July » 2009 » mobilegroove

THE PERCEPTION OF HIGH COSTS CONTINUES TO HOLD BACK MOBILE DATA USAGE, says a new survey from 3ple-Media. Last year, just 32 percent of mobile subscribers surveyed said that the believed receiving multimedia content on their mobile would be "too expensive", but that figure jumped to 58 percent this year. Meanwhile, 65 percent of operators surveyed agreed that cost was the biggest obstacle to users getting multimedia content. Source The bottom line: While flat-rate data plans have become more pervasive, and mobile data use has increased, cost still remains a very sticky subject, particularly for content not covered under unlimited data plans. This is a huge issue for operators and content providers looking to increase uptake of mobile content, but the implication is pretty clear: consumers don't have good pricing information, and they're hesitant to shell out without it. *** THERE'S A MIDDLE CLASS OF IPHONE APP DEVELOPERS, says mobile apps analytics company Flurry, with them bigger than independent developers, but much smaller than the traditional mobile powerhouses. The company studied the distribution of the most popular games on US carrier decks and in the Apple App Store, and found that the iPhone environment wasn't dominated by the same big names (EA, Gameloft, Namco, etc.), but rather by smaller, newer developers. Flurry says the cost of content is a big issue: it notes that in the App Store, EA's games mostly run from $5 to $10, compared to the $1 to $2 of other more popular games. It also notes that just before it conducted its analysis, Gameloft sliced the cost of its iPhone games to 99 cents; consequently 3 of its games leapt into the top 25 list. Source The bottom line: Once again, these figures show how price-sensitive consumers are when it comes to mobile content. The question for the likes of EA, though, falls back to that wonderful economic concept of price elasticity: by cutting the price of a $5 game to $1, will they get 5 times as many buyers? It's hard to get a read on that from Flurry's data, but anecdotally, it seems that users have a much easier time paying the mental transaction cost of a 99-cent app, and the lower price tempts a lot more curious buyers.

In brief: App stores are hot, but what are the challenges and where is the opportunity? This analysis draws from a variety of sources - including a recent Airwide Solutions survey, an exclusive interview with Vodafone UK's Jonathan Kelly, and a thought-provoking post from Alfred DeRose, Co-founder & Managing Director of Tego Interactive, a Web and mobile product and services company providing development and integrated solutions for the needs of major brands, content publishers and mobile network operators - to provide some practical answers. App store frenzy? That's what comes across when you connect the dots in the raft of recent announcements. Mobile operators ranging from U.S. mobile operator Verizon Wireless (which has borrowed a page from parent company Vodafone to launch a carrier-wide app store based on Java ME that can target more than one device) to China Mobile (which tells TelecomAsia.net that it's moving full-steam ahead on its Mobile Market app store where it plans to take 50 percent cut of app sales revenues) are jockeying for position and a piece of the action. Interestingly, much of the operator excitement centers on the new mobile advertising opportunity app stores represent. As Jonathan Kelly, who heads up Vodafone UK Marketing, recently told me in a briefing: "I see some quite interesting opportunities in apps and widgets. A likely scenario could involve a sponsored widget, where the brand actually works with us to create a widget or application that we then prominently place in our app store." Beyond that, Jonathan sees other opportunities around actually embedding advertising within a widget. "You could have some sort of utility widget that's providing weather, and there's no reason why certain relevant companies may not wish to have some advertising embedded within that." At the other end of the spectrum, Apple's App Store, RIM's BlackBerry App World and Android's Marketplace may have been the first to the party, but they have company. The recent JavaOne conference kicked off its annual convention by opening the doors of the Java App Store, a global marketplace for Java apps headed by Sun Microsystems. It comes on the heels of other app store news elsewhere in the industry including Nokia's launch of the Ovi app store, a storefront offering available in Australia, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ireland and the U.K, offering 20,000 titles (a fraction of which are apps) to an estimated 50 million Nokia devices globally.

MSG is expanding in all directions and part of this new-look and new focus is to showcase the thought leadership and commentary that is a well-known trademark of the Carnival of Mobilists . From mobile pundits (Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore) at Communities Dominate Brands, to mobile industry strategist Rudy De Waele, to Andrew Grill, mobile advertising evangelist, the Carnival brings together the best posts of the week from bloggers who walk the talk. This week's host is Punchcut, a San Francisco-based UI design company focused on strategy, user experience design and development for the digital lifestyle. Carnival of Mobilists #184 comes from the company blog Idlemode. Contributions this week (from Tomi Ahonen, Dennis Bournique, Judy Breck, Tam Hanna, Volker Hirsch, Holly Kolman, Sanjeet Matharu, C. Enrique Ortiz and Howard Rheingold) cover an eclectic mix of topics including app store fragmentation and frustration, Palm Pre's real market share and a look at how researchers leverage portable, camera-enabled mobile phones for diagnostic imaging and telemedicine. MSG's contribution this week was an in-depth analysis of Blyk's partnership model and its first deal with Vodafone Netherlands. Enjoy! Next week's Carnival will be hosted by Eric Chan at Mobileslate.

In brief: An analysis on mobile search strengths and shortcomings based on some eye-opening usage stats presented at the recent Mobile Search Masterclass; a summary of key findings from MSG's own mobile voice search white paper (examining how Google stacks up against ChaCha and Vlingo using Yahoo as the default search engine); and the business case for a new breed of mobile search tools (ranging from social search to SMS search to content verticals) PLUS news you may have missed from Alabot, an Indian company specialized in natural language and artificial intelligent applications which enable interactive, multi-lingual mobile search. No matter how you look at it (and who you ask) mobile search, the model that has effectively retrofitted Internet search for mobile devices, is riddled with shortcomings This was the message that came across in the interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research UK, the presentations I and other search authorities made during the recent Mobile Search Masterclass in London, and, more recently, in the mobile search assessment white paper (Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone) I co-authored with Peggy Albright. (DOWNLOAD) Is mobile search broken? More importantly, how can we fix it? These are the questions I put to a variety of executives representing companies from across the mobile search and advertising business ecosystem. Read between the lines, and their answers - along with my own conclusions - point to areas of improvement and opportunity in mobile search. MOBILE ADVERTISING RESEARCH UK Primary research and C-Level interviews with agencies, brands, operators and third-parties reveal mobile search is missing the mark. Their gripe: the poor quality of mobile search (specifically universal search powered by keyword queries and PageRank algorithms) is to blame for a lack of interest and investment in paid search advertising. As a leading executive at a global brand put it: "Just between the two of us, our spend for search is by far not in the digits yet - and it won't be....We do a lot in mobile, but the basics of search are not yet at the level of sophistication consumers would expect from us." At the other end of the spectrum, agencies are far from upbeat about the short-term outlook for mobile search. As one managing director at a mobile marketing agency put it: "Just the way the content is indexed prevents advertisers from creating a cohesive plan to integrate search in their [mobile] advertising strategies. There is just not the volume to get in and really do some targeted search [advertising], and that's what brands want: to make advertising personal and relevant to every search the consumer makes."

In brief: An analysis of what Blyk's partnership with Vodafone Netherlands really means, an exclusive Q&A with Blyk co-founder and CEO, Pekka Ala-Pietilä, and some big questions mobile operators can't ignore: Why is advertising the major revenue source for every mass media except mobile? And how do operators plan to compete with media and Internet companies to capture the most value in mobile media? It's been a bit quiet at MSG as I finalize the plans and partnerships that will transform MSG into a media company and lay the groundwork for an ambitious mobile marketing publishing project that has already earned the endorsement of several major industry organizations. (More in a press release soon via RealWire, a global news release distribution service and MSG partner that, like the online media industry that is its focus, is always-on, always-connected and always professional, which is why I can recommend them so highly.) But I couldn't end the week without posting an analysis of the exciting (but not unexpected) news from Blyk, combination mobile engagement media company, mobile advertising startup and MVNO, that it had signed an deal with to roll out its branded service in partnership with Vodafone Netherlands and to share revenues with the operator. Connect the dots, and Blyk has executed on the game-changing strategy that Antti Öhling, Blyk co-founder and CEO U.K., outlined in May in this exclusive Q&A. In it he provides solid logic for "making the switch" from MVNO (a model he called a "proof of concept") to youth engagement media. The reasons range from scale and speed (both accelerated through partnership with operators) to the ones that matter most to advertisers: reach and engagement.

AD BUYING IS TRENDING UPWARD, says a regular tracking report of the "advertising confidence" of media buyers and marketers, from Advertiser Perceptions Inc. The report says that in every medium except local newspapers, advertisers are looking to increase their spending, potentially signaling that the ad market has already bottomed out and is beginning to recover. Additionally, the report says that mobile is the sector about which those surveyed are the most optimistic, followed closely by online. Source The Bottom Line: As the economy begins to recover, so too will advertising. But that doesn't mean that things will go back to the same state they were in a year or two ago. The recession and subsequent drop off in ad spending may prove to be an inflection point where marketers shift their spending away from old-media outlets like newspapers, in favor of newer channels like mobile. *** MOBILE USABILITY IS AN OXYMORON, according to a study of mobile web sites from well-known usability consultants Nielsen Norman Group. The company says that the results remind them of their first study of desktop PC sites in 1994, and that user had much lower success rates at completing tasks than on desktop sites. The group tested 36 web sites, asking users to attempt particular tasks on each one, such as trying to find information about wine on a wine site, or flight information on an airline's mobile site. They also tested "web-wide tasks" where users could utilize any site they wanted. The average success rate on mobile was 59 percent, compared to 80 percent on PCs, while they also found that users of mobile-specific sites were successful 64 percent of the time, compared to 53 percent when trying to use a full desktop site on a mobile device. Source