Will 2012 be the year of mobile commerce?

This week’s m-pulse catches up with Chetan Sharma, independent consultant and well-known industry authority, to discuss mobile mega-trends and deep-dive into the results of the 2012 Mobile Industry Predictions Survey. Each year Chetan asks us —the mobile industry — to weigh in on the most newsworthy events and companies, as well as vote for the breakthrough categories, developments and technologies sure to define 2012.

Rob and I also discuss our pick of hot mobile news and data points. I rant about the disconnect between the mobile and retail readiness of luxury brands (lacking to say the least!) and our willingness (even requirement) to interact with luxury brands via our mobile phones and tablets.

Rob directs our attention to  Shopkick —hailed as the largest location-based shopping app in the U.S. —and its announcement that it has helped drive more than $110 million in-store revenue for partner retailers and brands in 2011, and is poised to do even more in 2012.

Finally, we raise our ‘Goblet of Rock’ (a toast to those who rock)to Scoopshot, a super-cool mobile crowdsourcing app with a built in ecosystem that allows media companies to produce fresh content by connecting with a community of people who have the app, take the pictures and want to cash in on the opportunity to earn money for the news photos they capture (and still return their intellectual property rights).

[Editor's note: More in our exclusive interview with CEO Niko Ruokosuo here on MobileGroove tomorrow.]

Who, what, where, when & how?

Chetan is a long-time industry veteran accustomed to asking the tough questions (and giving us some insightful answers). In his interview with m-pulse Chetan runs through the 20 questions that made up his 2012 predictions survey and the surprising responses he got from the some 150+ industry experts and execs that offered their insights.

• Tablets: Who will dominate the tablet platform in the next 2 years? Android and Apple iOS lead the pack, a response Chetan notes spells especially bad news for Microsoft. “This means that even in two years people are not placing their bets on Windows.” This may not come as a huge surprise, but it does confirm a profound shift in the marketplace that transcends single platforms and products. “Apple is demolishing its rivals left and right, and it’s so far ahead in terms of profitability that no one can come close to Apple at this point.” Tablets were also named the ‘most successful non-mobile phone category in 2012,” a development Chetan reads as a clear indication that tablets will “change the commerce landscape dramatically.”
• Mobile commerce: It dominates several sections of the survey. What will be the breakthrough category in 2012? For the second year in a row mobile payments and mobile commerce take the top two spots on a long list — ahead of mobile health, mobile coupons, mobile VoIP, mobile advertising and LBS. What will be the most popular consumer application in 2012? Again, mobile payments and mobile commerce come have the lead, beaten out only by messaging. Chetan’s take: messaging and commerce are the focus for the developing regions of the world; developed nations are likely to gravitate toward commerce (again!) and location-based services. And finally, which industry segment will mobile impact the most? Retail leads the pack — again driving home the point that this may be the year retail must reinvent itself, or miss the mobile wave (accelerated by the rise of mobile payments and commerce). As Chetan puts it: “The pace of change is fast and furious and lots of companies will be surprised by commerce.”
• Mobile showdowns: According to the survey, Microsoft is the one to watch. It was named as the company likely to make the biggest mobile acquisition. What company could/should Microsoft buy to bolster its position in mobile? We debate this key question, as well as the fate of Nokia. Lumia is off to a good start, so what should the next move be? Chetan has some solid advice: If AT&T and T-Mobile inject marketing dollars into the launch, then Lumia could see a similar growth trajectory to the one that catapulted Android Droid (via Verizon Wireless) into the center of the action.

As Rob puts it, our interview with Chetan is 30 minutes of pure mobile goodness. Listen in and find out why by viewing the latest episode at the end of this post.

Luxury opportunity

The advent of the smartphone and, in particular, Apple’s high-end devices (also tablets) have opened up new opportunities for the luxury sector. The question is: Do they ‘get’ it?

While some case studies stand out from the crowd (such as BMW) a recent study (the Prestige 100 Mobile IQ report released in January by L2 Think Tank, part of the New York University Stern School of Business, should have alarms bells ringing.

The report ranks the mobile offerings of prestige brands in across several sectors (beauty/skincare, fashion, hospitality, retail, and watches/jewelry) looking at how effective their mobile apps are — that is, if they have apps at all (!).

Topping the list of the mobile-savvy brands are Sephora (whose mobile site features product videos organized by content type and filterable by brand, as well as a GPS-based store locator, shopping list creator, order history/tracking, and a section for mobile-exclusive offers).

Sephora also gets points for ‘cool’ with an iPad app that lets users look at themselves on one side of the screen while watching how-to videos on applying makeup on the other.

But being cool is only half the battle. The report reminds us that, while seven out of 10 luxury brands on the list have set up mobile apps for Apple iOS-powered devices such as iPhones and iPads, less than a third let users shop using their mobile devices.

So are luxury brands falling down when it comes to mobile and retail readiness? Are companies leaving money on the table by not letting us shop till we drop? Tough questions, but the data I am collecting for a client research project confirms a dangerous disconnect between brand approach and audience demographics.

For one, the report states that 20 percent of individuals with $1 million or more in investable assets own a tablet and spend 50 percent more time on the device than on their smartphone. Good reason for brands to be present on these platforms with mobile optimized sites and offers.

Additionally, a landmark report on the retail sector by Millennial Media, a leading independent mobile advertising and data company, and consumer research conducted by comScore, confirms the massive mobile marketing (and commerce) opportunities for prestige brands.

Specifically, it found that the vast majority of mobile retail users are tech-savvy digital natives between the ages of 18 and 35 for whom the mobile phone has become an indispensable part of their daily routine. However, these Millennials are not just more sophisticated; they also tend to be more affluent. The data, which breaks down mobile retail users by income, shows that the percentage of mobile retail users is higher than the total audience in several income brackets. Interestingly, mobile retail users lead in the +$100,000 annual income bracket, providing retail advertisers — particularly those selling luxury goods — a significant audience that is likely to appreciate and respond to a mobile call to action.

My take: Given the demographics of mobile users and mobile retail users it’s amazing that so few luxury brands are serious about mobile (not to mention tablets).

Check out episode #3 of m-pulse

Look for m-pulse for your weekly dose of what matters most in mobile. We thank you for your positive feedback, shout outs and RTs. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me or my co-host Rob Woodbridge, founder and owner of UNTETHER.tv, with your good ideas and great companies.

In February we celebrate the ‘Year of the Ear’ — to borrow an observation from Mary Meeker’s invaluable trends presentation. Our topic is mobile voice, and our guest next week is Bill Meisel, independent consultant and the industry go-to guy for all things voice-enabled.

From a special section that expertly outlines the opportunities, challenges and attitudes around mobile marketing and advertising in India, to path-breaking research and models that harness our interaction with mobile social networks to drive frequency (and results!), this issue is the one if you are looking for a balanced mix of academic insights and practical business advice.

By way of background, the IJMM is published twice a year with the support of the Mobile Marketing Association. Each issue features articles and papers from academics, students, as well as mobile industry thought leaders. It is in its 7th year — and continues to grow from strength to strength with every issue. There are opportunities for firms to help underwrite and sponsor special editions, so please contact northamerica@mmaglobal.com.

Be counted (and quoted)

But the real opportunity that shouldn’t be missed is a new feature slot called INVITED COMMENTARY, a special section that allows industry executives and influencers provide actionable ideas and insights.

The new section kicks off with a contribution from Mihai Vlad, Head of Audience Management & Insight at Optism. He draws from his observations to make a strong case for transparency, straight talk and trust-building in permission marketing approaches. [More in this article excerpt.]

His argument is on the mark — particularly since the success of permission marketing rests on the quality of the dialog. To drive it home he provides mobile marketers a blueprint they can follow to maximize the value of their permission based mobile marketing initiatives. His five best practices to follow stress the paramount importance of thinking human and ‘nudging’ to ensure positive outcomes.

Guidelines & deadlines

MobileGroove is proud to collaborate with Michael Hanley —  IJMM Editor-in-Chief and  Associate Professor of Advertising, Ball State University — to promote this excellent work and amplify the call for contributions and papers. The IJMM has featured a whopping 130+ articles since it first went live, so make sure your voice is heard!

Also: The Summer 2012 issue of the IJMM will feature a special section on Mobile Marketing and Advertising in China along with articles from around the globe, and an INVITED COMMENTARY from a voice in the industry we need to hear.

Submit your draft or prospectus (in MS Word format) via email mmajournal@mmaglobal.com,  or visit: http://mmaglobal.com/resources/international-journal-mobile-marketing/call-for-paper for more information.

The submission deadline for the next issue (Summer 2012) is March 15, 2012.

If you miss that, then you can target the next issues.

• Winter 2012 (submission deadline: September 15, 2012)
• Summer 2013 (submission deadline: March 15, 2013)

Check out the new issue — or purchase past issues —by clicking the banner below.

Understanding this gap — and the need to collaborate with many mobile authorities, rather than leave such a work to a single writer — GigaOM PRO has published a new report that provides us a valuable roadmap to navigate mobile for the months (and years!) ahead. I contributed the section on the future of mobile search, which I will explore later down in this post.

First, more about GigaOM PRO. The research arm of GigaOM, GigaOM PRO was created to address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets. And it is doing an impressive job, by making high-quality expert reports, data and commentary easy to access and highly interactive for our community in key emerging technology areas.

For this reason, I used the latest segment of the new vodcast — m-pulse — to raise a goblet of rock to the resource that uniquely gives us a collaborative view of the trends to watch and the results to expect.

Mobile search landscape

My contribution to this mobile anthology is the section on mobile search and the evolution of what I call ‘zero-search’ (using implicit inputs or statistical models to present users with results they are likely to appreciate as opposed to key words or other inputs). In key word search, Google own the market. But —I argue —it’s unlikely that the search giant will continue to dominate in the future.

Competition in mobile search is on the rise. And we can expect more companies to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI), personalization and the social graph to deliver users more precise search results suited to the mobile platform — in some cases even before we explicitly request them.

As I further point out in the section, the door is wide open for companies with social in their DNA to win with approaches that infuse human preferences and judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint truly relevant information and better answers.

Another hot area in mobile search is apps. As we know, there are tens of thousands of applications on most application stores, and driving awareness is costly for developers and brands. App search is currently dominated by classic keyword search and “find similar” solutions that rely on social graphs and statistics. However, there are several new players (Chomp, Do@, findahh) with new approaches that are gaining traction.

Precision search needed

The verticalization of mobile search will likely accelerate as we become more sophisticated in our use of mobile devices and tablets to access and search the Internet. And with this development will come an increased user requirement for what I call “precision search.”

Why? Because while devices will likely pack more computing power, they will keep roughly the same size displays, screens are not suited to reams of results (and neither is our patience). Additionally, the huge growth in data, the failure of filters and the lack of machine readable metadata will persist, creating a need for search that can focus on a specific query and deliver genuinely relevant and useful results.

Against this backdrop, how will mobile search evolve in the next years? What services will it enable? And what will our experience be?

I map out the future of mobile search innovation (enabled by a new breed of vertical search engines and apps) as follows:

Who are the companies to watch in 2012 and beyond? What services and strategies will move mobile search a huge step forward? I encourage you to download GigaOM PRO’s segment by segment analysis by clicking the box below.

Interestingly, a string of recent market developments (eBay snapping up recommendation engine Hunch, Siri redefining what we except from mobile ’smart’ assistants and CNN tapping Zite to deliver truly personal and personalized news) support my conclusions and make this report a must-read anthology.

Mobile search profile series

It’s been busy times at MobileGroove and the focus in 2012 is on expansion at all levels and across all media.

Takeaways (and companies) from this report will also be covered in my soon-to-launch weekly live radio show. In addition, the new m-pulse vodast series with Rob Woodbridge and UNTETHER.tv will dedicate a month to analyzing mobile search innovation from a variety of perspectives (vendor, brand, innovator, aggregator). And our esteemed colleague and industry veteran Charles Knight will be back with his series of interviews and road tests.

In February I will also profile some of THE companies to watch in this exciting space, beginning with Expertmaker. This European-based has come out of stealth mode to equip developers and companies with tools and APIs, allowing the easy creation of a plethora of precision search services and apps. Look for recommenders, interactive shopping assistants and more. Expertmaker also powers the smart shopping assistant already on  offer via a major commerce giant. Martin Rugfelt, Expertmaker CMO, and I will discuss the company’s progress (which also further validates the overall trend to mobile search verticalization).

Topics covered in this report include :

TAPPING THE TABLET MARKET’S FULL POTENTIAL –BY COLIN GIBBS

MOBILE SERVICES: THE NEXT FRONTIER INWIRELESS –BY GERRY PURDY, PH.D.

CONNECTED DEVICES: OPPORTUNITES FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS –BY LAURIE LAMBERTH

THE FUTURE OF MOBILEHEALTH, 2011–2016 –BY JODY RANCK, DRPH

HOW SOCIAL-LOCATION-MOBILE (SOLOMO) IS TRANSFORMING E-COMMERCE –BY DR. PHIL HENDRIX,PH.D., AND ERIC

THE NEW BREED OF MOBILE SEARCH ENGINES –BY PEGGY ANNE

MAKE ME AN OFFER: HYPERLOCAL TARGETING IN MOBILE –BY GREG STERLING

MOBILE PAYMENTS: THE NEXT IMPORTANT GROWTH IN THE MOBILE MARKET–BY PETER CROCKER

THE FUTURE OF MOBILEADVERTISING, 2011–2016 –BY NEIL STROTHER

A MOBILE VOIP AND CHAT OUTLOOK –BY PIM BILDERBEEK

SOLUTIONS FOR A NEW AGE OF WIRELESS MOBILE BACKHAUL –BY MONICA PAOLINI

This week’s m-pulse — the new vodcast series produced by Rob Woodbridge, founder and owner of UNTETHER.tv, in collaboration with MobileGroove — catches up with Kevin  C. Tofel, Mobile site editor at GigaOM.com, where he covers mobile technology and the global wireless industry. Continuing our theme for January, we deep-dive into his list of 16 mobile industry predictions for 2012 and get his take on the week’s hot mobile news.

Rob and I also discuss hot mobile news and the results of a recent survey into our willingness to interact with brands that target us through our social networking profile. The takeaway (further down in this post) provides practical advice for marketers trying to crack the MoSo code. Finally, we recommend a new GigaOm PRO report that looks beyond 2012 to identify the mobile megatrends that will surely define the next three years (and beyond).

Wearable computing

Kevin, a gadget guy and tech aficionado, doesn’t just write about technology. He lives it. His enthusiasm for smart homes and wearable computing (the top two predictions on his thought-provoking list) is based on real-life road tests of smart devices (which he shares in his interview), as well as insights drawn from interviews with industry movers and shapers. Kevin’s take: Watch for wearable computers (specifically those related to monitoring and communicating information about our heath and wellness) to become more mainstream.

A big boost to all this is bound to be the advance of  Bluetooth 4.0 (which has already been embraced by Apple and Nokia). By way of background, Bluetooth is an open wireless technology that allows wireless communication over short distances. It’s a secure protocol that connects mobile as well as fixed devices, and could disrupt everything since it effectively enables communication with your device at the application level, as this blog post via ExtemeTech details.

Microsoft & more

In line with the news of day, Kevin and Rob dissected the decline of Research In Motion (RIM) — which was interestingly also one of Kevin’s 2012 predictions. His take: RIM’s missteps and late reaction to competition finally exact a toll. Expect RIM to be bought (mainly for its patents), or become a services-focused company.

Microsoft is a tough one to call. Kevin reported that CES was upbeat about the Windows Phone, a reaction Kevin reads as a positive in Microsoft’s favor. He concludes Windows Phone will see some serious adoption and —in any case — outsell RIM.

However, the picture outside the U.S. is less clear.

I point out that Lumia initially got a lukewarm response in Europe. While I didn’t go into deep detail during the vodcast, I was referring to a December survey by Exane BNP Paribas that showed European consumers had little interest in Nokia’s Lumia, the first smartphone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software. Specifically, only 2.2 percent of surveyed buyers (1,000 across five countries) said they intended to purchase the Lumia, far behind devices from Apple and Samsung. Meantime, we learn from Bloomberg (according to the average estimate of 22 analysts) that Lumia handsets, which went on sale in Europe in November, probably sold 1.3 million units globally to operators and retailers by end-2011.

Mindshare is a different story, and to make this point I quoted the phenomenal Developer Economics report from VisionMobile (sponsored by BlueVia). It draws from 900+ developer interviews to conclude that “Windows is not yet the third horse in the three-horse mobile race.” However, this could shift if developers begin to see Windows Phone as a commercial viable platform. Kevin and I agree: developer intent and mindshare could shift this.

BTW: This is why I am eager to see the results to the NEW Developer Economics report slated for release in February. With this in mind the report is also a focus at m-pulse in March, when we dedicate the month to issues around developers and the App Economy. Kudos to Andreas Constantinou, Matos  Kapetenakis and the rest of the team at VisionMobile for delivering us one of the best industry reports — and filling a critical knowledge gap.

Social media do’s & don’ts for marketers

As part of the m-pulse flow Rob zeroes in on the headlines rocking the mobile space. I, on the other hand, prefer to look at people and the data points that provide us insight into how mobile is impacting our lives at all levels. Obviously, our attitudes and usage are essential data for trend-watchers and companies across the ecosystem…

With that in mind I highlight a rather obscure report from Insight Strategy Group (via Mediapost) looking at social media campaigns and marketing and what people will and will not accept. I have failed to get a copy of the original results, so there’s still a question mark over the methodology.

However, the finding (though focused on online) are also relevant to mobile, our default state when we connect with our social networks in the first place.

Among the findings:

• 64 percent of people say they “hate” when a company targets them through their social networking profile
• 58 percent agree that social media marketing is invasive
• 55 percent believe social networking sites are the best way to give a company feedback and that posting about a product or service on a social site can have a strong impact on a brand
• 62 percent of those who have been using social sites for more than eight years are following brands, compared to 46 percent of those on social networks for only three to four years, and 20 percent using them for less than a year
• 54 percent of people say they like it when a company has a page or feed on a social networking site.
• 58 percent indicate incentives help attract their attention — and the most common reason for following a brand on social networks is to get special news and deals.

Read between the lines, and we have a welcome confirmation of the conversational nature of social media and clear indications of what brand marketers should and shouldn’t do. People don’t want to be followed/stalked by brands. They want conversations on their terms — and like it when brands have a presence on a social networking site.

And what can turn a fan into a brand advocate? Interestingly, exclusive information and deals are effective incentives. This finding jives with what Millennials told me during the series of virtual round tables I conducted on behalf of Optism. My work was to delve into the reasons why Millennials might opt-in to accept advertising. To my surprise, Millennials were lukewarm about freebies and told me it was more important to be one of an in-crowd and get all the products news and deals before their peers.

This survey (mixed with my other research findings) sends a clear message to marketers: respect your customers and don’t target them through their social networking profile. But do be present and available to listen to their feedback and provide input that they welcome (and find non-invasive). You may also turn that one-off conversation into an ongoing exchange with your brand if you provide an incentive people value (such as access to news and deals about they products they love).

Must-read Mobile Anthology

Finally, I raise my goblet of rock and salute The Future Of Mobile: A Segment Analysis by GigaOM PRO. The 115+ page report explores what the future of mobile holds for various segments of the mobile industry. From mobile cloud computing, to location based services, to mobile search and personalization, the authors (all subject matter experts in their respective fields), offer unique viewpoints based on hard market data and research.

I am proud to have contributed the section on Mobile Search, where I discuss the evolution of mobile search and the new breed of mobile search service providers harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) and recommendation to move the market (and our now zero-search experiences) to the next level. (See related summary post in Featured section.)

If you want a report that delivers actionable insights for 2012 and far beyond, then register to download this report TODAY!

And don’t forget to check out episode #3 of m-pulse

Look for m-pulse every Friday for your weekly dose of what matters most in mobile. This month our topic is 2012 predictions that set the bar, and our guest next week is Chetan Sharma, who will discuss the top level findings of his recent survey and his pick of 2012 trends.

For industry watchers, news from RIM and Apple gave us a deeper look at company performance and clues to the capabilities that likely play a lead role in deciding the leaders from the laggards.

While it was hardly a shocker when BlackBerry maker RIM made a change at the top (investors and analysts had been calling for the appointment of a “transformational” leader for some time), the choice of candidate to replace co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie did come as a surprise.

Even more unexpected was the comment by the new CEO Thorsten Heins — an insider and current Chief Operating Officer — that he didn’t “think that there is some drastic change needed.”

Read between the lines, and his leadership style likely supports the status quo, not transformation.

As Heins put in his interview with Reuters, process is the focus. “I’m a German so I like this word, the process discipline, I think that is something we need to get better at. But this is not a seismic change. This is scaling the company further and we will continue to scale this company up. We need to be more consumer-orientated because this is where a lot of our growth is coming from.”

Heins is upbeat about the “new heights” that can be reached. “Innovation is endless, we will have a lot of fun.”

In addition to having insights into work-in-progress at RIM, we also have the inside track on Apple’s performance in the last quarter. Specifically, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, 15.5 million iPads, and 5.2 million Mac computers. It produced $46.33 billion in revenue and earned $13.06 billion.

How I See It: I appreciate the transparency, but it’s not a one-way street. We also “saw right through” Heins’ spin and claim that change is not the order of the hour. Put it in perspective, and the 37 million iPhones sold by Apple in the last quarter is a number that gives us insights into how bad things are at RIM. According to reports, the 37 million iPhones are equal to approximately half of all BlackBerry devices in use today. Now let me tell a personal “BlackBerry fail” story. I’ve owned three BlackBerry phones over the last eight years. Lately, I’ve had to defend my choice since I also have an iPhone and get the same email on that device. I had a $35 a month data-only account with AT&T, which was sufficient until my company switched to Microsoft Exchange to manage and deliver email. AT&T and BlackBerry told me I needed a new plan, one that would increase my monthly cost by $50. Despite my 15 or so years experience with AT&T and long tenure with RIM, neither would suggest anything sensible to keep my business. So it’s more than innovation that is needed to get RIM back on track. It’s about coming up with better service options and approaches aimed at long-time customers who would stick with BlackBerry if the offer was right.

MMA mobile app guidelines

The MMA is stepping up to address the thorny issue of app privacy with guidelines that go a long toward helping developers explain the privacy practices of each of their apps and stay in compliance with applicable law and industry standards.

And it couldn’t come at a better time for all the stakeholders. “Mobile app developers asked for clear, transparent policy language that consumers can quickly and fully understand,” MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart said in a statement.

The guidelines address key issues including:

• Annotated guidance on core privacy principles and consumer-friendly language for developers to consider using
• Ways to inform users on how data is obtained and used
• Guidance on security and confidentiality of information

How I See It: The MMA and its members should be applauded for taking this step. Common sense would tell marketers to proceed without the document, but having agreed guidelines that we can follow will certainly help. Now we’ll need to monitor how well developers follow the practices laid out in the MMA document (or not). As I’ve written in earlier columns here on MobileGroove and elsewhere, privacy concerns tops the list of burning issues in 2012 that the industry must address. The answer lies in practices that reassure consumers that mobile apps — and their developers — are not abusing user trust or divulging personal information to partners and third-parties without people’s express consent. The MMA guidelines demonstrate resolve — in words and deeds. Will it all work the way we want it just because there is a policy in place? Of course not. Expect breaches, then histrionics from politicians and regulators trying to get on the news in the name of consumer protection.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

National Retail Federation Show, New York City:

Indeed, the reality of a connected shopping experience with smartphones at the center may not be far off. However, this show was proof to me that we have to get past our focus on technology (and B2B) and walk in the shoes of our customers (understanding that it’s B2C that is really at the core). And, since it is about the shopper experience, it’s clear that winning Retail 2.0 strategies will be the ones that bring CIOs and CMOs to the table.

Thankfully, technology is not an issue. In fact, judging from the number of vendors who used the event to show off an ‘old’ technology with a new twist, you could say that we are going to see a comeback of sorts.

Yes, RFID is back on the agenda — along with technology solutions to help retailers track the product life-cycle from factory to sale using near-field communications (NFC) and RFID chips, “smart” tags that track every item to gain real-time visibility into its key business processes.

Exhibitors such as SAP, Oracle and JDA Software showed how serialized data from RFID tags, which are embedded into product tags, can be integrated with business information from back-end systems along the supply chain. Track a sweater from factory to show room to purchase and possibly customer return? It’s coming. Allow retailer micro-visibility into order status and inventory. It’s work in progress.

However, many vendors are still missing the full story (and the strategy to make it all happen). To me, it was as if they ended the story in mid-pitch. Yes, it is about the efficiencies that RFID and other wireless, smart technology bring to retail overall. And yes, that is generally a matter that involves technology and the CIOs who engineer retail to deliver results.

But what about the new frontier — which I call Retail 2.0 — and harnessing mobile to understand and improve how people shop? And what about the potential to use this technology to involve people in the process, making them an informed and important part of the supply chain? This is where I miss the interest and input of CMOs.

Technology already impacts consumers’ daily routines. NFC-enabled phones are entering the market this year, enabling shoppers to do much more than just buy stuff on the move. People are becoming empowered to participate in the retail business ecosystem.

Put another way, the advance of smartphone scanners and apps that allow shoppers to navigate stores, find items, compare prices and get more product information are all capabilities that allow people to participate in and define their shopping experience from research to purchase. Retail 2.0 is about opening up retailers’ business information to the consumer to ultimately close the cross-channel disconnect.

Retail 2.0 is about the shopper

This last holiday season we saw the Amazon cloud abruptly enter the shopping mall and rudely disrupt retail sales. The outcome: Shoppers increasingly reach to their phones to compare prices and investigate product information and options. The race is on for all retailers to respond. Book, electronic, apparel, shoe stores and chains like Target are all working on strategies to become more relevant to this digital consumer.

Gone are the days when the consumer relied on the sales clerk for information and advice. That’s value their personal and connected devices can also deliver. What’s more, in most stores the “blue shirt” clerk has less access to technology than their customer, a sophisticated, swaggering smartphone shopper.

What to do? How can we connect with the shopper before they are poached by Amazon through its PriceCheck App? And how do retailers prepare for the skirmishes sure to happen once the  soon-to-come Kindle Fire 4G devices hit the market with their array of in-store mobile commerce tools? (What Amazon has cleverly chosen to call “pro-consumer” solutions…)

RFID pushes the boundaries

This is where (and why) RFID “smart” tags offer a solution. Often described as “bar codes on steroids,” RFID tags are equipped with a tiny antenna and a microprocessor, which stores a special number for every product – the so-called electronic product code (EPC). In connection with the retailer’s data warehouse it communicates data such as description, price, origin, shelf life and storage location.

Proponents of the technology say RFID technology will progressively replace existing bar codes. Unlike bar code labels these “smart” tags do not require a line of sight reader or scanner, and can therefore communicate directly with other objects – and without human intervention.

Ironically, retailers have traditionally been the drivers of this technology with mega-chains such as Wal-Mart in the U.S. and Metro in Europe implementing the technology to increase visibility into the supply chain, tracking everything from jeans to jelly.

Asset control, asset tracking, and the need to increase supply chain clearly propelled the RFID market in the last decade, enabling retailers to “see” the movement of products from the pallet in the distribution center, to the shelves in the store, to the shoppers’ baskets.

Each step of the way “smart tags” have allowed for better replenishment decisions, enabling retailers visibility into their inventories and sales.

But the RFID smart tag solution is not just a solution for retailers. Other industry sectors — including the public sector — are moving ahead on approaches that reinforce the growing importance of RFID in all things wireless.

More retailers (not just the major chains) are exploring RFID solutions to track and trace products. Law enforcement authorities are implementing RFID schemes to detect and prevent counterfeiting. The financial services industry is exploring ways to harness RFID (coupled with NFC) to design digital wallets.

Take a closer look at the use cases and scenarios and you’ll see that they all share one common interface: people using an NFC-enabled phones can participate in these experiences.

With it they can:

• Explore information on the product (track and trace)
• Verify that a Prada bag is authentic (counterfeiting)
• Receive an offer on the product (wallet)

If retailers design their back room inventory systems to allow for shopper-side access, then every product with a serialized RFID tag would also pave the way for a smart(er) shopping experience. By simply tapping the RFID tag with their phone, shoppers could open a browser window to access product information, product authenticity validation and jumpstart the all-important brand engagement that is the end-game of any interaction. Thus, we move from efficiency to lasting customer engagement  in the form CRM,

All this is without downloading a mobile app, QR code reader or even texting.

It’s not rocket science

In a world where the retailer needs to count clicks to commerce, using existing merchandising solutions such as RFID and NFC can pay dividends. They allow retailers to provide for simple shopper engagement and accelerate the path-to-purchase.

But first CIOs and CMOs need to sit at the same table (and be on the same page).

Once they work out a strategy to hand off product information and data from the enterprise to the shopper, then they can move beyond track and trace within their premises to engagement far beyond the boundaries of the enterprise.

The technology is mature and the CIO is already developing a data repository to store events associated with uniquely identified products and associated business information. Let the shopper into this repository and watch the results when shoppers have access to explore product information at the tap of their phone and participate in the commerce they drive.

About Gary:

Gary brings us insights on all things at the intersection of mobile and retail, directly from places and cases where the action is. Gary — who is the CEO of Impact Mobile, Inc., North America Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) and author of THE IMPULSE ECONOMY — has held a leadership role in the mobile industry for over a decade.  He has a long and impressive track record that includes mobile-first activities (in 2002, Gary ran the first cross-carrier short code campaign in North America) and achievements. In 2006, Gary founded the mobile committee for the Interactive Advertising Bureau  and has since worked to publish literature such as the Mobile Buyer’s Guide, for which he received an IAB award for industry excellence in 2009). In 2010, Gary was elected as the Chair of MEF North America with a remit to develop a mobile commerce practice to service brands, retailers and content owners (for which he received a MEF award for industry excellence). In 2011, in partnership with MEF and a number of industry groups including the X9 security standards body, Gary began work to develop m-commerce security and privacy guidelines. You can read his book and blog at www.theimpulseeconomy.com. Follow Gary on Twitter at @impulseeconomy

In my view, technology won’t limit how we use, access and enjoy the world (digital and physical) on our wireless devices. The carriers and hardware and software makers will do that with closed approaches that limit what is possible.

For years, the carriers (mobile operators) have tightly controlled the services and featured available on handsets and delivered over their networks. Be it content or products, the carriers have acted as gatekeepers with a singular focus: look out for their interests first.

Then there’s Apple, which famously bypasses all operators and flaunts a closed Apple system. Content is only accessible using Apple devices that, in turn, only use the Apple iOS platform. Mobile apps are approved by Apple and sold via the Apple App Store. And advertising is served via the Apple platform — period.

Google is also clamping down. Granted Android is more open than Apple, but Google’s decision to beef up its search engine results gives us more reason to be concerned than to celebrate.

Google intends to add social networking results to the results we receive in response to our search queries. But don’t assume your search results will display a wide variety of results from a wide variety of social networks. No, Google is just adding the results that come via Google+, the search giant’s own social networking service (which has so far seen more buzz in the media than it deserves given the low level of member activity).

This is a huge step backward — not forward — and ignores the desire of us (the people) to have all-inclusive search results that allow us open access to everything on the Web.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Google has limited our access.

Last summer, the company turned off real-time search results from Twitter in what was described as a contact dispute. Back then (as is the case now), we — the people seeking information through the Google search box — were the losers.

Google is spinning or in denial on the issue. An official blog post states that: “Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.”

The features added (as described by Google):

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

How I See It: Google has proclaimed loud and long that its practices stand in strong contrast to those of Apple. Google’s Android operating system, for example, is widely regarded as being not only good for everyone in the mobile ecosystem, but also for consumers worldwide. However, Google’s moves this week tell a totally different story. Is Google becoming a closed shop? Twitter is worried. It was among those who criticized the ‘improvements’ to Google Search. “We’re concerned that, as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users,” the company said in a statement. Google’s version of the story? It says Twitter is not included in search results because Twitter chose not to renew its contract. Where does this leave us? According to the Los Angeles Times, a privacy watchdog group will likely step up and complain to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about the privacy and antitrust concerns this new Google search feature raises. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has said his group is considering filing a letter with the FTC. Where does this leave Google? It may ultimately “search” for a way to display more people-focused information in search results while still maintaining control over what we get in the end.

Innovation abounds at CES

Enough about the limitation we face. Let’s shift to innovation that awaits us.

Here is some of the stuff that caught my attention this week:

• Samsung’s attempt to hit the sweet spot was the introduction of a 7.7 inch Galaxy tablet. You may remember the company’s first effort was 7 inches. Did focus groups tell Samsung the 7-incher was too small and 8-incher was a wee-bit too big?
• From the “getting with the times” department, Polaroid introduced a camera powered by Android. Users can upload images to social networks.
• Microsoft’s Windows Phones were warmly received by many, marking a departure from previous shows where Microsoft products were panned.
• RIM announced that it is bringing native email to its Playbook tablet. Can someone explain to me why it has taken the company — that built its market prowess on email and messaging — nine months to provide us an email solution?
• Ultrabooks were everywhere, including a 2.5 pound, half-inch Samsung notebook that boots in under 10 seconds and has a 10-hour battery life.

How I See It: Having introduced products at CES, I know how difficult it is to break through the clutter and rise above the noise. At first, I wondered if mobile would get lost in a show that is physically difficult for media and influencers to report. But I was pleasantly surprised. Wireless grabbed many of the headlines, eclipsing what was presented as the latest and greatest televisions and audio products. In view of the fierce competition in the industry and the need to unveil innovative products sooner than later, it’s understandable that many more mobile companies used CES this year to show off their best and brightest. After all, CES is about the consumer and consumers are mobile. Next up is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which kicks off on February 27. Expect more innovation as more companies (from even more countries) use the show to debut their products and devices.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

Today (!)

Gary’s no-holds-barred analysis of mobile’s impact on bricks-and-mortar retail suggests America’s shopping malls are in for tough times in 2012 as users move from price comparison apps to making real-life purchases using cloud checkout services. We also discuss how Kindle Fire is blazing through the U.S. (and soon Europe), building on the analysis I just posted this week on MobileGroove. What is the likely impact on mobile marketing and how are users in key countries already embracing this new type of connected device? Tune in and find out! (You can follow Gary and all the tweets related to his new book at @impulseeconomy).

The Pulse moves fast

Providing short, digestible and insightful commentary, our new weekly series will focus on a different hot topic every month. This approach allows Rob and I to showcase the views of players across the ecosystem, providing a platform for stakeholders including C-level executives, tech innovators, app developers, brands, businesses, non-for-profit organizations and individual users. Topics throughout the year will range from mobile voice to mobile payments, and from education and healthcare to the always-on enterprise. (Please don’t hesitate to ‘pitch’ us. You can email me (peggy@mobilegroove.com) or DM (@peggyanne).

Each week the show will consist of three thought-provoking segments: The Big Picture, a wrap of what is highest on the radar; The Featured Guest, an informed discussion with a special guest; and The Goblet of Rock, where the hosts and their guest raise a glass to celebrate the company, app or individual they believe ‘rocks’ the space. This week Rob makes a toast to SoundTracking, the mobile app that makes music listening social and viral.

Next week…

The series will also be available for download via UNTETHER.tv .

This month our topic is 2012 predictions that set the bar, and our guest next week is Chetan Sharma, who will discuss the top level findings of his recent survey and his pick of 2012 trends.

WATCH THE PULSE WITH GARY SCHWARTZ HERE.

***

The Internet ushered in the age of free content, a shift in models that had a massive impact on the worlds of publishing, music, news and entertainment. We have seen large companies stumble (and fall) as they struggled to adapt their business models to the changing world.

Fast forward and Apple and Amazon have shown how companies can harness the Internet to generate income through the controlled downloads of books, movies, music and magazines. And it doesn’t stop there. These companies have also built tightly controlled ecosystems around their content, allowing them to control all aspects of their business right down to the distribution of connected devices (e-readers and tablets, for example) that allow consumers to access this content on the move. This end-to-end control of the content is the source of Amazon’s new power and the reason the content giant can price the Kindle Fire at just US$199, making a US$10 loss on every Fire sold.

Amazon is set to continue this aggressive pricing strategy for the Fire with a rumored launch in the U.K. in January for a reported GBP125. Read between the lines, and Amazon has managed to pull off quite a trick. It prices a desirable device at an affordable price, and recoups the money it ‘loses’ on each Kindle through selling owners books, magazines, music, movies, games and apps.

The company is also bringing a new content paradigm —tried and tested in the North American market — to Europe. Unlike other tablet devices that have significant storage capacity, the Kindle Fire is a closed shop. The devices come with  just 8GB of built-in storage, enough for about four feature length films. Limiting the storage effectively forces owners to purchase their content through Amazon, which conveniently offers unlimited cloud storage. If you don’t buy content from Amazon, then you will run out of space very quickly.

The right (digital) stuff

And let’s not forget what a treasure trove of content Amazon has to offer. Betting that content would indeed be king Amazon has focused its attention on amassing an enviable collection of content and services. Ask yourself: Why would you buy your music and films from anywhere other than Amazon, especially when you can access it online through numerous other devices?

Amazon has also paid careful (and important) attention to solving the discovery dilemma that prevents most of us from finding what we want in the first place.  And it has gone one further than Google’s famous key word search to deliver users contextual results based on previous purchases, browsing patterns, recommendations and collaborative filtering (people like you liked X).

And it works wonders (!) Because people find what they want, or are intrigued by the recommended content Amazon displays, it follows that they spend more time on Amazon and more money using their Amazon accounts. We have all succumbed to it, I’m sure. By offering this capability on a tablet with Wi-Fi connectivity, Amazon will be to be our constant companion, a relationship that will no doubt allow the company to build an even better picture of its users, paving the way for improved segmentation based on deep customer insights.

The result: a sure-fire way to better understand (even predict) the types of content specific user segments want or would likely appreciate and the ecosystem control to deliver Amazon content to Amazon customers on Amazon devices.

What’s more, consumers and Amazon benefit. Consumers get a tablet device they can afford, and Amazon hooks us to bolster their market share and mindshare.

What does it mean for Android?

At first glance, it looks like Amazon is good news all around. But the picture is very different if we look at what lies ahead for developers and other Android tablet manufacturers. As Amazon gains steam it is imperative that developers consider how this company and its emerging ecosystem might impact their business.

It’s a hot topic — and one that Amazon recently addressed on the Amazon Appstore for Android developer portal. The Kindle Fire is running a highly modified version of the Android Gingerbread (API version 2.3.4 for those interested). As a result, the Kindle won’t support the Android Marketplace. In other words, for an app to work on the Kindle Fire it must be “optimized for non-Google Mobile Services (GMS) Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) and a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600.”  This is certainly a serious issue for developers, particularly those of us who assumed we could easily target both Fire and Android tablet owners with the same app.

No. It’s going to require more effort and resources. Let me explain. When developing apps for multiple devices, Android developers are going to have to take a slew of platforms and versions into consideration, including Honeycomb, Amazon and the long-awaited Ice Cream Sandwich. In practice this means developers must optimize their app across all the flavors of Android (and now Amazon!) to get the widest reach.

The alternative is to select the top devices and develop for them. This is often the choice developers have to make for graphical and processor intensive apps such as games and Augmented Reality tools.

Under ‘fire’

Developers will also have to think through the entire customer journey they enable, paying special attention to compatibility of experiences and the payment mechanisms they employ.

With the Kindle Fire, the end-to-end control of the ecosystem extends from content to commerce. The approach — which weaves together a modified version of Android, Amazon’s Appstore and ties it all together with Amazon account information — completely bypasses Google and any requirement for a Google account. Developers are well advised to take note of this. Currently, many developers are baking Google’s services into the development of Android apps, services which are null and void when they develop for the Fire.

Will developers need to re-invent the wheel? Let’s just say that replicating an app across the Android Marketplace and the Amazon app store will require developers to have two versions of an app to guarantee cross device compatibility.  For example, apps specifically for the Kindle Fire will not be visible if they require the use of hardware features and functionality such as a gyroscope, camera, WAN module, Bluetooth, microphone, GPS, or micro-SD slot.

The challenges are even greater when it comes to in-app payments. After all, with no Google Mobile Services (GMS) developers cannot monetize additional content. While Amazon is working on a Beta for its own in-app payments, it’s only going to enable in-app payments for the Kindle platform.

A totally different solution is needed that enables in-app payments for both Android and Fire —and there is none on the horizon just yet. Thus, the lack of a common in-app payment scheme adds to the fragmentation of development. It also means that developers will have to advise their clients early on in the app development process of the potential challenges and problems. If clients want their apps duplicated across various devices, it’s likely going to take more than a few easy tweaks.

To top it all off, these apps will have to go through Amazon’s submission process. While Amazon is relatively transparent about the approval process, it is still new to many Android developers who are used to the openness of the Android Marketplace, for example.

Unfortunately, confusing submission processes and procedures are not uncommon in app development. Just ask any iOS developer who has to deal with Apple’s App Store approval process on a daily basis. Amazon adds still more complexity to the equation and developers should be prepared. Meeting the requirements of Amazon’s submission process means more work. And it could also impact deadlines. So, if companies and developers choose to develop for the Fire, then they will need to build still more time into their projects and timescales.

Is it all worth it? It’s a tough one to call. One thing for sure: the Kindle Fire is already a sales scorcher and a device that developers can’t overlook.  Developers in the U.S.  have already reported spikes in app sales thanks to the success of the Kindle Fire. When it crosses over here to the U.K. and the rest of Europe, it will be hard to ignore!

The bottom line:

The Kindle Fire has left an indelible mark on the North American market and developers here (and elsewhere) should brace themselves for impact. The overall economic model obviously benefits stakeholders across the Amazon business ecosystem with distribution, innovation and exceptional access to customers. Consumers also come away with an affordable device and an enjoyable experience. But it’s not all good news. Developers and businesses will have to grapple with more complexity and costs involved in developing apps for yet another platform. No doubt, the top ranking apps such as IMDB, Angry Birds and popular news services will see huge benefits. However, for the vast majority of companies and developers it will be a tough decision. They may just have to concede that Amazon has introduced a highly appealing device, but one that is clearly designed for Amazon and consumers. Are Amazon’s customers also your customers? If the answer is ‘yes’, then your year is off to a bang as you develop apps to take advantage of the opportunity.

About Scott:

Scott has eight year’s software development experience based in financial services and software development houses. Scott lives and breathes mobile with specialty in the Android platform and is passionate about creating fun, social and useful apps. As Android Team Leader at Mubaloo, Scott oversees all Android resources and projects from inception to delivery, striving to build in quality, security and performance. You can follow Scott on Twitter (@scottyab).

Indeed, the COM —the destination bringing you the best of mobile blogging from around the Web — has a new look, a new focus and a new schedule. With so much happening, I’d like to start off by running through the significant changes one at a time.

Beginning in 2012 the COM is back to a weekly schedule. Please check the new schedule here, and let me know which dates you would like to host the COM in 2012. (My personal thanks to Martin Wilson, leading mobile strategist, veteran Mobilist and founder of Mobileweb Company for his continued support of the COM and for stepping up to deliver us a new website design and hosting service.)

Finally, the new site is matched by a new focus on featuring YOU, the Mobilists. I want to promote your work, your services and your sites via COM, so please start off my sending me your image (thumbnail), your Twitter handle and a 50-100 word description of what you do. And don’t forget to follow the COM on Twitter (@TheMobilists) and spread the word!

Excellent line-up

This month we received a large number of submissions —covering the months of  November and December — making it just that little bit tougher for me to choose the outstanding blogs to include in this final line-up. So, here we go…

Chetan Sharma leads the pack with a must-read post recounting the highlights of his 8th Mobile Breakfast Series event. As we would expect from Chetan, he used the sold-out event to delve into the trends and opportunities sure to leave their mark on mobile in 2012 —and beyond. By the way, Chetan is also running his survey Annual Mobile Predictions Survey for 2012 to find out what WE think were the topics and themes that impacted 2011 (and will be top of mind in 2012), so I encourage you to take a few minutes to fill it out. Chetan’s event covered a wide range of topics, from platforms, to privacy, to payments. We’re sure to hear more from Nokia (struggling), Android (gaining the upper hand), Amazon (game-changer) and the ‘Apps vs. Mobile Web debate (except the discussion has gone cross-media/cross-platform with people demanding a great experience on ALL their devices, many of which are better delivered by apps. How will it play out? Chetan sums it up best: “2012 will be another great year for mobile. Fasten your seat belts.”

Martin Wilson at Mobileweb Company has two worthwhile submissions. The first, a guest post on his company blog by Tina de Souza, connects the dots in the  Mary Portas review on retailing, a comprehensive report providing recommendations to companies on how to address the retail crisis hitting the U.K. hard. But the most significant point of the report has to do with mobile and its influence on our buying behavior, thus transforming the entire retail landscape.. Building on all this data the post presents us with 5  recommendations on how we can/should develop retailing through our mobile channel. What is this blueprint for mobile retail readiness? Read on and find out.

In the second submission Martin walks us through the basics of Google’s GoMo Initiative and spells out why it is significant for brands and their mobile strategies. The core message: Brands need to go mobile, or risk losing business. But brands also have to do it right.

Tomi Ahonen does his math in this post to present us a gloomy prediction of what Nokia’s smartphone market share will likely be for 4Q2011. Drawing from figures, reports and past posts, Tomi concludes that Nokia’s losses are inextricably linked with the actions of the CEO at the helm: Stephen Elop. The ‘Microsoft Muppet’ —as Tomi calls him —  has destroyed Nokia’s value and threatens its future. How can Nokia fall so far when it has such a quality portfolio? It’s a key question — and Tomi’s answer is sure to spark debate.

Carlo Longino over at WIP Connect submits a must-read practical post based on his recent interview with TouchType CMO Joe Braidwood. By way of background, TouchType’s SwiftKey is one of the leading paid Android apps in several markets, and has seen a huge amount of success despite having a relatively small marketing budget. How can developers make money on their apps? It’s the question developers will continue to ask in 2012 — and this interview is packed with tips and ideas to help you turn your app biz into a real business.

Dave Olsen grabs our attention with his post titled “Mobile Strategy is Dead, Long Live Content Strategy.” He argues that ‘mobile’ is becoming a prefix when we talk about the Web. As he puts it: “Search and links are the gateway for our users to our content. And you know what? They’re the gateway regardless if our users are using a mobile device or desktop.” So, do we need mobile strategies at all? Read on and make your decision.

Mark Bridge over at TheFonecast.com brings us a valuable roundup of the CES Unplugged consumer electronics event in London. His summary post gives us a good idea of what we can from the 2012 International CES this January in Las Vegas. Mark runs us through the numbers (showing that global sales of consumer electronics are still quite buoyant) and introduces us to some cool companies we’re sure to see and hear a lot more of in the coming year.

James Cameron has started a must-read series profiling some of the leading mobile minds and influencers. This month’s submission catches up with Daniel Appelquist, mobile veteran and Head of Product Management for BlueVia. What are Daniel’s his fav apps, start-ups and business opportunities? Read on and enjoy!

Antoine RJ Wright brings together a variety of perspectives in his blog post to explain why mobile fails to be a satisfying experience. Have companies stopped pushing the envelope, or is the industry at a cross-roads? Read his very personal observations and arrive at your own conclusion.

Francisco Kattan is back with a post that analyzes Amazon and asks the question: Should Amazon buy webOS from HP? Granted the post is no longer so timely (a major reason why we are weekly in the New Year), but his views on the role of Amazon and its emerging ecosystem help us understand the real essence of its competitive edge. Is the source of Amazon’s power and prowess a sharp focus on content and distribution? Read on and share your views with Francisco.

Steven Hoober combines personal experience, market reports and business observations in this post to explain the need for a broader approach to design. In his view, we need to design for every screen and think touch points, not devices. It’s an important message indeed, and one that developers should not ignore. How do we all get there from here? Read on and find out.

MobileGroove ends the year with two submissions. The first post builds on an interview with Atlas Premium (which made it’s debut in the recent Netsize Guide by Gemalto, a must-red mobile industry analysis and almanac you can download here for free). It outlines the company’s new social networking strategy and vision, one that 1) includes brands and 2) covers the bases to give Facebook & Co. some sleepless nights. Will it be the talk of 2012? Watch this space!

The second submission —from guest columnist Lisa Ciangiulli over at Optism —offers us an in-depth analysis of Starbucks’ mobile strategy (strategy, not app!). The takeaway: a comprehensive approach across all touch points can produce amazing results. What are they and how does this all tie in with lasting customer loyalty? Read on and find out!

And finally, a mention goes to this post from Six Revisions that came in via a cross-post from http://mobilerweb.com/. The post, written by web designer/ web developer Arley McBlain, asks if Microsoft’s increasing position in mobile could spark a Browser War and increased fragmentation. His message: We need to unite and demand a better browser standard.

Pick of the month

With so many quality submissions it certainly wasn’t easy.

Chetan’s post —based on discussions during his high-caliber event — were thought-provoking. Francisco did a great job of dissecting Amazon’s strategy and why it is shaping up to become the worst nightmare come true for some companies in the mobile space. And I enjoyed James’ series —and look forward to being one of the next profiles in the pipeline.

My pick goes to Tomi Ahonen for his comprehensive —and somewhat controversial — analysis of issues at Nokia. Will the number one handset maker stumble and fall? Are any hopes for a comeback blocked by current leadership? Even if you don’t agree with all the premises Tomi offers, it is a powerful argument we should all consider.

January 9th is COM #256

I am thrilled that we are going weekly in 2012 and urge you all to get your submissions in by end-day JANUARY 6th. Our next host is Mark Bridge over at TheFonecast.

Remember anyone can submit their best blog to the COM for consideration. Simply email your submission for the week to mobilists@gmail.com. If your post is selected, then the host will provide you a link to post share and tweet to your community.

if you want to host, there are slots open. Please check the new schedule here, and let me know which dates you would like to host. Hosting the COM has its rewards. For one, there is the personal fulfillment that comes from leading  the mobile discussion on your site. Our ‘founding fathers’ Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino started the COM in 2005 as a platform for ideas, insights and a way to ensure that the tide of mobile transformation lifts all boats. For this reason, the Carnival is hosted every week at a different site, a balanced approach that allows us to encourage variety, drive interest in the posts and benefit from the rise in traffic and visits.

That wraps up our last COM in 2011 — thanks to all of you for your submission and support over the last year. Happy Holidays and see you in the New Year!

Mobile Commerce deals with 3.6 billion searches a year in the U.K. and the U.S., handling over 25 percent of searches from mobile Internet users via U.K. operator portals alone. Since portals no longer play a lead role in our search routine, the company has expanded its model, sealing deals with a slew of major mobile ad networks (ranging from Millennial Media to Adfonic) to handle those mobile search queries as well.

The relationships give Mobile Commerce a detailed knowledge of what we search for on the go — information the company has released to MobileGroove first. Using its own IP and analytics tools to analyze search requests and clicks (and a unique categorization tool that makes it easy to see what users are searching for —and if they are ’single users’)  Mobile Commerce has today released a summary of what’s hot and what’s not among searchers in the U.K.

Interestingly, there largest section is searches is ‘Single User Search’ — or search terms that are unique to an individual user. As of November 2011 48.1 percent of all searches where Single User Searches (up from 45.1 the previous year).

As Steve Page put it in an interview earlier today, the continued growth of Single User Search shows that people “are looking for more and more things on their mobile devices.” This is further reflected in the number of searches per user, a number that has skyrocketed from 4 per individual in 2008 to 18 (!) in 2011.

The advance of smartphones makes mobile search a breeze, which is also why Steve now sees search terms of up to eight words — complex queries that are a huge hassle to input using a legacy feature phone.

Winners & also-rans

Predictably, social networking (the number one thing we do on our devices) came in as the top mobile search category. The most searched category accounted for just over 16 percent of searches.

Steve also observes a rise in the number of navigational searches, an increase that speaks volumes about the role of mobile in our routine. A few years back mobile searches were more about finding consumable content and digital stuff (music, videos etc). Today. searchers use mobile to find both digital and real-world destinations. From major websites to bricks-and mortar businesses, people use mobile search to navigate their world.

Over the last 12 months, the top 20 search terms have remained quite similar (and navigational), with 17 terms continuing in the top positions they held last year. There are three new terms (‘facebook login’, ‘plentyoffish’ and ‘lotto) and three terms have dropped out of the top 20. These are: ‘Bebo’ (down from 3 to 21) ‘Ebuddy’ (down from 7 to 27) and ‘Free Games’ (down from 16 to 38). In fact, the number of monthly searches for ‘Bebo’ has dropped by 90 percent over the year. It’s only able to hold its position because there was such a high volume of searches 12 months ago.

The category with the largest percentage increase was ‘Jobs’ with a 57 percent increase —no doubt linked to our interest in Steve Jobs after his passing away this year at the age of 56.

Other category winners include:

Dating

Single terms can be deceptive as users often have different ways of looking for the same things. Although Flirtomatic is the most searched dating site, when search terms are aggregated Plenty of Fish receives twice as many searches.

Football

Manchester United and Liverpool dominate the searches with Arsenal lagging in third position. High spending Manchester City only receive 16 percent of the volume of searches of Manchester United.

People

Justin Bieber, Cheryl Cole and Rihanna were the most searched individuals over the 12 months with JLS being the most searched band.

Astrology

Jonathan Cainer remained the most searched astrologist while Gemini, Taurus and Virgo were the most searched star signs. Interestingly, the least searched star signs coincide with the summer holiday periods – Cancer & Leo, and getting ready for Christmas – Sagittarius.

My take:

Search terms over the last two months provide good clues into what’s hot and not going into 2012. Steve expects ‘MSN’ and ‘plenty of fish’ to drop from their spot in the top 20, likely to be replaced by ‘chat’, ‘BBC’ or ‘tubidy’. But the real news is the continued increase in mobile search and the rise in Single User Search. Connect the dots, and mobile search is back, boosted by smartphones, connected devices and our own mobile lifestyles. Google knows this, which it has quietly and cleverly informed us via its Webmaster Central Blog about its new Googlebot-Mobile. The announcement from Google software engineer Yoshikiyo Kato (and detailed in this blog post) explains how the addition is aimed at making the search process easier for mobile users. (Helping —in specific cases —to eliminate the extra time it takes for pages to load on mobile devices.)

Mobile search is on the rise — a development MobileGroove will continue to document based on input from Mobile Commerce. This data should be all the more insightful as Mobile Commerce works with more ad networks and operators in more territories in 2012. (Steve tells me France, Germany, Italy, Spain and India are high on the list in the next year.) Look for Steve Page’s own regular analysis here at MobileGroove, and follow mobile search developments at the Mobile Commerce blog.

All speakers agreed that mobile plays a more central role in marketing, impacting people and influencing their actions throughout the purchase funnel (from awareness to conversion and commerce). However, there was a lack of consensus when it came to answering THE big question: how will mobile play out in 2012?

Jennifer Lee, senior manager of the retailer and distribution practice, Deloitte & Touche, placed her bets on mobile’s “multiplier effect.” As she put it: “Organizations that develop a comprehensive strategy on leveraging mobile in the path to purchase will win in the marketplace.” This entails having a “full view of a customer’s path to purchase for all channels and to have an integrated view on how mobile drives online and retail store purchases.”

In her view, the business case for mobile will “be driven by the multiplier effect that mobile has on other channels.” And mobile loyalty and CRM will also move up the business agenda. “In addition, customers will expect personalization and relevance in all the marketing messaging regardless of channel, and as a result, it will be important to use CRM tools to segment customers based on lifestyle.”

James Gaffar, product developer, ad solutions, mobile & emerging media, NBC Universal, is bullish about cross-media approaches and remarked that integrated marketing has never been more in demand.

“This is where publishers, brands and advertisers need to have serious discussions,” he said. “Mobile is only one screen in a user’s life and, therefore, crafting a story across different touch points in a user’s day will give an advertiser the best ROI. Messaging needs to be aligned with the overall brand strategy but adjusted to the time of day, location and where a potential consumer digests that content. Taking online creative and porting into mobile will never be as effective as planning for mobile in a larger holistic program.”

Tina Unterlaender, account director for mobile, AKQA, echoed this sentiment. She sees a “deeper integration of the mobile channel especially as part of product extensions and new enhanced mobile commerce options.” What’s more, “product extension such as Nike +, Epic Mix, or connected car applications will become the norm and will add value to the products purchased.”

But it’s not just about connected experiences; it’s about commerce. As she put it: “When it comes to mobile commerce, deeper integration cross platform with single sign on will drive mobile purchasing behavior. Google Wallet was only the start of a new era without plastic in our pockets. Looking at publishers, we will see the most interactive magazines and ad products since the beginning of mobile. ”

Finally, Hipcricket Chief Operating Officer Eric Harber told us he believes that 2012 will be about selecting partners that will “protect” brand marketers. “I forecast patent infringements being identified and enforced, making it imperative to work with a company that has protected IP and can keep you out of trouble,” he said.

HOW I SEE IT: The webinar was full of insights. I agreed with many of them — and I have some to add. Consider this as a list of my top predictions for 2012:

• Device price points will continue to drop — and we’ll see more offers that provide consumers with a product at a discount provided they agree to receive ads. Mobile phones with offers, including perhaps a Google phone, are coming soon.
• Savvy marketers will succeed by following research into real behavior and interest, rather than gambling on something entirely new. These professionals know that just because you can do something with technology doesn’t mean you should. Know your customers and prospects, and market to them in ways (and via formats) you know have the best chance of success. A major global brand allocates approximately 70 percent of its mobile efforts to reach efforts that include SMS. Additionally, 20 percent of efforts focus on delivering richer experiences (that don’t reach all subscribers), and 10 percent are all about the shiny object. That is a great example to follow.
• 2012 will be the year of the mobile web. As more people begin to access the Web using a wireless device than they do using a PC, it will become crystal clear to brands, agencies and companies across the ecosystem that they can’t afford to treat their mobile strategy and presence as an afterthought. They will realize they must offer a mobile Web offering that over-delivers, rather than just cover the bases. This has not happened yet, but it will because consumers will demand it.
• As mobile marketing moves to the mainstream (and becomes an item on the agenda of companies across all the verticals) you can bet that more vendors will enter the marketplace in 2012 making claims that they will produce ROI. My message to brands: Proceed with caution. While the name of the nimble newcomer company promising to help you craft a comprehensive mobile strategy may not say ‘Two Guys In a Garage’, that may indeed be what you are buying.
• Expect more pressure from senior management to produce results from mobile. As this shift takes place it will be even more critical to think beyond a one-time transaction. There are bigger opportunities in mobile if you think about what can (and must) happen after the click. Don’t stop at a one-off campaign that ends in a landing page or an app. Deliver an experience that can lead to an opt-in, providing you customer insights and remarketing possibilities.

And finally, successful mobile campaigns will have clear calls to action and provide multiple ways to engage. No doubt many brands and advertisers will borrow from the blueprints belonging to market leaders like Macy’s. Macy’s, which I wrote about in this earlier column on MobileGroove, has implemented a comprehensive and holistic approach called the Backstage Pass program. Like Macy’s, brands would be well-adviced to use an SMS call to action (to start the conversation) and then continue the interaction by harnessing QR codes (delivered via print advertising) to point people to a mobile website to capture people’s information —and interest. Macy’s approach shows that cross-media is where the action (and the results) are.

(This is my last column of the year. I thank Peggy for the opportunity and support, and I thank all the readers of this space for their continued loyalty. Next year will be even bigger with more insights here, as well as additional major projects coming designed to help you succeed in mobile.)

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

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Mobile advertising is set to explode. Market research firm eMarketer predicts that mobile ad spending will increase 48 percent this year from $743.1 million in 2010 to $1.1 billion in 2011. That’s significant growth, but none of this projected spending will be effective if advertisers can’t reach the right people with the right types of ads on the right devices at the right times.

Google’s AdMob, with its 52 percent reach of U.S. mobile users, offers advertisers targeting by device, demographic and people’s interests (based on their keyword search, for example), across 7,000 mobile sites and in 1,600 iPhone and Android apps. It covers the bases for brands that are prepared to settle for an approach that resembles traditional mass-market advertising on television. However, mobile is not TV and mass-market ad networks cannot fully deliver what mobile makes possible: the ability to target a user who has already purchased from your brand or is about to make a purchase in a specific location. This is the true value of mobile, and it can only be achieved as we become better at mapping audiences to their purchasing behaviors.

Mobile audience targeting is a hot topic and a huge opportunity. In fact, the industry search for a definitive solution dates back to 2008 when the audience measurement company Nielsen burst on the scene with Mobile-PRIZM. PRIZM was the first to enable targeting based on demographics and lifestyle attributes, but —much like Google’s AdMob— there was a serious shortcoming.

Close, but no cigar

Put simply, contextual advertising based on lifestyle or interests isn’t enough to map an advertising strategy to the purchase funnel. Behavioral targeting — delivered via mobile to people while they are shopping in physical stores — reaches the right mobile users further down the purchase funnel, which, in turn, increases consumer engagement after viewing the ad.

But there are challenges.

For one, there’s the issue of privacy. What information about consumers, such as age or gender, or geographic location, can be made available to third parties? Since most of this data is currently attributed anonymously, there’s no infringement on consumers’ rights. Yet, as the industry becomes more robust, privacy will continue to be a concern.

Then there’s the technology. For online behavioral targeting to work, cookies are set on users’ computers telling ad networks more about their individual search and browsing behaviors. On mobile it’s not so easy. Google’s Android accepts cookies on its mobile browser, but Apple’s iOS rejects cookies, thus making it extremely difficult to track users’ behaviors. As a result, advertisers are left with targeting by device, carrier, and location. Sure, that’s a solution, but I question whether it is the best solution.

Better targeting has made online advertising more successful, and better targeting is also what is needed to make the ROI of mobile advertising more compelling for advertisers and their agencies. If audience targeting can be done in mobile, more ad spend will flow towards mobile ads.

Achieving ROI

A recent study from market research firm AudienceScience found that 84.8 percent of agencies and 76.3 percent of all advertisers already use audience targeting to deliver relevant advertising to online users. What’s more, advertisers using targeting report they plan to increase their digital ad budgets more than 72 percent this year. Agencies surveyed said they plan to spend 66 percent more on audience targeting. For advertisers and agencies, an effective ad is one that increases brand awareness and purchase intent. Using targeting to deliver the right ads to the right audience increases the likelihood of being able to measure those KPIs more accurately.

According to a recent study — conducted by Jumptap, a mobile ad targeting company and Digiday, a media company and community for professionals who work in the digital media, marketing and advertising industry — targeting and reach top the list of what advertisers are looking for when investing in mobile.

That’s where the work of our company, 4INFO, comes in. We launched the AdHaven Mobile Advertising Platform back in 2010, and the AdHaven Audience Network now reaches over 90 million mobile users through hundreds of premium publisher partners. We have formed partnerships with multiple database marketing and digital companies such as Nielsen Catalina to gather behavioral data, and can map our audiences to specific behavioral segments, giving marketers the ability to reach their purchasing audience. Thus the AdHaven platform processes purchase data from our data partners, including shopper households tracked in the Nielsen Catalina database to deliver the ad to the best possible mobile user on our audience network.

Hartz reaches right users

We tapped into our network to help Hartz launch its new “Crunch ‘n Clean” dog biscuit with DentalShield by specifically targeting dog owners who purchase Milk-Bone products. Of the 90 million mobile users in 4INFO’s network, the AdHaven platform was able to identify six million mobile users within our audience network that had been shown to be interested in shopping for these types of products and would therefore most likely respond to the ads.

These users were identified as belonging to two main segments: pet supply buyers and animal tech/groomers. The AdHaven Platform uses historical data to determine how responsive mobile users would be to particular ads, and combines this information with users in the two main segments to ensure that the right ads are delivered to the most appropriate and responsive users.

As a result, we were able to directly target “pet food buyers” with mobile Web, app, and text messaging. The campaign led consumers to the Hartz mobile landing page, a destination that offered a free Hartz mobile app and a link to an in-store voucher for $1 off their purchase of Crunch ‘n Clean bones.

The ability to define an audience of potential customers based on their purchasing behavior on TV, Internet and in stores allowed us to achieve a significantly higher response rate. Specifically, the response rate to the targeted ads was 77 percent higher than the response rate to run of network ads on the AdHaven platform.

The bottom line: Effective mobile advertising isn’t just mobile-centric. It’s essential to have a holistic view of the customer as they move through their daily routine and across the platforms and screens (TV, Internet, mobile) that define their shopping experience. Delivering relevant advertising in mobile requires the right channel mix (mobile Web, SMS, mobile apps), but even the best balance isn’t enough.

Advertisers should use tools to find the right consumers — ones likely to respond or purchase based on their real-life behavior — to deliver those ads to in the first place. The future of this industry depends on having more access to more data that enables us to better predict correlations of behaviors, while respecting the privacy of individuals. The better we target, the better ads perform — and the more value we provide to advertisers overall.

About Tim:

Tim is the CEO of 4INFO and a seasoned Silicon Valley veteran with more than 25 years in senior operational and executive roles at several tech companies including Apple and Stratacom (acquired by Cisco). At Apple, Tim was responsible for developing the education business division in Europe. Employing a unique channel and product strategy he helped this division grow to over $500M in annual revenue. Armed with extensive experience in developing profitable strategies and scaling companies, Tim will drive the expansion of 4INFO in the rapidly growing mobile market within the US and globally. Tim graduated magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in Business and Finance. Follow @4INFO to keep up-to-date with developments at 4INFO.

Editor’s note: MobileGroove regularly features guest columns from industry and executives and thought leaders. If you’d like pitch an idea, then email peggy@mobilegroove.com with a brief summary of what your post will cover and we’ll get back to you within 48 hours.

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The explosion of mobile apps and value-added services, ranging from novelty applications to expensive HD games, has unleashed a frenzy of exciting — and expensive — activity in the mobile space. The proliferation of connected devices and platforms may spell opportunity, but it also requires content companies and developers to deliver more apps and services across an ever-growing number of devices, platforms and operating systems. While investors, shareholders and management teams may be nervous about the impact of all this change and flux on revenue projections in the short-term, there is no denying that the potential pay-off in the longer term is worth the effort.

When I started FoneStarz back in 2002 I decided the best and most cost-effective strategy was to hitch our content expertise to the Operator wagon. By supporting mobile operators we could use their traffic to generate interest in our services (distribution), split the revenue with the partner operator and use our share to grow the business.

It was a successful strategy at the time and we grew rapidly, building on the back of one successful case study in the U.K. to roll out to 26 operator relationships in 14 countries including New Zealand and South Africa. Back then the Operator portals were the principal destination for mobile content and services (there were no ‘apps’). And they were super user-friendly to access, often triggered by a hot key on the exciting new devices that were breaking on to the market. Predictably, portal traffic figures went through the roof. In a number of countries, including South Africa, portals are still attracting significant traffic and the growth in mobile Internet services is still impressive. But that’s not the case in regions such as North America and Western Europe, territories where the launch of the Apple iPhone smartphone and the App Store in 2007 threw a spanner in the works.

Shift happens

Indeed, the brilliantly marketed Apple App Store and the ground-breaking iPhone shifted the balance of power in favor of the handset manufacturers. As a result, the handset makers became significant players in the content game and for the first time the Operators surrendered their vice-like grip on the mobile content business.

Today, just four years later, we have a radically fragmented content market with statistics from handset makers —now the leading distribution channel for apps and content —that blow your mind.

Nokia’s Ovi Store, even though it’s a relative newcomer, boasts 9 million downloads a day. Android reports 550,000 new Android devices being enabled every day and Android Market counts a whopping 270,000 apps and rising.

Between Apple and Android there are more than 2 billion downloads a month, with Android catching Apple fast. Independent app store GetJar, with over 150,000 applications, hit the two billion download mark this year. Connect the dots, and we are downloading more apps than ever before — and the upward trend continues. However, the vast majority of all apps downloaded are free (or linked to a freemium model), so where’s the money?

Even mobile video, which accounts for between 40 and 60 percent of ALL mobile data traffic on Operators’ networks, is mainly free. Advertising revenue is starting to kick in, but the flow is currently more like a trickle as agencies are just coming to terms with the mobile medium and how to best spend their money to deliver effective advertising around apps. Indeed, the next 12-18 months will see a new phase of growth and activity in mobile video as the data collected about mobile usage becomes significantly more meaningful to advertisers and a driver for a new wave of mobile entertainment services from 2012 onwards.

The Games Store

In such a fast moving space the business questions come thick and fast. Who are the most important players in the mobile content space? How should I place my bets going forward? What are the best and most effective monetization models and payment schemes that will allow us to make money on our valuable content? Can we realistically support all the operating systems, let alone multiple versions of each?

Since FoneStarz was acquired by Livewire Mobile at the end of last year, we have gained a new perspective on these key questions. Our conclusion? Yes, there is uncertainty, but the opportunities are bigger than ever.

Do the Operators still matter to us? Yes, absolutely! They still have a huge say over the icons and shortcuts that are displayed on handsets at the point of sale (the icons that shape the consumer experience from day one). Of course, handset manufacturers also influence and decide the selection of icons, which is why we see opportunities for content specialists (like Livewire Mobile) to work alongside both customer groups — Operators and handset makers.

Can Operators play in the app store space? Yes, provided they choose the right approach. The new Games Store we designed, developed and launched for our Operator client Three in the U.K. and Ireland shows that the user experience is everything.

The Games Store is browser-based, but with an application and widget strategy behind that to give smartphone users an easy way to discover the best range of games for their device. Widgets complement both the apps and the mobile browser sites, enabling Android phone owners to place interesting, updatable widgets on their homescreens which interact in the background with new content feeds. To round it all out, Operator billing has been fully integrated to make the whole experience as clean and easy as it is fun.

Business basics

Over the years the strategies we and our clients have employed to tackle the discovery problem and expose content to mobile consumers have evolved. However, our experience shows the basic rules you need to follow in order to deliver consumers a compelling and engaging experience still hold true.

• License the best content. Aim to build relationships with the world’s best media companies
• Think seamless. Make sure it’s available for as many handset/OS variants as possible  — and ensure entertainment services run properly on all handsets and all variants of each operating system, seamlessly
• Make the pricing competitive and think ‘bundle.’ Local market pricing for mobile entertainment is vital to business success. Understand the pricing issues locally and tailor the proposition accordingly
• UI never ends. Work hard on the user experience – then improve it further. Watch your competitors, like Apple, for best practice.
• Rock and roll. Rotate the content according to demand and experience. Static displays are boring, so get the best content in front of your customer
• Get personal. This is an era where one size does not fit all. Use your data to narrow down the selection process so that you are offering each customer what they like and what the people they respect recommend. (Have a look at our new music webstore www.mediadrome.com as a prime example.)
• Curation matters. Use editorial and curation skills to anticipate market trends. Having skilled, enthusiastic specialists on your team can help you look out for new, trending entertainment products
• Connect with customers. Keep in touch with your customers through opt-in CRM and offers. If you are connected to your customer and delivering a great product, further that relationship with direct offers
• Remember this is entertainment!

Choice and curation

Our customer’s customers are accustomed to choice. However, the real opportunity moving forward may be in approaches that help our customers —and their customers — make sense of the proliferation of apps. In The Paradox of Choice, author Barry Schwartz tells us at what point choice makes it difficult to make decisions. While we assume more choice means better options and greater satisfaction, excessive choice is not always a good thing. In fact, the best solution to our choice overload may be offered by approaches that limit our choices.

In the mobile space there are 110 app stores with hundreds of thousands of apps. It’s tough for an app to get exposure, let alone achieve critical mass. It may seem as if discovery is a totally new issue we need to address. But the proliferation of apps is a repeat of what we saw in mobile content pre-2007, when we faced an abundance of Operator portals and providers offering us a ever-growing variety of video clips, games, ringtones and music tracks. Back then we had technologies in the form of on-device portals to help surface the most popular content across the various categories and be sure it was pushed to the front of the storefront.

Today we have another name for it: “Curation.” This approach to filtering, supported by editorial guidance and a great user experience, is defining what mobile content merchandising is all about. Put another way, effective personalization requires a balance mix of input from technology and real people. It’s important to make the right selections for your customers, and it is essential to complement this with automated recommendations based on their previous behavior and the choices made by their friends, family and community. Employing this hybrid approach has doubled —even tripled — conversion rates across a variety of territories, proving that technology (as always) gives us a huge head-start in capabilities. However, it’s still experienced human intervention that adds the magical extra ingredient to the mix.

About Dave:

Dave Moreau, Chief Operating Officer of Livewire Mobile, has more than 25 years of experience in founding, building and running media companies. Dave joined Livewire Mobile as chief operating officer in December 2010 through Livewire Mobile’s acquisition of FoneStarz Media Group, which he founded in 2002. As CEO of FoneStarz, Dave supervised the build of the company’s award-winning mobile digital storefront and content platform and created partnerships with many of the largest telecom and media brands in the world. Prior to FoneStarz, Dave was vice chairman of the National Association of Press Agencies for four years where he specialized in the monetization of traditional media. He was also the editor of Mason’s News Service and Television News, where he transformed the company into one of the top UK regional news and television agency group and increased revenue more than 10 times in two years while creating four spin-off companies. Dave qualified in journalism through the British NCTJ program at Harlow College. You can follow Dave on Twitter (@davemoreau).

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A lot of people like to say that there’s a ‘gold rush’ mood in the Apps industry at the moment. Hell, I’ve probably said it myself. It’s something of a cliché, and like most clichés, you use it unthinkingly. But I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve come to realize that the description is far more apt than most people in the apps space realize. Indeed, exploring the comparisons tells us a lot about where our industry is headed.

Here’s why the metaphor works so well. Firstly, there’s money to be made. Lots of money. Analysts at Canalys estimate that revenue from app stores will top $36 billion in 2015. Similarly, analysts at In-Stat recently put out a market alert that mobile app download revenues would likely surpass $29 billion in 2015.

So much for the gold. What about the rush? Well, there are a lot of app developers, but no definite numbers. (I’ve seen guesses that range from 40,000 to 100,000 worldwide.) One thing for sure: the number of developers getting in on the action is increasing at a rapid rate. And, of course, developers aren’t the only ones getting in on the gold rush. Advertisers, agencies, app stores, technology vendors and brands are also panning in the mobile valley. Despite there being a finite amount of gold —with most ‘prospectors’ only getting to see a few kernels— there is no end to the flood of independent developers setting their sights on the day they ’strike it rich.’ Or, in other words, the day they replicate the success of Angry Birds, make their millions and retire.

Reality bytes

In the California Gold Rush, which started in 1848, billions of dollars worth of gold was recovered (in today’s money), but only a handful of individual miners (the bedroom/garage coders of the app development world) made a substantial profit.

A slew of recent studies/developer polls show that individual developers aren’t making much for their time during the current app gold rush either. The Vision Mobile Developer Economics 2011 paper found that roughly a third of respondents made less than $1,000 per app (meaning they made a loss) and, more crushingly, that “there are five times more developers who are dissatisfied with their mobile application revenues than there are satisfied developers.” If you’re not convinced by the polls, then you might also want to check out this analysis (via GigaOM). It statistically demonstrates that ‘publishers’ are making only $8,500 a year on average for their App Store efforts. It seems like an untenable situation for the individual miner – and in most cases it is, but the dream of striking that Angry Birds seam keeps ‘em digging.

Let’s look for a moment at what’s holding the individual App developer back during this Gold Rush period. The most obvious factor is their singularity, or oneness. Individual developers only harness their own earning power; successful business people understand that real success results from harnessing the talents (earning power) of many individuals.

Individual developers also tend to be extremely time-poor, which comes with a number of disadvantages. First, they don’t have the capacity to take on the kind of app projects —often on behalf of big brands— which garner the best rewards. Such projects require fast cross-platform development (building an app for both iOS and Android mobile platforms). Most individual developers cannot resource these, even if they’re able to stay up to speed with multiple programming languages.

Another issue for the bedroom/garage guys arises during the post-build phase. Put simply, most developers lack the necessary marketing skills or contacts to make sure their apps are discovered. Instead, they publish their apps to the app stores, cross their fingers and hope their hard work finds a large enough audience.

So what can developers do to level the playing field? The answer is simple: band together and work together, just as many of the prospectors who flocked to California for the Gold Rush learned to do.

A new model for app development

When I set up the Chelsea Apps Factory in March last year, I knew the developer business model was broken and that I would have to innovate to improve on it. Once I had found my developer match—my expertise comes from 20 years of managing and marketing newspapers, and not from software development—I could pursue this ambition. My partner, Melville Carrie—a fellow Scot with 15 years of development experience, including an extremely fruitful stint commercializing Cortexica’s visual recognition tech for consumer mobile apps—and I started by visiting a number of friendly app development houses. During this time we quickly realized that our ideas and approach was unique. There was nothing like what we wanted to do out there. We would be the first. Naturally, that was terrifying and exciting in equal measure.

We set down to the task of bringing together a community of developers, marketers and investors under one roof, with the contribution of each helping to generate an app-centric creative atmosphere for all. Developers were welcome to be a part of this virtuous circle and could take space in the factory (for as little or as long as they wanted) to work on their own projects or on ours. There would be an emphasis on consultancy as a service in its own right (rather than as a form of lead generation).

Finally, this consultancy would offer advice that included perspectives from the whole community. Ideas would be paired with developers, and developers with fully formed apps paired with marketers. Eventually the community would develop a character synonymous with quality and innovation and the apps would develop their own kind of momentum. We described what we wanted to do by comparing it to the Industrial Revolution – we would take apps development out of the garage and into the factory.

Next phase

Have we been able to realize our vision? The answer is: most of it. We opened our doors in a renovated schoolhouse by the Old Gas Works in Chelsea. Since then we have rented out space to individual developers and small teams and given them contract work when we’ve had to upscale projects quickly and accurately for our clients. Our track record speaks volumes. We have helped developers make their great ideas a reality; we have assisted developers with marketing to generate publicity for their apps; and we have brought developers together with investors (and, in a small way, we have become technology investors in our own right).  At this point we are confident that a stage-2 app development model has potential.

Returning to our Gold Rush metaphor, we see important parallels that hold true when it comes to the future of app development. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the merchants —the ones who sold the equipment (Levi Strauss denim work clothes, shovels, provisions) made far more money than miners. What does that tell us? Simple: we can’t call the losers but we can  be sure the companies that control what we need to do our job (platforms, tools, licenses) and distribution we need to reach customers (handsets, app stores, search services) —that is, Google, Apple and Amazon—will be among the winners.

About Mike:

Mike Anderson, CEO of Chelsea Apps Factory, made his name in the newspaper publishing industry, where he rose to become managing editor of the Evening Standard, and went on to helm the Metro (he was on the launch team), the News of the World, and The Sun (where he was instrumental in the launch of the paper’s online bingo game). It was in the latter position that he became seriously interested in the potential of mobile technology. Chelsea Apps Factory, his first, personally funded, venture outside of the corporate environment, opened its doors in March 2010 and already has a number of blue chip clients, including Vodafone, Telegraph, RBS and CNBC. His work in the space has been profiled in New Media Age and Business XL. His ambition is to bring about an industrial revolution in apps by recruiting senior executives from commerce and blending them with world class technologists. The Factory is in a schoolhouse by the Old Gas Works in Chelsea; it is a point of pride for Mike that his doors are always open to businesses and brands who simply want to come down and talk about apps over a cup of tea.

IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative has produced a new online retail benchmark study, research that compares Cyber Monday 2011 versus Cyber Monday 2010 and reveals some surprising trends. By way of background, these early holiday season findings are based on data from IBM Coremetrics Benchmark, an analytics-based, peer-level benchmarking solution that measures online marketing results, including real-time sales data from the web sites of more than 500 leading U.S. retailers. All of the data is aggregated and anonymous.

Predictably, we are willing to spend more when shopping on the Internet. Online sales in the U.S were up 33.0 percent over 2010, with consumers pushing the average order value up from $193.24 to $198.26 (or an increase of 2.6 percent). The real news is our increasing reliance on mobile. Specifically, 10.8 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 3.9 percent in 2010. Additionally, mobile sales grew dramatically, reaching 6.6 percent on Cyber Monday versus 2.3 percent in 2010.

How did Cyber Monday 2011 compare to Black Friday 2011?

• Online sales were up 29.3 percent over Black Friday
• On Cyber Monday mobile traffic averaged 10.8 percent compared to 14.3 percent on Black Friday
• Consumer sales on mobile devices reached 6.6 percent versus 9.8 percent on Black Friday
• Apple’s iPhone and iPad continued to rank one and two for mobile device retail traffic (4.1 percent and 3.3 percent respectively). Android maintained its position in third at 3.2 percent. Collectively iPhone and iPad accounted for 7.4 percent of all online retail traffic versus 10.2 percent on Black Friday
• Shoppers using the iPad also continued to drive more retail purchases than any other device with conversion rates reaching 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent

How I See It: Mobile has become as much a part of the holidays as snowflakes and candy canes. Several surveys, including one from Hipcricket, show that consumers would use their devices in-store to compare, shop, read product reviews and more. But it’s not just a shift in attitudes that we see. A near tripling of mobile web site visits and sales from mobile are clear indications that people are engaging in mobile retail. Indeed, mobile shopping is fast becoming a mainstream activity and the market has moved past the early-adopter stage. To the brand marketers who have yet to get on board, I offer two thoughts. One: you have some serious catching up to do. And it’s not like we kept you in the dark about the tremendous mobile opportunity or you weren’t given enough information to act. Two: there is still time for you to create a mobile advertising campaign for this holiday shopping season. But planning broadly for next year should start before Santa parks the sleds and calls it another season.

Facebook’s big mistakes

The social networking service Facebook agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing the personal data to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future. Top of the list: Facebook will have to obtain people’s express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established (and agreed to) on their Facebook page.

The FTC charged that the claims Facebook made were unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law. As Jon Leibowitz, FTC Chairman, put it: “Facebook is obligated to keep the promises about privacy that it makes to its hundreds of millions of users.” Facebook’s innovation “does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy.” The FTC action is aimed to make sure it doesn’t.

Interestingly, the FTC complaint also lists a number of concrete instances in which Facebook allegedly made promises that it did not keep:

• In December 2009, Facebook changed its website so that certain information users may have designated as private – such as their Friends List – was made public. Facebook didn’t warn users that this change was coming, or get their approval in advance.
• Facebook stated that third-party apps that users installed would have access only to user information that the apps needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users’ personal data – data the apps clearly didn’t need.
• Facebook told users they could restrict sharing of data to limited audiences – for example with “Friends Only.” In fact, selecting “Friends Only” did not prevent their information from being shared with third-party applications their friends used.
• Facebook had a “Verified Apps” program and claimed it certified the security of participating apps. It didn’t.
• Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did.
• Facebook claimed that when users deactivated or deleted their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. But Facebook allowed access to the content, even after users had deactivated or deleted their accounts.
• Facebook claimed that it complied with the U.S.- EU Safe Harbor Framework that governs data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. It didn’t.

In this blog post Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized and pledged to do better.

His response to the strong allegations: “Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information.”

But he did admit to making some mistakes along the way. “In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.”

Zuckerberg also showed some understanding for the hundreds of millions of members who feel their personal information —and trust— was compromised. “Even if our record on privacy were perfect, I think many people would still rightfully question how their information was protected. It’s important for people to think about this, and not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.”

He closed his post reminding us that Facebook has always been committed to being transparent, and promised to do better in the future. “I’m committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy,” he stressed.

How I See It: This is cause for public outrage, but I’m not seeing it. Consumers have not punished Facebook for its deception despite repeated reports of infractions. That’s either because they haven’t noticed that Facebook has breached their trust, or they simply don’t care. I believe it’s mostly the latter. Zuckerberg said all the right things in his blog and public apologies. But the company’s actions are really all that matter. If Facebook members won’t do anything about Facebook’s privacy breach, then the FTC has shown that it will.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

When it comes to mobile sports content, Atlas is a major league player with an innovative mobile business model. The company— official and exclusive mobile partner of several leading soccer teams including Chelsea, Liverpool FC and Real Madrid with exclusive mobile and Internet rights to players and teams within the premiership league across in territories worldwide, including the Middle East, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and all countries in Africa —has built up a stockpile of rights and relationships. The ability to connect teams and their fans (and gather all the CRM data it produces) is a core capability Atlas plans to monetize big-time through today’s release of Second Screen.

This social-focused app allows fans to watch the game live (complementing the TV experience, not negating it), discuss the action with friends in real-time (regardless of whether fans are on Facebook, Twitter or Instant Messenger, for example) and co-create a truly tribal sports experience that ticks all the relevant boxes.

Brands get social

Atlas has also quietly and cleverly sealed a partnership with Omnicron, the second largest advertising agency worldwide. Together the companies have the resources to take brand sponsorship of sports to a new level, and one where advertisers alone will call the shots. The strategy is on the mark since Omnicron already works with high profile brands (the likes of Emirates, Etihad, O2 and other brands that sponsor sports) eager to engage with fans every stage of the journey, and not just during the game.

To this end Atlas and its partner Omnicron are determined to offer brands an alternative to the likes of Facebook. Since brands cannot monetize on Facebook, except through the virtual currency Facebook Credits, Atlas has stepped up to allow brands to monetize using any payment system (through integration with payment APIs from all the usual suspects including PayPal, Google and mobile operator billing systems.

More importantly, Atlas enables brands to access all the CRM information around the relationships they cultivate through interacting with fans via the app, data that would otherwise be the property of the social network provider.

Connect the dots, the new apps covers all the bases to give the likes of Facebook some serious competition. Nigel Tatlock, Atlas Premium Brands CEO, tells me he has already signed deals with advertisers including P&G —a brand well known for its massive mobile spend.

Editor’s note: We’ll have more information about the app (formally announced today) and the brands on board from Nigel in next day(s). He is in Brazil speaking at SOCCEREX, the world biggest soccer show, and currently unable to respond to our questions.

Exclusive interview with Altas’ Nigel tatlock in Netsize Guide by Gemalto

One of the great advantages of writing the Netsize Guide by Gemalto is the opportunity to connect with cool companies and individuals to discuss disruptive technologies and debate mobile mega-trends.

Nigel and I did both in an exclusive Q&A, an interview that also details Atlas’ larger mobile-social-CRM play and big-picture strategy to give TV broadcasters a new and pivotal role in cross-platform, cross-media efforts to deliver us an immersive experience.

As Nigel put it in the interview: “The idea is to give the networks the ability to take control of the consumer experience on the handset — through our app — during half-time, so they can start a discussion with fans directly about the game. This way the TV execs at SuperSports in South Africa can say, ‘Wayne Rooney was off sides when he scored that goal.’ Back in the studio, they can take excerpts from the fan comments that pour in, and broadcast them.  After all, people everywhere want that 15 minutes of fame. If fans see their name on a ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen with their message or their views, then they are more inclined to pay attention, and watch the advertisers that are sandwiched in the conversation.”

The reward is our attention, but the real value is in the CRM data brands can glean from our exchanges and interactions. Without a sharp focus on mobile loyalty, mobile CRM and all the ways to grow the lifetime value of the fan/customer brands (and sports teams!) are leaving money on the table.

“A football club will tell you they have around 200 million fans around the world. Ask them to supply names and details, and they can’t. Atlas adds value to their model because we have state-of-the-art CRM platforms that allow us to provide our partners and clients insights into every handset that buys content from the service. We could give Samsung, a sponsor of Chelsea, what we acquire from 10 million handsets and users — no matter if they are Nokia users, HTC users or iPhone users. What that does is extend the reach of the football clubs and their sponsors. We engage with consumers on a daily basis, a relationship that allows us to build up a detailed profile. And we can become quite scientific about our calculations based on the data — to the extent of that we can predict how much users are likely to spend over a period of a month.”

Based on this, Atlas can help its customers set the prices and offers for regions and user segments accordingly. “That’s where all football clubs traditionally fail,” Nigel points out. “They simply don’t have the CRM in place to understand the buying consumption of their consumers. Our systems help them identify where to spend the money and effort. We can also advise then when — and how — they need to target specific user segments, rather than just spend their marketing budget putting up a billboard up in Cape Town Airport with Manchester United plastered all over it.”

DOWNLOAD THE NETSIZE GUIDE BY GEMALTO & READ THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW

My take:

Will Atlas eat Facebook’s lunch? It’s a tough one to call. But the app clearly allows people new flexibility and freedom to connect and multi-task as never before. Against this backdrop, the app emerges the perfect complement to watching the game on TV — and the only platform to bring together all our friends across Facebook, Twitter and more. Atlas also wields its own stockpile of rights and exclusive games content (video, stats, interviews —the works) to give us stuff to share with our friends during the game and so enrich the overall experience. That’s the human side of the story. The business model puts brands and broadcasters back in the picture, allowing them a real opportunity to deliver advertising/content that is aligned with our context (watching the game). More importantly, this model (unlike Facebook & Co.) allows advertisers access to the CRM data that was created through their interactions with us. Granted, brands and advertisers will have to play by the rules (translated: learn from Facebook’s mistake and do not share our data with partners or third parties without our consent). But, if brands can grasp the reality that we alone own the customer, then this sports app (and think beyond sports to any activity we enjoy or participate in as a tribe) could indeed change the game — forever.

Disclaimer: Netsize collaborates with MobileGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz since 2007 to research and write strategic thought leadership and collateral including the new Netsize Guide by Gemalto. You can explore these industry reports and books here.

We catch up with Mike to talk about his success brokering profitable business relationships between brands and urban/hip hop artists to deliver a 360 degree entertainment experience combining social media interaction and TV (Social TV) and mobile apps.

We also get an unexpected scoop about Urban World TV, a new mobile TV channel Mike is launching in December to bring us “Pop Culture Redefined.” Look for the youth-focused channel to hit AT&T U-verse, Apple TV and Yahoo Connect TV. The channel purposely allows fans worldwide to connect, rate and rank what they see and share. As Mike puts it: Urban World TV is a “consolidation of cool content, from martial arts films from Hong Kong, to the Brazilian Carnival, to reggae in Germany.” The youth of the world appreciate urban/hip hop music and culture —and Mike’s venture will surely be a trailblazer.

Marketing first

Mike recently spoke at Apps World New York, where he joined in a discussion of how developers can/should build an app business. In his view, app developers have to keep the main thing precisely that: the main thing. This means focusing on the people first and using a deep understanding of the app audience to guide development —and nothing else. Once you know who the audience is (the main thing), then you can put together the marketing (and social) strategy that will grab mindshare and market share.

Listen to artists

Developers and brands would also do well to listen to (translated: let themselves be inspired) by the urban/hip hop artists, not just make entertainment apps. Mike shares the example of Ice Cube, who also branded and promoted a healthcare/fitness app. Games may be number one, but developers shouldn’t ignore the opportunity offered by health and finance apps, apps that are life-simplifying and will predictably command a great deal of our daily attention. There is a great fit between urban artists and fans’ daily routine. Make the effort to find it.

As Mike sees it. “In terms of how artists are using apps, it’s pretty much the wild, wild West.” There is also new territory to navigate such as the way artists can (and should) best connect with their fans and super-fans. Plug location into the equation and there are lots of ways artists can use apps and location to get more mileage out of their tours. “We can re-visit that in 2012 to see what we’ve done,” Mike says. “It’s brand new territory and there’s so much out there, and also so much more to be discovered.”

Advertise, advertise, advertise

How do developers rise above the noise and beat the discovery dilemma? “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise— that’s what it has to be in the app world.” It may sound basic, but Mike believes attention to business basics is what will separate the winners from the also-rans. “It’s now a competitive space, [making and selling apps] is a  very serious business.”

Coupled with that, Mike says, developers and artists have to outreach using social media. Social media and mobile —it’s table stakes.

Urban World TV

Mike filled us in on his new venture: a new first-ever “urban, multi-cultural, tech-savvy channel” going live in December. Urban World TV will feature VOD (video-on-demand), streaming and allow people watching to recommend and rate the shows. As Mike explains: “Our slogan is: ‘Pop culture redefined – we connect the streets.’ There was a need for a channel that covered not just U.S. entertainment content, but the world.”

Apps World

Mike also tells us about his experience speaking and connecting at Apps World, an event he strongly recommends to brands, artists and developers trying to navigate this tough territory. In his view the event was professional as well as personal. “For me, I would say that one of the things that I did like about the event was that it was intimate.” What’s more, attendees were approachable and open to exchanging business cards and ideas. “People were very open; it was very laid back and that was a good thing.”

My personal thanks to Kate Williams and the great folks at Six Degrees, the company that organized the Apps World event,  for introducing me to Mike. If you missed Apps World in New York, then you can catch the show in London on November 29th and 30th. Six Degrees tells me that the event — which uniquely looks at multi platform apps and the ecosystem emerging to take advantage of the significant business opportunity — counts well over 3,000 registrations (!), so click below to register today!

My take:

Mike is a wealth of practical knowledge and know-how, based on his long track record in the industry. Before he started Digital Mind State (whose clients include Flowd, the music lover’s social network) Mike was the driving force behind the brand UrbanWorld Wireless, where he was responsible for planning, business developing, marketing and brokering profitable business relationships with some of the biggest company names in the mobile industry including T-Mobile, Zed, Jamba, Fox Mobile, NBC, Fun Mobility, Nokia, and Microsoft.

But it’s not just his impressive bio that gets high marks. It’s his passion for what he does, and his razor sharp ability to cut through the technology and get to what matters: the experience. He also correctly sees the need of global youth (united by an interest in urban and hip hop that transcends any physical barriers) for a global youth channel. It’s a brilliant move (and hard work!) to create a place where cool content combines with social media to deliver an entirely new kind of interaction. I look forward to connecting with Mike and watching this develop.

Another development to watch: the advance of multiplatform experiences (and the apps to help enhance and deliver them). 2012 is bound to be the year of connected experiences (such as connected TV) and a turning point for developers who are equipped to ride the wave. As my esteemed colleague Chetan Sharma pointed out in his milestone app report (back in March 2010). “Connectivity breeds apps.” Expect a  significant uptick in apps for and avalanche of devices  that entertain us, connect is and lay the groundwork for new experiences.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW WITH MIKE JOHNS HERE. [18:05]

It’s a profound shift that market analysis and strategy firm VisionMobile has expertly identified and documented in Developer Economics 2011, a landmark, must-read report that surveyed some 900+ developers across 75 countries to understand their attitudes and identify the hottest issues in mobile apps. [Click here for free report.]

A special feature this year was the integration of 21 one-to-one interviews with senior execs from a variety of brands and agencies to gauge the level of interest (and motivation) in branded apps. A surprise finding: brands may have thought of apps as a means to increase awareness, but a significant number are marketing apps to generate real revenues. In fact, almost half of all developers surveyed make money through a salary or commission, confirming that commissioned app development is becoming as an important a model as making money directly through apps (via freemium or paid monetization models).

The opportunities are impressive, but the new terrain is tough to navigate since the avalanche of mobile apps has caused an irreversible change in the content distribution landscape. The Developer Economics 2011 report found that “app stores are the primary go-to-market channel” for almost half (45%) of mobile app developers across the eight major platforms.

The report also found that use of other application distribution channels has consistently declined across the board. Specifically, the report shows a significant drop in distribution via third-party aggregators, on-device preloads, and publisher websites. Even more dramatic is the state of mobile operator portals, destinations that once dominated downloadable content distribution.

But figuring out where to offer and how to monetize your app is just half the battle. You also need to work out a strategy to increase your app ranking, cost effectively generate downloads, and identify (and keep) your most loyal users. the bottom-line: The build-and-they-will-come approach that marked the early days of the App Economy has been replaced by the hard truth that apps do not sell themselves.

This is where Fiksu comes in. Fiksu has developed a real-time mobile app user acquisition platform that spans the entire mobile app ecosystem-including an extensive number of ad networks, real-time bidding platforms, and incentivized download programs-to help content companies and marketers identify their best customers.

Read the rest of the article over at EContent.

Editor’s note: How are developers and brands making money in the mobile app economy? Check out Developer Economics 2011, the definitive report from VisionMobile (sponsored by BlueVia) that brings together insights and analysis from across the App Economy. VisionMobile, never one to rest on its laurels (even though this report clearly sets the bar!), is gearing up to start work on Developer Economics 2012, which will focus on the new market opportunities for developers everywhere on the planet. This time YOU can get involved. Suggest topics you would like to see the report and help shape the direction of this landmark (and actionable) research. Reach out on Twitter @visionmobile and share what moves you.

Disclaimer: Peggy Anne Salz is proud to be a VisionMobile Associate. Peggy is also a regular columnist for EContent Magazine, the source of strategic news, trends and tips for the global digital content industry… NOW with an awesome new design to match the path-breaking content!

With marketers spending almost two billion dollars on social media last year, it’s understandable that all of us don’t just “want”, but *need*, to accurately measure the return – the ROI – of our investments in social marketing.  Here’s my answer.

My usual disclaimer before we start – all opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social marketing campaigns, managing social marketing teams, and advising social marketing clients.  Because every brand is unique, your mileage will vary.

Why? What? How?!

Despite there being SO much written about measuring our social media marketing efforts (10.4 million+ results on Google as of writing this post), the fact that we marketers continue to ask the question, tells me none of us are satisfied with the answer.

Before tackling the ‘how’, let’s be perfectly clear on why you must measure the results of your social media marketing investments. Said bluntly, ANY effort that consumes your financial or human resources needs to be “worth it.” By the way, if your answer to the question “why bother to measure?” is a nasally-whined “my boss makes me do it,” then I recommend you seriously consider that career in flower arranging.

Our existence as professional marketers depends on our seemingly magical ability to maximize revenue by creating and executing strategies that meet, and even exceed, the results demanded by our organizations at an agreed upon dollar and time cost per unit of results.

We do this by measuring the return on the investments we make in each of our paid, owned, earned and [now] social media marketing efforts.  So, let’s get to the punch line: what exactly do we social media marketers need to measure?

WHAT should I measure?

New customers.  Sales.  Revenue. Choose the key performance indicator (KPI) that best matches your company’s most important business objective. If your most important goal is to acquire new customers, then measure the number of new customers.  Just don’t forget to also measure your cost-per-acquisition, because spending more to acquire a customer than you can generate from the lifetime value of that customer will not help your career in marketing.

Which KPI is best for you to measure?  Start with a good list of the most common social media metrics. This will help you to quickly identify the specific indicators most relevant to your product and audience.

It helps to remember that most social media metrics can be broken down into three basic categories:

• Good: The number of social connections
• Better: The quantity of positive (and negative) brand content
• Best: The amount of direct brand engagements

The research-backed takeaway here is simple: The more your target customers connect with you, talk about you, and directly engage with you on social media, the more likely they are to purchase your product or service.

The bottom-line?  It is critical for you to identify the specific metrics that have the strongest correlation to the financial success of your business.

HOW do I measure?

A large part of social media is actively listening to the multiple, simultaneous conversations going on 24×7x365 about your brand.

No surprise that this monitoring cannot be done manually, even if you are fortunate enough to have a large team.  There are multiple for-pay, “big boy” solutions, including Radian6 [and their *many* competitors] and HubSpot.

However, I have always been a big fan of “fast, easy, and free” social analytics tools like Klout, Twentyfeet, and Crowdbooster.  Also, check out Ken Bubary’s great list of paid and free social media analytics tools.

Finally, don’t forget to make full use of the free/freemium analytics tools built into most popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Flickr and YouTube.

The magic, however, is not in the tools, but in strategically and consistently using the combination of tools that gives you the most actionable insights into the use of social media for your business.

In other words, do NOT produce a “weekly report” for your boss. Instead, produce a dashboard that enables *you* to analyze the fewest possible metrics which will provide you with the deepest possible insights. The aim here is to gain the actionable information you need to make data-based business decisions about what works (and what doesn’t) for your marketing.

On the very first day, of my very first market research class in graduate school, my professor told it like it is. “If you’re not going to use the information to make business decisions, don’t waste your time and money collecting and analyzing it.”  While he couldn’t have foreseen the advance of the Internet or social media when he said this, his advice has never been more true.

To recap: it doesn’t matter whether it’s paid media, owned media, earned media or social media marketing.  Clearly articulate what it is you want to achieve with your measurements, and STOP tracking any metric that is not helping you to make better business decisions.  Instead, identify the “critical few” KPIs that are actionable in driving growth for your business.

What do YOU think? How do you measure the ROI of your social media marketing efforts? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”.  All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

About Ken

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken is Vice President of Marketing at Deaf, deaf-blind, and hard-of-hearing communications services provider Purple Communications (http://purple.us). Ken is also a frequent author and popular speaker on the best practices to engage customers on social networks.

Follow Ken on Twitter @PurpleComm (http://twitter.com/purplecomm) and @KenHerron (http://twitter.com/kenherron), and listen to his “Powered by Purple Marketing Minute” on the LinkedIn Lady radio show with Carol McManus live (and podcast) on Wednesdays from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET.

The contributors to this book include the editors Michelle Manafy and Heidi Gautschi, as well as Mary Ann Bell, Shashi Bellamkonda, Sarah Bryans Bongey, Jami L. Carlacio, Albert M. Erisman, Brynn Evans, Susan Evans, Lance Heidig, David Hubbard, Richard Hull, Marshall Lager, Christa M. Miller, Emilie Moreau, Carolina M. Reid, Michael Russell, Arana Shapiro, Dan Schawbel, Rebecca Rufo-Tepper, and Robert J. Torres.

USABookNews.com, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, announced the winners and finalists of THE USA “BEST BOOKS 2011” in over 140 categories covering print, e-books and audio books. A complete list of winners and finalists in each category can be found at:

http://www.usabooknews.com/bestbooks2012awards/bestbooks2011results.html

Millennials are mobile

In my chapter on mobile (which I summarized in this earlier post), I connect the dots in the behavior of digital natives to show how mobile complements natives’ natural inclination to interact with companies and brands. But it’s a two-way street. While mobile enables instant self-expression, it also turns up the pressure on companies and brands to listen and deliver their marketing within the context of what matters most to digital natives: their lives, their experiences, their networks, and their worlds.

I would like to recognize my esteemed colleagues and friends,  who continue to inspire me with their insights and ideas. My personal thanks to best-selling author and consultant Tomi Ahonen; futurist Alan Moore, Antti Öhrling (Blyk co-founder),  Rosemary Tan (SPTI Asia’s Executive Director of Mobile Entertainment); Graham Brown (MobileYouth); Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman); Nigel Shanahan (Rapide Communications); and Mark Curtis (Flirtomatic) – to name (and thank) a few.

A special thanks to the team at Optism for providing me important insights into ongoing research conducted by the Global Youth Lab, an innovative primary research program managed by Alcatel-Lucent.  This path-breaking research was also recognized by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), which presented Alcatel-Lucent with the Academic Of The Year Award for its work to uncover new information about youth attitudes toward mobile marketing.

Check out the Digital Natives website and blog here.

MMA thought leadership project

Which brings me to my next project, a global mobile marketing knowledge resource I have been commissioned to write on behalf of the MMA and sponsors. The news will be official soon, so I can’t give it all away here. Meantime, I encourage companies across the ecosystem (vendors, agencies, brands) to organize  case studies and examples of best practice to be ready when I request input and interviews for this milestone project.

The timing couldn’t be better — especially now that I have finalized the all-new Netsize Guide, titled Netsize Guide by Gemalto (to reflect the new identity of Netsize, which is a Gemalto company).

Guide goes live

Regular readers will recall that I have researched and written the Guide since 2007, when Netsize signed on as one of my first clients. It has a been a privilege to work with the team at Netsize (headed by Alexander Vlasblom, Director of Marketing and Communications) to produce a definitive mobile analysis and almanac that includes exclusive interviews with industry executives and influencers, and in-depth telecoms and country data provided by research firm Informa.

Look for more on the Guide in upcoming posts and tweets. Meantime, I encourage you to check out earlier editions of the Guide by clicking the link below.

The Guide, which has consistently provided our global and loyal readers important insights into the developments impacting mobile — and our society — at all levels, NEVER goes stale.

In fact, the last edition, titled Mobile Renaissance, literally pushed the boundaries that separate our digital and physical worlds. It’s a wonderful coincidence that the Netsize Guide 2010 covered many of the current buzzwords and mobile mega-trends (mobile apps and the ‘App-economy’, Augmented Reality, 2D barcodes, mobile health, mobile education — and the list goes on)  that are defining the mobile discussion in 2011/2012.

Overall, I am loving my work and my life (people who know me know that ideas and intersections excite me). However, there is a downside to all this activity. I have been unable to post or tweet as often as I would have liked. Here’s hoping the excellent line-up of content, guest columns and industry happenings (Tweetchats to examine mobile marketing trends and video interviews on behalf of my partners at bnetTV) will more than make up for the radio silence that marked the last weeks…

I am proud to author the books and guides that will help you navigate the change ahead. Strap yourself in for an invigorating next couple of months!

Disclaimer: Netsize, Optism and the Mobile Marketing Association are MobileGroove clients and supporters.

In practice, businesses can go to Google’s GoMo website at howtogomo.com to access a so-called GoMoMeter. This tool lets companies see how their sites look and perform on mobile devices, and offers “personalized” recommendations to assist businesses in the task of developing a more mobile-friendly experience for their sites.

While hardly unique, the GoMo site has information about current mobile trends, best practices for launching mobile sites (like listen, learn and iterate), a list of developers ready to help companies build sites for mobile (there’s the make money part), and much more. And, if you need more support, you can find what you need on Google’s blog.

How I See It: Any effort to grow great experiences on mobile counts as a good deed. However, it’s the part of the initiative that encourages companies to “get personalized recommendations” combined with the convenience of having a ready “list of developers” that has me questioning whether Google is altruistic or just seeing dollars. I believe it’s both. Yes, we all benefit from efforts (particularly when they are driven by industry giant Google) to mobilize web sites. But Google also has a lot to gain if more sites are mobile. In a mobilized world, Google can serve more ads and bring in more revenue. Google is a for-profit company – and its shareholders won’t have it any other way. The GoMo launch gives me one more thing to ponder: Will this initiative make Google a one-stop-shop for marketers to get everything they need, from strategy to site building? Or, will marketers continue to prefer a system of checks and balances, one that is only possible if they have other partners (not just Google) as part of the mix? Right now the answer is some marketers will and some marketers won’t. We’ll know more after brands start using  GoMo and report their experiences.

Apps by the numbers

Regular readers of this column know that I consider the Pew Research Center to be an excellent source of mobile data and trends.

This week, the center shares survey results that are once more a must-read.

Specifically, Pew reports that the share of adult U.S. cell phone owners who have downloaded an app to their phone nearly doubled in the past two years – rising from 22 percent in September 2009 to 38 percent in August 2011. Further, the share of U.S. adults who purchased a phone already equipped with apps also increased five percentage points in the past year, from 38 percent in May 2010 to 43 percent in the current survey.

These findings are from a survey conducted from July 25-August 26 among 2,260 adults ages 18 and over, including surveys in English and Spanish and on both landline and cell phones.

According to Pew, when both groups are accounted for—those whose phones came equipped with apps and those who have downloaded their own—fully half of U.S. adult cell phone owners (50 percent) now have apps on their phones.  In May 2010, that figure stood at 43 percent. Looking at all U.S. adults, 42 percent now have cell phones with apps.

The center said that while app downloading is on the rise, it is still concentrated in certain demographic groups.

While the portion of adults downloading apps has grown since 2009, their demographic profile has not changed markedly, even with the addition of tablet computers to the mix.  App downloading on cell phones remains concentrated among young adults, those with higher incomes and education levels, and those living in urban and suburban areas.  In May 2010, cell phone app downloaders were also disproportionately male when compared with the full U.S. adult population, but the gap between men and women has decreased.

How I See It: Dig deeper when considering whether to include an app in your strategy. The study provides critical data about how people use the apps – or, in many cases, don’t use the apps — and whether an app on a phone is the same as an app on a tablet (hint – they’re not). Does a brand need an app? There is no simple answer. In fact, the question is much more complicated than it appears at first glance. In contrast, answering the question whether all brands need a mobile website is a breeze. In my view, they most certainly do.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

Over the years, Meeker has been quoted in a variety of sites and publications worldwide. And her most repeated forecast — the prediction that more people will access the Internet on a mobile device than on a personal computer by 2015 — is a key data point that continues to get play in industry presentations, conferences and research around the globe.

Meeker’s annual analysis of the trends and stats that matter most is eagerly awaited — and this year was no exception. Her latest research was unveiled this week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco,  where she provided an inside look at the latest in mobile trends globally, including mobile penetration, mobile usage and mobile advertising spend (still out of sync with actual mobile use, by the way).

Among the highlights:

• Smartphones surpassed feature phone shipments in Western Europe in the second quarter of 2010 and in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2011. Meeker says “the rest of the world will follow.”

• The number of global mobile 3G subscribers has grown 35 percent year over year to total 936 million, or 17 percent of all mobile subscribers.

• There are approximately 835 million smartphone users worldwide, compared with a whopping 5.6 billion mobile users in total (this includes people with feature phones or low-end devices)

• Android phone adoption has ramped up faster than iPhone

• 85 percent of the world’s population is covered by commercial wireless signals, providing greater reach than the electrical grid (which covers 80 percent of the population)

Meeker pointed out that these developments bode well for the tech industry. As she put it: “Wow! Unprecedented times! If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”

What about the global economy? Meeker said economic woes worldwide are formidable, but not insurmountable. “(It’s) Often darkest before dawn,” she told the summit audience. “At least we know what the problems are. Now we need the resolve to fix them. Across-the-board sacrifice [is] needed.”

How I See It: Many people make bold predictions when it comes to mobile. Some of them are on the mark, and others miss it. Take the recent claim (via this interview in AdWeek) that the advertising spend on mobile will exceed that of television. The statement received headlines, but was promptly dismissed by many in the industry (including myself) as pure exaggeration. However, Meeker and her annual forecast have the credibility and track record to guide us. I encourage every marketer to listen up and put her on the “can’t miss” list.

Africa by the numbers

Sadly it wasn’t news to me when Nielsen reported that more people in Africa have access to a mobile device than they do to clean drinking water.

However, the other data points Nielsen published in this recent post summarizing the current state of mobile in South Africa were entirely new, shedding light on an abundance of opportunities for marketers everywhere.

Among the highlights:

• South Africa ranks fifth in the world for mobile data usage, ahead of the U.S., which ranks seventh.
• Facebook is the most popular social media platform, used by 85 percent of mobile subscribers. Half of all users of Facebook in South Africa access the site via mobile.
• Text messaging is used by almost 4.2 times more people than e-mail. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of consumers prefer sending texts to making voice calls, largely because it is less expensive to text than call. Additionally, 10 percent of respondents believe texting is a faster way of communicating.
• The majority (60 percent) of South African mobile users said they are aware of mobile banking services offered by banks, but only 21 percent say they use such services. A much larger number of those aware of the services said they would never use them, suggesting banks might need to invest in communicating the benefits and security of mobile banking.

Check out the full blog post and details on the study here.

How I See It: Mobile is global — and we should make it our business to keep abreast of usage and attitudes around the world. The last months have shown that many countries outside the U.S. are leading in areas of mobile, delivering us exciting case studies and key learnings. Informa reports that Nigeria leads in mobile banking; Hong Kong has the most mobile shoppers (with 35 percent using their mobile to research products and purchases); and we all know that Japan was the pioneer in barcodes and NFC. Granted, it’s difficult to draw parallels between mobile interests and activity from one continent to another. But what is useful and essential in my view is the periodic monitoring of mobile around the world to help us anticipate change – and capitalize on it.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

So, why is indoor navigation enabled by micro-sensor wireless networks moving up the agenda at Sprint (and elsewhere across the emerging business ecosystem)? According to Phyllis, the drivers are the services (and benefits) they deliver us and the companies that want to connect with us.

Micro-location marketing

As consumers, we can look forward to more personal and accurate navigation services that don’t just lead us to the entrance of a 30-acre mega shopping mall, for example. Instead, these advanced services will be able to guide us through the mall to the shop or doctor’s office we seek.  In addition to significantly cutting the time we spend looking for (and not finding) businesses we want, these services will help us plan our overall daily routines better.

At the other end of the spectrum, brands and retailers also stand to gain from knowing more about our mobility patterns. One scenario these sensor networks can enable: Brands could deliver us a coupon for milk exactly when we are in the dairy products aisle and seriously considering a purchase.

However, Phyllis reminds us it’s not just about offering consumers the right discount at the right time/place. It’s also about delivering enhanced customer service. Stores, she says, will be able to interact directly – and more effectively – with customers because their mobile phone is now “a mobile information desk.” People can ask questions, query about items and better navigate the space nearby. The exchange feeds into CRM systems and programs to potentially boost customer loyalty.

Population movement

Phyllis tells us that Sprint is also eying opportunities in the healthcare and public safety sectors. Knowing where crowd build-up occurs (via a finer-grain sensor network) can help security officials allocate resources to the right location, for example. The same network data can help save lives. As Phyllis puts it: “In the case of emergencies, you want to know where the first responders are, and you want to be able to provide first responders with the ability to go directly to a trouble spot and save the time of trying to figure out where in a seven-storey building someone might be located.”

In the healthcare sector Sprint is currently working on a project focussed on detecting understanding personal mobility patterns. People who experience psychotic or depressed episodes, for example, typically develop erratic or compressed mobility patterns. “We’re looking at how people could opt in to a service that would monitor them and alert a caregiver when that person’s mobility patterns change,” Phyllis explains. “We are just starting to push the boundaries on what’s possible out there.”

Major micro-navigation opportunities

Why the heightened interest in micro-navigation and micro-sensor networks? In Phyllis’ view, it’s a logical next step in location services. Macro-navigation apps and solutions (such as Google Maps and MapQuest) have done a brilliant job of getting us to our final destinations. Now companies are lining up to claim their turf in a business ecosystem that exists to navigate us directly to the door step of our final destination, delivering us advice, assistance, information, perks and coupons every step of the way.

Sensing a business opportunity, companies, app developers and advertisers are looking to extend their reach directly inside buildings (businesses, malls, hospitals, schools). However, to make it all work there needs to be a fine-grain sensor network.

We aren’t there yet, but Phyllis discusses the progress and models that will define this new market. allowing the delivery of real-time, spatial, temporal services that can be used by business and – ultimately – for social good.

My take:

Sure, indoor navigation paves the way for effective proximity marketing. But don’t just think about spatial temporal campaigns that tell you want is on offer at the aisle level in a store. Phyllis outlines exciting opportunities around public safety, emergency response and personal mobile-enabled healthcare. What are the technology hurdles and where are the growth opportunities? You can get the inside track on this by listening to the interview.

***

Editor’s note: Phyllis is also speaking this week at LocNav USA (San Diego), a mega-event that brings together the well-established Navigation USA Conference (now in its 7th year) with the highly successful Location Business Summit. MobileGroove is proud to be a media partner and has produced and posted this podcast exclusively for Helen Raff and Naomi Hands over at TheWhereBusiness (you rock!), where the organizers have launched a microsite to showcase this audio interview and cement our future collaboration. My personal thanks also to Phyllis for the invigorating interview (!), and all the great exchanges since we connected at MCN so many years ago

If you missed LocNav this week, don’t miss your chance to catch the show when in comes to Europe (Amsterdam, May 2012).

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST With PHYLLIS REUTHER [15:20]

It’s rather fitting that I was 36,000 feet in the air connected to an in-flight Wi-Fi system working on a MacBook Air at the time. Thus, I was able to benefit from the technology advancements made possible by visionaries (like Jobs) who have brought us all advantages that generations before us would never know.

And that brings me to another connection between Lennon and Jobs. Each asked us to imagine and look beyond the ‘here and now’ to what will be – if we are open to it. In this respect, the contributions by Lennon and Jobs are tied to imagination and what can happen when we free our minds. They reshaped our thinking about peace, technology and the world around us. And through their vision and passion they made our world a better place.

To me, this is their legacy and the biggest lesson they have taught us. Dare to dream. Strive to have impact. Rather than accept limitations that would normally convince us that “we can’t”, these two men – in their own fiercely individual ways — showed us that “we can.”

Siri at your service

We all need an assistant. The more intelligent, the better.

In addition to the announcement and news around the soon-to-be-introduced in iPhone 4S, this week’s conference gave us a deeper view into how Siri – the technology Apple quietly (and cleverly) acquired last year — plays in a bigger ambition to deliver us suggestions, recommendations and assistance on our mobile devices. Apple’s Siri is marketed as the smart helper that gets things done. All we have to do is ask.

Think of Siri as an electronic concierge and virtual assistant at our call 24/7. No job interviews, hourly wages or background checks before we take Siri into our employ. Siri is trusted and smart — equipped to manage our lives as if she came right out of Harvard or Oxford. Or so we’re told.

According to Apple, Siri understands context and natural language. No need to tailor how you talk to match a machine. Imagine you ask Siri: “Will I need an umbrella this weekend?” Siri understands you are really looking for a weather forecast.

Apple also tells us that Siri — like any capable and qualified assistant — is knowledgeable about using the personal information we allow it to access. For example, if you tell Siri: “Remind me to call Mom when I get home,” it can find “Mom” in your address book and carry out the task. Ask Siri “What’s the traffic like around here?”, and it can figure out where “here” is based on your current location, data communicated by the GPS capability in the device.

And the list goes on. Siri supposedly helps you make calls, send text messages or email, schedule meetings and reminders, make notes, search the Internet, find local businesses, and get directions. You can also get answers, find facts and even perform complex calculations — all this just by asking Siri.

How I See It: There are obvious benefits to having an electronic concierge to help us manage our lives and work – if the technology works, of course. However, voice recognition is not entirely suited to how we live our lives. There are times when you can’t speak out loud (in class or during a play to name two).  And let’s not forget that voice recognition has been inexact for years, especially in loud places where the technology often can’t distinguish one voice or noise from another.  But, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that Siri does exactly what Apple says it can. There are huge implications for brands when our personal devices are equipped with personal digital assistants. Are companies going to continue to pay for an ad in a Google query if a mobile subscriber can bypass traditional keyword search altogether by just asking their new and knowledgeable pal, Siri? Will advertisers still sponsor the traffic alerts if Siri can tell their customers all they need to know? On the positive side, the concierge concept could deliver marketers deeper demographics and more insights into what people want, prefer and demand based on what they ask Siri to do in the first place. Siri may be the next big thing, but we won’t know for sure until the devices are on sale and the service stands up to consumer road tests in the wild. The big question is: how much will people  trust and rely on Siri for assistance. It’s one marketers will have to wait out. One thing is certain: marketers won’t get the answer just by asking Siri. This is where first-hand experience, knowledge and interacting with customers will give us the ability to gauge their real interest and actual participation.

Peggy adds: Personalized search and personalized devices are a natural fit in my book, which is why Siri was also the topic of my contribution to GigaOM’s most recent (and extremely relevant) Future of Mobile research brief. My chapter focused specifically on the advance of companies wielding personalization, recommendation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to transform mobile search. I also listed Siri among the companies/capabilities to watch in the next 12 months. I am proud to be a GigaOM PRO analyst and invite you to view the complete report and start a free trial here. BTW: My next project is a mobile loyalty report, so watch this space…

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

***

Are businesses mobile ready? A look at new research from Google and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) — conducted by Ipsos GmbH and TNS Infratest — should have alarm bells ringing. Only a fraction of businesses in the five countries surveyed report having mobile optimized sites. The break down is even more of an eye-opener: US – 33 percent, U.K. – 17 percent, France – 12 percent, Germany – 37 percent, and Japan – 43 percent.

So why are firms reluctant to spend their money on mobile?

Nick Lane, chief strategy analyst at mobileSquared, blames marketers’ mindsets. “The percentage of retailers that have invested in mobile is very low, it’s around 8 percent,” he says. “It shows that mobile is still not seen as a primary vehicle for brands, which is incredible when you think that 39.8 percent of people in the U.K. have a smartphone.”

Although some companies are already reaping the rewards of investing in what is undoubtedly poised to become an enormous growth market, Nick admits that, in general, mobile is still a “hard sell.”

Ironically, once a marketer or agency makes the effort to understand the opportunity in mobile, they move up the learning curve quickly. As Nick puts it: “Once a client for an agency sees how they can use mobile, how it fits within their own marketing remit, they then start to explore fresh ways of using mobile, especially location. The problem really is getting the next wave of companies in and that’s still quite a tough sell.”

Mobile in the fast-lane

When it comes to mobile, many companies are stuck in their ways, convinced that mobile has a way to go before it catches up with traditional , PC-based Internet. However, there are definite signs that this is a situation will change quickly and dramatically as we move through the current decade.

The best confirmation of this mobile megatrend comes from leading mobile author and strategy consultant, Tomi Ahonen. “There are those in the Internet world like Google, Yahoo and Facebook who say the future of the Web is mobile.” And why not? “We can do everything on mobile today, that can be done on the PC. Not necessarily always as well, or as easily, or as cheaply, but we can do it.”

As Tomi writes in his landmark mobile book, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media: Cellphone, Cameraphone, iPhone, Smartphone: Mobile is at least as disruptive as every other media that went before. People can use mobile to consume newspapers, read magazine articles and books, listen to podcasts and radio, buy songs and video games and even watch whole movies.

Technological advances mean that the capabilities of both the PC-Internet and the mobile Web are becoming increasingly blurred, a development Tomi argues will see mobile replace the PC as the dominant Web-communication medium altogether. “Mobile can do far more than the Internet ever could hope for,” he says. “The PC based internet was designed for those people who have a desk, who work at a desk, or who have easy access to a desk. But mobile was designed for the pocket. So those people who work in areas that do not have a desk can benefit from mobile, and only the mobile Internet.”

Clock is ticking

Whether its marketers mindsets, or our Euro-centric view of the world (unable to see that mobile THE screen for Asia, India, Africa and much of the developing world), it’s clearly taking time for companies and brands to wake up to the tremendous potential of mobile. Over at mobileSquared Nick believes that more companies will move to mobile when they begin to see a correlation between mobile strategy and bottom-line profits.

As he sees it: “The key thing for driving this is to show people that you can make money on mobile. The mobile operators can see that it’s not just about their relationship with the consumer over communications, they can then extend that into a transactional relationship.”

Once the case is made with real results and real relationships, the business benefits can follow. “The brands and the business can see an end-to-end journey and how you can take the consumer from communication and messaging all the way through, using mobile, to that transaction. They can see that there’s a direct return on investment, which perhaps wasn’t the case before.”

Apps aren’t enough

So far, many companies think they have invested enough in mobile if they simply launch a mobile app. That’s an approach that many (myself included) is akin to pouring money into a substantial black hole.

Granted, apps have earned their place in a mobile strategy. However, I believe it’s important for companies to be clear about what an app can and cannot deliver.

“It’s the age old story,” Nick observes. “Some have been forced to create an app just so  their brand is on the iPhone. The problem is, very often, no one is going to use it, and if that’s the case then they’re going to have their fingers burned because they have invested a lot of money, anywhere between £20,000 and £40,000 just to get their name up there, and they don’t actually know if their customers have an iPhone or Android.”

It’s a risky business and one that Martin Wilson, co-founder and managing director of Mobileweb Company, advises companies everywhere to think through carefully.

In a visionary blog post all the way back in April 2010, Martin referred to a new condition he dubbed the iSyndrome, likening it to a kind of debilitating disease. He wasn’t far off since iSyndrome forced companies not to see the Big Picture. Instead of thinking mobile, firms were focusing blindly on iPhones and apps. Short-sightedness kept them from missing the point of mobile, and missing out on huge opportunities to grow their business as well.

Martin kicked off the blog post with a clear objective: “I wish to put the device in perspective in terms of the market and more importantly strategic thinking.” He then presented points that are just as pertinent now as they were then. (I have updated the stats where possible.)

“In the UK the iPhone makes up about 4 percent of mobile devices in circulation (that’s if we count all the legacy devices too), Android even less – a small slice of the pie. Of all mobile devices; some 70 percent accessing the mobile web are not Smartphones [now around 60 percent], some 62 percent using applications are not smartphones.”

In the same post Martin explained why companies should look beyond the app to deliver on their business objectives. “The starting principle should be to deliver an experience that works effectively on any mobile device. For most that does not mean an app, but a mobile web solution. A mobile web solution that works on any device should be able to be delivered for any organization in just a few days, at very low cost. This is the ideal way to deliver a proof of concept, the perfect way to demonstrate value of mobile.”

Big picture issues

Apps and mobile websites are just a part of the picture. With mobile devices now accounting for almost 20 percent of all Google’s searches and a similar level at Microsoft’s Bing, mobile search should also be an essential part of a comprehensive mobile strategy.

As Martin sees it: “Many mobile suppliers can’t enable brands to capitalize on this burgeoning opportunity. Limitations in their platforms mean they simply can’t optimize services and content to be discovered by search engines, let alone work on a full range of mobile devices. Brands are missing a real opportunity to engage consumers and drive business.”

Thinking like this has motivated Martin to found his new company, Mobileweb Company, aimed at helping companies as they develop and implement comprehensive mobile strategies. With the help of a new platform (the company’s own IP) Mobileweb Company enables organizations to create a strong mobile presence within days – not weeks or months. Mobileweb Company also helps clients avoid the many optimization issues already preventing some major brands from taking full advantage of what mobile can offer.

What are these issues? Martin recently shared with me the results of an informal audit he conducted of mobile websites belonging to several leading U.K. retailers. Among the chief shortcomings: “Basic elements, such as optimizing the site and underlying content for search discovery, are overlooked.”

This lack of strategic thinking is out of sync with the phenomenal growth of mobile search. The recent Google/MMA research I noted at the start of my column, for example, reveals that mobile search is once again a daily touchpoint for consumers, particularly if those consumers are also smartphone users. Specifically, the report shows mobile search has increased 236 percent since 2010, with local search leading the growth.

As Martin sees it: “Brand reach and product promotion are important to delivering customer engagement and driving sales. Key traffic sources like Google are key to business growth. Many mobile suppliers are so far failing to take advantage this, forcing their retailer customers to miss out on a massive opportunity.”

My take:

My ongoing conversations with the analysts and experts impacting the industry confirms that the opportunities in mobile are most certainly there. The unknown variable in the equation is how many companies will lead the change — rather than be crushed by it — and harness mobile NOW. But don’t move so fast to catch up that you forget to investigate your options. Look past the big names — many of whom are hindered by their lack of vision, budgets and platforms — and think mobile. If you are going to take the plunge, then companies that have mobile in their corporate DNA are well-equipped to deliver strategic solutions and innovations.

About Richard

Richard is a freelance journalist and mobile enthusiast doing his part to support an ecosystem that helps consumers find and access content regardless of their devices. His work has appeared in the U.K. national press, including the Sunday Mirror, Sunday Express, The Times, Daily Telegraph and the Observer. Sharply focused on sports news and content, Richard has developed a deep interest in sports content and its pivotal place in the digital content mix.

According to new data from Boingo Wireless, a leading provider of software and services worldwide, smartphones and tablets passed laptops as the most widely carried Wi-Fi device in airports, reaching 58.9 percent of all devices in June. Mobile devices topped the 50 percent mark for the first time in February of this year. The study draws from data across Boingo’s managed network of 60 airports and aggregated network of hundreds of thousands of hotspots worldwide.

Boingo reports the overall size of the Wi-Fi device market has increased five-fold in the last five years, with laptops doubling overall, while the explosive growth of smartphones/tablets accounted for the lion’s share of the growth.

Apple operating system iOS has a commanding market share of mobile devices actively using Wi-Fi in those same venues, representing more than 83 percent of mobile total.  Android more than tripled its market share from 2010, but comes in fourth, following iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.

The numbers also underline an opportunity for companies that — like Boingo — have cleverly identified where we congregate as we circle the globe. Indeed, airports are truly hot spots when it comes to mobile marketing. My own company, Hipcricket, has created an innovative, location-based brand awareness campaign called Blue Moon on the Fly that begins by asking people to opt in by sending an SMS keyword to Blue Moon beer’s short code.

When an opted-in user arrives at a participating airport, they receive a message welcoming them to that airport, along with directions to the nearest terminal where they can find and enjoy a cold Blue Moon beer. Hipcricket and Blue Moon, a member of the MillerCoors family, have selected 59 airports across the country to be part of the campaign. At each of these locations the campaign delivers a unique message to users’ devices at each airport. No blanket mass marketing here. We also harness other channels to increase overall effectiveness, and recruit new users via call-to-action table tents we have set up in participating airports. Acknowledging the incredibly important role of social in the mix, we also support the campaign call out through posts on Blue Moon’s Facebook page.

How I See It: We travel a lot and we use mobile devices more than ever. But anyone who travels a fair amount has surely noticed that not everyone is a road warrior with the newest smartphone. A significant number of people still carry feature phones, connected devices that companies should not ignore. Blue Moon certainly hasn’t, and being all-inclusive (rather than limiting your focus to high-end smartphones) has allowed brands to have reach and impact. While Boingo’s data is interesting, it is important to remember that there is room for all kinds of mobile programs to target those who spend time in transit.

Marketers should grasp Google+

If you’re like me, you scrambled for an invite to join your colleagues on Google+ right after it broke on the scene in July.  And, if you’re like me, you have struggled to find the time to settle into yet another social network. Goodness knows contributing to the conversations on LinkedIn and Twitter can expand into a full-time job, if you let it. So, I may have been one of the first to sign in to Google+, but I’ve have spent virtually no time on it.

Apparently, I’m not the only one. Google has moved activities up a gear to capture our attention (and our time). This week the Web giant took the wraps off Hangouts, a mobile extension that enables simultaneous interaction with up to nine people via video.

As Google puts it: “Bumping into friends while you’re out is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, spontaneity hits the web. Whether you’re home in your pajamas, or hitting the streets with your mobile phone, video hangouts let you bring up to 9 people into your world. It’s the next best thing to everyone being there.”

For the time being, Google says that you must have an Android phone with a front-facing camera that has Android 2.3 Gingerbread or higher. The company has also announced that an iOS update is coming soon.

How I See It: It Google+ poised to be the next Big Thing? It’s a tough one to call. Having access to Google+ on mobile will certainly increase the odds that I will use it (once it hits the iPhone). I have also become a believer after watching this presentation from social heavyweight Chris Brogan. Brogan eloquently made the case for staying current, pointing out that services like MySpace were red-hot before falling out of favor with users. Social is exciting, and we are just beginning to understand what is possible. As consumers — and as marketers — it’s imperative that we keep an open mind and stay open to trying new things – especially if the new thing comes from the likes of Google.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

These are some of the observations and opinions voiced by a few of the just over 100 professionals, practitioners and  passionates who made our first Tweetchat an invigorating exchange and a rousing success. Tweetreach, for example, reports we reached nearly 107,000 people via just under 600 tweets to achieve an exposure of a whopping 658,320. All this confirms our conviction that there is a huge requirement for a platform that allows us discuss what really works, and why.

Prompted by the overwhelming positive response to our inaugural Tweetchat, we will continue the conversation with a Tweetchat following the must-attend MMA Forum London (October 4-5). That’s when we will discuss what you told us you wanted most: real-life case studies and key learnings from the brands and agencies that lead by example. Watch MobileGroove and Twitter for details — and chime in!

Connect with me – NOW

Paul Berney, MMA CMO (@paulbmma)

Mobile marketing is similar but different in each country around the world. What is the common denominator? @paulbmma tells us people everywhere have a  growing expectation to engage with brands in real-time. (Spot-on observation and one confirmed by a raft of research including a recent Cone Consumer Media Study that found people develop “positive feelings” towards brands they felt they could interact with on new media channels and reported they felt “better served by a company or a brand if they can have a conversation with them in a new media environment.”)

This is what marketers should understand, but where is the evidence that mobile interaction delivers results. @tomiahonen, joining us live from Hong Kong, pointed out that we are seeing astonishing stats coming from Japan, where McDonalds has signed up 1 in 6 consumers to opt-in for mobile advertising messages, a success that @noahelkin wondered can’t also be replicated elsewhere (a great point we will pick up on in future Tweetchats).

Another data point from @tomiahonen drove home the point that people do indeed want to have interactions with brands: 31 percent of U.S. adults want to be reached by using SMS.

OS or SMS?

@Mobisoul suggested mobile-savvy operating systems (OS) may displace SMS. While several commented that smartphone may well win out in the end, many more argued that SMS has the reach and the all-important personal touch. As @noahelkin pointed out: “SMS remains an effective engagement mechanism, even for those with advanced devices.” @Ew4n agreed, adding that “a perfectly timed SMS can really sway the balance on most any transaction.” (A view that many others also amplified.)

A mobile optimized site can also clinch the deal. @paulbmma shocked us with the data point that few businesses in Europe have mobile web or app presence. In fact, the total is less than 19 percent in France and U.K. This shortchanges merchants and their customer as reports show consumers are ready and waiting to transact on mobile. @tomiahonen underlined this critical point with the case of Tiffany’s jewelers, a company that doubled its sales after launching a mobile-optimized mobile website.

Permission marketing

Interaction is at the heart of mobile marketing, but messaging campaigns should abide by rules and etiquette. @nixxin reminded us that permission marketing is well suited to his native India, where consumer backlash against bulk SMS spam has forced the regulator to step in.

@tomiahonen

Indeed, spam in India and elsewhere makes it clear that “we as an industry need to move very strongly to opt-in,” @tomiahonen observed. (Even during the Tweetchat several participants in the U.K. and Africa complained they had just that moment received spam on their mobile phones.) @LisaCiangiulli brought her own example to strengthen the case for opt-in, revealing that permission marketing allowed mobile operator (and Optism customer) Mobinil to count 1+million opt-ins to its mobile marketing service in just two months. @tomiahonen added that Blyk has announced its client in India counts 1 million opted-in customers.

Others in the chat echoed the requirement for opt-in, agreeing that permission marketing matches with people’s requirement to “be in control” (as @Veluuria put it). The discussion prompted @paulbmma to state that permission marketing is “going to be essential.”

We’ll hear more about the pivotal place of position of permission in marketing at Permission-Based Marketing (October 3, London), organized by mobileSquared and in association with the MMA. The first-ever event will discuss how to build, monetize and grow opt-in customer databases.

Multi-channel, transmedia

We established and agreed that mobile sits at the center of increasingly cross-media campaigns. But what does that mean to marketers?

@paulbmma satisfied our requirement for real-life examples with a nod to Garanti Bank in Turkey, which successfully combines online, email and mobile. He also drew our attention to Mr Price Group in South Africa, which combines “every media channel to sign up new customers.

Connect the dots, as @MsMobileConverg did — and its clear that “transmedia will be tops.” As she put it marketers will finally crack the code when they “understand that each platform has it’s own voice.” SMS, she stressed, ROCKS in getting the message out. Not new, but very effective. @LisaCiangiulli took it a giant step further, picking up on the underlying theme of exchange: when we talk channels and formats we are still talking technology. “Understanding users’ needs and wants [are] often overlooked.”

Meantime, @MikeTV started a separate and stimulating discussion about mobile video. While we didn’t answer his question (will video dominate mobile marketing?) we did agree that video is moving up the agenda as brands use it to impress and engage.

I pointed people to this case study from @millennialmedia explaining how Pantagonia harnessed mobile video to drive app downloads and iTunes sales from the Patagonia Music Collective – a campaign that benefitted a wide range of environmental groups.

What will move video into the mainstream? Beyond issues around pricing and bandwidth @DuncanPringle and @shoobe01 indicated that we need to put people back into the equation, and look for ways to align video with our preference for pull on our mobile devices, not push.

But the lack of pull isn’t stopping us from watching video on our mobile devices. @paulbmma weighed in with a surprise from the joint MMA/Google research. Among the findings, many in Europe are already watching mobile video at high levels. Specifically, 64 percent in the U.K. — stats that spell opportunity for marketers.

QR codes

No surprise that a separate debate also raged around QR codes, one of the formats @paulbmma revealed is hot (along with coupons and search + LBS) in the U.S., Europe and parts of APAC.

@Ew4n, @mobileholly and others wondered if there aren’t easier alternatives than are less hassle. @shoobe01 zeroed in on the key question. Is QR code fragmentation is helping or hurting the industry?

The jury is out on that one. However, no matter the shortcomings around QR codes, @lizkmiller reminded us that there is lots of new investment in QR as a vehicle to “tie traditional spend to digital’s more measureable spend.”

We also heard from @noahelkin that QR codes are gaining traction as a pull mechanism “in-store and across traditional media.” @karimkhalifa told us that QR codes are also widespread in Egypt and the Middle East, where they are used to link physical (cars) with digital (information) at car shows, for example. Finally, I commented that the real impact of QR codes will be in the enterprise. Thinking here of pharmaceuticals and verticals where information about the product and demos (accessible via the linkage QR codes enable) are key.

Strategy trumps technology

But we have to think bigger than QR codes, apps or mobile video.

Marketing is not about technology.

@lizkmiller got us to focus when she commented: “the real issue is how to tie these innovations into a STRATEGY to engage at every stage — too many random acts of mobile marketing!” @mackmckelvey strengthened the argument. “Fundamentals in #mobilead cant be overlooked – get as fancy as u want, but if you haven’t planned right initially – #mobile falls flat.”

However, many campaigns depend on the capability of operators to understand and deliver essential subscriber data. @lizkmiller, who is also VP, Marketing Programs & Operations, CMO Council, quoted findings from a recent CMO Council study showing carriers – not marketers – have to get their head around mobile marketing. The majority (68 percent) of carriers in the study said that the traditional corporate mindset” they have is “out of sync with new forms of service delivery.” A solution to bandwidth issues can be found in truly understanding the customer and “delivering relevance based on data,” she continued. Narrowing down the audience saves on wastage all around.

Contextual relevance

How can the industry deliver relevance? @Veluuria suggests we start with empathy. We must put ourselves in the shoes of people and work with “four mobile mindsets: 1) I’m local. 2) I’m bored. 3) I’m multitasking. 4) I need it NOW.”

Search - us requesting what we want right out – is another way to arrive at more relevant results. In fact, @paulbmma pointed out that search is coming on strong,  increasing 236 percent since 2010 with local search – which also encourages social interaction) leading the growth. Quite correctly, @indigo102 asked why there appears to be a disconnect between the size of search (huge) and the number of mobile solution providers and organizations over looking the opportunity. @somoagency joined the debate, reporting that conversations from mobile search measures on transactional mobile websites are “proving that it is one of the strongest, most relevant channels.”

Inspired by my own interactions with cool startups (such as Primal, Goby, Expertmaker, Hipmunk) that are defining the future of mobile search, I started a discussion about how our requirement for personal relevance in marketing also marks a turning point in mobile search. We want what we want, not what Google’s PageRank says we do.

Prompted by @matthausk, I pointed out that precision and personalization is where the action (and the money) is in mobile search. Think Siri, virtual assistants, smart recommendations, and you know where this is going.

As if @robertphaslam could read my mind, he echoed that “contextual relevance” is where the market is going. “Give me what I want, when I want it, based on where I am.”

Kinda says it all.

More about mobile search megatrends in a review of mobile search I have written to be included in a must-read mobile anthology that GigaOM will publish and distribute during Mobilize (September 26-27, San Francisco).

* * *

Editor’s note: My guests and I were blown away (!) by the positive response to our first Tweetchat, and the string of requests from participants for an encore. We’ll be back with a Tweetchat to discuss some of the key learnings from MMA Forum London. And we’ll use our own learnings from this chat to develop a structure that will allow us to explore single topics (coupons, QR codes, permission marketing, mobile shopping) and speak directly with the brands leading the pack.

Read the complete Tweetchat here (and many thanks to Robert Haslam @ MiLiberty for culling over nearly 600 tweets!)

This headline on msnbc.com stopped me cold: Windows 8 Does What Apple Doesn’t. Talk about an about-face.

In case you missed it, Microsoft used its developer-focused BUILD conference to provide a detailed preview of the next major release of Windows, code-named “Windows 8.”

“We re-imagined Windows,” Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, said in his keynote address to the thousands of developers in attendance. “From the chipset to the user experience, Windows 8 brings a new range of capabilities without compromise.”

What’s new in the new release?

A new interface that Microsoft says embodies simplicity and gives you control. The Metro-style UI provides for access via mouse, keyboard and touch. And there are apps that work together to deliver users a seamless experience whether you are in email, on your desktop, or on a social network –  an experience that Microsoft says syncs across devices.

“This is no desktop of files, intended for you to push around in your little dreary garden,” highly-regarded tech writer Wilson Rothman wrote on msnbc.com. “Instead, it’s based on the assumption that your computer is a dynamic extension of a changing world, and that you yourself are a node in a vast social network. If that sounds crazy when referring to a Microsoft-built PC operating system, it kinda is.”

Rothman gives kudos to Microsoft for making tough, but necessary decisions. “When Microsoft set out to design Windows 8, it faced a pretty daunting decision: Put its mobile OS on tablets, or rewrite Windows entirely so that it would be as good on thin touch tablets as it is on a big honkin’ PC. That latter choice is waaay harder, but Microsoft has global dominance on the Windows side, and pretty much zero traction on the phone side. A PC is still what most computer companies want to sell, especially the ones that are crazy jealous of Apple’s products (and profits). So as a long-term strategy, leveraging its huge Windows base to grow a tablet business makes more sense.”

How I See It: Microsoft put no timeline on the release of Windows 8, but reports say it will be a year or more from now. Innovation can never come fast enough, but that doesn’t mean marketers can sit and wait it out. If the observers are right that Windows 8 is poised to have dramatic impact on our personal mobility, then we as marketers need to plan for this convergence of experience and devices. It isn’t that difficult if we focus on what matters most: people. This is about lifestyle and connected lives. Products, services and technologies need to take a back seat. Early adopters lead connected lives today, and technology like Windows 8 could move this into the mass-market. It’s great when a large audience of consumers want — even demand — connectedness in everything they do (including the marketing they receive). Clearly, this makes the activity of reaching the masses easier on one hand — and far more complex on the other.

…

Regular readers of this column know how much I believe in the convergence of mobile and social.

Nielsen released new research this week based on a survey of nearly 2,000 people worldwide that shows just how far we’ve come.

Among the findings:

• Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
• Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet
• Over twice as many people aged 55 and older visit social networking sites on their mobile phones than last year
• Nearly two in five social media users access these services from mobile devices. About 37 percent use mobile phones, 3 percent use iPad, and a whopping 97 percent access via computer.

How I See It: I’m fortunate to be an annual speaker at Mary Furlong’s impressive Boomer Summit. Each year, I talk about how intuitive technology can go a long way toward bridging and — ultimately closing –the Generation Gap. It wasn’t so long ago that many wrongly assumed the 55 and older crowd was made up of hopeless luddites who chose to use their phones only for voice calls. Fast forward, and the majority of skeptics are finally convinced that this is a demographic that can’t be pigeon-holed. Nielsen provides us another interesting stat to drive this home. It states that this age group is leading the growth of social on mobile. I want to call someone and tell them the news, but why bother? It’s more likely that the best (and most effective) way to reach my intended audience is to use a social network.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

Grab a pew at the MMA Tweetchat (September 20) and follow the edgy and informative exchange with Paul Berney, MMA CMO, and Tomi Ahonen, independent consultant, influential blogger and seven-time best-selling author.

Knowing Tomi (as we all do!) the discussion will be candid, open and extremely worthwhile.

Tough questions, lively debate

Join us to deep-dive into three key topics:

Q1. Mobile marketing is global, what are the learnings from other markets that matter most?

Q2. Coupons, QR codes, LBS, Augmented Reality, Apps: what are the hot trends in mobile marketing?

Q3. What were the real surprises from the Google and MMA mobile research?

How do I participate?

The Tweetchat will take place in Tuesday, September 20, at 5pm UK, 6:00 pm Johannesburg, 7:00pm Istanbul, (Find your time zone here). Just follow the #mmaf2011 hashtag on Twitter and include it in your tweets during the chat. We recommend using tweetchat.com, which loads tweets faster and enters the hashtag automatically -you can sign in using your Twitter account. I will host this live, online chat on Twitter –  all you have to do is follow the hashtag on Twitter and bring your best questions for our guests.

Google findings

By way of background, the MMA and Google teamed up in 2011 for the MMA Forum New York and MMA Forum London, to collaborate on an ambitious global research study to provide insights into how people are using their mobile devices and the readiness of businesses to engage consumers via mobile.

The research, titled Global Mobile Research: The Smartphone User & The Mobile Marketer, was conducted by Ipsos GmbH and TNS Infratest and based on the results of two surveys: an online survey of thousands of mobile consumers in 30 countries, and a telephone survey of 1,000 marketing decision makers, 200 in five key markets.

Among the key findings (based on a subset of the data which focused on five countries: US, UK, France, Germany and Japan):

• A significant number of smartphone users accessed the Internet via their smartphone every day of the past seven days (U.S.- 58 percent, U.K. – 55 percent, France – 59 percent, Germany – 45 percent, Japan – 78 percent)
• Many users go online via their smartphones multiple times a day (U.S.-53 percent, U.K. – 49 percent, France – 47 percent, Germany – 42 percent, Japan – 68 percent)
• Smartphone users have looked for local information on their mobile devices (U.S.- 90 percent, U.K. – 81 percent, France – 83 percent, Germany – 85 percent, Japan – 90 percent). What’s more, these local information seekers have taken action after looking up local content (U.S.- 87 percent, U.K. – 80 percent, France – 83 percent, Germany – 79 percent, Japan – 80 percent)
• Across the board, consumers are using their smartphone while in a store (U.S.-82 percent, U.K. – 68 percent, France – 82 percent, Germany – 65 percent, Japan – 75 percent). But it’s not just about assistance and information. Consumers are  also making purchases on their mobile device (U.S.- 29 percent, U.K. – 28 percent, France – 17 percent, Germany – 28 percent, Japan – 45 percent)
• Mobile commerce strategies primarily target upper funnel activities, with 65 percent of respondents reporting that their mobile strategy targets the research phase of the shopping process
• Only a fraction of businesses in the five countries report having mobile optimized sites (U.S.- 33 percent, U.K. – 17 percent, France – 12 percent, Germany – 37 percent, Japan – 43 percent)
• Fewer than a third of businesses surveyed have an app (U.S.- 19 percent, U.K. – 15 percent, France – 18 percent, Germany – 26 percent, Japan – 10 percent)

The first set of results can be viewed in a presentation available here.

Spread the word

The MMA project with Google and other research partners is ongoing — and a highlight of next week’s Tweetchat will be a discussion of these findings and a preview of some of the  additional data points that will be unveiled at the MMA Forum in London (October 4-5).

If you want to find out more about how you can harness the mobile channel to drive positive results for your business, brand or organization, then register to attend the MMA Forum London and connect with the leading thought leaders in the mobile marketing world.

***

Tweetchat – be there!

Everyone across the industry is welcome to join in and participate, so please share with anyone who you think might be interested. We’d love for anyone who’s interested to join, and share their thoughts on the subject.

So please, let us know if you’re interested, post any questions or topics you’d like to see discussed, let other people who might be interested know about the chat, and join us:

Event: Tweetchat on hot mobile marketing trends, topics and stats

Where: Twitter

When: Tuesday, September 20, 5pm GMT (Find your time zone here)

How: Follow the  #mmaf2011 hashtag on Twitter – and chime in!

The benefits and the business models around mobile are the topic of Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology II (September 15, London). The all-day knowledge seminar organized by AIME (the Association for Interactive media & Entertainment) is already standing room only (!), an unexpectedly high attendance that tells us the topic strikes a chord with charities, advertising & marketing agencies, service providers, broadcasters, industry bodies and mobile operators–all the players that need to come together and work together to maximize the potential for all kinds of charities to use mobile.

The event is a follow up to the tremendously successful inaugural event that took place in May 2010. (You can read the 2010 Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Charities Event overview here.)

Mobile for good

Andrew Darling –esteemed colleague, OpenMarket executive and Chair of the AIME event provides us with an update of the mobile/cross-media campaign by DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee) to help the millions of people in the horn of Africa suffering from the worst drought in human history. OpenMarket provides the platform and connectivity for the effort, which uses the company’s payments and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions to improve the outreach by allowing the charity to connect with donors (and ultimately continue the interaction) using text messaging.

DEC kicked off the call for donations on June 7 with a massive media and advertising campaign that promoted the mobile channel for the first time, using ads on posters, TV and elsewhere to promote a shortcode. The cross-media effort paid dividends, allowing DEC to raise over GBP1 million in July alone.

But that is just the start of something bigger: ongoing relationships with donors via mobile.

“We added considerable value through our innovative use of our CRM and content management platform, which we call OpenMarket CMX2.  This is a platform which really handles the interactive messaging and adds some quite critical core intelligence functions, allowing a campaign manager a way of recognizing when a donor had made a GBP5 donation [using mobile] and sending a text message back to them thanking them for their donation and requesting them if they wanted to opt into the UK HMRC tax regulations around Gift Aid to forego the tax relief….Our response mechanism simply asked the donor to text back their full name and their postcode and this guaranteed that an extra 24 percent would be added to their donation.”

Andrew notes that other fundraising channels, including telephone and email, report responses to the Gift Aid opt-in are generally around the “25-30 percent range.” With mobile – and the addition of CRM — charities can “get this up to 60 percent, providing a very significant uplift in funds raised.”

Multi-channel matters

Integration with mobile is just part of the picture. Charities must also be aware of the central role social networks play — both in our behavior as donors and in charities’ campaigns as they embrace interactive technologies. With this in mind, OpenMarket has taken the wraps off of Mobile & Web Checkout, a custom mobile checkout solution that allows charities (and companies and merchants in all verticals to integrate mobile purchasing into a mobile app or website, allowing people to complete a mobile purchase using their web-enabled mobile devices.

“Charities have to understand that the cause is not longer insulated from the donors,” Andrew observes. The opportunity (even the requirement) for people to interact with the causes and organizers that matter to them most, turns up the pressure on charities to use interactive media and take donations via mobile, social and apps – to name a few.

Knowledge & networking Seminar

How do companies drive awareness of their SMS donation channels? How do they integrate with the likes of Facebook? How can mobile drive positive results for time-sensitive campaigns?

MobileGroove is proud to be a media partner with Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology II, and event that will look at what charities need to do and have in place to manage campaigns effectively, across multiple platforms – web, mobile, email, social media, apps.

Speakers include:

• Michael Newsome, Director of Individual Giving, UNICEF
• Tim Longfoot, Managing Director, Open Fundraising
• Richard Dutton, Head of Commercial, Charities Trust
• Angela Morris, Marketing and Commercial Manager, Jamie Oliver Foundation
• Marcus East, CIO, Comic Relief
• Max St John, Lead consultant, Non-profit and Public Sector, NixonMcInnes
• Adrian Cockle, Head of Online, WWF UK
• Linda Minnis, CEO, Charities TrustAndrew Jackson, Director, Cork and Leather
• Oisin Lunny, Senior Market Development Manager, OpenMarket
• Elizabeth Kessick, Head of Insight, JustGiving
• Paul Swaddle, CEO and Founder, Pocket App
• David Erasmus, Founder, Givey
• Andy Burnett, Head of Operations – Interactive and ITL, ITV
• Patrick Nash, Chief Executive, Connect Assist
• Rob Mansell, Finance Director, Retail Trust
• Iain Ainslie, IT Underwriter, ACE Europe
• Paul Whiteing, CEO, PhonepayPlus
• Erica Crump, Solicitor, Bates Wells & Braithwaite
• Damian Collins, MP. Member of Culture, Media, Sport and the Olympics Committee
• Rupert Lowery, CEO, Cardsave Online
• Iain Ainslie, IT Underwriter, ACE Europe
• Jason Cross, Marketing Director, Incentivated
• Gareth Jones, Brand Engagement Director, LBi
• Rosalie Kurton, Business Development Director, LBi

The event is already sold out, but the positive attendee response indicates a high level interest and activity in mobile giving — a topic that we will revisit in follow-up coverage here at MobileGroove and over at the official AIME website. You can follow on-the-spot coverage via Twitter, and the hashtag is #Techgiving. You can (and should!) also follow Andrew Darling (@darlingbuds).

With its industry reach, AIME is well positioned to be the bridge between charities, third sector representative organizations and technology providers, providing information on the value of interactive technology and how companies can move their charities from analog to digital and mobile. For more information, please visit AIME.

Listen to the podcast with Andrew Darling [16:00] here.

We’ll likely never know the answer. But it’s safe to say that Yahoo’s disjointed mobile strategy was largely responsible for the board’s decision to oust Bartz.

What were the missteps in mobile that cost Yahoo, a company once so close to expanding its prowess in search, social and technology to mobile, its competitive edge? News site mocoNews provides some worthwhile insights and analysis.

It argues that Yahoo made a series of bad moves:

• Yahoo has not committed efforts and investments in the vital area of research and development, and has a lousy track record of starting and stopping initiatives.
• Livestand, the company’s digital newsstand for tablets, is late to market. It was expected to be delivered in the first half of the year.
• Yahoo has failed to grab a significant slice of the search advertising pie, and research firm IDC reports that Yahoo is losing share in mobile advertising.
• There has been frequent and disruptive change at the top of Yahoo’s mobile units.

Ironically, Bartz – who didn’t steer Yahoo back on the mobile course  when the company lost the plot– sent her farewell email to employees via an iPad.

How I See It: I agree with Om Malik ’s view that an acquisition would help Yahoo get back in the mobile game. Malik names Foursquare and Flipboard as possible candidates. (I’ll talk about Foursquare in the next item.) As for Flipboard, the social magazine for the iPad has been the leader of the pack since its launch in summer 2010, when it immediately could not keep up with demand. I still use Yahoo, but it is more about personal habit than a conscious choice to be with an innovator. Like everything else in mobile, the story has yet to be written. But this latest shakeup signals that Yahoo is running out of time to be included in the narrative.

***

Is LBS the big thing for marketers?

This week saw the release of a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, an essential source of data and insights about how average North Americans use the technologies and services available. Among the takeaways from the report is the observation that the category referred to as location-based services is broad and can’t be easily addressed by marketers.

According to the findings, 28 percent of all American adults use mobile or social location-based services of some kind. This includes those who do the following activities:

• 28 percent of use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location—that equals 23 percent of all adults.
• A much smaller number (5 percent of mobile phone owners, or 4 percent of all adults) use their phones to check in to locations using geosocial services such as Foursquare. Smartphone owners are especially likely to use these services on their phones – coming in at 12 percent.

“Americans are not currently all that eager to share explicitly their location on social media sites, but they are taking advantage of their phones’ geolocation capabilities in other ways,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, Pew Internet Project research specialist and co-author of the report. “Smartphone owners are using their phones to get fast access to location-relevant information on-the-go.”

How I See it: Foursquare’s hype has always topped its ability to deliver a mass audience to marketers. Do the math, and the results are an eye-opener. Even if you are targeting U.S. smartphone users, the most you can hope to reach is about 14 million. In my view, there are other more effective ways to reach consumers with relevant local offers. At the top of my list is the creation of a mobile loyalty club where users willingly share preferences and location information in exchange for deals and information that matter to them. How big is that audience? The last Hipcricket survey on the subject indicated that more than 100 million would be interested in joining a mobile loyalty club – if only their favorite brands would offer one.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

* * *

While Google may have sewn up the market when it comes to general or horizontal Internet search, the race to dominate the mobile and alternative search space is far from run. In fact, it’s just starting. A top contender for a lead spot is Goby, a mobile search app available on the Apple and Android platforms designed from the ground up to help people find fun stuff to do nearby.

The concept certainly sold TeleNav, a leading provider of location-based services (LBS) to consumers, enterprise, wireless service providers and automotive companies with more than 24 million paying subscribers as of June 30, 2011. TeleNav was one of the first companies in North America to launch a GPS management service and has since grown to provide products in 29 countries through 16 mobile carriers.

TeleNav quietly snapped up Goby last week for an undisclosed sum. Additional details on timing and extent of Goby content and technology integration will be announced at a later date.

Peggy adds: The motivation is no doubt linked to TeleNav’s increasing focus on the delivery of location-specific, real-time, personalized services such as GPS navigation and local search. After all, the fit between turn-by-turn navigation and finding fun stuff nearby is a no-brainer. What’s more, Goby, a search and discovery engine, counts nearly  500,000 users as of the 1Q2011 — a figure Goby said was on track to reach one million by 4Q2011.

Goby: At-a-glance

RATING: Reliable, easy to drive, and with an attractive exterior!

Availability: You can find Goby at www.goby.com, in the Apple App Store (iPhone and iPad) or in the Android Market.

In my view, Goby has a jump start on most other search apps. I consider it to hold the pole position because Goby moved so quickly from the web to the iPhone, cruised right through the Android Market, and then roared onto the iPad!

I invite everyone to download the free app on their device(s) and take Goby out for a spin. I did, so now let’s look at the results.

Goby is the brainchild of co-founders Mark Watkins (CEO), Vince Russo (CTO), Michael Stonebraker, and Andy Palmer who developed it to help people find fun things to do on short notice. They did this because they are self-proclaimed adventure junkies and they wanted to build a site to help other people find great things to do as well, all in one well organized place. It hit the Apple app store in March 2010 and launched its iPad app in June of 2010. It then joined the Android Market in July of 2010 and now counts approximately one million (!) downloads since.

Firs and foremost, Goby is a search engine for finding places to go and things to do there. Every part of it is designed to fit that need, a singular focus on a niche that makes Goby a powerful alternative search engine. As a result, Goby  exposes the shortcomings of Google when it comes to well-honed vertical searches. Sure, you can try to *make* Google tell you what’s on nearby, but Goby is designed from the ground up to do it better and do in on your mobile.

There is no tutorial within the app. but Goby doesn’t need one. As you can see for yourself (in the images below), Goby is  menu driven and completely intuitive.

How does it work?

You simply select a category, a location, and a date(s), and hit search.

In like fashion the search results are also laid out so that you can easily select a destination and then all of the necessary ephemera flow neatly from it.

Add up these usability pluses to its clean design and free availability and it’s easy to see why Goby earned the pole position in my book.

Q&A with Mark Watkins, CEO:

Where does Goby get its data from?

Mark: Goby uses something called “Deep Web” technology to search carefully selected databases and other sources of information that are pre-qualified for relevance. Then Goby organizes your query results in a meaningful way.

How can I suggest a site for Goby?

Mark: We have a process for qualifying and introducing high-quality sites. Drop us a note at content@goby.com and we’ll take a look. If it’s not a site we’ve already found and we end up using it, we’ll send you a Goby t-shirt to impress your friends!

What is the Fun Feed?

Mark: The Fun Feed allows you to personalize the types of activities that are most interesting to you. When Goby comes across some new information it can alert you on your phone or by email.

Goby is available in the U.S. via the iTunes App Store and the Android market. What can you tell me about your roadmap and plans for markets beyond North America?

Mark: Goby has its sights on launching internationally just as soon as possible.

Mobile means search is not desktop search. It can be a new experience that is people-assisted, location-linked, or even pure app discovery. What directions are attractive to Goby and why?

Mark: Well, Goby is not just a vertical search engine. We are rapidly becoming a search, discovery, social and recommendation engine. I encourage all of your readers to try our new Fun Feed for personalized recommendations.

Tell me more about Goby going social…

Mark: Social media is a logical addition to the whole Goby experience. If you’re headed somewhere or at some place that Goby recommended, naturally you’ll want to tell your friends and maybe invite them to join you. By integrating social media like Facebook and Twitter, we just want to make it easier for you.

With the rise in smartphones, conditions are aligned for increased interest in, and usage of, mobile search, but how does Goby make money?

Mark: Goby is a search engine, and we make money the way most search engines do. We sell ad space on the site, and we will always clearly mark it as such. Also, some sites pay us if you click through to their site and buy something, but of course, there’s no pressure.

Goby road test

Naturally, I took Goby out for a spin myself!

I was truly a typical user, lost in a new city in need of a hotspot and some coffee. I gave Goby my location (it should be the default setting) and used the category system to select “coffee cafes.” Goby found two nearby. The first was a dud – but an accurate dud!

The second one was surreal. I spent 15 minutes looking for that coffee shop that “wasn’t there” according to the results. However, I knew different — or at least I thought I did. I got to the bottom of the mystery when I called the coffee shop. It turns out the owners were actually at the window (looking at me – the idiot) as I paced back and forth in front of the coffee shop I was looking for in the first place. The shop was there –but it had changed its name! Goby was right and I was close. I then recalled some low ratings that I had read for Goby’s results from users, and it all made sense.

Goby isn’t perfect because the world isn’t perfect. Shop names change, for example. Once Goby finds something fun for you to do, call ahead! You can bet it’s right on the mark, literally.

Overall, my Goby test drive got high marks. The results are extensive and straightforward.

I’m also impressed by the simple and effective branding. Goby has a great logo, a very attractive color scheme and the company sticks to it. (Personally, I would love to see a custom Goby case in blue with the ever-popular orange fish logo. It would give a real boost to word-of-mouth adoption of the app and maybe even start a movement (!). That said, I am also the type to very discreetly pay $.99 for the ad-free version.)

Where would I like to see Goby go next?

Well, when I open up my iPad, I want more. An iPad app should be more than a large iPhone app, at least in this case. At the very least, I want the Goby fish to swim or blow audible bubbles. I want an awesome splash page (see image). I want downloadable brochures because I couldn’t afford the 3G model.  As Steve Jobs would say, I want “one more thing!”

Peggy adds: No doubt we will see more than that now that TeleNav has bought Goby, Charles. I expect the acquisition to produce services with more stickiness, a sharp focus on social and new emphasis on discovering fun stuff nearby — and recommending still more of the same. Add aware advertising and this is a model with a lot of mileage!

Next in the series: We go searching with a duck!

Editor’s note: The mission to discover and promote every alternative Internet search engine in the world took Charles three years and over 4,000 posts to accomplish. Now he’s back with his pick of mobile search apps, starting with iPhone and iPad apps and later moving to look at mobile search offers across other platforms and – ultimately – the mobile Web. If you have a mobile search app or service, or would like to suggest a company for this series, then please reach out to Charles (csknight1@hotmail.com).

About Charles:

Widely respected as the “Voice of Alternative Search,” Charles Knight started his career in search as editor of the ReadWriteWeb spinoff blog AltSearchEngines (ASE). The mission of ASE was to discover and promote every alternate search engine in the world, a feat that took 3 years and over 4,000 posts to accomplish. Along the way Charles and ASE organized ground-breaking events in San Francisco, New York City, and Berlin to discuss the future of search. A convert to the iPhone and apps for iOS, Charles begins AltSearchEngines Redux here on MobileGroove with his pick of alternative search engine mobile apps that belong on everyone’s smartphone or tablet. Charles divides his time between Virginia and Vermont. He welcomes search engine app news and views at csknight1@hotmail.com.

***

Doing business on the Internet used to be so simple. If you knew for sure that your desktop website was optimized for access across all browsers, then your job was done. That was then. Now, the explosion of Internet-capable and connected devices has complicated matters. As more customers access your site from mobile devices, you have to do more to deliver a good user experience. To deliver content your customers can access and enjoy on their mobile devices you need to know what those devices are, what capabilities and features they have and — more importantly — how your customers are using them.

It’s a mammoth task, made even more complex by the existence of at least 6,500 (!) distinct and Web-capable mobile devices models. And let’s not forget the vast array of screen sizes, operating systems and capabilities.

So, how do you address such a complex and fragmented device landscape? And – better yet — why should you bother?

Mobile is massive

It may sound like a no-brainer, but we can’t stress it enough. Mobile is displacing PC. Therefore, we can no longer operate under the naive assumption that most traffic to our websites comes from PCs. In some countries mobile Web usage is not just competing with PC; it is outstripping it. This has been the case in Japan and South Africa for several years (Japan since 2005 and South Africa since 2008, to be precise). In other countries (such as the U.S.) we are near the tipping point.

In fact, The International Telecommunications Union estimates there were 940 million mobile broadband (3G) subscriptions worldwide and 555 million fixed broadband subscriptions in 2010.

But it’s not just the numbers that tell us mobile is displacing desktop as the primary means to access the Web. Internet giants are also moving into mobile at full-speed, an exodus that tells us a mobile strategy is a must.

Case in point is Google. During a February 2011 presentation, Google revealed that over 15 percent of Google searches are via mobile devices (a whopping 30 percent of searches for restaurants was done by people using mobile phones). As Google’s Director of Mobile Jason Spero pointed out, that adds up to one in seven searches. But, how many companies put one seventh of their resources into mobile? Definitely not one in seven. Jason’s  damning conclusion: Not engaging mobile customers is like “not doing business with your customers on Thursdays.”

Sure, you can choose to do nothing, and hope that your existing Internet website works on mobile. But do you really want to bet your business on it?

Better is best

Spoilt by a great Internet experience on our PCs, people have come to expect – even demand — an equally excellent Web experience on their mobile devices. People tend to lose patience (and their tempers) if they are not presented with what they want – the way they want it.

Major brands and companies need little convincing of the merits of adapting content to devices in order to deliver a good user experience to mobile customers. Check out Alexa’s top 20 Websites. There some 18 out of 20 big names detect mobile devices and deliver a site that is appropriate. Some — including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and eBay  – take it even a step further, delivering a great mobile experience to ALL users of all devices, including feature phones, legacy phones and smartphones.

What do these companies have in common? They use device detection to fine-tune the user experience. Why do they go to the trouble? Because, even on smartphones, customers have a lot of hoops to jump through if they want to view a Internet website. (This extra effort is not required if a company uses device detection to make the perfect match between the user, the content and the device.)

Without device detection, the user is on their own. They have to suffer the hassle of panning and zooming to read a desktop oriented page. The have to deal with the frustration of Flash (which is still  problematic on smartphones, and non-existent on iPhones and feature phones). And they have to waste a lot of time just waiting for the all-singing, all-dancing version of the Internet (translated: desktop oriented) website to load and display on their device.

Size does (not) matter

On first glance, the Google home page may look similar no matter if you view it on a PC, a tablet, a smartphone or an ordinary feature phone. But that’s only because Google has meticulously architected a comprehensive mobile strategy designed to delight all of its customers everywhere on the planet.

Other companies — such as Tripadvisor and Booking.com — understand that mobile isn’t about squeezing desktop websites into smaller displays. Mobile is about lifestyle and context.

Put another way, it’s about providing people precisely what they need to do what they need to do. We may want everything at our finger tips when we are booking a room or a flight from the comfort of our PC, where a big screen and keyboard mean we can while away hours searching, planning and inputting all the details (more than once!).

But on mobile the context (and immediacy) changes all the rules. People don’t want access to everything, they want to accomplish a single task and will gravitate to the sites that let them do it quickly, easily and without the hassle of zooming, panning or just waiting.

Device detection

This is why device detection is moving up the list of mobile must-have’s.

Device detection allows companies to query the capabilities of each device accessing their Website. But it’s not just about accuracy. That’s table stakes. Good device detection is also fast, and it should be possible for your site to identify at least 100,000 handsets per second. This device information allows the site to make decisions about how best to format the content before sending it to the user.

Once you know the make and model of the user’s device accessing your website at that moment, then you can make smarter choices about the appropriate services, promotions and advertising to deliver.  After all, it makes no sense to deliver advertising that includes mobile video to a handset that doesn’t support it. Knowing what to deliver (and what not) helps to ensure a seamless (and more enjoyable) user experience with fewer disappointments.

Device detection is also key when it comes to planning and investment. If you find that half  of the mobile traffic to your site is coming from low-end phones, then it’s high time to stop worrying about whether or not to cater to iPhone users and start thinking about developing a leaner version of your site to support basic handsets.

Finally, device detection gives you a view into what you can and can’t do to improve the user experience. Does the device supports click-to-call? Then make sure to take advantage of this functionality so the user can click to dial numbers that appear on the page. Does the device have GPS? Then make sure the user’s location is communicated via GPS, rather than forcing people to fill in a form stating their location. Does the device have a touch-screen? Then adapt your CSS to ensure that items are big enough to be tapped with a finger tip.

At the end of the day, device detection is the way to give your customers what they want — without them having to ask for it. (You also don’t risk losing them altogether if they end up at the receiving end of a bad user experience.)

App shortcomings

“And what about apps?” — I hear you ask.

This is not an app vs. mobile Web debate. If you know for certain that all your customers use iPhones (and will continue for the foreseeable future), then go ahead and make an iPhone app. (But if you know that with 100-percent certainty, then you should also get in contact with me to pick some horses in the next Ascot!)

However, a true mobile strategy is mobile-focused and embraces all of the mobile devices out there. Thus, a mobile app is not a mobile strategy, regardless of how many different platforms you choose to target. (A discussion of the complex mobile ecosystems and the vast differences between app submission and approval procedures is beyond the scope of this column.)

What’s more, apps only work if users download them, install them — and find them in the first place (!). This assumes that you have the branding, marketing and social media savvy to get the word out that you have an app, and what it takes to rise above the dozens (even thousands) of apps in your category.

Consider your options and it’s clear that a truly mobile strategy is the most effective way to achieve positive results (and deliver all users everywhere a good experience). Against this backdrop, device detection is not just essential to developing your mobile strategy. It’s also the only way to maintain it. Device fragmentation is an issue we must all face now because the market shows no signs of slowing.

Indeed, the advance mobile and the variety of devices means there is no end to the devices we can choose to use: feature phones, smartphones, small tablets, big tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktops and personal navigation devices. ‘Connected’ is fast becoming our new default state of being, and marketers that can cater to our always-on lifestyles will surely clinch the deal.

About Ronan

Ronan Cremin is VP of dotMobi’s engineering initiatives, where he oversees the development of dotMobi’s portfolio of mobile Web products, including DeviceAtlas — a solution used by companies in over 130 countries, including 8 percent of the Fortune 100 — to power device detection for their mobile sites. DeviceAtlas detects over 1 trillion mobile devices each month.

Editor’s note: In July 2011 dotMobi released the new version of its award-winning DeviceAtlas. See mobiThinking for more details on device detection.

Be heard! Reach an audience of 20,000+ mobile professionals and practitioners.

MobileGroove is accepting guest columns. Email us to find out more.

Mixi started out in 2004 allowing its users to post photos, share comments and links, and interact on community pages and forums based on themes ranging from recipes to rock-n-roll.

Today Mixi is a full-scale communications platform, with a growing emphasis on mobile and apps. In line with this sharp focus on apps, Mixi enables users to ‘check-in’ via GPS and select from applications around entertainment (games) and communication (tools to enhance the communications experience).

Like most platforms, Mixi is clear about the requirement to actively encourage third-party developers to make apps for its members. In August the company released an Android SDK and has since revealed plans to release an SDK for Apple iOS. (You can find more information by visiting the Mixi Developer Center .)

Mixi by the numbers

With more than 750 active users Facebook may be the leading social network in many countries, but Japan isn’t one of them. That’s a territory that is loyal to Mixi, a fast-growing social network spanning PC and mobile.

According to Tak, Mixi currently counts 24 million registered users and 3 million mobile users, a number that is on the rise.

In fact, Tak reports that “over 70 percent” of total users choose to access Mixi via mobile, reflecting the usage trends we see elsewhere in the world (namely, that social and mobile are morphing).

Little wonder that Mixi is taking steps to encourage third-party development on its platform. Granted, users can access Mixi and the services via the browser (for example, Safari), but the experience offered by a native mobile app (platform-specific) has its advantages.

As Tak puts it: “The situation with the smartphone [is that] the user wants to have high quality in the context of graphics applications which may link to the Android and iOS [platforms.] So we have decided to provide the SDK for Android and iOS [so] application developers can develop games and apps.”

Opportunity for developers

Mixi is one in a long line of companies to release an SDK and encourage developers to get involved. But the big question is: why should developers make apps for Mixi?

Tak took the challenge and offered two answers.

Size: Mixi is hands-down the number one social network in Japan with large and growing base of mobile users.

Monetization: Mixi is Japanese and benefits from the culture (accustomed to paying for goods via mobile) and the infrastructure (designed from the ground up to support and promote operator billing). The pieces come together and allow developers to charge users for apps and implement the models that encourage cross-sell, up-sell and repeat-sell.

Demographics and preferences

Who is the typical Mixi user? Tak says the typical member is young, urban and interested in communicating — non-stop. “We are really strong with the younger generation in their 20s.” In fact, “over 70 percent” of 20-somethings have a Mixi account.

A majority of Mixi users are also young women, between the ages of 20 and 24.

What apps would fly with this demographic? Tak says young women (actually, all Mixi users) would welcome fun games and new ways of communicating. Currently, Tak says, social gaming is the most popular category on Mixi, with users flocking to games around farming, for example.

Another hot area is activities around “check-ins” – particularly since GPS is available and easy for developers to use.

What is on the horizon?

Mixi is eying opportunities in commerce. It’s not a leading category — yet. But it is full of potential.

Tak tells me that Mixi is doing a test pilot now with a convenience store in Japan around coupons. Users receive coupons via Mixi delivered to their mobile phones and can then redeem them at the store. “Online-to-offline is a new category that is very promising on the Mixi platform.”

Listen to the podcast with Mixi’s Tak Miyata [9:13]

Editor’s note: MobileGroove is proud to be a media partner and support Apps World Asia, where you can catch up with Tak (and speakers from companies including Unilever, BBC Worldwide, Singtel. Amdocs, Samsung, Nokia, ShowNearby, buUuk, inMobi, Oxfam and Blackberry).

And, if you can’t make it to show, event organizer Six degrees will bring the show to YOU.  App World is coming to New York (November 1-2) and London (November 29-30). You can follow coverage and comments from the event on Twitter (@Apps_World).

Thanks to Paul Skeldon, who assisted in podcast production. Paul runs Videobaby Media – a one-stop-shop for high-quality, entry-level video and audio recording, editing and production for media companies looking to get a foot on the multimedia ladder. MobileGroove theme music courtesy of the inimitable Dan-O, who offers an awesome selection of free royalty free music for production purposes.

***

Reams have been written and tweeted about the Google-Motorola Mobility tie-up, with much of the analysis sharply focused on the significant patent portfolio that Google under its belt as a result. The patents will certainly be an advantage and go a long way toward protecting the vulnerable IP position of Android. However, it’s not all good news.

1. Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility is reminiscent of Symbian’s rise and fall

The acquisition means Google is effectively a device manufacturer, a shift that puts Google in an extremely precarious position with Android’s tier-1 device manufacturers. The potential consequence of this cannot be underestimated. As a competitor in the ecosystem, Google will no doubt have an unfair advantage. The reality of this is slowly sinking in, and is already creating unease within the device manufacturer community.

Ironically, this latest chapter in Android’s development shares many similarities with what we have already seen happen once in the mobile industry. I’m speaking here about the rise and fall of Symbian.

From a strategic perspective Android may well be on its way to becoming another Symbian, which you’ll recall was also an open source operating system that had several device manufacturers backing it including Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. Symbian, however, went the way of the Dodo  bird and became extinct because competitive pressures came into play. In the end, all of the tier-1 licensees turned their backs on Symbian when it became wholly owned by Nokia.

The fact that Symbian was open source clearly didn’t help to allay fears or ease competitive tensions. Once Nokia took control of the Symbian operating system, neutrality among the parties was replaced by outright rivalry. Strategic conflict dominated and undermined Symbian. In the end, the competing players pulled out of Symbian altogether. Some focused on building their own proprietary operating system strategies, others joined alternative ecosystems.

Interestingly, it was actually Android that came out on top. Device manufacturers jumped to Android because they saw it as an operating system that was open and free of the conflict that the Symbian consortium fostered. Appearing to be the only safe bet on the market, Android enjoyed a meteoric rise.

Until now.

With Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, it’s like Symbian all over again. These device manufacturers find themselves in much the same situation as they did when Nokia gained full control of Symbian. Will history repeat itself? It’s not unreasonable to predict a similar path of development for Android.

2. Android was Google’s Trojan horse and both device manufacturers and carriers are now feeling the sting

Google’s Android operating system was perhaps too good to be true. For device manufacturers it was, at the time, a nice gift, attractive and – crucially – free.  But even free has its price in the end. With the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Google has wheeled the Trojan horse up to the gates of Android licensees Samsung and LG. And both have pulled the ‘gift’ into their fortresses.

But it’s not just the device manufacturers who will suffer the consequences in this battle.. The Trojan horse also stands at the door to challenge carriers as Google’s real plan becomes crystal clear. Google really wants to own the customer (just as the carriers do now). The only way for Google to achieve this is to build a direct relationship with the user for services, thereby reducing carriers to a ‘dumb’ pipe along the way.

3. Android is where the action is for the short-term, but developers and manufacturers are keeping their options open.

As the acquisition plays out over the coming year developers will, and rightly so, continue to bet on Android. However, the picture is very different if we look 12 -18 months into the future.

That’s when tier-1 manufacturers, as well as the developer community, will likely start looking elsewhere, a shift that potentially signals the peak for Android.

Why 12 months? Because there are many Android devices in the pipeline which will be shipped and make it to market completely unaffected by Google’s strategic move. It’s therefore reasonable to expect that Android will continue its rise for the coming year.

However, the fallout from this deal will inevitably have its effect on the market. I expect that LG and Samsung (and perhaps also HTC) will likely start looking elsewhere once alternative platforms start shipping. The developer community will no doubt follow suit.

Where does that leave the other operating systems?

Many have suggested that Google’s move may well provide a boost to Windows Phone from Microsoft. I would take it one step further and argue that Meego may also benefit. While many may have written Meego off when Nokia pulled out, it is nonetheless widely considered to be a solid operating system. And let’s not forget that Meego also has a big backer in Intel.

Samsung may choose to refocus on Bada over the next 12 months. This leaves LG–which doesn’t have its own smartphone operating system to fall back on — in a delicate position. LG has a choice: It can invest in its own operating system,  or it can decide to go with Windows Phone or Meego.

Finally, there is also rampant speculation that Microsoft may acquire Nokia. If this were to happen, it would not bode well for the success of Windows Phone 7. Other device manufacturers are not likely to rally round an operating system or ecosystem in which a competitor has an unfair advantage. Windows Phone has such a small market share that it would be seen as proprietary anyway.

My take:

The Google-Motorola tie-up makes us question the motives of the players (Google) and the outlook for competing operating systems (Bada, Windows Phone 7). However, the much bigger question we need to ask ourselves is: Is there a place for an open operating system in the smartphone market at all?

What do YOU think? Does the wave of recent change rock your belief in open operating systems? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

About Carsten:

Carsten Brinkschulte is founder and CEO of Synchronica plc. A serial entrepreneur and mobile technology pioneer, Carsten has accurately identified technology trends and market opportunities and consistently translated them into leading-edge products.   Under Carsten’s leadership, Synchronica has grown both organically and via a number of strategic acquisitions to be one of the leading mobile messaging vendors worldwide.  In his spare time, Carsten is an avid technology and gadget enthusiast.

Follow Carsten and Synchronica on Twitter at @SynchronicaPLC.

MobileGroove is accepting guest columns. Be heard! Reach an audience of 20,000+ mobile professionals and practitioners. Email us to find out more.

Following the first shockwaves when the news hit, I reflected on my blog about how extraordinary minds create technology that disrupts.

There hasn’t been a bigger or better disrupter in this century than the now former Apple CEO.

iPod. iPhone. iPad.

Game-changers.

What should marketers make of disruption and how should they react? As always, the key is to time your participation so that your brand is out of the gates once the disruptive activity settles and it’s clear which technology or tool is winning the race. Jumping the gun doesn’t guarantee a head start in the right direction. There are graveyards full of innovative technologies and devices that failed from the get-go and never gained the traction we expected. Remember Digital Audio Tape and Betamax videotapes?

In mobile marketing and advertising, just because something can be done, doesn’t mean you should blindly spend against it before its time. (An example is Augmented Reality, a technology packed with ‘wow’ effect but lacking in mainstream take up.)

Jobs’ iAd is in that same category. Apple’s closed mobile advertising network (closed because you can reach only those people on the iOS platform) has been a large disappointment for many advertisers and others (like me) who looked at Apple’s move into mobile advertising as a milestone and a much needed push to move the industry along.

But don’t close the chapter on iAd just yet. Despite his resignation, there are indications that Jobs may not be done tinkering with iAd.

In-the-know Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg reports that Jobs will continue to have influence on Apple and its innovation “To be very clear, Mr. Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive,” Mossberg writes. “Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day. So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.”

How I See It: In the short-term, Apple sales should soar with Sprint reportedly set to join Verizon and AT&T as Apple’s third carrier partner in the U.S. this fall. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster forecasts iPhone sales will growth from 30 percent to 37 percent in calendar year 2012. Sprint may get some company. There are rumors that T-Mobile will also sell the iPhone by this holiday season. The implications for marketers? iAd may become more meaningful with a beefed-up consumer base. Until then, it’s disruptive — with much excitement but without much return.

***

There was a time when RIM was also a disruptive force in the industry. That was back when its BlackBerry revolutionized the way most business people, and then consumers, accessed their email. In my view, RIM is a textbook case of a company that has succeeded in disrupting mobile, but somehow lost the plot. It did not continue to innovate.

Its latest phones, running on the new BlackBerry 7 operation system, have been mostly panned by industry pundits, including influential Ed Baig of USA Today.

While Baig said he generally likes all three phones he tested, he pointed out that “some features have RIM playing catch-up.” He continued: “That’s disappointing given the speed at which Android phones and Apple’s iPhone are adding innovative features.”

Baig (and I) are puzzled. As he put it: “With all that’s at stake, you might expect that the latest devices represent bold leaps forward. (I don’t mean Bold, as in the name of one of the most venerable BlackBerry brands, but rather something that is fresh, impactful and frankly, different.) Instead, the models — while superior to what came before — aren’t likely to shake up the tech Richter scale. And RIM continues to fall far short in the ever-critical apps sweepstakes.”

So, what are the device shortcomings? In a word: apps.

According to Baig, “arguably the biggest deficiency for all the new devices is in the apps department.” RIM has about 35,000 apps in the BlackBerry App World store, a tiny fraction compared with iOS and Android. And only a “few thousand” or so of those will be compatible with BlackBerry 7 devices at launch.  He concludes: “The new BlackBerrys are solid devices that should appeal to the many people who still love the brand. I just don’t expect many others to get overly excited.”

Baig is especially respected by business travelers who have been reading him in USA Today for years. His words won’t help sell BlackBerrys.

How I See It: As I’ve written in columns and blogs on MobileGroove and elsewhere, the worst mistake a marketer can make is to work off of stale data. The same goes for ideas and innovation. BlackBerry has had its day – and there may well be many more coming. However, unless RIM can disrupt again – and adoption occurs – then RIM risks ending up an also-ran in the mobile marketing mix.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

Brands, agencies and companies across the ecosystem can submit their entries via the award website. There you will find the entry form and full details of the entry criteria.

Recognizing results

The Award is in its second year and recognizes the effectiveness of mobile marketing campaigns, apps and mobile websites worldwide. This year also sees the addition of a few new categories (below), and the involvement of a new sponsors, including global mobile marketing firm Upstream and mobile recruitment specialist Propel.

I have once more been invited to sit on the panel of judges, which includes Jon Mew, head of mobile at the IAB; mobile specialist Helen Keegan; ex-Incentivated commercial director and mobile training specialist Robert Thurner; Andy Favell, editor of mobiThinking; Nick Lane, chief analyst at the research firm mobileSQUARED; and Mobile Industry Review editor and founder, Ewan MacLeod.

Stand up and be recognized! Entry is free and the closing date is Friday.

REGISTER HERE

New categories this year include Most Effective Tablet Application; Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform/Network; Most Effective Campaign from a Mobile Operator; and Most Effective Mobile Publishing Solution.

The full list of categories is as follows:

• Most Effective Mobile Application – b2c
• Most Effective Mobile Application – b2b
• Most Effective Tablet Application
• Most Effective Mobile Advertising Campaign
• Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform/Network
• Most Effective Mobile Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign
• Most Effective Campaign from a Mobile Operator
• Most Effective mCommerce Solution
• Most Effective Mobile CRM/Enterprise Messaging Campaign
• Most Effective Location-based Service/Campaign
• Most Effective Mobile Couponing or Barcode Campaign
• Most Effective Mobile Site
• Most Effective Mobile Charity Campaign/Solution
• Most Effective Mobile Ticketing Solution
• Most Effective Mobile Payment Solution
• Most Effective Mobile Publishing Solution
• Most Effective Mobile Travel & Tourism Solution

Mark your calendar

So get your entries in this Friday, and look for the shortlist in September.

The actual Awards Ceremony is scheduled for November 3 in London.

Last year  some 200 executives from brands, agencies and network operators gathered at London’s Vinopolis for the Awards Ceremony to recognize excellent mobile marketing solutions, sites and apps that delivered great results. Read about the 2010 EMMA winners here.

It was just a few years ago that the best way to find a new home was also the hardest. You had to drive up and down streets, look for ‘for sale’ signs, write down phone numbers and call later from a landline. Thankfully, that way is the old way as real estate grasps on to the mobile opportunity with both hands.

Today, real estate is one of the hottest verticals on mobile, with realtors and brokers harnessing this powerful medium to offer us information and interactions on our terms. From text messaging to mobile Web and QR codes, companies in this vertical are striking out in new directions — with notable results.

An example is Century 21, an old-fashioned brand best known for the gold sport coats that make the brand (and its staff) look like a flashback to the 1950s.

At the Mobile Insider Summit (where I also had the opportunity to speak), Michael Callaghan, VP of Digital and Strategic Marketing, emphasized the role of mobile in the company’s strategy. Simply, Century 21 sees mobile as an opportunity to modernize itself.

“On the 40th anniversary of Century 21, we want to go from the old-fashioned, gold jacket to mobile and innovation,” Callaghan told attendees.  “Why did we do this? Clearly, because there is this new home buyer.”

What is so new about these buyers?

Generally, this buyer is between the ages of 25 and 40 and — more importantly — mobile-savvy.  Century 21 mobile users want “precise information that is immediate and robust,” Callaghan explained. “They are not browsing”.

Century 21 began the move to mobile by optimizing its online website for the mobile Web. It then launched an app and started (as many companies have) with the iPhone. Century 21 has now extended its offer to Android, BlackBerry and Palm (although I’m not sure why it has launched on the last one).

Mobile accounts for about 10 percent of Century 21’s marketing budget.

The company counts about 172,000 downloads of its mobile app. The app is further evolving to include information on all houses in an area, not just those offered by Century 21. “It led to challenges,” Callaghan said referring to the effort and mindset necessary to list every house on offer. “But it was something we had to overcome because consumer need was here.”

How I See It: Century 21 is the first to admit that its brand had gone stale. But rather than complain about it, the company decided to reinvent itself via mobile because that’s where its target audience lives. It’s a terrific lesson for others and a story worth watching as it develops. Century 21 says it is early in the journey. No argument here.

***

Travel was highly represented at the Mobile Insider Summit with Expedia, Travelocity and kayak.com leading the list of brands walking through their mobile experiences.

Travelocity VP-Global Product Marketing Beth Murphy provided some of the richest data.

She said that the number of consumers accessing travel services via their mobile phones is growing at a rate of “400 percent to 500 percent annually.” Moreover, “16 percent of mobile users” have bought a ticket using their mobile device.

She added that Travelocity is seeing a demographic split resulting in two distinct groups of mobile travel users: the 40-plus segment (one that she said is more traditional and pragmatic in their use of travel services), and the “under 30 segment,” which is more to “social experiences.”

Travelocity, which is already a strong online brand, is seeing little cannibalization between its mobile and online properties. In fact, 50 percent of users booking trips via their mobile app are new customers.

Murphy shared observations as they relate to Millennial mobile travel users. Specifically, younger consumers are “device agnostic,” demanding robust experiences online, mobile, and tablet. In addition, this audience is more affluent and less brand loyal.

Expedia told attendees that a whopping 70 percent of rooms booked via Expedia on mobile are for the same or the next day.

Also, Expedia revealed that it is planning for (but has not yet implemented) inventory-driven last minute hotel deals on mobile.

How I See It: Following her formal presentation, Beth spoke to me about the challenges associated with offering last minute deals effectively and successfully. It is quite a list. A brand needs a real-time view of availability, training for staff that allows them to recognize and respond to late travelers with offers that could change daily, and hotel partners who can face – unafraid — the challenge of tailoring deals for consumers who prefer to wait until the very end for a better price. Personally, I travel a lot. I rely on both apps and the mobile Web to book my trips and hotels. As a rule, I know that I need to keep up to date because travel companies are in a fierce competition and prices change often. The immediate nature of our last-minute travel needs are a perfect fit with the real-time connectivity of mobile. How will it all play out? It’s a hard one to call, but you can learn a lot about mobile by watching how companies in this vertical duke it out.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

The impact of mobile on shopping and commerce was also the focus of proprietary research I introduced last June in an in-depth interview with Peggy here on MobileGroove. My findings highlighted precisely how consumers use their social networks to get input and advice at a brand’s “Moments of Trust”.  The result (as I point out in my own blog) is profound impact on sales and loyalty.

Interestingly, Yahoo has released insights that confirm my findings and help us better understand the impact of mobile Internet on mobile shopping and purchases. Yahoo teamed up with Nielsen to interview 8,384 U.S. residents ages 13-64 via an online quantitative survey. Of this sample: 5,313 were mobile Internet users who access information related to at least one of 12 product categories. 3,071 were PC/Laptop Internet users who access information related to at least one of the 12 product categories and could not access any category Internet information on a mobile device.

So, what is the place of mobile in our shopping experience? Yahoo findings indicate mobile is at the center of the in-store action, making mobile devices a great advertising vehicle for retailers. In fact, a whopping nine out of 10 mobile users have accessed the mobile Internet while they were actually in the store. What’s more, approximately 50 percent of in-store mobile web activity is related to shopping. And people also share while they shop. Almost half (48 percent) of in-store mobile users take and/or send a picture of a product they are considering buying to a friend or family member.

Among the key findings:

• 51 percent of consumers indicated that they do make a purchase after doing research on their mobile device.
• On average 16 percent use their mobile phones for shopping research, but interest for this in the next 12 months is extremely high at 57 percent among mobile Internet users and 41 percent among non-mobile Internet users, on average.
• One in 5 mobile shoppers who have seen advertising during the shopping process say they always look at it. The key to being successful in mobile shopping advertising is to make sure the ads are informative.

How I See It: It’s 100 degrees fahrenheit in many places, but towel off and lock in your mobile strategy for the holiday season. Marketers and retailers alike have to ask (and answer) some tough questions: How will you influence your customers at the point of sale? Are your salespersons ready for shoppers who have instant access to information, product reviews, and competitors’ prices? Is there a plan for consumers who are using mobile to speak about your products and services (or just let off steam) via their social networks? You can forget the holidays (and celebrating anything any time soon), if you haven’t figured even the basics of where mobile fits in your business.

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eMarketer also weighed with new research about consumer behavior and how people use the mobile Web.

It estimates that more than 91 million U.S. consumers will use the Internet via a mobile device at least monthly by the end of this year, up from 77.8 million in 2010.

The eMarketer story based this conclusion on the findings of a recent study by Affinity Research that identified a “generation gap” in mobile device preference. Put simply, older consumers favor tablets and ereaders, while younger users are adopting smartphones at rapid rates.

Specifically, 85 million Generation Xers have a tablet and are 16 percent more likely to have a tablet than average. Approximately 59 million Boomers have an ereader and are 19 percent more likely to have one than others. Also, 47 percent of Millennials have a smartphone and are 28 percent more likely than average.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Millennials and the younger end of Gen X own more smartphones than those over the age of 35. Additionally, Affinity reports that more than 24 million Millennials plan to purchase a smartphone in the next six months.

How I See It: What first appears to be dizzying fragmentation in how we access the mobile Internet is actually a crystal-clear opportunity for marketers to connect with their customers on precisely the devices they prefer. The upshot is mobile marketing that both pleases the individual and generates business. Everyone watching television can’t be pigeon-holed into one segment, group or demographic, and the same goes for mobile. Knowing the device preference of your audience is key. This site and others provide valuable consumer insights that can make or break your campaigns. So, read up and take some notes. And keep in mind that users behavior evolves quickly. If your data on mobile users has dust on it, freshen it today.

These are just a few of the questions examined in the new report Fighting Smart: Using Value-Added Services To Create Lasting Customer Loyalty. The report  – written by MobileGroove  and commissioned by Amdocs Interactive — is based on a survey of 120 telecom executives at major mobile operators across Asia Pacific conducted by market research firm Coleman Parkes.

The findings show that mobile operators are not just waking up to the opportunities to generate revenues through mobile marketing, mobile payments and personalization; they are grasping it with both hands.

Value-add through loyalty

Specifically, the survey found that the majority of respondents (62 percent) believe these value-added services are critical to their business. However,  the survey also revealed that revenue generation is not the top motivation for developing and delivering value-added services to mobile subscribers. Instead, respondents report the end-game is about increasing customer loyalty.

Mobile operators in Asia Pacific — more than in other regions such as North America and Europe — pursue a value-added services strategy to deliver a compelling customer experience, one that will allow them to boost individual loyalty and the lifetime value of their existing customer base. In fact, respondents identified stickiness and improving customer experience as their top two business drivers.

Mobile payments pay-off

Mobile operators in Asia Pacific are also advanced in their strategies to compete against banks, credit cards and middlemen in mobile payments and commerce. Interestingly, Asian mobile operators are not only gearing up for a fight (with 95 percent of respondents claiming to have a mobile payments strategy). They are confident they will win through operator billing, a strategy that stresses billing on behalf of third parties including app stores and providers of virtual goods.

In addition, 84 percent of respondents said they are pursuing bill payment services, 79 percent are investigating peer-to-peer money transfers and 76 percent are working to offer point-of-sale or similar services to enable the purchase of products using NFC.

Why are mobile operators bullish about the outlook for mobile payments and what do they expect to gain? The three top reasons for pursuing this strategy are:  new revenue streams, customer retention and enhanced customer experience.

Personalization and portals

Most Asian mobile operators are confident that their portals and applications storefronts are and will continue to be crowd pleasers. This is a very different picture from other regions where mobile operator portals, destinations that once dominated the landscape, are in serious decline. What’s more, 66 percent of respondents predict that their portals will grow in importance in the next three years, attracting and retaining a loyal audience of mobile users, in  part thanks to portal personalization approaches that emphasize content discovery and contextual relevance.

Among the findings:

• 75 percent of respondents are pursuing mobile advertising and search strategies — and for good reason! The majority (65 percent) report that their subscribers would be willing to view mobile advertising in return for free content such as mobile apps or entertainment

• 55 percent of respondents believe that personalization is the key to improving the value of content (and advertising) they deliver as part of the VAS offer

• 50 percent of respondents believe that at least half of their subscribers will purchase smart phones over the next three years; Blackberry is the most popular platform followed by Android and Apple

Who’s afraid of Google?

Granted, respondents are well aware of the threat from over the top (OTT) players (players including Google, Apple and Facebook that deliver services via operator networks but bypass them completely in the value chain). However, it is interesting to note that mobile operators in this region are also not intimidated by OTT rivals. On the contrary, they are confident that the threat from these players will diminish over time.

My take:

Why the positive outlook? No doubt mobile operators across Asia Pacific are confident that the value added services they have baked into their offers will allow them to deliver a superior customer experience and beat the competition at its own game. In addition to developing their mobile payment strategies, mobile operators are also sharpening their focus on mobile advertising, mobile search, and personalization — an approach that will allow them to super-charge their value-added services for maximum impact.

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TWEETCHAT

The new report is also the topic of this week’s Tweetchat — organized by Amdocs Interactive and hosted by MobileGroove — on Wednesday, August 10. To ensure everyone across Europe and Asia Pacific can join in the discussion, the Tweetchat will take place at 9 am GMT/ 10 am CET/ 1:30 pm IST. Check here to see the time zone in your region, and please spread the word!

Fighting Smart: Using Value-Added Services To Create Lasting Customer Loyalty, available from today for free download from the Amdocs Interactive website.

Disclaimer: News and views across the mobile payments & personalization ecosystem is sponsored by Amdocs Interactive, an MG client and supporter.

Editor’s note: From mobile professionals and practitioners to outstanding and passionate individuals doing their part to improve mobile communication, connectivity and collaboration the world over, this new bi-weekly feature introduces you to new people and new viewpoints that merit our attention (and a ‘follow’ on Twitter). In the next weeks we’ll profile Chetan Sharma, David Berkowitz, Judy Breck, Nora Goodman and Ajit Jaokar – to name a few. If you would like to be considered for this series (or suggest someone you admire), then reach out to me directly (@peggyanne).

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Derek Johnson (@TheDerekJohnson)doesn’t just think mobile. He lives it.

He’s a Millennial (age 26) who’s gone into mobile in a big way. We may know him best as the CEO and founder of Tatango, an angel-funded text marketing company with a sharp focus on outbound messaging. Originally built to send messages to fraternity members, Tatango has now grown to service a wide customer base including local businesses and Fortune 500 companies. (The company offers clients a monthly subscription model and says that it has doubled its revenues every year since its launch in 2007. Derek reports his company is currently profitable.

As you would expect from a millennial and model entrepreneur Derek started Tatango in his parents’ basement after dropping out of the business program at the University of Houston. It’s a story of self-made success that has made Derek the focus of dozens of articles and blogs about the business of mobile, including the Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, Mashable, TechCrunch and other  publications and destinations.

In June Derek’s company got even more coverage when it took the wraps off a new look, a new version of its service and a new emphasis on helping small- to medium-sized businesses harness text marketing.

Zero tolerance for text message spam

However, it’s Derek’s passion about text marketing — and his personal resolve to educate advertisers everywhere and call out organizations that spam their customers and disregard best practices — that earns our attention.

Kudos for a brand new infographic (released just this week) based on a survey of 500 consumers in the U.S. Tatango conducted the survey to gain insights into people’s experience with text message spam.

Text Message Marketing by Tatango.

The key data points:

• 68 percent of survey respondents say they’ve received text message spam.
• Women under 17 are the most likely to have received text message spam, with 86 percent of this demographic saying they’ve received text message spam.
• Women 55+ are the least likely to receive text message spam, with 51 percent of this demographic saying they’ve received text message spam.

As Derek put it on the company blog: “With the rise in text message spam, the effectiveness of marketing through this channel will drop significantly if gone un-checked. With over two thirds of the U.S. population receiving text message spam, it’s time for businesses to start realizing the impact text message spam has on their customers and selecting software providers like Tatango that have instituted a zero tolerance policy for text message spam.”

Vendor spin aside, Tatango’s graphic drives home an important point and an uncomfortable truth: SMS spam is a nuisance and what Derek has called (via his blog over at Mobile Marketing Watch) a potential business killer. In another (edgier) blog Derek effectively takes on the industry and calls for a revision of the guidelines governing text messaging best practices in the U.S.

4 Qs for Derek Johnson

I caught up with Derek on a Skype chat to ask him some questions and get some real answers to what makes this man tick (and powers his output of a whopping 17,658 Tweets since 2008).

MG: You are a voice in the mobile marketing space — loud, clear and sometimes edgy. However, there are many professionals and practitioners out there talking mobile marketing, why should we listen to you?

Derek: Yeah, I’ve been known to piss off some people by voicing my opinions on what I see happening in the industry. It’s tough too, since people get confused about who to listen to within an industry that has so many *experts*. The problem main I see with the majority of people talking about mobile marketing, is that they’re too old. They aren’t immersed in mobile. Look, I’m not trying to be mean here, but mobile marketing is a young person’s game. This industry is a new and nascent industry driven by early adopters, and the majority of early adopters are young people. Luckily for me, being 26, I’m still part of that early adopter group. I’m the guy in this industry that really gets this stuff, and I that’s why I think I bring a unique perspective to the table when talking about mobile marketing.

MG: We know that text message spam is happening — as your new infographic shows — and it’s annoying. But you argue it is more than a bother; it’s a business-model killer. What makes you so sure?

Derek: Are you kidding? Spam isn’t only a business-model killer; it’s a ticking time bomb for the entire industry. All the benefits of text message marketing depend on one thing: people’s acceptance of them. People have to open text messages and read them. Everything else — all the calls to action — things like redemption rates, recall rates, and effective marketing are possible because text messages are opened and read. If, because of spam, consumers start to ignore text messages, we lose our ability to communicate with out customers and potential customers. Once that has been lost, it’s goodbye text message marketing.

The most frustrating part about this is who’s to blame. It’s a ticking time bomb that hasn’t been assembled by outsiders. It’s being built right here within our industry by traitors. These traitors are disregarding best practices and purposely allowing certain practices to take place on their platforms. They knowingly expose consumers to text message spam, killing our industry from within. We need to stop these traitors before it’s too late for our industry.

MG: The mobile marketing space is crowded with companies and solutions. What makes your company Tatango different?

Derek: You are completely correct, and it feels like the industry is getting more crowded by the day. Tatango is different because we have chosen to specialize in just one thing: outbound SMS marketing. My philosophy is that you can only be the best at one thing, and if you try to be the best at everything, you will succeed at being the best at nothing.

MG: Text messaging is widely considered to be a central component of mobile advertising campaigns, particularly in Europe where brands like M&S understand it is the only way to reach everyone regardless of their device. It feels like text message marketing hasn’t yet hit its stride in the U.S. In your opinion, what has to happen to really move the dial on text marketing?

Derek: Great question. I think we were close in late 2010 and early 2011 to really seeing text message marketing take off. Unfortunately, the industry was blinded by the whole social media craze. That’s when businesses abandoned their mobile strategy to jump on the Facebook and Twitter bandwagons. Now I’m seeing a mass exodus away from social media towards more traditional marketing methods, and mobile, driven by the realization that all the excitement about social media didn’t produce a positive effect on their bottom line. Now that businesses are clear about what social media can and can’t accomplish, I expect 2012 will be the year that text message marketing finally gets its time to shine.

You can follow Derek and his edgy comments on Twitter (@TheDerekJohnson) or on Tatango’s SMS marketing blog.

If you would like to be considered for this bi-weekly series (or suggest someone you admire), then reach out to me directly (@peggyanne).

The wide-ranging report, which details people’s use of and behavior on social network sites (SNS), is full of insights and analysis explaining how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.

By way of background, the results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from October 20 to November 28, 2010, among a sample of 2,255 adults in the U.S., age 18 and older.

According to Pew, 79 percent of adults said they used the Internet and nearly half of adults (47 percent), or 59 percent of internet users, say they use at least one social network. This is close to double the 26 percent of adults (34 percent of Internet users) who used one in 2008.

Pew said that the average age of adult social network users users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010. Over half of all adult users are now over the age of 35. Some 56 percent of SNS users now are female.

We also have proof that Facebook dominates the social network space. A whopping 92 percent of SNS users are on Facebook; 29 percent use MySpace, 18 percent used LinkedIn and 13 percent use Twitter.

There is considerable variance in the way people actually use SNS. Half (52 percent) of Facebook users and 33 (percent) of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7 percent of MySpace and 6 percent of LinkedIn users do the same.

Delving into our interactions on Facebook on an average day, the report reveals that:

• 15 percent of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22 percent comment on another’s post or status.
• 20 percent comment on another user’s photos.
• 26 percent “Like” another user’s content.
• 10 percent send another user a private message

How I See It: Pew once again delivers us important data points, but has chosen not to break out the mobile numbers. This is unfortunate (and counter-productive) since we know that Facebook and Twitter users are twice as active on mobile as they are on a PC. As I have written here on MobileGroove, social is what we do on mobile — and why Facebook has hatched an ambitious plan to get 500 million worldwide users via mobile. I believe that we’ll see major shifts in daily activity once more people access Facebook via mobile. And, drawing from the Pew report, we can bet we’ll see even more users update their status, post their photos and reveal their location. As marketers, access to this information is gold as we seek to be relevant and engage with Facebook members.

* * *

Editor’s note: As we go live with this post mobile marketing firm Augme Technologies has announced it will acquire Hipcricket for $44.5 million in cash and common stock. In addition, the transaction calls for a twelve-month earn-out payment valued at up to an additional $27.5 million.

I’m fortunate to work with Hipcricket, long a leader in marketing via SMS.  (We also work with other mobile marketing approaches and formats.)

This week, Luxury Daily (a Mobile Marketer destination) asked me to offer advice and insights about text message marketing and the most effective ways to reach — and engage with — affluent users on their mobile devices. I responded with the following list of top ten best practices.

1. Use SMS as a customer relationship marketing tool, not just a means to provide one-time offers.

2. Use past experiences with the customer to offer luxury customers what they actually want.

3. Do not assume all luxury customers have smartphones – make sure SMS plays a large role in your program to connect with large numbers of consumers.

4. Use SMS for time-sensitive offers and information. Ninety-seven percent of text messages are read within four minutes of delivery.

5. Consider location to boost relevance.

6. Make sure SMS campaigns fit into the brand’s overall marketing strategy.

7. Use SMS as a means to connect to richer brand experiences. For example, link back to the brand’s mobile Web site or app.

8. For this audience, over-deliver on customer service – it is more of an expectation.

9. Use SMS to drive customers to the store.

10. Exclusivity is important as it makes customers feel like VIPs, so reward the brand’s best customers with something special.

How I See It: Of course, mobile marketing is more than SMS. But, if you are after reach, no other format or approach comes close in terms of effectiveness. What’s more, text messaging often opens the door to engagement that consumers desire — and have even come to expect. At Hipcricket we are gearing up to do our annual mobile loyalty survey, the fourth year in a row. In it, we ask mobile users about their attitudes towards brands’ loyalty clubs and programs. Last year, the majority of mobile users told us they are open to joining loyalty clubs and are eagerly waiting for more brands to approach them to engage. I’m eager to see what this year’s results reveal.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

From disruptive technologies to new ways to monetize mobile networks, and from connected devices to the dilemma of delivering content and advertising to the 20+ screens that play a role in our daily lives, this high-caliber, thought leadership summit —  organized by consultant and industry authority Chetan Sharma — covers all trends that truly matter.

MobileGroove VIP offer

Mobile Future Forward brings together world-class speakers from across the value chain for a powerful cross-industry networking event.

Attendee Profile:

Speakers: C-Level – 59%, VP/SVP – 41%

Audience: C-Level – 30%, VP/SVP – 32%

As a valued member of the MobileGroove community, we’d like to offer you a limited-time 20% discount when you register with the code MG.

Stellar agenda

MobileGroove is proud to be a media partner and help build awareness of this thought leadership event (now in its second year).

Among the topics and speakers:

• Mobile Future Forward: Connected Universe. Unlimited Opportunities.

The DNA (Devices, Network, and Applications) of the mobile ecosystem is changing. What opportunities will emerge during the course of this decade? Where are the new billion dollar markets?

Steve Mollenkopf, EVP and Group President, Qualcomm

• Disruption is in the Air

Disruption is the fundamental tenet of progress. Whether it is the technologies, the business models, the players or the alliances, disruptive forces are essential in making things better for the consumer and the larger ecosystem. Is 4G a game change? What does the wholesale business model do to the data economics? Is the halving of the device lifecycle good or bad?

Sanjiv Ahuja, CEO, LightSquared

Jason MacKenzie, President, HTC Americas

• Playing in the N-Screen Media World

The number of connected devices per user is steadily increasing. Some users have 10-20 connected screens in the household and the number is only going to increase. How does product and service design leverage this phenomenon? How do monetization strategies change? What are user experience and pricing expectations? How does the value shift between the players?

Paul Palmieri, CEO and Cofounder, Millennial Media

Charlie Herrin, EVP – Technology and Products, Comcast

Jeremiah Zinn, EVP – Digital Products,  MTV Networks

Eric Anderson, VP – Content and Product Solutions, Samsung

Frank Barbieri, SVP – Emerging Platforms, YuMe (moderator)

• Monetizing the Mobile Network

Traditionally, there has been a direct correlation between the mobile network usage and revenue/profits. However, the significant mobile data consumption, lack of adequate spectrum, ecosystem disruption by the Internet players, and the changing of the consumer expectations have provided the opportunity for operators to rethink how they look at their network from a technology perspective but more importantly from a monetization angle. How will operator grow their revenue base beyond measuring the bits and bytes?

Ken Denman, CEO, Openwave (moderator)

Kris Rinne, SVP – Network and Architecture, AT&T Mobility

Janet Schijns, VP – Business Solutions Group, Verizon Wireless

Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Industries

• Mobile Commerce & Payments

Mobile is fundamentally reshaping how consumers spend. How are the various players preparing for the new world of mobile commerce and payments? NFC has been around for some time but will it really help in moving the money around? Will the killer NFC application be commerce, payments, advertising, loyalty programs, or something else?

David Messenger, EVP and Head of Online/Mobile, American Express Company

Gibu Thomas, EVP – Online/Mobile, WalMart

Dale Nitschke, former President, Target

• Mobile Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Opportunities

Data is everywhere. Mobile Cloud is Booming. Data is driving Knowledge. Having the best knowledge about the user to help drive transaction is simply the most valuable currency of commerce. With so much data being generated, how do we efficiently sift through it and make sense to enable engagement and commerce in a fraction of a millisecond? What is data teaching us about the consumer behavior, future product design, and the competitive landscape?  What are the implications for consumer privacy and data security?

Braxton Woodham, Head of Engineering, AVOS

Joe Megibow, VP and GM – Mobile and Analytics, Expedia

Hank Skorny, Chief Strategy Officer, Real Networks

Jay Emmett, GM, OpenMarket, SVP, Amdocs

Ramneek Bhasin, GM and VP, TheFind

Check out the complete agenda on the Mobile Future Forward website, and follow news and development on the run up to the event by joining Chetan and his team on Facebook. You can also follow Chetan on Twitter (@chetansharma).

Definitely not. Granted, it is a crowded space, but there are also clear lines that define their market reach and target audience. Some players are competing on services (sync, backup, media management) and others are betting to win based on their customer focus (consumer, small & medium business (SMB), enterprise and/or selling white label solutions to operators and device makers). A quick scan of the competitive landscape in the D2C (direct-to-consumer) space reveals an interesting mix. Some might sound familiar (like DropBox, SugarSync and Box), while many of the ‘white label’ firms that play behind the scenes might not (NewBay, Funambol and FSecure).

Clearly, a host of players are already competing for their piece of what I’ll call the digital content cloud services market. Does the entry of the BIG-3 mean the race is run– or just starting? It’s a tough one to call. But the winner’s circle will only include the companies that understand and address what users really want in a digital content service.

Backup is table stakes

There are plenty of words and methods we use to describe people’s requirement for backup. We talk about ’syncing’ our content, protecting it and storing it. No matter how you refer to it, the bottom line is users want a backup copy of their content for safe keeping. It’s a no-brainer, and no wonder that most players in this space have this covered. The BIG-3 offer backup through a suite of services and the D2C players offer apps and clients that provide similar functionality. Operators and device makers are also able to support this need via in-house or white label solutions. An example of this is Verizon’s V CAST Media Manager service.

Put another way, backup is pretty much table stakes today. However, providers can differentiate their offer through their approach to media management, search, integrated Personal Information Management (PIM) and premium content. Apple ‘gets it’ and is the closest to achieving this to date. But it’s not the only one. Operators and device makers have plenty of upside here, with their large, paying customer base. Operators also have some control over network access and device distribution, as well as solid financial resources. Put this altogether and they have an opportunity to make a much bigger impact on the digital content cloud services market, but they need to take a more strategic view in order to be successful.

ADVANTAGE: Apple

UPSIDE: Operators and device makers

Access must be open and ubiquitous

With users now owning a plethora of connected devices – multiple computers and mobile phones, tablet, Internet-enabled game console and TV – it is now much harder to manage the disparate content and deliver on the promise of content access anywhere, anytime and from any device.

How do the BIG-3 stack up? Apple delivers on this requirement, but access to its ecosystem is limited only to their devices. It’s off limits for people who own other devices, unless they use the web client. Google is more open than Apple, offering people a bunch of solutions for a slew of devices. However, Google does not provide a seamless user experience like Apple does. Amazon is making progress, but still needs to work on client support, user experience and integration between all the components.

The D2C players pursue a variety of approaches. SugarSync, for example, ‘syncs’ content to the cloud and, when people access it, the content is downloaded to the device. This is a reasonable approach — except for those situations when you’re offline. DropBox syncs all content to the cloud, and also some content to selected devices. Each approach has pros and cons, which a user may not fully realize until they start using the service.

Operators and device makers offer access, but only for their customers and preferred devices. This is fine, but can cause issues when users want to switch providers.

ADVANTAGE: D2C players

UPSIDE: Operators and device makers

Sharing is THE new “Network”

People love to communicate about content as must as they love to create it. In case there was ever any doubt, Facebook, Twitter and other photo and social networking services have demonstrated how much people like to share stuff – photos, videos, contact info, life stories — with their family and friends. Interestingly, both the BIG-3 and the major D2C players fall short here. They don’t support easy sharing with social networks like Facebook and Twitter. And Apple only supports Twitter because the companies are partners. Predictably, Google supports Picasa (and probably Google+ in the near future) because these are Google properties. Meanwhile, the D2C players have just discovered sharing. Several operators have opened up to the idea of letting their customers share with social networks. An example of this is AT&T’s Mobile Share service.

ADVANTAGE: Operators and device makers

UPSIDE: D2C players

My take:

Users want freedom of choice and they want the service to work seamlessly across all their devices. They don’t care about the technology or how it happens; they just want it to work.

This crosses off Apple and Google (and even Amazon) because they have limited client support. Google has at least made an effort to develop apps for Apple, while Apple — the biggest ‘control freak’ of the bunch — remains extremely protective of its walled garden. Also, Google’s own properties need to be better integrated. Amazon will improve over time.

The D2C players need to grow their offer beyond simple backup, sync and limited sharing. They need to add more media management capabilities, including search and robust sharing, and they need to make sure that all the pieces work together regardless of device.

Operators and device makers are the wild cards here. They are well positioned to sit at the center of the new user content ecosystem, acting as the ‘hub’ or ‘enabler’ between the various stakeholders. How do they achieve this central position? They need to connect all the pieces (users, their devices, cloud storage, social networks, premium content storefronts), while leveraging enablers and third-party developers to monetize and enhance the service.

Though some may think it’s heretic talk, operators and device makers should also consider extending their digital content services to non-customers. This approach would allow both operators and device makers to effectively monetize their competition’s customers. What’s more, this approach opens a back door for these players to interact with their competitor’s customers and — ultimately — convince them to defect. Finally, operators and device makers also need to move away from seeing traditional ‘service subscription’ plans as their only monetization option. Price wars only lead to mutual destruction.

Who do YOU think will win in the battle to backup our lives’ content? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

About Steve

Steve French is VP Global Marketing, NewBay, a cloud software platform provider, enabling operators and device makers to deliver a lifetime of digital content experiences across any connected device. Steve and his team are responsible for all things marketing at NewBay. Steve spends his time strategizing, planning and executing, and on the side he blogs for NewBay, writes positioning papers, participates in conferences and webinars. On a personal note, he and his wife are planning for the arrival of their twin girls.

Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveCFrench

Editor’s note: The battle lines are drawn. What capabilities should your company cultivate to stay in the game? For more information, check out the new white paper – Leveraging Digital Content Services to Increase Lifetime Value.

My usual disclaimer before we start – all opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social marketing campaigns, managing social marketing teams, and advising social marketing clients.  Your mileage will vary.

Social media is like a tarantula, the biggest and hairiest of spiders. As we know, the mere mention of a tarantula can send otherwise fearless arachnophobes running screaming. Likewise, just the *thought* of having to create, execute, and track the ROI for a brand’s social media strategy can send otherwise fearless marketers running screaming.

The Eight Ways Social Media is Like a Tarantula

(You just knew there were going to be eight ways…)

1.  Tarantulas are the king of spiders.  Social media is the king of marketing.

Remember back long ago, when our companies asked us marketers why we needed a website (1994), why we needed to be on Facebook (2006), why we needed a mobile app (2008), and why we needed to be on Google+ (last week)? Okay, some of us are still working to convince our companies about that mobile app, but we’re no longer having to convince our companies of the value of social media marketing. All marketing has become social. We no longer get to choose our media. Our customers do. And they have spoken.  Regardless of whether we’re B2B, B2C, or B2X, social media is now at the heart of our integrated marketing strategies.

2.  There are over 900 species of tarantulas.  There are over 550 social networks.

I’m the first to admit it. You may never need to know or care that there are 14 different social networks for cat lovers. But, if you’re marketing a brand of cat food, then you need to know the specific audience and culture of each and every one of them.  In fact, niche social networks may be the most effective marketing channels you have for your brand.

3.  Tarantulas move fast (10-16 kph/6-10 mph).  Social media moves faster.

People think I’m joking when I say the worst part for me about being a social media marketer is waking up “stupid” every morning, after going to bed feeling so smart (“wicked smart” as my friends in Boston like to say).  Why?  Because each and every day new technologies, tools, and practices are launched to help us better engage our target audiences.  ”Keeping up” with the blistering pace of innovation in social media means being able to identify and analyze – often in real-time – what is valuable for our brands, what is not, and why.

4.  Tarantulas have a lot of moving parts, eight legs to be exact.  Social media has a lot of moving parts, six to be exact.

I define social media’s six “moving parts” as:

1. Actively listening to what our target audiences are saying to and about our brands
2. Tracking and analyzing our target audiences’ [often out of synch] social content and behaviors
3. Creating valuable, [hopefully] viral, brand-appropriate content
4. Publishing this content *everywhere* our audiences choose to be
5. Growing, cultivating, and managing our social connections with our target audiences
6. Engaging and interacting with our target audiences in ways *they* think are valuable, actionable, respectful, [appropriately] outrageous, and entertaining

Each of these moving parts has its own unique function, but they are also tightly integrated and interdependent. The real power (and effectiveness) lies in the sum of the parts, and taking them as a whole.

5.  Where there is fear of tarantulas, there is opportunity — for the tarantula — when we run away.  Where there is fear of social media, there is opportunity – for our competitors — when we run away.

The opportunity here has nothing to do with the hype driving and driven by the ever-increasing army of social media “experts.” The opportunity is to embrace rather than run away from social media by mastering it to out-market our competitors.

So where is the opportunity? Ask yourself these three questions:

1.  Which customers are my competitors not listening to?

2.  Which social channels are my competitors not using?

3.  Which customers are my competitors not engaging?

Your competitors’ social media blind spots are the real opportunities for *your* brand!

6.  Understanding tarantulas will reduce your fear of them.  Understanding social media will reduce your fear of it.

It is rational for us to fear big, hairy things with lots of moving parts that move quickly, particularly if we don’t understand them.  It is equally rational for marketers to fear complex, quickly changing new media, particularly if we don’t understand it.  Acknowledging our need to constantly learn new skills and change ingrained behaviors is the first step in transforming our fear into action.

7.  You can be startled out of your shorts if a tarantula sneaks up on you.  You can be startled out of your job if social media sneaks up on you.

Evolve, don’t perish!  Take 15 minutes a day, 7 days a week to LEARN.  Where should you start?  I recommend the media of social media, Mashable (http://mashable.com). You should also sign up for the free SmartBriefs on Social Media at: http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia.  This is not “extra credit.” These are the requirements for us as marketers to succeed in this era of rapid, unpredictable and unprecedented change.

8.  While you may think of them as “just plain weird and to be avoided at social functions,” many people just like you around the world have “befriended” tarantulas.  While you may think of them as “just plain weird and to be avoided at social functions,” many people just like you around the world have “befriended” social media.

Today, marketers have greatly diminished financial and human resources at their disposal.  To achieve our companies’ business objectives, we MUST use the tools and channels of social media effectively. Engage, learn, and share. You will always find someone in social media who’s a page ahead of you, so reach out and ask questions. Likewise you will never feel better than when you can return the favor and help a colleague who’s a page behind you.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether social media is like a cocktail party, high school, a Bruce Springsteen song…or a tarantula.  What does matter is that you are fully leveraging every aspect of social media you can for your marketing, communications, product development, customer service, and talent acquisition efforts.  Why?  Social media works.  Interactive, viral, and real-time, social media empowers *anyone* to talk about you, your company, your brand, and your products and services with as much [or even more] authority than you do yourself.  Back in the Mad Men era, marketers were the de facto creators, controllers, and [sole] authorities on their brands.  Today, we are just one of many voices talking about our brands. It is up to *you* to use social media to be THE voice with the highest social authority on your brands.

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What do YOU think? What would you compare social media to in order to explain it to your peers? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”.  All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

About Ken

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken Herron is Vice President of Marketing at deaf, deaf-blind, and hard of hearing communications services provider Purple Communications, and the marketing strategist behind many of New England’s most successful startups. A frequent author and popular speaker on engaging customers on social networks, Social Media Marketing Magazine ranked Ken the #2 CMO on Twitter worldwide in his prior role as Chief Marketing Officer of social solutions and services company SocialGrow Inc.  Follow Ken on Twitter