This evening I’m off to check out the new 3UK MiFi personal wifi hotspot device from 3UK. It’s a different brand — Huaauuauwueiii, if memory serves — from the Novatel one I’ve been trialling recently.
I *LOVE* the Novatel one. I really do. (Check the video overview I did recently) I’m excited to find out more about 3UK’s offering.
Meanwhile, what do you think?
I setup a vote to get your impressions:
Will you be buying a MiFi personal wireless hotspot device?
I’ve setup a vote on the right-hand-side here on Mobile Industry Review to capture your perspective on the new Nokia Booklet 3G laptop coming soon (see yesterday’s post).
To vote, look over here –> and choose an option.
And here’s a nice picture of the Booklet as a reminder:
I had a note in from Carsten Brinkshulte, the CEO of Synchronica, who saw the piece we published yesterday on Orange’s launch of their ‘Social Life’ service.
Synchronica are all about sync — in particular, their Mobile Gateway (push email for everyone) and Mobile Backup services are being enjoyed by customers of many an operator. Social networking is naturally an area of interest for the company hence Carsten’s comments below:
I think this shows that carriers have understood the importance of social networking, but it also shows the limitations of the technical approach some solution providers are taking.
Orange said ‘Widget Player is currently available on the Nokia 6303, but it plans to roll out the application to more devices throughout the rest of 2009’.
How much sense does it make to introduce a solution that clearly is targeted at the mass-market of consumers and then make it available only on a single handset?
The client-based approach of many messaging vendors is drastically limiting the addressable market. Synchronica has always implemented a different approach using industry standards delivering push Email, synchronization and now social messaging to the native applications of a wide range of handsets – without requiring an additional client to be downloaded to the handset.
As a result, our solutions have a much larger addressable market and are better suited for the consumer sector which is categorized by a highly heterogeneous device landscape.
That’s a very interesting point. I took a look at the announcement and wondered that too, Carsten. I can only assume (and hope) that this the first of *many* Orange handsets that will go live with widget support.
I think, at least in the United Kindom, we’re still very much at that stage in the movie, the Life of Brian, where the Peoples’ Front of Judea ask “What have the Romans ever given us?”
The underlying assumption is that the Romans are rubbish. Until each of the ‘Front’ members pop-up with suggestions unhelpful to the broad argument, like the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education…
That’s how I felt the other day when I was standing amongst a group of friends of friends.
“What kind of new phone should I get?” a girl asked.
I did a quick analysis in my head and said, “iPhone”. I reasoned that she’d enjoy the interface, she’d love the apps, the maps, the user-interface — and that it would really blow her Nokia-N95-bearing-mind. And it’d be a good experience for her.
For me, for tech geeks, the iPhone’s almost Fisher-Price-like lack of background processing begins to annoy pretty quickly.
“Hold on a moment, that’s a monopoly!” declared a chap next to her.
The conversational attention moved to him as he ranted at the ‘grip’ wielded by Apple and their exclusive operators.
“Right, but the features, the potential, what you can actually DO with the device, it’s brilliant,” I argued, my underling point being that the device would actually increase the girl’s quality of life, in a small yet meaningful manner.
“All I need is to be able to call and text,” said the girl.
Somewhere, a pretty little mobile industry angel popped out of existence.
“Precisely!” said the monopoly chap, “It’s a monopoly!”
“Apple needed to do a deal with the mobile operators to get them to accept and implement ‘unlimited’ mobile data,” I explained, “Plus they needed to be able to install some software/services to deliver visual voicemail at the operator level, hence the initial exclusivity.”
The argument continued.
Before somebody mentioned ‘TomTom’ and the girl picked up, “Oh, maps on my mobile would be good.”
And almost immediately — exactly as per the script of the Life of Brian, everybody listening into the conversation started listing benefits of the iPhone. (Or, benefits of an advanced mobile platform, over and above the call/text basics).
Maps.
Sending pictures easily.
Train times.
Cocktail instructions. (Another chap promptly got out his iPhone, downloaded a cocktail video app and proceeded to follow the instructions to make a Caprina).
Here’s a video of that Life of Brian scene I found on YouTube:
To end the conversation, before we got onto more interesting discussion themes, I gave an illustration to how I’d used my mobile that day.
1. Alarm clock in the morning
2. Check train times
3. Find Thorntons chocolate shop in the High Street
4. See where my friend was, currently, with Google Latitude and rendezvous
5. Deal with some technical support perspective from a colleague via Facebook
6. Use the National Rail Enquiries iPhone app (priced at a steep £4.99) to ‘Find my next train home’ — a genius, genius offer.
7. Looked up and ordered a book on Amazon
8. Watched three episodes of The Wire
9. Listened to 60 minutes of Terry Pratchett’s Making Money audiobook
10. Took a photo and blogged about the fact that you can get an Entire Wedding Day Package for £1,799 at a venue in Billericay (walked by the poster).
At the end of my list, the chap didn’t say much for a few moments, before affirming that he, “Only wants to call and text on his mobile.”
Which is perfectly fine.
But the girl in question — and a few other on-lookers were sold. And they’ll be heading out to buy iPhones shortly.
The Great Unwashed — the mobile masses — are slowly realising that they don’t just need to restricted themselves to calling and texting.
There’s actually a lot more you can do with your handset…
I didn’t immediately have an answer. I had the answer in my mind… I could feel the neutrons firing but not giving a distinct summary sentence.
Then I formulated this:
A smartphone is a handset that enables you to manage your work and social life via means other than just the medium of voice.
What do you think? The thinking behind my definition is that, irrespective of what platform or specific functions, the main element that differentiates a ’smartphone’ from a ’shit phone’* is the fact that you can DO stuff. Manage a diary that’s synced from your Google Apps. Use instant messaging to talk to your team in Singapore whilst on an extended conference call at the office. Browse a spreadsheet or powerpoint on your device whilst you’re waiting for the ‘check’ at the restaurant.
What do you think?
* By the way: Will people PLEASE stop ’shit phones’ that only call or text as ‘feature phones’. They have next to NO features.
That said, it’s a good move for the consumer looking ‘for a deal’.
You simply walk into Carphone Warehouse or Phones4U and — this is where the mobile operator gets an absolute kicking — you tell them you want a ‘better deal’. Let’s say you’re on Orange, right. Well, you won’t be. Not for much longer. The retailer typically gets a heck of a lot more revenue for obtaining a new customer than it does for ‘retaining’ and upgrading an existing customer. The deals for new customers are usually a lot more appealing.
So you’ll be whisked off Orange before you can say ‘can I get free minutes with that’ and the sales executive will begin pointing you to the operator that offers the highest revenue payout/bonus/vouchers for them.
So, from July 7th, you could now be walking out with a new Vodafone connection from Carphone Warehouse.
Good news for the consumer.
Good news for Carphone.
Bad news for Phones4U (slightly less reason to get your hands covered in snakeoil).
Good news for Vodafone. They can hopefully benefit from the churn that these retailers are generating. Carphone Warehouse, by the way, sold 19 million handsets last year. A majority of which were obviously churned from other networks.
If you’ve got an opinion about the mobile industry — or life related to the mobile industry — I’d like to read it. And what’s more, so would more than a quarter of a million Mobile Industry Review readers.
Opinion and commentary is a a lot more valuable to MIR’s readers than your average handset review. Phonedog, Engadget, the industry leaders have that covered.
I want to know what you think of the implications of the iPhone extending reach into the medical environment. I want to know whether you think the market for mobile messaging is slowly dying. I want to know whether life in India is better with the addition of mobile, or not at all. I’d like to know what your mother thinks of her Motorola. Or why you think Palm are poised to take over the world. Or fail.
MIR’s readers aren’t necessarily commenters. Now and again you’ll see a post that attracts a lot of feedback. For MIR, it’s not always about the comments. It’s about the fact that your contribution is printed out and put in front of one of the mobile operator’s CEOs. Or having your article about the future of mobile music being included in the background dossier as briefing for one of the world’s top music companies.
Those are both real world examples that I’m aware of. Indeed I know of one mobile operator and another handset manufacturer who regularly prints off entire segments of MIR to forward round the office.
If only we could make people pay for that…. oh wait…
Anyway, part of the reason I’ve brought back MIR 3.0 is because I was missing really good opinion. I’m certainly capable of forming my own. Indeed I’ve never been known to be short of a perspective or two. But I thoroughly enjoy reading other people’s viewpoints.
So I’d like you to consider taking the time to write a post for MIR. On whatever mobile related subject turns you on. You don’t need to be *somebody*. You don’t need to be a jobbing columnist. You don’t need to have your own blog or 50,000 followers on Twitter. Nor do you need to worry about committing to a punishing 5-post a week schedule.
Submit one. Or try it weekly. Whatever. Provided you’ve got something to say — I’d like to publish it.
And the MIR audience would like to read.
I can’t commit to paying for content at the moment, but I can put your name in lights and give you an influential platform to reach hundreds of thousands of people, not just in the industry, but all across the tech blogosphere.
Here’s how it works.
1. Email me and tell me you’re interested. Tell me who you are, tell me what you reckon you’d like to write about. If you’ve just got one post in mind, no problem. Or if you’d like to try doing a few, tell me what you’re thinking.
2. I’ll write back as soon as I can. Usually within a day. I’ll give you some feedback as to what I reckon the audience will think of your idea.
3. If you’re still up for it, I’ll sort you out with a MIR publishing account and we’ll go from there.
If you think this might be a useful way of promoting you or your company, sure. That’s not a problem. We’ll put in a link and tell the audience about you — they typically want to know that level of context anyway. Indeed some of the readers might want to do business with you or hire you.
For anyone thinking about writing 4 paragraphs of puff rubbish and getting it published: No. The MIR audience are old enough and smart enough to be able to identify a bullshitter from someone who is passionate about a particular subject (and happens to be writing from a company who specialises in that area). We’re all about helping out with business development anyway.
Now, I’m often asked about word count.
There is no word count limit.
If you’re a new columnist then the readers aren’t going to react that well to three lines of text. Equally, there’s nothing worse than reading an article that’s a really cool subject — but finding that there’s only five paragraphs, because the author stuck rigidly to some imaginative 400 or 500 word limit. The key thing with MIR is we have — deliberately — a conversational editorial tone. If you want to write with the Queen’s English, brilliant. I set the tone as conversational originally because I wanted to be able write-as-I-speak, or perhaps, write-as-I-think. I find it a lot easier to get the stuff out my head that way. So don’t be worried about word count. Worry about quality. Get the stuff out of your head and keep writing for as long as you feel is relevant. And if you can’t find a decent end to the post, say something contentious and end with a question mark.
If we’ve talked in the past about you writing — and you didn’t necessarily get an immediate response from me, it’s because I’m rubbish. It’s because I probably wanted to reply properly — but that’ll have required 45 minutes work and [insert more excuses here]. I do my best, but there’s a constant inbox of about 4,000, so please don’t be put off. Try me. Drop me a note and let’s see what we can do together.
Ashton hasn’t reacted all that well to reports that Twitter is getting into bed with a TV channel/show that may well, “put ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.”
Here’s a quote from that CNN report:
Ashton Kutcher — Twitter’s top tweeter — warned he may pull the plug on his tweeting if the micro-blogging service partners on a reality TV show.
“It’s all fun and games until somebody gets stalked,” Kutcher wrote in a Twitter posting late Monday.
I think it’s an interesting concept, getting members of the public (“ordinary people”) to use the likes of Twitter to keep tabs on celebrities. It’s the next evolutionary step. Do we all want to know that Brad Pitt just used the bathroom? I don’t. But I’m sure a good few million people who’ve got nothing better to do would be delighted to give their attention to this — and make it a ratings winner.
Brad Pitt. Live.
And all you need to do is pay some guy $2,000/month plus expenses to literally follow him everywhere? Done.
It’s a genius concept.
I don’t agree with it. But it’ll work.
Introduce photos (ShoZu) and live QIKing when the network speeds and batteries support it.
Yup it’s a genius concept, it really is.
“What’s Britney Spears doing right now? Right now? Well I can tell you because Jimmy is inside The Beverley Hills Four Seasons with this latest update [link to Twitter feed/photo/video].”
Yeah. That’s going to get eyeball-after-eyeball. Sad, but true.
It’s the next step in the evolution of celebrity obsession.
But what’s Ashton going to do about it?
Could he, theoretically, setup AshtonLive, himself? And send an invite to every one of his 2 million followers? How many would join? 70%?
It’d would be more or less frictionless for them to do so. One click and your account, friends and whatnot are imported.
After all, a lot of those who’ve joined are genuinely interested in what Ashton’s up to. They’re fans. They’re on Twitter for him. Ashton is the draw, not Twitter.
So isn’t it better for Ashton to own his own AshtonLive feed — and make it wholly compelling, so he can control it? So he can switch it off when he really wants a break? So he can put re-runs (or highlights or something) up when he wants to go away for 2 weeks to get some peace and quiet?
Much better to own your own medium, right? Do it now, while you’ve got the authority and control over those 2 million followers.
Setup AshtonLive.com — do a carbon copy of Twitter, hire a few smart developers and woosh, you’re live over night. You’ll need a bit of help scaling but there’s plenty of technical assistance out there ready to access. In fact you could probably stick it all on Mosso and let them sort it out.
Launch your own AshtonLive iPhone app.
Stop Tweeting on Twitter immediately. Transfer the attention assets out over night. Make huge, huge headlines while you’re doing it.
Meanwhile do a deal with the talent agencies across Hollywood to rip their celebrities off Twitter and on to their own services.
I’d really like to see what would happen if Ashton, Demi and the celebrity Twitters launched their own microblogging alternatives.
