I recognise that this is less than scientific but they can certainly be considered anecdotal. I simply spoke to the IT director or senior manager — whoever was available to have a chat.

When I called, I introduced myself as the Editor at Mobile Industry Review and gave them a quick overview, pointing out that I was doing a quick bit of BlackBerry research.

I came up with three questions as I didn’t want to impose too much on their time. Indeed I didn’t expect them to be as polite as they were. (I ended up getting a whole load of feedback from each question.)

Here are the questions I asked along with the rather simple results:

- – - – -

Do you have BlackBerry email services?

100% (all five said yes)

Do you intend staying with BlackBerry for the foreseeable future? (i.e. 12-24 months)

80% (4 out of 5)

Are you considering other smartphone platforms?

60% (3 out of 5)

- – - – -

So, yes, RIM are going through a lot of trauma but I wonder whether their core business will still remain relatively secure. That said, relying on core business simply won’t cut it in the smartphone wars. Also rather worrying is that 3 out of 5 are having their heads turned by other platforms. This is not surprising given the consumerisation of IT and the amount of employees hankering to try out the latest gizmos.

[An interesting aside -- one of the chaps I spoke to pointed out that they currently pay for their BlackBerry services and licenses via their operator but plan to stop doing this soon because they intend swapping to Office365. They'll still need BlackBerry 'service' from their operator, but they won't need the client access license costs for their exchange server -- because it's all wrapped into the Office365 monthly service fee. This is good news for RIM's continuity but bad from a reduced license revenue perspective.]

[insert breathless press release introduction]

[insert some additional speculation from press release]

[insert a quote from the analyst]

[insert a summary editorial point]

I trust you got the point of this post.

Here are the company’s key findings:

- The Apple A4 remains unchanged from the iPad
- TI has won the touch screen controller
- OmniVision is the suspected main image sensor – more analysis to follow
- STMicroelectronics scored two big inertial sensor wins for the accelerometer and gyroscope
- AKM has updated the magnetic sensor with a new device that promises better performance
- Broadcom continues to have success with Apple with its low power 802.11n with Bluetooth® solution

What does the iPhone main board look like? Here it is:

Amazing to think that this small piece of technology is probably light years better than my first 386 processor-based Amstrad.

Head over to Chipworks for their in-depth reports and analysis.

Recently someone described me on Twitter as ‘pro-Nokia’. Like you’d label someone ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’. I can’t find the tweet but it really stuck with me. I am a fundamental fan of the company and I very much respect a lot of the talented people who work there. But I think a better label for me would be ‘Frustrated-Pro-Nokia’, or something like that.

I have been debating with other Nokia fans, across the months, about Nokia’s ridiculous policy of standing in front of the mobile crowd and letting folk carve out chunks of flesh without doing anything. Or releasing a fuddy-duddy press release in response. Or worse, suing Apple. It’s a bit late in the day for that.

The frustrating stand-and-stare approach is causing the company untold amounts of reputation damage. It is almost comical to watch — so much so that I’m writing this post for documentary purposes, just so that it will look good as a screenshot in my next presentation that I give to the financiers and analysts chaps in about 6-12 months.

The company needs to get in the game. They need to let their PR and marketing people off the chain. The company has expertise and capabilities in spades. It’s got super-effective people, ready to go to bat for the company, ready to take the gloves off, ready to jump in and aggressively defend the company.

Right now, there’s no defence needed.

No.

This is the shocking bit.

The company often isn’t even considered. This is what I find most shocking. Would you like some proof? Well then, here we go.

The name Mary Meeker will, I’m sure, ring a bell. She works for Morgan Stanley in their Technology Research department and has a track record of producing interesting, thought-provoking perspective. Andy on the MoMoEdinburgh news group posted this link to the biennial Morgan Stanley Research Presentation on Internet Trends, published this week.

A few slides into the deck, I noticed this one:

It’s titled:

“Mobile Internet Ramping Faster Than Desktop Internet Did – Apple Leading Charge”

The slide shows the growth of iPhone and iTouch clearly ‘ramping faster’ than Desktop Internet, along side AOL, NTT docomo and so on.

I fully appreciate that the graph is meant to illustrate mobile internet and that the author has simply selected iPhone/iTouch to make their point.

But the assumption that ‘proper’ mobile internet means Apple is … well, it’s reflecting of the prevailing wisdom. Further, it demonstrates that when people think Nokia, they think rubbish-phone, especially in North America.

And that’s a problem when you’ve got the online/mainstream media thinking this.

It’s an even bigger problem when you’ve got serious analysts working on that basis too.

Nokia has arguably got more internet connected mobile-internet capable devices on the market that anyone else, period. Who’s reminding Mary? Who’s reminding the rest of the marketplace, the media, the consumers, the tech influencers?

The company isn’t even front of mind. It’s worse than an also-ran.

This isn’t just down to the company’s products. It’s easy to forget that millions of people really do enjoy using their Nokia phones — and that although they don’t have the razzmatazz of Apple or the Android crowd, their devices invariably work reliably. And there’s been a ton of work to bring the company into the next generation. Qt, the open-sourcing of Symbian, the free navigation platform, the Ovi Store innovations — they’re working hard. The trouble is, waiting ’til next year to really get stuck into the game will be far, far too late.

Their PR and marketing teams should be out canvassing support, excitement, delight — continually. And they should be coming down like a ton of bricks on people making inaccurate or misleading statements about the marketplace (by forgetting or overlooking Nokia). The company doesn’t need to play the same game as Apple. It just needs to step up to the plate and actually get stuck in.

Anyway.

Note to self: Remember to take a screenshot of this post for posterity in the months to come.

If you’re interested in flicking through Mary’s presentation, I’ve embedded it below. (Nokia does feature, but only to act as the shoulders for Apple to stand upon).

[Well, I did embed it, but the original file at slideshare has been removed]

I’m pleased that the report points out that it’s not all about the iPhone. Obviously with 4 billion downloads to April 2010, the iTunes App Store is a monster, but, as Juniper point out, brands and developers shouldn’t ignore users of other platforms and handsets.

“If the mobile industry wishes to introduce a model based on applications, then it must ensure that those applications are accessible by a wide range of handsets ranging from smartphones to mass market devices,” said report author, Dr Windsor Holden.

The company forecasts the following:

Combined revenues from apps funded by pay-per-download (PPD), value-added services (VAS, including freemium and subscription) and advertising is expected to rise from just under $10 billion in 2009 to $32 billion in 2015

I can believe that.

Head over to the Juniper Research site for more information.

Price is the number one purchasing factor

Consumer purchasing decisions of mobile phones are overwhelmingly made on price, with 49% of consumers citing it as the most important factor; only 7% based their purchase on the phone brand

This is why Nokia is stilling half a billion handsets a year. Most of them are very, very competitively priced, especially in the developing markets.

Design isn’t that relevant

A combination of operator subsidies and the homogenisation of device design is having a negative impact on role of the OEM brand in the smartphone market. Only 10% of consumers chose a phone based on its design.

I don’t find that surprising at all.

It’s about what the phone does, not it’s actual specs

Smartphone hardware is becoming commoditized. Instead, the differentiator is increasingly seen as the data features, applications and functionality of smartphones, (34% of consumers cite this as most important when purchasing a handset)

A real issue for anyone trying to compete with the Apple iTunes application store.

It still doesn’t work OTB (“out of the box”)

Yet these features are still a major cause of consumer problems, in particular with the services used most on a day-to-day basis. Almost a third (24%) had problems setting up email, and 17% experience problems setting up the internet on their device

Again, sadly this is still the reality.

Rubbish experience

These issues frequently lead to service abandonment. 8% of consumers give up on a service without trying to find a resolution, and 29% do not think any of the support services available to them are effective. This lack of effective user experience in turn damages the both OEM and operator brand reputation

Think about Nokia’s Comes With Music service. Really nice concept, the implementation of which (originally) wasn’t that good. Or, think about Nokia’s Maps service — now it’s a pretty stunning offering. But if you’ve tried it in the last three years, you won’t be going back to it any time soon after the experience.

“I’ll do an unboxing!” I said to Belinda, one of the founders of LadyGeek. Belinda had just handed me a copy of their first mobile applications report, titled The Female App Economy. It’s been produced in combination with YouGov’s SixthSense team and it makes very, very interesting reading.

LadyGeek’s mission is to help technology companies understand and sell to women. Selling to women is a critical business issue and one that technology companies simply cannot get their minds around. That’s why the smart ones hire Belinda and her team of experts.

Today’s report highlights some considerably interesting facts:

* Of all survey participants, 39% of female smart-phone owners aged 55+ have downloaded one or more app to their smart-phone.

* Gaming was the second most popular category for over-55-year-old women in the survey, with nearly 1 in 5 female smart-phone owners stating gaming is their favourite app compared to only 1 in 15 of men in a similar age band

* The number 1 app for female smart-phone owners over 55 is Facebook, with 18% of survey participants in this group saying that a social networking app is their favourite app.

* 22.5% of female smart-phone owners over 55 found out about their favourite app from a recommendation from a friend, compared to only 12.9% of male smart phone within the same age band.

(For this report, Lady Geek in conjunction with YouGov SixthSense, ran an online survey a sample of 16,810 smart-phone owners. The number of men and women over-55 was 1,639.)

You can find out more about the report here and if you’d like to buy a copy of it, talk to Belinda.

I feature in the report providing perspective a few times as does the ubiquitous Mr Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian. Worth buying for that alone!

Here’s a brief overview video ‘unboxing’ or ‘de-enveloping’ of the report:

The first point to consider:

In February 2010, smartphones accounted for 48 percent of AdMob’s worldwide traffic, up from 35 percent in February 2009.

More and more people are upgrading their shitphones to Smartphones. This can only be good news for the marketplace.

The strong growth of iPhone and Android traffic, fueled by heavy application usage, was primarily responsible for increase. Although the share of feature phone traffic in AdMob’s network declined from 58 percent to 35 percent year-over-year, absolute traffic from feature phones still grew 31 percent. Mobile Internet devices experienced the strongest growth of the three categories, increasing to account for 17 percent of traffic in AdMob’s network in February 2010. The iPod touch is the top mobile Internet device and is responsible for vast majority of this traffic, other devices include the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi.

Highlights from the February 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:

iPhone OS increased its share of smartphone requests from 33 percent in February 2009 to 50 percent in February 2010.

That’s pretty impressive — but to be expected given AdMob’s heavy emphasis toward the platform. Good news for publishers and advertising chasing iPhone users!

Next up, Symbian…

Symbian’s share of smartphone requests fell from 43 percent in February 2009 to 18 percent in February 2010.

This is why Nokia and Symbian is viewed as more or less irrelevant by much of the American media and application developer space. It is perhaps to be expected, given the reach AdMob has embedded on applications and on sites heavily frequented by iPhone/Android users. Let’s look at Android:

Android increased its share from two percent in February 2009 to 24 percent in February 2010.

That’s pretty dramatic, given the number of handsets that shipped last year.

Now let’s get some more Android focused perspective:

The top five Android devices worldwide, by traffic, were the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and the Motorola CLIQ. The Google Nexus One only generated one percent of total Android traffic in February 2010.

And now a nod to the rest of the marketplace:

Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and LG were the top manufacturers of feature phones. Top feature phones from each manufacturer in AdMob’s network were the Samsung SCH R350, Nokia 3110c, Sony Ericsson W200i, Motorola RAZR V3, and LG CU920.

[Note: Do remember that AdMob's stats, whilst indicative, are based on being able to track users viewing AdMob inventory. So if you visit Mobile Industry Review on your mobile, you're being tracked by AdMob (since we carry ads there) but if you *ONLY* visit The Application Review on your mobile, you won't be tracked and your usage won't be included in AdMob's metrics. So do keep a pinch of salt around when you're evaluating the stats in the context of the whole industry.]

You can pick up the full report here.

Interestingly though, Frost’s exhaustive research indicate that downloads from all app stores will reach 6.67 billion in 2014.

Not 7 billion.

Not 6 billion.

6.67 billion precisely.

If it was me I’d have aimed for something a little less precise. Let’s face it, forecasting these kinds of things is hardly an exact science.

Find out more here.

I’ve always been a fan of the Symbian operating system, despite whacking it with a large stick at every opportune point (tough love, I’d like them to succeed) — and it’s for this reason that I’m posting this note.

Do you have — or can you recommend a source of geographic Symbian use statistics for Vojtech? It’s — in the end — going to help out Symbian so I’d appreciate your suggestions.

My fag packet calculations that might be entirely wrong:

Europe: Tons
Africa: Lots
Asia: Not so much
Americas: Rubbish

How’d I do?

That said, I think the figure of 20 billion application downloads per year, per planet, should be pretty accurate.

So Apple have done 1.5 billion in about a year, with, what… 40-odd million devices out there (including iPod Touch). So… 20 billion… well, you know what, that doesn’t seem that much, if you sit and think about it.

There’s a lot of future gazing involved, eh?

Say for example that the fabled 400 million Nokia devices that are meant to have access to Ovi Store by 2010 actually materialise. Let’s make that 500m users. Assume each of them downloads what… 24 applications per year? 2 per month?

That’s 12 billion downloads a year. For just Nokia.

Yeah.

I think fag packet mathematics along with a pinch of salt support this prediction by Juniper Research. Here’s the meat from their announcement:

New market projections from Juniper Research have shown that the number of mobile application downloads will approach almost 20 billion per annum by 2014. The increasing deployment of app stores targeted at mass market handsets, allied to enhancements in storefront interfaces and an ever increasing array of titles appealing to wider demographics have been the main factors driving this market.

The Mobile Applications research found that the remarkable success of the App Store – which passed 1 billion downloads in April – has led a raft of vendors, OS providers and operators to launch their own storefronts, with more poised to launch over the coming months.

My name is Ewan and I’m founder and Editor.  You can find out more about me here.

After Mobile Industry Review turned subscription-only back at the end of March, I’ve been looking around for other projects to commence.  Mobile Developer TV started off as a concept in the back of my mind about 6 months ago.

Here’s the Background

I’m founder and editor of Mobile Industry Review (”MIR”), one of the world’s most influential commentators on the mobile industry.  The site published daily news and opinion for almost 3 years, reaching a core audience of 250,000 industry executives and fanatics.  MIR’s feed is integrated directly into the intranets of many mobile operators, handset manufacturers and mobile service companies.  Super reach, super influence.  Witness, for example, our ground-breaking video of the never-before-seen Nokia Test Labs in Farnborough (Over 175,000 people viewed it within days of publishing). Or take a look at the recent post I published about iPhone centric developer mindset in Silicon Valley, picked up by MocoNews, VentureBeat and the Washington Post.

I thoroughly enjoyed producing the site with a team of brilliant contributors.  In March 2009, I turned MIR subscription-only, providing the site’s on-going feed to one company.  The nature of the company’s requirement developed to the point that I was able to engage a small team of writers to deliver the on-going service.  I still retain all MIR rights and content — including the domain names and the site’s extensive reach — so I’ve been looking for another project to put these resources to good use.

Why Mobile Developer TV?

I really, really enjoy producing online video features. There’s something about ‘TV’ that you just can’t match with the written word.  It’s about seeing the person (or people), visualising their excitement and seeing just how passionate they are about their products and services. I did a lot of experimenting with the Mobile Industry Review Show — the MIR Show — and after a good few hundred hours of stress and learning, I think I’ve more or less perfected the art of brilliant online video production: Top quality HD cameras, excellent HD video hosting, super-expensive microphones — in fact, the best equipment you can buy, a bit of creativity in the editing studio (Final Cut is excellent, but iMovie, although frowned upon from the professional sector, is extremely quick).

Marry this passion for online television with my fascination with the mobile industry — and more specifically, with mobile development — and it didn’t take me long to hatch the concept.  And here it is!

The Aim

I’m going to meet the best and the brightest in mobile development — and I’m going to put them on camera.  I’m aiming to publish one TV show per week to start with.  Each show will centre on one or two people in the mobile development space.  iPhone App developers, certainly.  But I’m interested in the whole spectrum — from Blackberry’s App World, to Nokia’s Ovi, to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace and beyond.

If you’ve ever seen any of the interviews I’ve produced in the past, you’ll know I like to keep myself out of the picture. It’s not about me, it’s about the interviewee.  In some cases I’m aiming to do a straight interview — me to the right of the camera pointing the microphone and asking questions.  In other cases, I’ll do a walk-about or a show-and-tell with the developer.

I’m interested in talking to and profiling:

• Mobile application developers
  (Platform agnostic: iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia/J2ME/Samsung/Microsoft/Android)
• Companies whose primary business is NOT in the mobile space — but who have developed or are developing mobile applications.
  (For instance: A travel company launching an iPhone app, dotcoms launching their own apps — eg. Lastminute’s FoneFood app)
• Companies who supply services to/work with mobile developers
  (Example: Providers of mobile advertising, debug/testing)

Video will comprise most of the content here on Mobile Developer TV — however in my research over the past months, it’s clear that, whilst there are a lot of developers in Silicon Valley and London (my two primary locations), there’s a considerable geographic spread of developers.  Only today I was talking to developers from Ohio, Johannesburg, New Zealand, Ukraine, Paris and Scotland.  I’d like to be able to fly into meet each — that might be a bit of a challenge in the short term though.  So to supplement, I’ll aim to publish text interviews and profiles regularly.

One developer I spoke to suggested recording his own interview on video, answering my questions to camera with his own facilities — and sending it over to me to publish.  I think it’s a super suggestion and I think we’ll do that.

Can I profile you?  Contact Me!

I’m based in London and San Francisco so I’ll be producing the majority of in-person videos from those locations.  If you’d like to feature, drop me a note.  I’m ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv — this is the best way of contacting me.  But you can also phone/text me.  My mobile numbers are:

+44 7769 658104 (UK)

+1 415 200 9515 (US)

… (I’m happy to hear from PRs too.)

Don’t Be British

Please don’t be British — that is, sit at the back and hope I’ll come across you.  I really will do my best to find mobile developers and companies to profile — I’ve already got a big list from working with MIR — but I am most certainly no genius.  So I need your help in order to profile you — I need to know you exist. So please do drop me a note if you’re keen to be profiled.  At the very least I’ll aim to send you out a list of questions to answer by email that I can turn into a profile piece here on the site. (Who are you, what are you creating/have you created, what platform, why, what challenges have you had, and so on).  Ideally I’ll arrange to meet physically to interview you on-camera and perhaps produce an application walk-through.

Got News?

If you’ve got a particular topic of announcement that you think mobile developers and those working in related fields should know about, knock me over an email right-away.

Design

I’m doing a Robert Scoble at the moment — that is publishing with a default WordPress Theme.  I’ll update it as we progress.  The content is way more important than the theme and that’s where my focus is at the moment.

Editorial Policy

As for editorial policy, I’m aiming for a macro view of mobile development.  I don’t plan on publishing code level discussions, or discussing the finer points of the Symbian operating system.  Instead, I’ll be looking at the commercial aspects of the mobile applications development sector along with the trends I’m witnessing.  The overriding focus is, of course, on profiling developers.  I’m particularly interested in talking with one-man-bands:  The chaps (and ladies) who’re single-handedly driving the massive change sweeping the industry.  That said, I’m also keen to talk to the business people — the product managers, the executive teams — about the challenges and successes in the field of mobile applications development.

This is a work in progress so I’d welcome your feedback, either below or by email.

I’ll be syndicating the output through the public feed on Mobile Industry Review so if you’re already a MIR RSS subscriber, you’ll start to get updates shortly.  You can also catch blog updates via the new Mobile Developer TV Twitter account @mobdevtv.

Standby!

Tweet This Post 

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

They’d like to know what is important to you.

And I think that’s a good thing because LG’s handsets are simply brilliant…

But you can do NOTHING with them. Nothing other than what the technical chaps in Korea decide you want. So you can have a calendar. And a whizzy camera. And even an email client.

But if you’d like to be able to use Twitter on your LG? No. Use the browser. If you’d like to have a Facebook client? No. Use the browser. If you’d like to try out Last.fm and stream music to your handset. NO. If you’d like to automatically upload images to other services not defined by LG? NO. If you’d like to send your videos to Vimeo rather than Youtube? NO. You’re out of luck.

This is the serious problem with LG. Gorgeous handsets. Completely vacuous when it comes to their expandable application abilities. The age when a mobile manufacturer decides exactly what your handset can do — application wise — is OVER. At least, it should be. Unless you’re in the market for a £5 mobile.

LG haven’t got that message yet.

There are rumours that they might launch a developer channel, a mobile marketplace a la iTunes App Store. They’re still rumours.

We live in hope. Any attempt at ‘out-reach’ is good news.

Anyway if you’d like to help LG out, they’ve got a survey waiting for you right here. I just took it and completed it in about 60 seconds. Interestingly, the questions aren’t necessarily about your camera megapixel demands…

Take the survey!

Here are the highlights:

• By the end of 2007, there were almost 74 million mobile connections serving a population of 60 million in the UK. This was an increase of 3.7 million connections since the end of 2006. The total number of mobile connections increased by 48 per cent in the five years from 2002.
• Seven out of ten people with a mobile phone and a landline use their mobile to make calls, even when they are at home. One in ten people with a landline at home said that they never use it to make calls.
• We are a nation of texters. In the UK, nearly 60 billion text messages were sent in 2007 – an increase of 36 per cent since 2006 and up by 234 per cent since 2002 when we sent 17 billion texts. The average mobile phone user sent 67 texts per month from each mobile compared to 53 texts per month in 2006.
• The majority of children have access to the internet and most have a mobile phone but they use them in different ways. Boys aged 8-11are twice as likely to use the internet every day than girls of the same age (45 per cent compared to 22 per cent). Meanwhile girls aged 12 -15 are more likely to use a mobile phone than boys of the same age (74 per cent compared to 65 per cent).
• Instant messaging is more popular than email amongst children with 62 per cent of 12-15 year old sending an instant message, compared with 43 per cent of them sending an email. Adults prefer to email – 80 per cent of adults sent an email compared to 34 per cent who used instant messaging.

It’s nice to have some actual figures rather than telling folk ‘there are more mobiles than people in the UK’.

So there you have it.

74 million ‘connections’.  60 million people.

Do any of the MIR readers have any research about the cost to operators of top up vouchers – or can they point me in the direction of relevant research?

Any ideas?

They’ve done a bit of research to find out just how mobile mad we are. Have a read…

New survey by 3 Business discovers hard-working British staff unwilling to leave the office behind
Nearly a quarter use their mobile to work from the pub, 25% have sent emails and made work calls whilst on public transport and 13% even work from the doctors.

A survey of over 1,000 UK workers released today by 3 Business has uncovered that 31% of all people feel it is essential to be contactable by work, whenever and wherever they are. The survey also found that 23% of people have answered calls or sent emails whilst down the pub, 25% have worked on public transport and 13% have even sent emails and made work calls from the doctor’s surgery.
The survey also revealed that 7% of all people questioned, which equates to 4m people across the UK, have taken time out in the middle of a date to take a work phone call. An intriguing 4% of people have even managed to send emails and speak to work colleagues whilst having a waxing or tanning session.
Renato Bottini, Head of 3 Business, said, “The mobile phone has become such a crucial part of the working day that people can now no longer do without it. Whereas previously people would be lashed to their desk, their mobile now gives them the freedom to keep up with emails and other work events no matter where they are.

When I’ve got my Blackberry on me, I use my ‘downtime’ a lot. So I have definitely worked from the doctors. The pub. The restaurant. The plane (when on the runway with a signal).

I’m not too sure I want you emailing me whilst you’re being waxed.

Maybe we could get RIM to knock up some dynamic footers.

Sent from my Blackberry whilst I was on the loo.

Sent from my Blackberry whilst I was talking to the Doctor about that rash.

Sent from my Blackberry whilst I really should have been paying attention to the road.

Hi

I’m doing some research on the mobile advertising sector and wondered if anyone had any views on the sustainability of the sector. If the projected ad spend by 2013 will be $2bn and the revenues from mobile transactions will be $300bn won’t there need to be a huge shift in the technology/consumer culture/backoffice infrastructures to enable this to happen? There appears to be a number of issues between 3rd party developers, handset manufacturers, and network operators that will need to be settled before sufficient industry standards are in place to fully facilitate this boom.

Just looking at the proliferation of premium content/advertising networks that are springing up suggests that the marketplace is growing quickly, but I wonder how many of these firms are able to offer something that adds true value. Nokia bought Enpocket to help it ‘establish Nokia as a leader in Internet services’ and is continuing to make regular acquisitions along this path, including MOSH in June. Is Nokia becoming Fox?

I can see why the industry is excited, but I’m not sure whether it’s just hype or not.

Would anyone like to share their views? You can email me direct if you’d prefer not to post to all.

Cheers
Kerrianne

Kerrianne Gauld
Business Development
Smith & Williamson Corporate Finance

Kerrianne raises some interesting points. If you’re suffering from doubt and wondering if we’re walking through a hype-laden industry, here’s my patented 1-step hype detector process:

1. Is/Can/Will your mother using it?

If yes, you’re fine.

If no, you’re in Hypeville.

There are a range of players ready to plug the gaps — First Data is one of those that springs to mind when it comes to mobile transactions. However the mobile industry itself — and the mobile operators in particular — still can’t work out what day it is.

Today I’m a media company. Tomorrow I’m an internet services company. On Tuesday I’d like to flog you 40p/min cross network telecommunications services to call your granny. And on Wednesday I’m trying to become big in music.

And we move on.

The BBC have been promoting a show called “Britain from Above” in which which they take telemetry from various trackable sources and generate fancy maps of our activities and, presumably, add a thick layer of social commentary.

In the promo video linked below they show a few examples of air, land and sea movements but it’s the content at almost exactly 1 minute into the video that interests me; A traffic map of every telephone exchange in Britain tracked, as they say in the video, second by second.

This is obviously based on information from BT, so are there any mobile networks that do fancy network utilisation displays like this? Hopefully there will be more telecom eye candy in the full show.

You can check out the promo video here or, if you’re in the UK, see the whole show on Sunday 10th August at 9pm on BBC One.

Vijay, on behalf of mobile ad networking geniuses, AdMob, whacked me over these summary points from their February metrics report. The AdMob metrics reports are most definitely becoming essential reading for anyone wanting to track real mobile usage. It’s all very well reading those annual and semi annual research reports, but I want to know what’s going on now-ish.

So here are Vijay’s summary points:

1. iPhone traffic was flat in February. This may be due to the ‘novelty’ factor of people getting iPhones as holiday gifts around December/January, the spirit apparently didn’t grow in February.

Hmm. I wonder if that’s accurate? It does make some sense. If you bought an iPhone around Christmas, one would imagine that you’re continuing to use it as normal. Ergo ‘flat’ stats.

2. Blackberry and Nokia have been fighting out in the Smartphone world as top handset makers to access mobile ads via AdMob. Their rank on the network varies from country to country (see below). Even SonyEriccson wins the battle in specific markets like the UK. This means that basically the Smartphone race is being won differently region by region.

Good news for Sony Ericsson — their handsets accounted for 37% of all ad requests.

3. AdMob continues to add new data points for analysis since launching the metrics consistently since last November. There are more things to compare across regions, handsets and behavior, potentially leading to something new from a product side coming soon…

The moment I saw the first AdMob metrics report last year, I thought they should product-ise it. I look forward to seeing what the offer. AdMob is by no means definitive — you obviously have to be accessing mobile sites containing AdMob spots in order to be tracked, and not all sites feature this, but it’s a good ready reckoner.

You can get the AdMob report free — for the moment, anyway — here: http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/metrics.

The expected growth in smartphone numbers is “a product of a number of complex factors including carriers’ drives to grow data revenues from advanced services and the general trend to pushing ‘smart” operating systems down into middle tier devices,” the company says.

What’s really exciting about this is not that there are more smartphones out there but that more and more mid-range devices can now be classed as smartphones – good news for operators, as users are likely to consume more data, and good news for users, as they can get access to more and better content.

Got a note through from Beky Hughes regarding a secure mobile working survey. She’s hunting for UK IT journalists to complete this survey — so if you qualify.. or if you maintain a blog, I reckon qualify, go ahead and check it out. I thought it might be relevant for the SMS Text News audience because I’m willing to bet that almost that every reader has used his or her laptop in a public location and when commuting.

Well, there was a bit of an error with the survey software so they weren’t able to get the contact details of some of the respondents. Which means it will be quite difficult to enter you to win an M&S hamper if they don’t know who you are.

So if you took the survey and didn’t see an option to enter your contact details on it, email Beky (bekyh at neesham.co.uk) with your email and postal address just in case. You never know, you might work.

The survey link is here.

Meanwhile some scriptkiddie across the road is probably browsing through my files and watching me type this text in real time…

This survey aims to raise awareness of the security risks associated with working on laptops in public places through the personal experiences of commuting IT journalists in the UK.

Please take time to complete the survey. There are 10 questions in total and answers you provide will remain anonymous. We especially encourage you to share your personal experiences of using laptops while commuting, which again will remain nameless.

The closing date for completed surveys is 5.30pm on Monday 31st March 2008. Fully completed survey respondents with the best anecdote will be entered into a prize draw for a Marks & Spencer hamper to the value of £50. In addition, every completed survey respondent will be rewarded with a free Vikuiti Privacy Filter from 3M (worth £20-£50).

How to take part:

• Access the survey by clicking on the link below or copying and pasting into your browser’s address bar:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Ohge7spLjAp3ld2dVusbdA_3d_3d

• Please answer all 10 questions adding additional comment where applicable

• Click on Done >> when you have completed the survey

Got a call from the FTC today.

Michael Becker of iLoop reckoned I should sit in as a panelist on an upcoming Town Hall meeting that the FTC are putting together on the subject of mobile commerce (and with an emphasis on consumer protection).

The Town Hall will explore consumer protection issues arising in the rapidly expanding world of M-commerce. Topics will include:

* The use of mobile-messaging services as instruments of M-commerce;
* Consumers’ ability to control mobile applications;
* The adaptation of advertising to mobile devices, including the challenges presented by small screen disclosures;
* M-commerce practices targeting children and teens;
* Industry best practices in preventing fraud, disclosing costs, and resolving billing disputes;
* Evolving security threats and solutions; and
* Next-generation products and services.

James Trilling, one of the Attorneys supervising the formulation of the meeting, arranged to call me with colleague Ruth, who identified herself as a regular reader. Nice one Ruth!

I’ve got quite a lot of opinions on mobile commerce. In fact I’m overflowing with them, particularly real experiences since I’ve been out using a lot of American mobile commerce services recently. James tentatively asked my perspective on mobile commerce and consumer protection and within moments I was venting forth on PhonepayPlus’s Fine Day, the STOP command and how I was really impressed at being able to buy a ham sandwich via text with Noah’s Gomobo.com service.

I’m not sure if I’ll qualify for the panel, particularly given my realistic experience and direct approach. I can just imagine how some industry players — the Motorola-RAZR-bearing 55 year old tanned mobile industry executives who’ve only just got to grips with this new ‘texting’ lark — might not be that impressed at my highly reality-based perspective on the industry.

It will be interesting to read the results of the panel.

If you’d like to send some viewpoints for consideration the FTC site notes that…

Interested parties may submit written comments or original research until March 17, 2008.

You’ve got a good couple of days to knock something up and send it over. If you’re working in or around the American mobile industry and you’d like to have a say, I recommend you do so. More details on this page.

To Vodafone. I can’t tell you how delighted I was to receive James’ call. Because I’d have been panicking big time if I was using my T-Mobile handset. On an international call you want the clearest line possible. And since I was actually standing in Liverpool Street Station when James called, there was a lot of external noise. And James and Ruth were on a conference phone. It was just brilliant having what felt like a ‘full signal’ to be able to talk to them without worrying about:

a) the call dropping (on my end)
b) poor general audio quality
c) unpredictable scrambling of the audio

Such a relief. Delighted with my Vodafone connection.

The Mobile Marketing Association is on the hunt for papers to be considered for their upcoming June publication. Here’s the request:

There is scant qualitative and empirical evidence to formulate an authoritative definition of mobile marketing and its key enables. In order to address this void and provide a forum to expand the available body of knowledge on the subject of mobile marketing the MMA calls upon academics, students and industry professionals to submit articles to be considered for publication in the IJMM. The following discusses the importance of these articles and details the IJMM submission guidelines

So if you’re a mobile industry professional — and let’s face it, a whopping 70-80% of you reading are just that — you might like to have your say and get your experience published for all to see. Here are some suggested sample topics:

# Review of industry typology, definitions
# Mobile marketing theory, frameworks, constructs, and concepts
# Research methodologies and models suitable for studying mobile marketing
# Effectiveness of mobile marketing across various traditional media channels, i.e. the mobile enhancement of traditional media
# Mobile initiative metrics
# Mobile customer relationship management
# Effectiveness of mobile content, such as ringtones, mobile TV, video, images, etc., within the marketing mix
# Application of multimedia within mobile marketing initiatives
# mCommerce as it pertains to the marketing mix
# Analysis of the various delivery methods: SMS, MMS, mobile internet, IR, IM, Bluetooth, mobile email, mobile portals
# Analysis of future trends and impact of global, environmental, cultural, and/or political activities on mobile marketing
# Use of mobile channel for philanthropy or politics
# Demystification of the technology and elements needed to enhance mobile marketing adoption
# Effective methods for bringing mobile marketing academic research to professionals
# Mobile marketing, a global perspective

I suspect this will be a rather good marketing opportunity — and if this is at all interesting, I strongly recommend you give it a bit of attention and consider contributing.

The Morph will be shown off at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from February 24th to May 12th, 2008, as part of the ‘Design and Elastic Mind’ campaign. You can check out the campaign’s official website here, and get more info on the Morph in the official press release.

Technology that exists in the Morph could make its way to the mainstream in 7 years or so. The Nokia Research Center looks beyond Nokia’s existing business and product development to challenge current strategies and to stimulate renewal in the company’s direction. Working closely with all Nokia business units, NRC’s research explores new frontiers in digital services, physical-digital connections, human interaction, data and content technologies, device architecture, and access and connectivity. NRC promotes open innovation by working on research projects in collaboration with universities and research institutes around the world.