In March 2007 I told Senator Obama how much he was improving America’s image abroad – he replied that greater changes would come with his election -. Indeed most of the world applauded the president-elect and there was fascination on advanced communications that supported his campaign.
This post collects some information on innovative e-politics, infrastructure and policies for communications from this election campaign.
Innovations in e-politics Internet adoption by Americans to get political information jumped to 40% of (compared to 31% in the 2004 campaign) as reported by a Pew research on a sample of 2,251 adults. Politicians and supporters could gained easy assistance to move on-line from groups like e-politics or the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Obama has been called "tech president," as democrats demonstrated better use of technology than republicans or previous presidential candidates as summarized by Sarah Lai Stirland in Wired The Webwas the dominant media. Chris Hughes blogs about the future of My.BarackObama site. The site has 1.5 million accounts and this community created 35,000 local groups, hosted over 200,000 events.
Online video in particular stormed the stage: 35% of Americans have watched in absolute time (views * video length)around 15 million hours (Obama 14.5 McCain 0.5) including campaign commercials, debates, interviews, and speeches. David Burch of TubeMogul analyzed the value of this channel. Social networks and blogs were used by up to 49% of online users: on Facebook and MySpace supporters had 3.6 million pages (Obama 3 McCain 0.6)
Mobile communications included SMS and downloaded applications. SMS alerts from short code 62262 (OBAMA) delivered messages such as this one
Less than a week until Election Day on Nov. 4th! Barack needs your help. REPLY to this msg with your 5 digit ZIP CODE for local Obama news and voting info
Barack Obama sent 3 million SMS to supporters to announce Senator Joe Biden choice for vice president (Mobile marketer). Similarly Rock the Vote, encouraged young people (18-29, 18% of electorate) to vote, using text-messaging campaigns to over 100,000 subscribers and called 13’000 on election day. The Obama campaign also set mobile web site at http://obamamobile.mobi or http://m.barackobama.com . The Mobile future coalition has recorded a panel discussing mobile impact of elections. Online fundraising and advertising This campaign broke records in both raising and spending money on media. Nearly 10% of internet users donated money online to candidates in 2008, compared to 3% in 2006, according to Pew Research. In 1999, MoveOn has been the pioneer in internet fundraising (MoveOn had 1 million making 370,000 donations totaling $88 million for Obama'08). In total Democrats raised a record-breaking $780 million in contributions from more than 3 million people, many of whom donated through the web. Republicans raised $340 million. [Federal Election Commission, September]
Obama's campaign spent $293 million on TV ads, according to TNS Media Intelligence. In addition $8 million was spent on Google, Yahoo, Facebook, news Web sites, ad networks, and in-game ad firm Massive. McCain spent $132 million on TV ads during the same period. (campaign spending in media was close to $500 million and 50% of the contributions).
Hopes for a better communication infrastructure Despite the great shift to online campaign, some issues remain. Pew research noted that 60% of online Americans feel that the internet is a megaphone for extreme viewpoints and a source of misinformation. Responding to this rise of media on the Web, along with the decline of public trust, Newstrust recruited an online community of 8’000 news consumers, journalists, educators and students. They launched an election news hunt initiative in July to recommend the best coverage on the presidential elections, using community review tool. How can the momentum be sustained beyond the campaign, for 40% of the electorate who went on-line? The technology engaged people to participate in volunteer groups and to organize off-line events that could support better government. But will this all stop when the funding and marketing efforts disappear ? The Obama web site promises to create a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens….Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (will it be Google’s CEO ?) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.
About the competitive infrastructure, the programs focuses on net neutrality and spectrum expansion. Net neutrality through federal legislation will allow all applications, services and devices to operate on all access networks. It announces a review of competition in the wireless space and "smarter, more efficient and more imaginative use of spectrum” meaning the 700MHz auctions. Telecom employees had mixed feelings and contributed $3.5 million to Obama versus $4.1 million to McCain.
There are other good intentions to support innovation in communications. Obama's program promises to expand funding of broadband infrastructure to compare with Japan, South Korea and Finland. And Silicon Valley is likely to benefit from an increase of H-1B non-immigrant visas to recruit engineers and scientists. Tech employees seemed pleased and backed Obama in a 5:1 ratio donating $21 million ($1.5 million at the 20 largest Silicon Valley companies).
Notes from Mobile Europe 2.0 in Barcelona, a great program prepared by Rudy de Waele, Gregory Gorman, Daniel Applequist, Peter Vesterbacka, Gregory Gorman. Rudy’s wrap-up says it all if you want to skip my in-extenso version.
Key challenges for mobile 2.0 include : > Leveraging up Web 2.0 faster > Attracting investors despite hurdles > Bring together operators and service innovators > Building on successful business models > Bringing to market innovative user experiences from start-ups
Catching up with Web 2.0 ? There seemed to be a bit of frustration in the mobile social media panel that mobile 2.0 is not yet booming. Tommy Ahlers, CEO Zyb (just acquired by Vodafone)advice: simply care about the end-user [experience], avoid filling the screen with ads, fix fundamentals and get services off the ground. Smaller operators are better at doing that and more innovative but he promised to change Vodafone for the better. Charlie Schick, editor Nokia Conversations recommends to avoid the clash between web services for big screen/keyboard and those mobile on small handsets. No one is going to dominate the other. Alex Romero, Director Yahoo! thinks it requires tuning the eco-system leaving room for MNOs and other players. And Doug Richards, CEO Trutap summed it up : We are only at the very beginning of the industry, openness will create better user experiences.
Attracting investors ? Rudy de Waele invited me to join this VC perspective discussion with a corporate venturing view. What’s holding VC investments and IPO’s back ? One issue is the business scalability mentioned by Maximilian Niederhofer from Atlas Venture: the fragmentation is due to the number of devices, he gave the example of Atlas’s investment [32M$ with Partech] in Dailymotion, now 60 million users the web but too difficult to move to mobile. It’s clear that mobile 2.0 does not compete with web 2.0 investment opportunities. Imma Martinez, from Stradbroke advisors was very vocal about the channel friction issues such as revenue share agreements, low flat-rate data offerings, 9-12 months to negotiate carrier agreements, a view shared by the panel. In her blog, she refers to mobile services “corrida de toros” (bullfight).
I proposed a more balanced view between short-term business improvement with longer-term innovations opportunities. At this moment, corporate funding, M&A or simply business deals may be appropriate to mobile 2.0. This is because mobile 2.0 can immediately enhance today’s Telco or enterprise “brick and mortar” services which have a sound business model. A good example in the conference was Dial2Do that combine voice service monetization with web 2.0 services (see below). I mentioned the business model of mobilizing HP Snapfish, photo sharing offering 9c print in partnership with 12’000 outlets and used by 50 million on-line users in 20 countries storing 2 billion photos. Another example would be mobilizing publishing with readers social network services complementing on-demand order and printing industry enabled by HP’s Indigo printers. Around the consumer electronics and content businesses, there is value in adding connectivity to the various home devices, for example mobilizing the exchange of play lists and on-line content preferences. At the same time, looking into the 3-5 years future, I foresee great opportunities for VC-funded breakthrough innovations that will exploit LTE bandwidth, new video processing capabilities and enhanced devices. This is where there is a need for innovative start-ups and the VC exits should be plentiful.
Understanding operators ? The operator panel discussion exposed the misunderstanding between mobile start-ups and mobile operators. Mobile start-up innovation and users expect a fully open and cheap playground; in contrast operators focus on CAPEX/OPEX optimization to monetize scarce mobile broadband resources. Anastassia Lauterbach, EVP Strategy, T-Mobile International explained these issues clearly but bluntly : P2P mobile data is 38% of traffic (YouTube alone is 17%), with less < 200€ data revenues. Applying Moore’s law, the flat-fee business model does not scale : 5-year CAPEX required is 70B€ in Germany [~300€ /subscriber/year]. She also mentioned the impact across the value chain that supports mobile 2.0 : network > platforms > middleware > customer care and service. The subsequent debate with the audience was heated and inconclusive (despite Raimo van der Klein and Gregory Gorman’s moderation attempts). I would have suggested at least a differentiation of mobile 2.0 services based on their real-time bandwidth requirement and alternate access points such as Femtocells and WiMax for video streaming.
Among other good comments, Martin Duval, CEO Bluenove and director Orange start-up program was positive on opening-up and offering flat-fee data services to bring ad-funded content services and rather than cannibalizing. Under the motto "together we can more" Orange wants to educate start-ups to develop mutually beneficial business cases. He also referred to Orange’s opening-up to Nokia Ovi. Gian Paolo Balboni, head of innovation Telecom Italia mentioned innovation by providing access to network assets through web middleware services. Unai Iturburu, head of Vodafone Spain R&D indicated that we need better industry alignment to combine web and mobile services and quoted Vodafone’s Betavine.
Already a successful business ! The open business models panel showed 5 successes ranging from off-deck, MVNO and on-deck approaches. Chris Liu, of Fjord gave the example of Flirtomatik business model of “ego-services”. They have 120M PV/month, selling digital flowers and kisses. He referred to the challenged of supporting handsets. Leif Fågelstedt, COO Blyk explained how they monetize their “understanding of users”. The 7th media is less about content than it is about context” . Blyck's 900 campaigns resulted in 29% response rate (up to 60% in some targeted campaigns). Most are “conversations” such as SMS > SMS response > MMS > WAP menu. He says the MVNO business model is a win-win for the operators and not cannibalizing as it brings new revenues from advertising, they are expanding in Europe in the fall. Blyck’s emphasis is on personal communications but there is room for expanding into content and social networking. But right now you can’t solve the handset fragmentation issue so it’s too early. Ilja Laurs, founder Getjar sees it as an off-deck community of downloaders with an enormous diversity (10K applications, 200K download/month, example: flashlight replacing lighters in discos, battery drainer , Opera Mini 7M dl). For him, mobile billing is a nightmare so advertising sponsoring is a better solution. Ray Anderson, founder Bango said they combine off-deck and on-deck and see MNOs opening-up. Laurence Aderemi, from Admob now serves 3 billion ads/month 100% off-deck.
Awards winners and next wave The team assembled a great line-up of start-ups. We met them the previous day at ESADE where they gave a VC-pitch. I’ve classified them in 3 themes because of my particular interest but presentations were grouped by financing stage.
Personalization, social networks • Zipipop : they have invented “intention broadcasting” for your social life, casual meetings among friends and even for your “sex life”. It is a really cool user interface, a la T9 for broadcasting “Let’s meet for coffee at this place”. I enjoyed discussing with Helene Auramo, Zipipop CEO their monetization ideas and suggested “intentional advertising” like “the cook is in a really good mood at this place”. Viral marketing by SMS invites. Richard von Kaufmann gave an excellent pitch and had the T-shirt with the best logo Zipi-fish. *** Best Early Stage Start-up. • Rummble, is a location-aware social networking for discovery of events and recommendations, with micro-blogging.*** They won an award. • Aka-aki, proximity-aware networking. Personalize, on the go, share emotions and content, lifestyle; cross-media, location-based advertising. I like the fact that it gathers contacts along the way, kind of an active address-book. They have an excellent video pitch and I had posted about them earlier. • Shout'em, mobile social media : White-labeled Twitter-like service, launched as Zrikka in Croatia, (200K subscribers) they also have a photo sharing site. Their ambition is to support Symbian, iPhone and Android handsets. • YouLynx, mobile social media with geo-tagged upload/download and IM/VoIP. They address the PC/mobile convergence and synchronize address book, communications, content on both devices. On-portal deployment at O2, Vodafone, Telefonica, America Moviles, Orange, Airtel, DoCoMo . Presentatin by Jorge Gonzalez • Taptu , mobile social-aware search Stefan Butlin, Taptu CTO, presented • Mobiluck , mobile location based IM, chat and social networking. MobiLuck helps you share your location, spot friends nearby, and meet interesting people and places along the way! • Nimbuzz, Free IM, txt, PC calls, mobile VOIP in progress. Client for 22 brands/500 models. Great functionality with Skype, Gtalk, AIM, Windows Live messenger, Yahoo!Jabber, Myspace, Facebook. • Palringo, mobile IM client for sharing text, photos, and voice IMs with groups or individuals.
Multimedia user interfaces • Dial2do, a great application that uses voice to connect to web 2.0 services. It goes beyond traditional unified messaging (e.g. SpinnVox) or voice activated dialing and let’s you Twitter or Facebook in addition. Other services include : Jaiku, Tumblr, Jajah, Zimbra, etc… And voice allows immediately monetization. The US market seems ready for this : 60% of wireless calls while driving 87 min/day. Their go to market includes packaging in retail with Plantronic, Jabra and other plastic telephony appliances. Ivan McDonald , the CEO has a very convincing pitch. ***They won an award. • Kooaba,is a revloutionalry cool image search engine that fits perfectly with cameraphone capabilities. “Shoot a picture of a record cover and get the music” kind of experience. Herbert Bay is an alumni of ETH Zurich. • Via mobility, they developed a mobile widget execution platform to leverage the 150K widgets on the web and adapt them to 100K phones. You get your customized idle screen for notification and contents. This was presented by Serge Crebassa. This is important if your bet is that widgets are the way to innovate without handset fragmentation issues. The core skills of the company is in the embedded AEE and again this is critical. • Clicmobile: Alex Kummerman, CEO presented a really impressive visual city guide with celebrities launched for Louis Vuiton, walk with celebrities for 12 € in Shanghai, Beijing. The foundation is a social network but it’s really the user interface and the quality of content that attracted my attention • ViiF, video enabled mobile entertainment : Most of the service is via download, but the services can be tried out by video call 22557 in Germany, easy to customize with a web interface. They have revenue-sharing agreement with content providers. A welcomed competitor to iTunes video. • Secufone, developing specific user interfaces for iPhone for safety/security applications. They transition from a custom-handsets business for elderly people and security firms. A good example of business cases from focusing on user experience within a niche. • Mippin mobilizing web by adapting sites. This blog can be viewed there.
Monetization with advertizing• Unkasoft, mobile sponsored gaming : Repurposing mobile games catalogues for advertising campaigns e.g. Pepsi Max (a game of saccharin vs. sugar) Contact : Jaume Lanchares
Questions of the day at mobile web 2.0, 11th June London :
Finding monetization in the next phase of mobile web services, Innovation in user experiences New technologies
Monetization of mobile web is small At the end of the day, the money around mobile web is still small compared to the substantial revenues of mobile voice and messaging. Perhaps 30 B$ content and 3 B$ advertising compared to over 600B$ voice, SMS and data access. But you can’t milk a calf and the business will grow.
Tony Fish, CEO, AMF Ventures & Author, “Mobile Web 2.0” presented the opportunity in monetizing the mobile digital footprint (user profile and behavior ). The new world focuses on the [UGC] creation side and posting mobile content to the web. Advertising revenues complement value-added service charging models. This is a transition from the old world mobile industry focused on consumption, centered on payment for services, applications and content. But thee new world will not wipe the old word it will improve it.
The monetization opportunities coming from uniqueness of mobile : Mobile payment, complementing credit cards and cash ; in the old world you get back services and content. Mobile footprint : (data follows you all the time leading to accurate digital footprint, advanced personalization, beyond identity protected by AAA (bank and credit card details), location) ;. in the new world you give your footprint to the community and get in return reputation, enhanced search algorithms and results; the ownership of this meta-data is a new battle ground.
Nick E. Heller, Strategic Partnerships, Media & Publishing, Google. He also sees mobile advertising complementing overall advertising with unique features : Location remains the top unique selling proposition, despite the fact that this is a 10-years old idea. Usage pattern : 8:00 (commute), 12:00 (lunch) and most important 22:00 (bed time). Device interaction : primarly SMS (CPM) today – evolving to web searches (CPC) and user interaction (CPA) using cameras such as Android scan (taking pictures of barcodes to trigger searches). User authentication was one aspect when discussing privacy protection, safe search, personalized advertising (context sensitive)
Stéphanie Hospital, VP Marketing, Orange online advertising : said the priority is to establish basic metrics for mobile advertising and expand the main inventories in WAP banners and messaging. Current CPM/CPC rates are not significant at this stage. Experimentation with video or interaction (with Adidas to win tickets in France) shows the future potential for branding campaigns and later we will improve at user profiling.
Paul Goode from m:metrics confirmed the success of SMS advertising campaigns with 50% of EU and 20% of US subscribers having received messages. He estimated mobile media audience being 25% of all EU5+US subscribers (~ 106 million, > 6% growth) with a >3X greater usage by the 10% smart phone users (~ 37 million, 0% growth). The biggest growth is seen in social networks, used by ~ 4% of subscriber spending 1:30 hours/month on facebook.com or myspace.com, ranked in the top 5 visited sites. US now leads over Europe in mobile media consumption and web access : Americans spend 4:30 hours/month browsing, British spend 2:25 hour/month. Demographics show 45% of 28-30 year old with the biggest usage of mobile content. On the topic of smart phones he noted that N95 outsold iPhone 1:2, the iPhone being bought by those who can afford it. Innovative user experiences More than the money, the passion of both users and developers alike seems to fuel the development of new user experiences, whether for self-expression, social networking and the holy grail of location-enhanced services.
Carl Taylor, Director of applications and services, Hutchison Whampoa Europe : stated the priority is to improve the interaction between users, devices and content to make the experience more relevant. This involves more psychology than technology and aims at enabling consumer peer review and viral marketing. [ Carl has been an advocate of applying semantic web mark-up such as W3C Powder to ensure better relevance ]. Hutchison has made the 3 mobile broadband offer attractive to consumers and had the courage to launch Skype phone at £12 / month. They see premium content and advertising business model expanding, provided there is tuning of the delivery value-chain across operators and content providers.
Christian Lindholm, Partner and Director, Fjord : he told the story how he came late at Radisson Edwardian May Fair Hotel because his search for london mayfair hotel brought 400 results on mobile Google Maps excluding the right one. In this user experience, “places” are different than “street addresses”. He joked that London black cabs is the best LBS system because they have contextual and semantic information.
Matt Jones, Co-Founder and Lead Designer, Dopplr.com Commenting further on looking LBS user experiences he said he liked the topic because it's so difficult and bad things can happen. Dopplr is about describing interesting parts of places and the social aspect of places. For this you may want to increase fuzziness rather than accuracy of the location.
Anja Kielman, Founder aka-aki demonstrated their innovative social service piloted in Berlin, uses bluetooth to alerts users with similar profiles logged within 20m in bars, shops and crowds. Anja says it’s designed to take your social network to the street and create connections in the real world. The web version has all the standard features like profiles, friends and messaging. The mobile version is a small Java application that you can send to friends, one connected phone can serve as a hub for the other, therefore reducing the cost of data connections.
New technologies Virtual and real devices are also fueling innovation.
Anders Elleby, Swisscom Participation : innovative services can be launched with devices such as the Ogo2 devices adopted by (~100’000?) Swiss teenagers who can connect to MSN IM, call and now browse the web. Also mentioned, Starfruit virtual phone booth in Second Life allows SMS and offering flowers to the real world. In general MNO can innovate with network enablers (for all access networks), device applications (despite the fragmentation of platforms) and overall services, rather than focusing at declining premium content revenues.
Thomas van der Zijden, VP of Marketing for Polymer Vision: presented the “Readius” a pocket sized reader with a 5" rollable display and 3.5G connectivity. Readius uses organic materials in all elements of the display and can be rolled.
Thanks to Josh Dhaliwal, of Mobile Youth I was invited to the workout in London, May 2 2008. Graham Brown, CEO of Mobile Youth who wrote about the 7 challenges of mobile marketing proposed 3 challenges of mobile youth marketing for this workout :
Charging : from free-content to new business models Relevance : user profiling allowing intimacy and privacy, Trust : social dialogue between brands and consumers
Monetizing free-content with new business models Mobile Youth marketing is about winning the heart and mind of the youth and content, music for example is a great way to succeed. It’s one reason iPod brand is such a reference. We talked about brand that fell such as Levi’s ® (from 50% market share in 1996 down to 9%) as they lost their sexy / rebellious shrink-to-fit image [yet they launched an award-winning mobile campaign promoting user-remixed ringtones and 501 jeans in 2005]. What’s the business case for free content and capped data plans ? Music : some great examples of the free economy. Fans downloaded Radiohead’s new album Rainbows at the prices they wanted, 38% paid a total rumored to amount 9M$. Similarly, Prince's album Planet Earth was released as a freebie but the 21 London concerts sold out for 23M$. Gerd Leonhard calls this the “tap water music” vs. “bottled music” and published 3-years blog history : Music 2.0. Damien Saunders, head of music at Vodafone agreed there were lots of opportunity to monetize mobile music. But he made the point that it is about creating user experiences with lead users and rather than promoting content with advertising which is counter-productive. Video : there was less buzz on mobile video but Rhys McLachlan of Mediacom reminded us that youth still consume 3 hours/month of TV. Other panelists saw a smaller opportunity there. [yet 3 UK had 600’000 subscribers downloading 6 million video clips sponsored by advertising and announced a sponsored music video service – and 32 million have been downloaded on 3’s SeeMeTV and O2’s LookAtMe!, from 60,000 user-generated submissions]. Graphics : an order of magnitude of mobile entertainment revenue was given by Tal Dagan, from Comverse (ring tones 10B$, ring-back tones 5B$, graphics 3B$, other 0.5B$) [I attempted to complete the picture with other publicly available figures from MEF(25B$), IDC (highest revenue from ringtones, ringback tones, mobile television and video services, 2011 forecast of 40B$), Portio Research (music 9B$, games 3B$, video 1 B$, others 17B$)]
By comparison, eMarketer estimates mobile advertising at 2.8B$ [growing to 19.1 B$ by 2012 ]. As an example beyond ringtones, Comverse’s Klonies is a solution to push avatars during call establishment (J2ME client software) instead of the CLI / phone address-book user interfaces.
User profiling driving relevance and protecting privacy My presentation in the user profiling panel triggered lively discussions. : how far should we drive user behavior analysis and targeting ? I explained the potential for dynamic profiling with network information : your phone address book is your social graph, call and location history, presence and device information are additional dynamic profile information’s typically available in databases such as HLR/HSS, XDMS etc… And dynamic device detection can help adapt to the preferred format and channel.
On the pro side, user profiling serves both advertisers and users. Jupiter surveys that 50% of 16-25 year old youth are happy to be targeted by advertising in exchange for free content and Blyk’s 100’000 subscribers are a testimony of this. Jack Wallington of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) representing over 86% of online advertising in the United States, gave views on the normalization of the mobile advertising profile data and related metrics.
On the opposite side privacy protection is key to maintain trust with consumers. The audience recalled the controversy around Facebook’s social advertising and Beacon Facebook Ads, an engine for sharing profiles with advertisers that lead to 50’000 users joining the MoveOn.org group until explicit permission and opt-out was enforced. On the privacy issue, IAB best practices include the opt-in opt-out facilities to give control to the user. In addition strong authentication profile should assist in enforcing child safety, such as mobile operators code of practices brokered by the European Commission to prevent bullying [15% of under 16] , access to pornographic [ #1 destination is adult, peak usage time 9pm-11pm] and violent content, and inappropriate use of camera phones and location services. I was asked about authentication mechanisms beyond USIM and passwords – my belief is that only biometric (fingerprint, face recognition) authentication can properly identify a child using a device. A related issue is SPAM which affects 80% users with 23 billion messages/year.
Matthew Snyder, now CEO of the consulting company ADO strategies has a great experience in this mobile advertising industry and provided some comments on how advanced profiling can practically be implemented with multi-channel ad-serving platforms. From the discussion I attempted to list some of the main aggregators and players in this new industry.
Nokia’s media network (Nokia’s ad Business led to the acquisition of Enpocket in 2007, a mobile campaign management with multi-modal SMS, MMS, WAP, and video delivery with analytics). Google’s Adwords for mobile DoubleClick Mobile (works with ad networks to deliver combination ads, road blocked ads and jump pages) Microsoft’s subsidiary Screentonic (early leader in mobile ad serving technology for European operators) AOL’s Platform-A Advertising.com , Quigo (content-targeted advertising), Tacoda(behavioral targeting), Adtech (online ad-serving), buy.at and Third Screen Media (platform and mobile advertising network) Admob (home of evangelist Russell, co-author of MobHappy) Amobee(dynamic ad insertion in multiple channels : videos, music, messaging, games, WAP)
Trusted social dialogue between brands and consumers Can mobile social networks enhance customer relationships ? The question was debated in the panel led by Ged Caroll from Waggener Edstrom and blogger who said that customer insight can be obtained with a mix mobile marketing and traditional PR+advertising. He’s a professional advocate of blogging for marketing as he explained in a video.
Helen Keegan, from Beep Marketing raised thie issue that as of today, those who master "the black art of communication and persuasion" at major brands cannot justify the ROI of mobile marketing. How much do Brands really benefit from this ? Truth and honesty are universal values that consumers recognize said Ed Homes from Haygarth. You have to decode the responses and non-responses of customers, for example in Twitter feeds. That’s the value of on-line community moderators such as Dominic Sparke’s company Tempero which also provide information tagging. Looking for successes, everybody agreed on Japan’s mobile social networks :
Moba-ge-town by Dena [statistics : 10M mobile users, 65% 0-19, 28% 20’s, 18 B PV/month, members earn virtual Moba-Gold from watching ads, FY07 sales of 15B¥ ~ 144M$] and Mixi [statistics : 14M users, 63% early 20’s, 22 hours/month, 20’000 advertisers, mixi mobile advertising since 2006, 8B PV/month at 0.05¥ on mobile out of 13B total, at 0.1¥, FY07 sales of 10B¥ ~ 96M$]
I commented on this in last blog . For further reading, Helen edited Tanla Mobile’s excellent guide that you can download here, she blogs on mobile marketing and runs Swedish Beers mobile gathering.
Cherry blossom in in Sapporo and Tokyo, April 14-21, revisiting my comments 2 years ago.
Growing mobile content services and networks Mobile commerce and advertising are growing Mobile video is still emerging From 3G to 4G leadership
Growing mobile content services and networks User generated content and messaging are the top usage : 25% of subscribers send more than 5 messages/day, and 10% more than 10, according to Impress. DoCoMo’s Decomail, service is popular with teenagers who use sites such as Decotomo.jp, Disney to offer purchase messaging personalization content. Social networking is growing : 10 million users (50% of teenagers, 35% of 20-30 year old) generate 20 billion PV/month on Dena’s Mobagetown, which offers free browser flash games, social networking and 10,000 digital items. 1.7 million users (25% of teenagers, 39% of 20-30 year old) generate 93 million PV/day on KDDI’s mikle.jp mobile community with 11 user generated content categories such as gaming (#3), love (#10) etc.
Internet providers have established strong partnerships with mobile operators : Web searches rank 3rd among the most popular mobile data services , behind e-mail and news. Google Search appears directly on the top screen of KKDDI and DoCoMo users with the banner enhanced by Google. Google also develops mobile applications with NTT DoCoMo, sharing behavioral mobile search data and splitting advertising revenues. Yahoo! Mobile , owned by Softbank is the country’s most popular Web portal with 18 million mobile subscribers and gets 4 billion PV/month. 14 million users (out of 82 million) access the internet exclusively from their mobile phone according to Impress R&D.
One additional driver has been the 9:1 on-deck revenue share for content providers. NTT DoComo’s i-Mode menu still drives 5 billion PV/month.
Mobile commerce and advertising have doubled Mobile commerce is used by 36% of Japanese users and estimated ARPU of 300$ exceeds mobile content revenues according to Impress and Infinita. NTT DoCoMo provides Rakutenchi mobile auctions on the i-menu and Softbank offers Yahoo! Shopping and Auctions. For mobile payment , 30% of handsets support the Sony Felica RFID chip for contact less transactions at train and plane gates and with more than 70 commercial retailers.
Mobile advertising revenues doubled since 2006 to 620 M$ (62.1 ¥B) and 25% of Japanese companies use it . This is still only 10% of on-line advertising spending at 4.4B$ (443 B¥) and 1% of total advertising, according to Dentsu communication institute. Typical banner rates are 5’000-10’000$/week for 2-20 million PV and there is a large choice of options between these. Mobile advertising was the topic of the MoMo Tokyo meeting on April 21st at Google’s offices in Shibuya . An example of mobile online community using Mobile Adsense is mikle.jp. They have 129 million PV/month and 2.3 million users/month.
Mobile video is maturing Mobile broadcasting branded “1seg” was introduced in Japan in 2006 and now reaches 25 million subscribers in Japan can receive broadcast TV on mobile , with a data link for mobile information or advertising. Check 1 seg on YouTube. On the user generated video content, one service is My Tube from a mobile service provider called Key Life that provides video sharing aggregation ( from You Tube, Google Video, Ameba vision, Dailymotion), with a specific focus on for Japanese content. And there is a very small usage of video calling for similar video bloging experiences. In general, video calling quality was very good and international calls worked very well.
My Japanese colleagues showed demos of video convergence across TV screens, PCs and mobile handsets with the related issues of video adaptation and service control.
From 3G to 4G leadership Japans counts over 90 million 3G subscribers (+30 million since 2006) according to Impress R&D : 25 million have usage-based contracts 38 million have flat rate contracts 25 million use 3.5G HSxPA
Throughout my visit I was impressed by the high quality of coverage, even in-building. Last month, NTT DoCoMo announced the result of their 3G long term evolution (LTE) tests in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. They achieved downlink transmission at 250Mbps using a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) with a 4-antenna base station using the full 20MHz bandwidth (specifying 300 Mbps peak ) . They advertise this as “Super G” and talk about a first network roll out in 2010. Mobile gaming and mobile TV applications will be enhanced through the introduction of LTE, benefiting from < 10ms latency and high peak-rates. 70 million 4G subscribers are forecasted by 2013 (Europe 30 million, Asia Pacific 21 millions and North America 17 million) according to Informa.
Evolution of service infrastructure In a panel in Sapporo we discussed service infrastructure, together with George Mc Gregor, VP of services at HP OpenCall, Dr. Suphachet Phermphoonwatanasuk, from AIS in Thailand , Martin Gutberlet, VP Research at Gartner. Gartner’s view of the top mobile business opportunities includes : mobile TV 40 B$, mobile music 31 B$, mobile broadband 28 B$, mobile advertising 14 B$. AIS discussed their target architecture to combine voice, music and video services using VXML and SIP application servers on 2G and 3G networks. In a following talk in Tokyo, I demonstrated mobile instant communications, video blogging and the use of web technology such as WSDL network APIs, JSR309 Java APIs, and SMIL) to provide interfaces to networks and create interactive video services.
Subscriber statistics update
DoCoMo 53.4 million KDDI 30.2 million, slight decrease due to phase-out of Tu-Ka Softbank 18.8 million, growing
I visited Indonesia, January 22-24th to study 3G multimedia services evolution.Indonesia, is the world’s 4th most populous country after China, India and the US, with 245 million people on a territory counting 13,000 islands spread 5000 km wide. But , Indonesia has one of the least-developed communications systems in Asia.
2G mobile penetration under 30%, 3G deployed in cities Mobile penetration is below 30% and concentrated in urban areas (50% penetration in Jakarta, 40% in other cities). This compares with 80% in Malaysia and 40% in the Philippines.
There are good signs though as mobile growth exceeded 40% in recent years, with a forecast of 120 million subscribers by 2010, and a further 25 million fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers. One of the growth drivers is the decline in handset prices priced at $30 to $40, and refurbished units at $10 to $20. Telkomsel has 96% pre-paid and operators report a blended monthly ARPU of $9 including $2.40 for data. Indosat and Excel have reported 5-7$ prepaid ARPU and $23 postpaid. In 2007, minutes of usage grew to 52’ this compensates ARPU decline.
Five 3G licenses were auctioned in 2006 to Telkomsel, Excelcom, Indosat and in 2004 to Hutchinson, Natrindo. Hutchinson and Natrindo have 15MHz spectrum each , Telkomsel, Indosat and Excelcomindo existing GSM operators received 5MHz. Telkomsel has deployed 3G/HSDPA with 1500 Node B out of 19.000 BTS. This network covers 49 cities in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi . Telkomsel has 3.5 M active 3G subscribers and expects to get 18 million 3G users by 2010. This required an investment of $1.5 billion in network expansion in 2007. It is expected that all GSM operators will continue to invest on 3G network coverage expansion in 2008. Uptake of 3G services is slow because 3G handset pricing is not affordable enough to attract users.
Mobile operators duopoly challenged in 2008 With Telkomsel and Indosat, controlling 74% market share , mobile prices in Indonesia remained high because of inadequate competition. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, measures Indonesia’s mobile market concentration at 5,082 (1,800 indicates a highly concentrated market). The competition watchdog (KPPU)ruled in November 2007 that Telkomsel had broken the anti-monopoly law by establishing a price cartel with Indosat in Indonesia. The entry of Hutchison and Maxis in 2008 will bring in a price war and downward pressure on mobile calling prices. In the context of the forthcoming 2009 presidential election, the debate has evolved to that of foreign investment in Indonesia's mobile telephone sector. Economic nationalism views seem dominant in response to globalization. Singapore’s SingTel Group owns 35 % of Telkomsel (65 % by Indonesian government) and Singapore’s Temasek, owns 31% of Indosat through a subsidiary (Asia Mobile Holdings, 15 % is owned by Indonesian government) . Telekom Malaysia owns 60% and Malaysia’s Khazanah 17 % of Excelcomindo. Saudi Telecom owns 51 % of Natrindo (Lippo Telecom).
More than 10 mobile players PT Telkomsel, Indonesia's largest cellular operator by subscribers, controls 52% of the market. PT Indonesia Satellite has around 27%, and PT Excelcomindo Pratama around 16%. The remainder is held by city operators like PT Bakrie Telecom and PT Mobile-8.
Excelcomindo (XL) 16% market share Xplore (pre-paid) Bebas (postpaid) Jempol (postpaid) XL is a Vodafone partner network GSM 900Mhz, 1800Mhz and 1900Mhz, WCDMA 5MHz spectrum
Mobile-8 Telecom 4% market share Fren (post-paid and pre-paid) CDMA 800Mhz, CDMA2000/EV-DO services since 4Q06 , only covers west and some cities in middle Java Subsidizing data cards to customers
Hutchison Telecommunication 0% market share 3/Three (postpaid and pre-paid) GSM 1900Mhz and W-CDMA launched 2Q 2007, 15MHz spectrum Services will cover 67 cities on Java Island in 2008 and expand to the islands of Sumatra and Bali. Targeting 1 million subscribers and driving adoption of mobile email, MMS and other data services to generate data revenues. Hutchison has been active in both on-net and off-net promotions, having reduced on-net tariffs by up to 50%
3G services launched 3G may not appear a priority in emerging markets but one can argue that HSDPA will take-up in Indonesia simply because of pent-up demand for internet access. In 2005, there were only 10.3 million internet users, 0.05% of the population and in 2007, Telkom has only 210’000 ADSL subscribers. 3G data cards may be an option for internet access at 300Kbps.
In addition, operators such as Telkomsel will introduce 3G infotainment services on their web site :
Telkomsel Mobile TV can be accessed using circuit-switched video calls to short numbers : 8800 Video Portal 8801 Metro TV 8806 SCTV 8809 Indosiar 8811 O Channel 8810 SpaceToon 8817 Bali TV 8829 Makasar TV
Video content from content providers including SCM, Metro TV, Bizcom Elasitas and 160 local and foreign providers is also distributed from the WAP portal offering video-on-demand streaming and video downloading. Telkomsel is hoever generating less than 0.5% of ARPU with video.
I noted with interrest that Telkomsel is promoting video calls Video SMS : video call to 3605 MOVie : Make your Own Video video blog service; 0.05$/min call Video Call Conference Video Call to 3604; 0.05$/min call, 0.5$ for ID-PIN registration by SMS
At Saint-Emillion with my colleagues Lam Nguyen (who teaches classic SS7 at ENST) and Alex Vorbau who comes from Web service design at HP Labs.
I attended the ICIN conference on intelligence in networks. As some of the best Bordeaux wines, it now an 18-years celebration of “classic telecoms”. But 2007 was an innovation challenge as the congress mixed experience coming from IN glory days with revolutionary Web 2.0 mash-ups. It was quite nice to see the old guard moves on and actually contributes ideas to combine the best of both worlds. And with such optimism, we obviously celebrated the French gastronomy, tasting a mix of old grand-crus and new wines. Key points
Web architectures as Google are even more scalable than IMS
Web services can be interfaced with telecom networks and IMS
Client software is essential in all cases : Java JSR 281 is one approach
HP Conversa is a simple example of Web 2.0 to communication services, we presented more IMS oriented demos (instant group communications) so did several other presenters.
There is a broker in the Net ... its name is Google Roberto Minerva, roberto.minerva@tilab.com from Telecom Italia Lab kicked off with his views on Google vs. IMS architectures “comparing apples and oranges”. He did a good job to impress us with the technology and scare us with the business models. In a summary Google is
(PageRank of page n is the sum of PageRank of pages pointing to it , divided by L(n) the total number of out coming links from page n. q is the probability that the users will leaves the page without clicking any of these links )
Google monetizes page ranks with brokerage to advertisers (Ad sense is illustrated here) . But the clear direction is to move to detailed subscriber profile management to increase ARPU using information from :
Registration to services (Gmail),
Personalization of services (MysearchHistory, Page creator),
On-line searches on PC, (Maps, Froogle, …)
Applications (Gmail, Gtalk,..)
Google distributed system have pushed the limits of parallelism :
Distributed computational model with Sawzall programming language
Replication. fault tolerant version of the Linux Red Hat
Up to 100,000 servers with 2 GB RAM >80 GB disk
A quote from Eric Schmidt, CEO : “we're much further along in the build out of data centers. We have the cheapest and most scalable architecture. Running large Internet scale businesses is very, very difficult."
Google disruption can be summarized as follows :
Google Video (+ YouTube) = Impact on Media Companies
Google Base, Froogle, Checkout = Impact on eBay, Craig list, …
GTalk (IM + VoIP) + WiFi = Impact on telecom service providers
Desktop Applications (Writely) = Impact on Microsoft, Apple, …
Google Library, … = Impact on book publishers
Spectrum acquisition in 700 MHz access = impact on Mobile network operators
Web 2.0 in an IMS Environment Thomas Magedanz and Niklas Blum from Fraunhofer FOKUS ran a tutorial and several presentations on a cooperative research portfolio they characterize as “play ground” .
The Open IMS playground aims at creating enablers to IMS, legacy and internet network. HP OpenCall unit has provided MRF, HSS, XDMS component in this multi-vendor testbed. Orchestration of the service components can be done with : SIP application servers, IMS SCIM using S-CSCF service filter , SIP Proxies.
Listen to Thomas Magdeganz's advertising presentation of the SOA and IMS playgrounds on a classic Jazz backgrounds.
Niklas Blum presented a prototyping fixed mobile environment, with a focus on the network address book shared by multiple devices:
IMS clients (Synchronisation via XCAP)
legacy clients (Synchronisation via SyncML)
Email clients (Synchronisation via SyncML)
. Here is a demo of "IMS 2.0" done by their team.
Mobile video in a community-based Web service My colleagues April Slayden Mitchell, Mitchell Trott from HP Labs were presenting Conversa, a social utility enabling video conversations. Our HP OpenCall team contributed a mobile video interface to this service. Alex Vorbau gave a very good example of HP research combining web enablers and telecommunication features. In addition, Conversa addresses social and usability aspects of multimedia services. Alex Vorbau presentation at ICIN 2007
E-commerce transaction validation I presented a discussion paper on payment transactions with telecom enablers co-authored with my colleagues Dominique Sandraz , Paul Serra and Antoni Drudis. This is work in-progress but the original objective was to investigate possible use cases were voice authentication and activation could assist e-payment. We felt this could be relevant in countries with low literacy and PC penetration. For example mobile money transfers are popular in Zambia and Bangladesh where Paypal could’nt be an option. Here is our work-in-progress ideas :
Eric von Hippel's research demonstrates that communities of users are now driving product development. As the telecom networks open-up to web mashup services, virtual network operators, we can leverage lead-user developments that have happened in many industries. Eric von Hippel provides numerous quantitative analysis of the processes that generate breakthrough innovation. Here is a summary of his papers and and video tutorials.
Users generate different innovations than manufacturers Examples demonstrate that communities of users are powerful innovation "engines" . 20 to 40% of users engage in developing/modifying products (20% of mountain biking users, 37% of extreme sport participants) . Those with the strongest lead user characteristics develop innovations having high appeal to the general market place.
Von Hippel argues that 80% of innovations come from DIY lead-users because manufacturers don't see emerging business potential, nor can deliver in time. 'Necessity is the mother of invention '. Some examples : Apache web servers users improved security functions. HP Voodoo PCs were developed by users over-clocking standard processors and installing water coolers
Generating breakthrough value on top of incremental improvement
Users and manufacturers tend to have different knowledge leading to different kind of innovations. Unfortunately there is information asymmetry between users and manufacturers and the two sources of innovations are hard to combine. This is sticky information, because it is very difficult to transfer from one group to another or between application domains.
User need and context of use knowledge is generated by lead-users. Often the richest source of information can be found on user web sites. Users tend to develop innovations that are functionally novel. Note that users tend to share their innovation freely inside communities such as Open Source”. As a result user innovation is often cheaper and faster. And user communities are driving manufacturers out of product development.
Generic solution knowledge is, on the other hand, mastered by enterprises closer to manufacturing and supply chain activities within a particular industry. Manufacturers tend to lead in solution process improvement innovation. But the need to protect innovation with IPR often slows down innovation by preventing collaboration with 3rd parties for example.
Democratization with toolkits for user innovation
One way of democratization of innovation is to combine both types of knowledge. 'Toolkits for user innovation and design are integrated sets of product design , prototyping and design testing tools intended for use by end users. One good example is the semiconductor industry with custom ASICs toolkits. Another is Lego mind storms craze for adult techies. Lego executives simply did not know what to do. Toolkits substitute market research by collaborative innovation with communities of users.
Organised by W2F , there were a panel presentations and roundtable discussions. Some kind of speed dating event with efficient networking activity. Here are some comments, classified by type of participants mobile, internet, media, advertising rather than by chronology. My take-aways : 1. Online web 2.0 services are still on the way-up but migration of users have started to appear, there could be ups and down as the social habits and demographics evolve. 2. Mobile network operators are opening the walled garden to the big brands but also partnering with ASPs, this could stimulate a value-added service creation utilizing more fully the mobile assets (location, address books, IMS enablers) 3. Advertisers and media are still cautious about mobile social networks, see it as a modest multi-channel addition to boost brands, not revenue. 4. Technology enablers are coming : widgets for user interfaces, customer analytics, and possibly as mentioned selective network enablers
Online services Sarah Gavin, Global communications director,Bebo Bebo is now the 3rd social site, with 5.8 million, Beboers and may catch MySpace by year end. Bebo's success is based on very strong engagement of users, they spend 160 minutes / month [compared with 140 minutes for Facebook and 100 minutes on MySpace ]. [ Note : Beboers create profiles, list favorites, pictures, and activities; it provides band profiles and music sharing. Beboers customize profile skins, make it public or private; to protect personality Bebo does not allow criteria search. Skype provides IM. BeboTV has 12 categories : music, sports, comedy, entertainment, animals and news. Bebo also has music from all genres. ]
David Springall, CTO and co-founder Yospace Yospace is the ASP behind 'See Me TV' user-generated video gallery offered on 3 UK and and O2's LookAtMe!. It provides MMS hosting and services. Statistics for See me TV : 13 million clips / year, reward and pricing is key. start at 10-50p. Clips are 10-30s videos (MMS). Paypal used to participate and reward. It leverages the fact that mobile users are willing to pay. Community is secondary to content gallery because of mobile UI limitations.
Roy Vella, head of mobile payment, PayPal PayPal mobile payments works exactly the same as on the internet, replacing an e-mail address by an MSISDN and password. But Roy stresses that SNS drivers have not been all about money. MySpace started as a promotion for small bands, Facebook was launched when Harvard refused to post face books on internet. Advertising money came as a result because eyeballs. Few SNS are money-centric : eBay is a community where people meet in and transact leaving feedback about people and goods.
Brands should be cautious about engaging with SNS. It ‘s a new space to thread carefully. Imagine if you throw a party and a non-invited corporation shows up ! The word of mouth can be negative if you are not contributing something tangible to the community. Half of the value is consumers’ generating content about your brand.
Tim Hussein, Head of mobile, AOL UK SNS are nothing new for advertisers and brands : message forums existed in the 80's, Coke sponsored football clubs because it's about communities. It’s no different on-line and it's common sense principle. And adds are posted where people are more likely to buy. People expect to see adds when they pick up a magazine but not in SNS which they think is private . About 16 hours usage ? he doubts it.
Mobile operators and application service providers Amer Hasan, Manager mobile internet partnerships, Vodafone global Mobile brings users a remote control of their profile in social networks. And MNOs can offer additional enablers to the ecosystems : id [authenticated] , location, handset support. MNOs can also provide value with customer care (user can call when have queries). And a range of billing options from free offering to premium service : for example MySpace for 50p. to 1.5 £./day, flat rates of 7.5 £/month,
But mobile SNS need critical mass and uniform availability across all channels. Therefore they are not sustainable as MNO proprietary offerings. Vodafone’s direction is towards preferred non exclusive partners : MySpace [MySpace mobile is wap based update blogs and friends, only known friends.- email address], eBay. Google maps. Short term exclusive agreements to provide time to promote.
Mark Watts-Jones, Head of development and innovation, Orange UK Orange interest is no more in the creation of mobile SNS products. Orange tried proprietary solutions before but realize that partnering will result in better products. Orange works with Bebo, IMS. .However it is not easy to copy internet on phones. We have to develop useful service that mobile users will use it and advertisers will come. Dead easy to say, hard to do! . About mobile UGC, you have to realize that what users are doing is SMS and messages, not only blogging and sharing : my mum do not understand blogging.
Liz McCord, Principal engineer, France Telecom R&D, UK She commented the role for IMS to provide some services to online networks, such as identity moves. I hardly heard anyone else mention IMS during the day.
Anuj Khanna, head of marketing, Tania mobile They provide ITV platforms for UGC and participation. The mobile data market is 100B$ but 80% of this is SMS . Flat rate data offers will trigger VAS on data. So far mobile users have shown a surprising tolerance to pay bad content but this will not last. Need better content. 70% may be offered free on internet and 30% charged on mobile because “this market exists”
Laurence Seberini, Managing Director, Lucky mobile Mobile banners adds are very effective in RSA. Click thru is 1:5 (because phones display only 1 add at a time), compared to 1:50 on internet and 1:100 on TV. But the CPM of mobile is al lot higher (5x online and TV) Also market surveys can be done in 24 hours using WAP forms. And we have seen instant purchasing behavior very strong : mobile users buy crap content easily.
Advertising and media Graham Darracott, Partner, Graphico New Media His opinion about mobile SNS business : Mobile is an extension of the net, and it works as an additional channel, part of digital campaign...MNOs “can't get their pound of flesh”. Consumers will always find their way around paying e.g, use Facebook for group SMS [ Some related comments here Facebook Will Win in SMS Social Networking] . MNOs have to offer , all you can eat data bundle including roaming to allow new services. One mobile issue is privacy : : SNS.are like big night clubs, “you don't give your mobile number to everyone”.
Brand must bring real [genuine, authentic] value in social networks. Brands that give something back to the community benefit. For example ordering a real Domino's pizza from inside World of Warcraft is, fantastic : you don't have to go out of the WOW environment, you only have to answer the doorbell ! [ Story is here ]. Nike in Second Life it's about how you look [avatars can acquire and wear customized virtual footware; Nike gets actual revenue for the digital shoes, gathers market research such as colors and designs and branding. Further analysis here ]. BBC brand instantly creates affinity with customers and is incredibly strong. He recommends market-research research : on-line or on the streets : spend time with people. Neil Hughston, Managing Director, Saatchi&Saatchi Interactive The development of mobile social networks will be modest. Even in Korea’s Cyworld usage of mobile is selective. Many people have up to 15 contacts in their phone address book. And many do not use applications on their handsets. Users will not pay MNOs for services, the march is towards offering pay as you go and contract tariffs choices. MNO are involved with mobile with SNS to get critical mass of customers. .
About SNS advertising, we should not mix influencers and connectors. There are different ways to measure influence and connectivity. Who is being listened to should be measured, not number of friends? Names collectors are of no value, boys collecting girl's names; unless you are a star, you are not a connector. SNS advertising is moving away from big hit big campaign and playing on passions : music, charities, events. It’s very difficult to apply to all brands. Think of Campbell Soup or Procter Gamble washing powder who have the budgets but cannot have that level of responses.
Melissa Goodwin, head of mobile, ITV ITV are not doing SNS for the money but in order to get user feedback on programs. It is a direct audience to TV interaction, that can be read exactly, they are unofficial testers, tell exactly if it's rubbish, and ITV can put our own responses. This is the most valuable reason ITV does it for now for 18 month. There is a simple way with audiences: delight them, engage them.
Rachel Beresford, Head of mobile marketing, emap Transparency of pricing is key. Integrated billing plays in favor of mobile especially for impulse buy - internet / Paypal is not as integrated. Questioned about an example of failure : Friendsters, which Google paid 13B$ but got less than 1% of the SNS market. They forgot about customers and had service quality issues : 1min to download profiles.
Technology Gero Steinroeder, head of partnerships, Nokia Widset Widset (Nokia’s widgets) is about opening walled garden, with over 80 mobile devices supported . It is all about choice as opposed to operator control, following the successful internet model where user do unexpected thing. There is a community to recommend and share Widsets, it enables users, open up services, let them fine the direction. He expects that users will primarily use internet’s add-funded model and free usage. With mobile SNS, non intrusive engagement advertising should be build as a basic part of the service. There will still be room for premium rate.
Jouko Ahvenainen, Founder and COO, Xtract Ltd Xtract Social Links is a part of of Blyk's advertising solution. Jouko explained how companies can utilize and analyze word of mouth marketing in a systematic way, recommendations are really important and are behind 71% of purchase decisions. With SNS analytics, you can analyze, understand, value the very important, players [alfa users] . Similarly, advertisers need facts and user profiles details. There is a need to optimize value chain and user experiences in mobile and internet channels . Traditional web analytics are describing only average users, Google provides only ad-hoc links based on current search context. Mobile SNS get to learn user preferences over time, not only what people tell you but detailed behavior patterns. How limitations on privacy private communities public / are there some obvious lines to draw, location
Market research Nadja Litschko, research consultant. W2F London She presented 3 segments from the Mobile Youth report ( showed qualitative recorded interviews without quantitative analysis) : • casual users 55% of total; have 100 friends (real friends) • dedicated users 35% of total; 15-35 old;have100-300 friends, most of them real; 6-15 hours usage , personalized pages, often musicians and artists • hard core users 10% of total; less than 18 years; have over 300 friends (not real); 16 hours, highly personalized pages Highlighted the trendes migration of social networks away from youth market, as user grow-up and also as the older users get on board. For example,. 75% of users YouTube are now over 25, 87% over 18yrs (compared with only 41% in 2005).
MobiTV I visited MobiTV, Emeryville, CA (formerly Idetic). MobiTV is a mobile TV/Radio ASP prvoiding both content aggregation and managed technology to MNOs such as Sprint, Cingular, Alltel 3UK and Orange UK. We met the VP sales Kevin Grant and the CTO Kay Johansson. Their focus is content distribution but they see some value in user generated content or personal video communications if user acceptance develops. We discussed technologies such as H.324M (not deployed in North America) , DTMF-driven video navigation, expanding to community sharing services for photos/videos etc...The long term vision could evolve towards IMS/group applications offered as a managed service.
Verizon Wireless I visited their 3G lab, Walnut Creek, CA at the invitation of 3G network planning Sergei Karpov who described the activities of VZW Advanced technology lab (the video specialists were out of town so another visit will be needed). They were running the CDMA 2000 EV-D0 Rev A trials (the capacities are 550Kbps uplink / 1.8Mbps uplink, low latency all IP - the wireless profiles are described in IS-835D-C) to prepare roll-out in 2007. The services include video telephony, video instant messaging, push to talk/video and streaming (evolution of VCAST). Trial handsets likely to include Audivox, Motorola, LG, Samsung with (H.263 / EVRC - EBRCb - EVRC-wb codecs, Brew IM clients needed). We also discussed the success of Amp'd Mobile, Los Angeles CA, who is an MVNO on VZW EV-DO aimed at 18-35 year olds wth services featuring video. They work with Break.com, a viral video web site. AMP'D investors include, MTV, Universal Music, and other VCs, rumored to be in the region of $120 million. Amp’d . They sell 3 handsets from Motorola and Kyocera (MPEG4-VGA video).
Blue Ocean strategies in telecom from around the world
The content, information and opinions shared on this blog are mine and do not reflect information from my current customers. Claude Florin. claude@florin.ch
Mobile communications included SMS and downloaded applications. SMS alerts from short code 62262 (OBAMA) delivered messages such as this one
Thomas Magedanz and 
