Link: Portio Research.

Eastern Europe is now approaching saturation and the region is forecast to grow by only 79 million further net additions in the next 6 years, while Africa represents a vast continent of almost a billion people, and barely 14% of them currently have a mobile phone. We forecast another 265 million subscriptions across Africa in the coming 6 years, the period covered by this study.

Got a note from Karl at Portio Research about their latest report.  Check out the link above to get the summary and to obtain the report.  It makes very interesting reading.  In particular, they predict mobile penetration in the region will shoot to 42% by the end of 2011.

Aquaterra
Leisure, the charity dedicated to improving the quality of life and health in
local communities across the UK, has chosen Incentivated’s text message
appointment reminder system ‘iris’ to reduce the number of no-shows at its
sports and leisure facilities.

Yet another leisure company organisation embracing the mobile medium!  This is good news.

Incentivated only recently scored LivingWell as a client too.  I would really like to read more about what LivingWell and Aquaterra are actually *doing* with their technology.  Real world examples and some (success?) statistics to help drag the rest of the industry along kicking and screaming. 

I wonder if Jonathan at Incentivated might give LA Fitness a call.  I phoned them a few years ago (as a customer) to ask them to get their arse in gear and offer me some SMS reminders and encouragement to get into the gym more often.  Their head of marketing told me (I’m paraphrasing) that they’d tried ‘SMS’ and it hadn’t worked….. I hope they’ve looked at it again.  Last I saw in LA Fitness, Billericay, customers had to screw about with bits of paper and tokens to book classes.  Absolute nonsense in this day and age.  You should be able to book a class by text when you’re on the train home. 

Any gym or health facility that doesn’t communicate with its customers
via text (as well as phone and email) needs its head looked at.

I had a note recently from Jiri Satanek, co-founder of Circletech to tell me about their newest service: SMS007.  You may well have read about various secure SMS services — this one looks very much as though it’s in a completely different league!   It’s been available to Czech users for about 5 months and is now hitting the international market (with Nokia Softwaremarket supervising international distribution).

As you might imagine, everything sent between your phone and the recipient is military-grade encrypted.  However the SMS007 java applet also secures its address book — so if you lose your phone, no one’s going to get access to the address book. 

I quite enjoyed the SMS007 comic-book story here which does a cool job of explaining what the service does.   I myself am not on Nokia so I haven’t managed to try it.  However you can check out the details and buy (EUR 35) here: Nokia Softwaremarket. 

UPDATE: In talking with Jiri, I found I was wrong to say that SMS007 only works with Nokia phones.  You get the best performance with Nokia, however it’ll also run perfectly fine on Motorolas (although there’s a slight issue with the Motorola java implementation that prevents SMS007 from making audible new message alerts).

I had a note from Bob Roth at 4INFO highlighting another range of service updates.  The sexy new functionality is the ‘reply 1′ option which automaticall sets up a text alert for the information you just requested. 

1. The "Reply 1 to Set Alert" Feature
This functionality eliminates the need to repeatedly type out and
request information for certain services, such as sports scores, stock
quotes, or weather queries.  Instead, users can ‘Reply 1” to immediately
set automated text alerts. When a user sends in a sports, stock, or
weather query, their reply will ask if they’d like to set a text alert.
For example:

* Sports: Text ‘texas” to 4INFO (44636).  The reply will provide
information about Texas’ last and/or next game.  Set a text alert for
‘texas” by following the ‘Reply 1 to set game end alert” command, which
will send a text at the end of each game.

* Stocks: Text ‘aapl” to 4INFO (44636).  The reply will provide
information about Apple’s stock for that trading day. Set a text alert
for Apple by following the ‘Reply 1 to set daily alert” command, which
will send a text at the end of each trading day.

* Weather: Text ‘w 94303” to 4INFO (44636).  The reply will provide
information about the weather in Palo Alto, CA.  Set a daily weather
text alert by following the ‘Reply 1 to set daily alert” command.

A confirmation text will be sent after an alert has been set by phone.
The text will describe the type of alert that was set and the various
ways to manage or discontinue its scheduled delivery.

A confirmation text will be sent after an alert has been set by phone.
The text will describe the type of alert that was set and the various
ways to manage or discontinue its scheduled delivery.

(Btw, we\’ve seen a marked increase in alerts being set with this
feature. I love it when a plan comes together.)

2. The Curse of 4INFO
Twice a coincidence, three times a curse?  We created a bunch of online
ads for the Gannett affiliates in late January, using Duke as the
example team to query. Duke lost to Georgetown. We switched the small
ads in the USA TODAY over to Duke. Duke lost to North Carolina. We sent
out a press release for setting an alert from your phone. The same day,
Duke lost to LSU. Now, on one hand, since I am not a Duke fan, this
rocks. On the other hand, it really messed up my bracket. NOTE: New team
promoted above is Texas (which is a Big 12 nemesis and helps my bracket
when they lose).

As always, please send me your questions, comments, and/or concerns!

Sincerely,
Bob