Roundtable discussion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

February 29, 2008 at 6:17 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, Sponsored Post, Messaging

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Airwide convened a roundtable designed to forecast the future of mobile messaging. The roundtable and Airwide’s accompanying report revealed that:

• Asia continues to demonstrate the strongest overall growth opportunity. However, ARPU remains low as does the per-minute cost of calls and services, leaving operators in a quandary over where to concentrate their efforts in terms of customer base.
• Mobile spam has been identified as a hot issue in China and will continue as such over the next five years. Similarly the threat of mobile viruses also looks set to increase.
• The Middle East illustrates the greatest potential for growth of emerging services such as mobile IM, email, videoconferencing and MMS.
• Europe sees mobile email, mobile music and MMS more ingrained services than many places in the world and there is growing confidence amongst operators that these services can provide a steady and sustained growth in revenues.
• In the United Kingdom, accelerated growth is expected in mobile versions of applications that are already firmly established. Mobile email is expected to double its share of the total market over the next five years.

Present at the roundtable were me, the CMO of Airwide Solutions; Mike Short, Chairman of the MDA and VP of Research and Development at O2; Andrew Bud, Vice Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Executive Chairman of mBlox; John Darnbrough, Market Development Manager at the GSMA; Graham Rivers, CEO of WIN; Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer of Informa; Michele Scanlon, Founder of Green Giraffe Consulting and Paul Ruppert, Founder, Global Point View Ltd and contributor to industry blog, Mobile Messaging 2.0.

The roundtable sparked an interesting debate about how mobile use across the world has changed over the last few years. The debate discussed the differences in mobile phone use between the developing and more developed parts of the world and helped highlight the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead for mobile operators worldwide. The panel also debated some of the key themes from Mobile World Congress including mobile advertising, mobile payments and social networking.

Andrew Bud, Vice Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Executive Chairman of mBlox commented: “SMS used for business-to-consumer purposes continues to be a runaway success worldwide: to illustrate this, in 2007, mBlox processed over 2 billion application-to-person transactions and grew by over 40%. By 2011 we can see carrier revenues from all wholesale enabling services more than doubling to $8bn, if they replicate SMS’ successful wholesale business model. At Mobile World Congress, the biggest theme was the huge opportunity for the entire industry in the emerging markets, where applications like mobile banking are already beginning to drive the mobile transactions business. With a market of over 3 billion consumers to reach and serve, there is a lot to be excited about.”

Mike Short, Chairman of the MDA and VP of Research and Development at O2 commented: “Text – we’ve only just begun. Fifteen years since the start of text is just the beginning. There remains much more to be done in 21st Century messaging from CRM to Enterprise Messaging, from screen interactivity to better memory stores of your favourite messages from mobile marketing to personalised alert services, from public sector services to charity text.”

Lord Digby Jones, Minister of State for Trade & Investment, said: “This report shows the strength and energy of the ICT sector in the UK. British firms in this business have to be at their creative and innovative best. The text message was created in Britain and the British public are always early adopters of technology. There were a record number of text messages sent in the UK last year. Now companies in the sector are innovating to include data messaging using picture and video. Once again British consumers are taking up the technology before many other markets around the world. Companies in the UK are only able to innovate to this extent because of the world-class research being done in British universities and the highly-skilled workforce. All these factors make British firms fantastic commercial partners and will allow them to remain world-leaders for many years to come.”

Audio from the roundtable is available in the Resources section of the Airwide corporate website (see the podcast section) along with the full-length global messaging trends report (see the whitepapers section). These will be featured in Airwide’s next corporate newsletter.

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Airwide Solutions

DIY Techology Lets Your Plants Twitter You When They Are Thirsty

February 25, 2008 at 3:04 pm · Filed under Twitter, Funny

Well, gang, this one’s so far over the wall that it sounds absolutely daft. Bu I promise you, it can be done.

That would be hooking your plant up so that it can Twitter you when it is feeling kind of dehydrated. Even when you are on the go!

The process involves a plant, a handheld mobile device, as well as technology from Botanicalls, iwhich a system that was developed to allow plants to place phone calls for human help. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics.

Step-by-step procedure is too detailed for us to list here, but as described on the Botanicals page, you will need a moisture probe, wiring and a lot of time and patience.

Before you even begin, you will also need:

(1) 2N2222A or 2N3904 transistor
(1) 100 ohm resistor

(1) 10K Ohm resistor

(1) LED

(2) galvanized nails, preferably hot dipped

(1) small breadboard

(1) Adafruit Xport shield

(1) XPort or Xport Direct

(1) Arduino USB board

(1) 9V DC power adapter

hook up wire in assorted colors

solder

USB A to B cable

USB A to miniB cable

USB Serial FTDI adapter (optional)

Ethernet cable

EQUIPMENT:

soldering iron

helping hands

computer with ZTerm or HyperTerminal, Arduino

Oh, and don’t let me forget to mention, a Twitter account.

Hey, spring is coming soon, and your plants are feeling the urge to grow. When they need a little water to help them along, why not let them let you know when they could use a few gulps?

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When Mobile isn’t Mobile

February 25, 2008 at 9:03 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile isn't Mobile

Leading the mobile industry are the mobile operators. They build the networks, purchase access to airwaves and populate directories of applications and services. Over time they have donned a few different identities while rejecting their true and inescapable role as access provider. Mobile operators have thought themselves handset companies, application companies, aggregators, media companies and lately - advertising agencies. This multiple personality disorder is a reaction to ensuring they capture a lion’s share of any revenue possibility. Each attempt to alter their nature and morph into a business out of their comfort zone has created opportunities for competing network access technologies and alternative solutions which ultimately leave the operator out of the revenue pie completely.

We can go back to a time when mobile applications were new, and operators launched in-house development teams to build these applications. But - a more striking example is the how operators refuse to recognize the economics presented by Apple’s iTunes and the impact it would have on their own offerings. Mobile operators who referred to themselves as being in the content business created an opening for a product that would allow people to take their music mobile without the need to access a mobile network or purchase a high end phone. Price pressure from the operators on the mobile music value chain was no small factor in the success of Apple’s iPod and iTunes service. Had the service from mobile networks been at a reasonable cost to subscribers, no entry point would have existed for Apple.

In addition to the iTunes/iPod solution, handset makers like Nokia had made slide loading of music possible through ensuring the device could connect to PCs. And even with all the evidence demonstrating market rejection of costly operator music services, they continued to insist upon a rev share driving their music tracks to a 2 or 3x price point above other services. Add this to the network access charges to enable downloading and they priced themselves out of the early market.

So mobile music looks like this:

+

OR this

More recently many operators have positioned themselves as media companies. The problem? The cost to access their networks for video up or down remains prohibitive. Handset makers are adding Wi-Fi capability to many handsets which greatly improves the economics of up or down media. Consider media producers like Robert Scoble. Robert uses Wi-Fi to stream live video which would be impossible were he paying the costs to move this data across the mobile network. There are also implications on mobile TV which many people have already begun to consume on their phones from companies like Sling Media or iTunes, and again, over Wi-Fi.

These solutions allow the consumption or production of media when mobile, but don’t require a mobile operator’s network. We have landed in a place where price pressure has caused solutions, mobile solutions, to be developed without the mobile network, but not necessarily without a wireless component. So sometimes, mobile isn’t mobile. At least it isn’t mobile if that activity is defined by access to the mobile network.

For the next two weeks, MM2 will consider the topic of “When mobile isn’t mobile.” Given the variety of perspectives at MM2, I’m interested in learning where we end up with this subject. And you the reader are invited to join us. Your point of view is essential to building a lively and robust discussion.

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Mobile Messaging 2.0 on Mobile World Congress

February 25, 2008 at 6:21 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile World Congress, MWC Barcelona

Mobile Messaging 2.0 followed the many events and releases coming out of the Mobile World Congress last week. There are
advantages in assessing conferences both from attending the event and also from outside of it. Like sporting events attendance reveals the reaction of the live audience - sometimes emotional - and provides interaction with other attendees which colors our experience. Real time feed back provides one perspective and the remote viewing through TV for sports provides a different level of detail and a different experience. So is the case, with reading the releases of participating companies and the reactions of journalists, bloggers and competitors. The mitigating factor is time. Participating in an event limits time to consume the firehouse of detail reported out of and around large industry events like the Mobile World Congress.

Mobile Messaging 2.0 (MM2) provided both perspectives. Paul Ruppert attended the event and launched the coverage with a prognostication on 2008’s hot topics and industry cold spots. His article, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, outlined 9 topics or topic areas that would be significant coming out of the conference.

1. Mobile Advertising
2. Africa
3. Mobile Payments
4. Mobile User Generated Content
5. Mobile Social Networking
6. Mobile TV
7. LTE - Long-term-evolution (network technology)
8. Cost savings and Efficiencies

Check out Paul’s take to find out what he predicted would be the cold spots and decide if his predictions were on target, or off base.

As one would expect, Ewan Spence had an ear to ground on developments coming out of the handset/OS sector. His article highlights the Sony Ericsson announcement of a Windows Mobile device including analysis of SE’s possible strategy. Ewan posits that the US market doesn’t “get” the Symbian OS. Certainly, this position creates an opportunity for discussion.

The Mobile Monday Peer Awards are always on my radar. It is truly special to be recognized by your peers for accomplishment in mobile applications and services. Of course, the ultimate recognition comes from sales and/or adoption, but those who have performed well in these awards have also been recognized in the marketplace. This year was unique as one company captured the attention of the jurors, the audience and the MoMo chapter leaders from around the world. Buzzd, local party search company, received all three Awards in their category of Early Startups. Buzzd also announced a deal with Helio, US MVNO. Check out the article for what other companies to watch in the Emerging Startups category.

Imran Ali introduces a company called modu in his article. A company that Imran points out is creating flexibility through experience versus technology as advocated by open API evangelists. Is the market ready for an infinitely upgradeable device? Imran offers some critical aspects of execution that will either spur modu forward or trip them up.

Additional observations on innovations from Paul feature encryption for SMS from CellTrust, and Gesture-Tek turning your phone camera into an eye on the world around you. Using the camera as a sensor, instead of a media capture device is truly creative. Read about these innovative technologies in Paul’s articles on CellTrust and Gesture-Tek.

Mobile World Congress resulted in thousands of press releases some of the larger companies were well reported in the corporate press, many bloggers featured new handset releases, and startups were well covered by the usual news sites: MoCo News, TechCrunch, Mashable, etc.

At MM2, the discovery of unique developments, as featured from this year’s MWC, and messaging trends draw our attention. Many of our readers have long-term direct involvement or long-term observation of the mobile industry. It is no surprise that what results in our coverage of an event like Mobile World Congress would be off the beaten track of the world’s largest mobile players or the new efforts from Internet companies. These announcements and pre-announcements were well documented elsewhere.

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Innovation at the Mobile World Congress part 2

February 24, 2008 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Mobile Payments, Mobile World Congress, MWC Barcelona

Tagattitude

NFC using the phone’s audio channel to transmit secure data signing transactions.

Translation: How to use the phone’s voice channel as an NFC (Near Filed Communication) device enabling mobile payments transactions. Really? What are you making a call to use the channel? No.

Like GestureTek, Tagattitude shows combinatorial innovation where a set of seemingly unrelated component technologies can be combined for new innovative applications. It uses NSDT (Near Sound Data Transfer). Consequently any existing or future mobile phone can make a secure mobile payment transaction similar to those of specialized NFC services requiring embedded handset software, clients or other more complicated and costly NFC solutions. Time saver, money saver, means faster to market in the NFC world.

I like Tagattitude since it fills technology gaps and provides interoperability which are key factors in harvesting revenue from mobile technology. It provides a technical bridge until the complete, more robust deployment of NFC solutions hits the marketplace. It offers low cost contact-less services for non-NFC phones. It can be a backup for NFC services in case of temporary unavailability. It offers immediate contact-less payment solutions to begin educating the market. Great value proposition.

All these leapfrogs the need and necessity for hardware medication or software injections while awaiting for mobile phones with new technology. It uses a previously otherwise used audio channel as a cryptographic pipe to transmit secure transaction data. Very clever. This simple use of “current pipes” is ideal for established and emerging markets.

Imagine you’re a street agent for a carrier in an emerging economy country and would like to have a transfer from your phone account to a subscriber’s. With Tagattitude, the agent’s “point of sale terminal” can be his mobile phone, and he can readily accept and make transactions. This is significant to the operators as well since they can transform all their prepaid accounts to essentially pre-paid money accounts thus offering mobile payments to all their customers. An FI (Financial Institution) can also launch mobile payment solutions independently of all telecom operators.

Founded by three French smart card and telecoms execs, Yves Eonnet, Loic Eonnet and Herve Manceron, the company is based in France and funded by Innovacom, Orange France Telecom’s venture arm.

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Innovation at the Mobile World Congress

February 24, 2008 at 9:12 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0

Trade shows of the scale of the Mobile World Congress always have constant serendipitous moments when you are standing in the canyon boulevards of four story exhibition booths frantically trying to orient yourself with thousands of people streaming by you. You forge on, look up and find yourself next to a booth and something about it catches your eye, or you run into someone you haven’t seen in a year, or even better you bump into someone you saw only two short weeks ago but 10,000 long miles away. Such have been my run ins at the Mobile World Congress last week.

That’s how I came across GestureTek and Tagattitude.

Mobile Wii Device ?

Gesture Tek provides computer “vision” and gesture-recognition technology for presentation, information and entertainment systems. Vision because it ’senses’ the 3 dimensional reality surrounding the phone and translates it into action reflected on the phones screen. Telefonica O2 recently announced a strategic investment in GestureTek and they were being showcased at the massive Telefonica Movistar booth.

What GestureTek does is enables motion sensor capabilities to your mobile phone–without any additional costly chip or handset client. That’s an innovative break with current technology that requires a chip in the handset. No chip means there is no additional cost layer to the operator, nor consumer to make your phone a spectacular tool, especially for gaming. Think turning your mobile handset into a Wii controller, and you’ve got the idea.

How they do this is even more remarkable. By engaging the camera on your phone a signal emanates from the lens and “senses” changes in the 3 dimensional topography which the camera ’sees.’ Amazing. It must have some serious math processing going on somewhere in a box installed in the network. Cover up the lense on the phone and it doesn’t work.

GestureTek is a 20 year old Canadian company which has shaped ‘applied computer vision’ for computer-human interaction and developed such technology for many years. The company’s multi-patented video gesture control technology (VGC) lets users control multi-media content, access information, manipulate special effects, even immerse themselves in an interactive 3D virtual world – simply by moving their hands or body. They deliver Wii-like gesture-control without the need to wear, hold or touch anything. You can even use the capability to ‘throw’ tasks such as to a printer to print a document from your handset.

Seems the company has been way ahead of its time (for some time), and now the mobile camp has finally caught up with it–with GestureTek no doubt becoming an permanent resident. No one from GestrureTek was at the Telefonica booth on Wednesday while I fought through the crowds there, so we’ll have to learn more about them perhaps at CTIA in the states.

Bet on them getting attention in Vegas for CTIA….and stay tuned for my post on Tagattitude soon.

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Shock and Awe as US Carriers War Over Unlimited Plan Offers

February 19, 2008 at 8:12 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, News, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, ATT, Carriers, Voice, Rate Plans, T-Mobile

Hours after Verizon Wireless announced their unlimited calling plan for $99, AT&T responds with a $99 plan of their own. And not to be outdone, T-Mobile USA this afternoon announced a $99 calling plan and then ups the ante by adding unlimited messaging. Sprint, the other of the top four carriers, has yet to release their nationwide unlimited plan. The question is: will they further up the ante and put pressure on these shiny new flat-rate plans?

Verzion’s Offer Details

• $99 - Nationwide Unlimited (voice)
• $119 - Nationwide Select Unlimited (voice, SMS, MMS)
• $139 - Nationwide Premium (voice, SMS, MMS, VZNav, VCAST, email)
• $149 - Nationwide Email and Messaging (voice, SMS, MMS, and data)
• $169 - Nationwide Global Email and Messaging (voice, SMS, MMS, and international data)
• $199 - Family plan with two lines, $99 per additional line
• Subscribers not required to extend their contract to select these new offers.

.

AT&T’s Offer Details

• $99 - Nationwide Unlimited (voice)
• $134 - Nationwide Unlimitied with unlimited messaging and Media Net
• New customers can choose month-to-month or 12-24 month contracts

T-Mobile USA’s Offer Details

• $99 Nationwide Unlimited (voice, SMS and MMS)

So Sprint? Last May Sprint began offering an unlimited rate plan bundling nationwide voice, web access, email and messaging for $119. The offer has been limited to markets in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Tampa, Fla., and parts of Northern California and Western Nevada. Today Sprint claims they have no plans for expanding their unlimited plan beyond these markets. The office pool betting opens at COB today. Place your bets on an announcement for tomorrow morning. Anyone?

Winners: Power Users
Losers: Stock Prices Fall for All Four Top US Carriers
Yawners: Non-Power User Mobile Subscribers

Carriers strike quickly to eliminate Verzion’s differinator on price announced this morning, and up the ante each time. Craig Moffett, analyst at Sanford C. Berstein, compares Verzion’s bold move on flat-rate plans to Sprint’s long distance flat rates for landlines in the 1990s, removing confusion from pricing plans, making them easier to compare and hastening a rapid decline in prices. Today’s standard for long-distance is either free or as a feature in a service bundle.

Let the games begin!

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Mozilla Starts Thunderbird Collaboration Project: CEO Points To SMS Functionality as Goal

February 19, 2008 at 7:23 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, Studies + Research, Messaging

As I’ve already pointed out, today, the Mozilla Foundation announced Mozilla Messaging, a new open source initiative largely aimed at bringing greater collaborative functionality to the Firefox email counterpart known as Thunderbird.

A significantly expanded Thunderbird is pretty close to the hert of Mozilla Messaging. The newest Thunderbird will be known as Thunderbird 3.

Comments made today on the blog of Mozilla Messaging’s CEO David Ascher point to increased SMS funtionality

David writes in part (bold face is mine):

It is worthwhile considering what the right user experience could be for someone using multiple email addresses, multiple instant messaging systems, IRC, reading and writing on blogs, using VoIP, SMS, and the like. What parts of those interactions make sense to integrate, and where?

I don’t believe that stuffing all of those communication models inside of one application is the right answer. But the walled gardens that we’re faced with today aren’t the right answer either. There is room for innovation and progress here, and we need to facilitate it.

In other words, when it comes to SMS via Thunderbird- the Mozilla Foundation is thinking about it.

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Text Security Requires SMS “Hardening”

February 19, 2008 at 7:25 am · Filed under SMS, Messaging, Mobile World Congress, MWC Barcelona

As I’ve been wandering through the MWC halls of the Fira at Plaza D’Espanya I’ve been lucky to discover some interesting companies and propositions in the mobile industry. There are also media events with some select companies available for in-depth review. Here’s one which caught my eye at Showstoppers ( www.showstoppers.com ) regarding text messaging security : CellTrust.

CellTrust challenges the notion that SMS is considered “secure.” They’re right.

CellTrust provides security for SMS. Oh, you thought SMS is actually “secure”? Mate, when it comes to security it is all about degrees. Sure, for us consumers, sending short texts to each other, is secure enough. Who knows you might even be lucky enough to pull a bird by sending tonight’s pub meet to the wrong number. But what about enterprises that send out alerts and notifications to their work force, customers or even critical caretakers of mission critical equipment like your electric grid? Consumer grade security isn’t “reliable” for CIOs and company IT leads or for the even more demanding management of mobile banking or transactions. That’s where CellTrust positions its proposition. It hardens SMS.

CellTrust provides control, accountability, compliance and security to SMS in the enterprise environment. Using pubic key encryption they guarantee recipient end-to-end privacy and two factor authentication without the expense and complexity of a proprietary, bespoke (custom fit for you non-Anglophiles) solution. By providing the SMS gateway to the enterprise, their encryption technology layered over the routing rules enables CellTrust to create a secure SMS environment.

I had ever thought of security as critical in a consumer messaging company, which is why CellTrust caught my eye. Through the combination of their platform technology and a micro client with password protection they secure and provide an SMS security solution. Although, they could have modified the MAP layer of the SMS as we did at the former Mobile 365 to provide tracking capabilities through our networks. My two cents of consulting is this is something they should consider as an added layer of functionality in their security “suite.”

A “hardened” SMS comes with guaranteed secure delivery through their “Advanced Encryption Standard, a read and delivery confirmation to the sender, option for password protection prior to decryption and display of a message, even a remote wipe API, for when that handset is lost or stolen Mr. Phelps, you know your mission remains secure and possible.

I would think the natural market for this would be banking applications, as well as government authentication–although i think much of that may have already been explored and gobbled up by RIM’s Blackberry. Who knows, but definitely watch CellTrust.

Do you know whether your SMS is secure?

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Too good to be true…

February 16, 2008 at 11:39 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0

Handsets you can configure online before you order? The Dell-ificiation of the handset industry? $149 for a customised or Symbian phone?

<sigh> ZZZphone’s Dell-like business model - enabling users to customise a phone with OS, touchscreens, GPS, dual-SIM cards and memory capacity using the same manufacturers as Motorola and Nokia sounds too good to be true - and it is.

Unfortunately, the handsets aren’t using legally licensed operating systems or indeed radios that’re compatible with US networks it seems; which is a real shame, as there’s huge potential here to positively disrupt the handset marketplace and indeed the carriers.

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