A quick visit to Hong-Kong to present at IIR's MIM Asia conference. With the boom of on-line social networks, mobile IM is gaining a lot of traction, but still an unclear business case for mobile operators.
I presented a view on new personal communication services, beyond IM and SMS/MMS. I discussed technical implementation using a combination of IMS and Web 2.0 open technologies. The case study was based on OpenCall Instant Communication and approaches proposed by the EU research project COMET.
Some of my notes on the presentaions:
Mathieu Saccharin, Bouygues Telecom : he presented the experience of Bouygues Telecom with very good understanding of how to market and price IM to customers.
Arnold de Ploey, Nokia Siemens Networks : gave the example of new services such as Mxit having 3 million registered subscribers, charging 0.001 euros per messages but recovering money on chat rooms with 15% of users. He stressed the value of SMS continuity and interoperability between operators. Nokia handsets is bringing out a single message composer that lets users choose to send as IM. MMS, Voicemail depending on content.
Patrick Olenzak and Pascal Lorne, Miyowa : gave their experiences of 17 launches as managed services with Bouygues, Orange, Base, Ten, FarEastone, KPN, Wind, MTC, Cellcom, Cosmote, O2, Starhub, Telefonica, Telstra. Their usage studies shows no canibalisation, but the opposite (6 month on 4000 users : growth from 152 to 176 calls/month and +7% SMS).
Ervins Kampans, LMT : described their analysis of OMA IMPS wireless village. There is 80% overhead [2kb/message; assuming a group of 5 people, 12 min this is 44kb/session, 281kB/day for presence updates of 20 contacts x 30 sec polling] . The conclusion is that there are serious GSM / GPRS congestion. This is much less important with 3G and in the future MBMS will allow more efficient chat room broadcast.
Tom Williams, Fastmobile he presented the case of Helio Ocean, an ASP in USA. They focus on usability and have numverous installations : Globe (IM evrywhr )Vivo, finance, BT, T-systems, BSNL, Vivo, Idea, Helio, Idea, Globe, BPL, Airtel, Hutch, Aircel, MTN Dialog. Partnerships (Jataayu gateway in India, Guzy, Livecargo) and interoperability are key (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google, chikka, terra)
Ana Fatima Tavares, IM Campaign director
She gave an update on the IM MoU with 42 operators and 1 billion subscribers www.gsmworld.com/personal_im . Several countries are live : India, China, Egypt, Philipines, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Portugal.
Matt Hooper EVP Marketing, Colibria : he quoted Reeds Law stanting that the power of network multiplies in proportion of the number of groups. The key user experiences are
1. service discovery
2.first time use
3. habit use
4.new services.
Strategy analitics forecasts SMS plus revenues of 3500B$ in 2011 and mobilised internet IM 1000 B$.
Paul Jeseman, CTO Asia, Acision : he focused on the experience economy that requires a stronger foxus on consumer analytics "I am female and 24" is just a statement; "I like travel, white wine, music" is a fact! In his view, mobile is becoming a FMCG consumed by the digital youth community.
Caroline Sexton, Vodafone, community product manager : a most interesting marketing basics presentations. Her goal is to avoid ,targeting the whole of Vodafone UK 17 million subscribers with irrelevant services. Rather focused on sustained service for long term "how do we make it relevant to customer lives ?" And she knows about it : she is 27 with 110 friends on Facebook 110, uses MSN as "boredom relief", Flickr, Vodafone SMS "when I am late", BT wireline "long chats". Vodafone has identified 17 subscribers segments, using data mining on usage patterns. The following are key for instant communications :
1. tireless texters are 17-20 females, they txt more than voice, typically low income working at Tesco, hair dressers and readers of hit/ok. Buy on internet clothes with emotional purchasing, not early adopters but followers.
2."mobile maniacs " 22-25, low income as student, but likely to spend more when working
3. confident communicators : above 30s, average income, watch X-factors. Predominantly female planning long conversations or evenings out.
The IM expectations opposite depending on the fact that subscribers are or not PC users. PC users want Yahoo and MSN branding and need the same buddy list, presence, emoticons, five way chatting. Non PC-IM texters like simple features like group messaging.IM-ers get angry about event charging but recognize the value and accept unlimitted monthly subscription. Mobile texters want messages pricing with monthly (1000) bundles.
