outdoor activities, you can also try the “sex mode”! This mode allows you to try sex positions with your avatar partner, turn on the webcam, “or just visit the voyeur club and get a sneak peak at someone else's wild side”.

Very creative, kinky and daring. Really. What I don’t like in these apps is the potential to replace (to a certain extent) a normal social interaction. There’s no harm in meeting a potential date over an online dating service, over any IM jabber or flirt through SMS. There is no wrong in having a place to express ourselves and our fantasies more easily and freely either. But these apps exist in an evasive sphere, not totally real and not totally imaginary. They provide an alternative experience which is easier and safer to dating (in the real world) which many find as very stressing, intimidating and exhausting. By providing a detour, many just don’t need to cope with/ face their difficulties in order to get satisfaction.

Would next step be feeling embraced to initiate a small talk with people without having technology as a mediator? Will we (need to) hum/ scream out loud Rolling Stones' "I can't get no satisfaction"? ;-)

MobParenting? - A No Go

Looking for some cool stuff from the CTIA, I’ve found that Walt Disney is launching a new mobile service designed for the proud but not so trusting parents of 10-15 year-olds. With Disney’s new service:

• "A parent is the designated "family manager," able to set monthly spending  limits (via the phone or a computer) on kids' voice and text message usage and on ringtone and other downloads. The manager is alerted when a kid bumps the limits and can raise them. When kids exhaust their allowances, they still can exchange calls with their parents and other designated numbers and can dial 911.
• Parents can set the times and days of the week when kids can use the phone.
• GPS technology will let parents map the location of the kids' handsets from their phone or PC.
• Families can exchange custom text alerts or pick from a menu, such as "Can U Get a Ride?"

[via USAToday]

This new service answers the most basic, most foundation and cross-cultural anxiety of parents, which is: “where are my kids?!!! Are they safe?? Have they eaten well?” and so and so…

I don’t want to underrate, I was a good-girly and *I’ve done* some naughty stuff as a kid (we'll save these story tales for a rainy day)… BUT controlling every breath we take and every move we make is a bit obsessive. Really, if you think about it for a minute (and read Police\ Sting’s lyrics), how kids will learn to be responsible if we don't let them the opportunity to behave so?

Getting back to the mobile world, -what’s wrong with the old fashion way of responsibility and freedom under some ground rules, like don’t go over x dollars a month or you’d pay it out of your allowance, or like get home by 7PM? -That it takes A LOT OF work. Parents want the easy way (who doesn’t? I can sympathize that, really). That technology will spare them the lesson needed to be taught: “isn’t there a button that makes them take a shower\ go to sleep?” -Nope. Unfortunately, there is no short cut... Technology can do so many great things for us, but it can’t teach our kids to be responsible, disciplined, and well mannered. Only we, the parents, can. Having 100% trust in someone is so much more obliging than monitoring every step (and eventually finding some mistakes, because we all make some). But it’s hard, weather it’s a child, a spouse, a family member, a lover, a friend…

Tracking devices? A no go!

Technorati Tags: Disney, CTIA, parenting, surveillance, mobile, GPS

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

Confused? Don't Be

How much time would be reasonable to wait for a reply to an SMS? How long can I wait with replying on an e-mail? Evidently, we’re a bit confused, or so says a study called “Digital Etiquette” held among office workers. Most interesting is the fact that we all agree that firing a worker over any kind of means of communication, instead of over a private meeting, is totally rude. However, regarding the time intervals between getting an SMS, IM or email and replying the sender may vary.

Putting stats on the ice for a moment, it is a great opportunity to look at the 24-7 connectivity’s etiquette. We all rant about being always connected, online, reachable, in range… It usually sounds like this: “how the !@#$@#!! did they manage when there was NO mobile\ internet?! They had no other choice but handle the crisis without me. So they can manage it again!”** But, if we do a reality check, we actually have found the golden path between the 24-7 connectivity’s social demands and our own pace of doing things and our privacy.

At the beginning we felt obliged to answer every incoming call on the mobile or apologize for being unable to answer. The technology was new and there wasn’t a clear convention on the subject. With time, etiquette has evolved: we know we can turn off the mobile when we need to, get the voicemail later on and reply when convenient. From total presence it turned to be “when I choose to be available” kind of presence. It looks like other means of communication like SMS and IM are walking on the same path. While it is rude to disappear in the middle of an ongoing conversation, it is very common to have an online status like “be right back”, “on the phone”, “not at my desk” or “busy”… this is the golden path between total connectivity and our needs and our boundaries (“I’m not answering now, need to do something else”).

BTW, It looks like apps like RSS will push it further to optimize the different kinds of “presence” and our accessibility through different means of communication.

So if you’re confused it’s because social norms regarding these new technologies haven’t totally evolved yet, but good news - it's in process.

**There are various phrasing options here, so you can help me. Try to remember the little voice in your head saying it the last time you were ranting on it. And... write a comment. Thanks :)

"Try to Look Natural... and Action!"

Video calling on the mobile phone, what anticipation!! “Wow video calling, how exciting!” “Which HS it’ll work on?”, “Which operators?”, “What capabilities…?”  Lately, everyone is buzzing on Video calling...

It’s great to be able to see people that you talk to. Thinking of all the possibilities, it really sounds great. Waking up to the sound of the phone ringing, answering with puffed eyes and saliva on the corner of your mouth… Beautiful sight! Or calling late to work, saying you’re just around the corner of the office when you’re really 20 miles away… Great surveillance system and the deployment is paid on behalf of the excited workers… 

We will need to direct ourselves before participating in a video call and check if our hair is combed (spikes are standing up, in my case :-)), if lipstick is well put and dark circles around the eyes are well covered – hey, this is a close up shot!

And if you’ll decide to keep your face off the video call (a new zit in the center of the forehead, or a swimming pool in the back instead of an office scenery), people would probably ask – what do they have to hide? If they didn’t have something to hide they would have showed themselves… not only we’re connected 24-7, we will be under the spotlight, standing on the big stage with even less privacy left…

What would be best is another visual means of communicating… Much more fun and much easier!

Express Yourself or Get Screened!

I don’t know if you remember, but long time ago, when the mobile was merely an infant, it just rang when someone called and we had to pick up in order to know who’s calling. Most of us probably had calling card or lots of change and didn’t own a mobile… what a days… Later on, the mobile evolved a bit and we could get a display of an entering call or a “missed call”.

Then, with more developed caller IDs we had an informative display of the caller’s identity. By signing up for the service, we could get this information, which was merely a phone number. Yet, we could customize it to better fit our needs as the receiver of calls.

Imagine yourself this (not PC) situation: an ex-boy\girlfriend (or other nagger) who keeps calling again and again… not nice but it happens. Besides asking him\her to stop calling and hope for the best, we could simply tag him\her with “don’t answer” or “I’m a jerk don’t answer” (I’m sure you can come up with more amusing tags to better rephrase that) so each time the nagger calls we won’t answer… For the same purpose, we could also choose a certain ringtone to all the naggers as a group.

The nagger, on his\her behalf, could only determine whether we can see his\her phone number or block the number (displayed as “private caller”) on our mobile screen. His\her ability to self express on our mobile is very limited and is very much depending on our mobile settings.

But what if the nagger isn’t really a nagger? If I’m feeling bad and I know that my mom\dad\both are in a meeting and can’t answer? With the next generation of caller ID’s, we can take advantage of the visual display to express more complex messages. With the multimedia user defined caller ID, I can have the ultimate ability to self express my personality and state of mind and reach far over the receiver’s mobile screen.

So if I’m feeling bad, my mom\dad\both could know it before taking that call, that otherwise wouldn’t have been answered. Instead of customizing my mobile phone, I’m self expressing on other’s mobile! I’m actually sending a visual message (or better said - communicating!) before even beginning the call. Think of all the possibilities... Next time you need to get answered - express yourself visually!

United Chargers of Mobile!

-What is the most annoying, most irritating, most frustrating thing when you are a part of the 24-7 connected techie community (think before answering, will ya’)?

-When battery dies and you’re stuck with a mobile that can only serve as a paperweight or as a mean for self defense.

The other day I left home in a rush and haven’t charged my mobile phone (happens to the best, right?). Trying to look for a Nokia charger, I found so many good people (with all kinds of mobiles) trying to help but no luck… even other Nokia guys that had a charger with them had the wrong kind of outlet (?!) That was so frustrating!! Why can’t mobile manufacturers make ONE charger for all their HS models? Here’s even a better concept for the mobile industry – a UNIVERSAL mobile charger. I’m willing to give up the royalties, just make it come true…

Mobile Live Crowd

Think about this: from just about anywhere in the world you can watch the hoop at the moment a slam dunk has been made over your mobile screen! You can almost hoop yourself!

People are very fascinated by live broadcasts, live music concerts, and live sports games. The authenticity is what we find so appealing – knowing that what we’re watching is for real, it’s not an act of pretending and it’s happening right now as we speak!

Imagine yourselves the following situation: I bought sits for the latest most popular sports game - Super Bowl, NBA… you name it. Drove all the way to the stadium, wore my team’s shirt, bought soft drinks and hot dogs, and went to my seats. I actually did everything the way fans do. Eventually, I found myself staring on the huge screen to see only part of what’s going on in the court\ field (I’m 1.52m so believe me, it is hard even to see just the screen without people blocking my view...). Unfortunately, the same happens the at music concerts.

I feel like I paid a lot of money to be in the crowd, to be able to scream my lungs out (and to choose not to - ladies shouldn’t curse, right?) and see only a small fraction from the whole happening\ event. If you look deep enough, you could say that I didn’t really get the action in LIVE. Besides all the excitement of being part of the huge crowd and actually being there in *real flesh & blood*, it isn’t any different from watching a game at home. Both ways I end up watching at the screen. I know what you’ll say - that at the stadium we can feel as part of the big crowd… my answer to you is - that even at home, a homemade cheering crowd can be easily arranged. All you need is to gather a few friends, buy some drinks and a few bags of family size of Frito-Lays and send the girls to a night out. (Between us, sports aren’t my biggest interest, so I’ll go out with the girls… :-))

I’m having a thought here of a nice feature with some added value for the "homemade cheering crowd", so tell me what you think of it. How about recording the "homemade cheering crowd" through the mobile, and sending the audio\ visual\ both recording as an MMS message to the stadium's speakers\ big screens\ both and have the "homemade cheering crowd" be heard\ seen\ both over there, while they’re actually sitting on the couches in front of the TV, at home.

Well, either way, most of us end up watching the game through the screen. Either way the real action is mediated. So, my questions to you are: what’s the real difference between a live game and a taped game if both are seen through the glass? If we always get the action through the screen, would people care to watch TV on the mobile (in that case, the liveness would be to watch the action on the fly, rather than in real dimensions)?