The bottom line: For quite some time, there’s been a lot of hype about operators being able to aggregate and utilize subscriber information to allow for better personalization of services – but also to generate better targeted advertisements and offers. Perhaps it’s now actually on the horizon, though tying it to IMS seems odd when some solutions (such as from ad tech provider MADS, or any number of recommendation vendors) already exist.

—–

THIS MOBILE INTERNET THING IS GOING TO BE BIG, says the latest piece of research from famed internet stock analyst Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley. She and her team have released a 424-page report along with a 659-slide deck, coming to the conclusion that the mobile internet will be twice as big as the desktop internet. Perhaps a bit more interesting is the prediction that smartphones will outship notebook and netbook computers in 2010, and will outship the entire PC market in 2012. Source

The bottom line: Welcome to the party, Mary.

—–

THE ANDROID MARKET NOW FEATURES 20,000 APPLICATIONS, according to AndroLib.com, with about two thirds of them free for users to download. Keep in mind that the iPhone App Store offers about 100,000 applications, but the Android Market’s growth is impressive, having doubled in size since June. November was its biggest month for new apps, with over 3500 added. Source

The bottom line: Another reminder that all the app action isn’t on the iPhone.

—–

FIVE BILLION MOBILE APPS WILL BE DOWNLOADED IN 2014, says ABI, up from 2.3 billion in 2009. But it’s not all good news: the firm says that app sales revenue will decline by 2013, as competition pushes prices down. It also says that the iPhone App Store’s market share will peak in 2010 as more competitors enter the scene, with the Android Market in particular expected to grow its market share from the current 11 percent to 23 percent in 2014. Source

The bottom line: That’s nearly one app per every human being on the planet. Or, in other words, a lot.

—–

MOBILE DATA REVENUES WILL DOUBLE OVER THE NEXT FOUR YEARS TO 100 BILLION EUROS, according to Screen Digest. Revenues from rich media content like mobile TV, video, games and music will generate 8.6 billion euros of this, with the balance coming from operator data fees. The company also says that the iPhone will generate more than 7 billion downloads in 2013, a much more optimistic prediction than the one from ABI above. Source

The bottom line: Full speed ahead for the mobile data business.

—–

THE NUMBER OF TEXTS SENT IN THE US MORE THAN DOUBLED BETWEEN 2007 AND 2008, according to figures from the US Census Bureau, jumping from 48 billion to 110 billion. At the end of 2008, the US had over 270 million mobile subscribers, spending an average of $50 per month on their mobile bill. Source

The bottom line: US subscribers aren’t all thumbs when it comes to texting.

In the first of a series of quest columns Colm Healy – Vice President of EMEA services and General Manager of Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm company – dissects the discovery dilemma.

Search, recommendation and discovery tools are commonplace on the web. We are used to having an intermediary between us and the content that we will eventually consume.

There are many ways in which that intermediary can appear, how we access it, and how it can go about its business, but its role is the same – to enable us to find content. Content that we are looking for; content that we might be looking for; and content that providers want us to see.

The reason that these tools exist is, quite simply, because there is too much content available to do without them. We need some service in place to help us find what we want.

The same now applies to mobile content, be it content designed specifically for mobile, or web content accessed via the mobile. The amount of content available has exploded in recent years to the point where the search, recommendation and discovery tools essential on the web are equally important in our mobile experience.

Key drivers for this explosion in content creation and availability have been led, first and foremost, by the adoption of mobile as an ever-present attachment to our lives, and, in turn, the reliance on the mobile device as a device for more than simply communications.

Evolving from this is the increasing sophistication of mobile handsets – from now so-called ‘Vanilla’ phones, to feature phones, to the emergence and unremitting growth of the smartphone category – users now have mobile handsets that are capable of processing any of the content out there on the web, including HD video. Enabled by the network developments to support increased bandwidth capacity and faster peak data rates, users are now capable of consuming almost any content through their mobile handset.

The user behaviour that this creates represents an incredible opportunity for content developers and publishers. And for the retailers that provide access to that content.

Yet the challenge for all players in the mobile ecosystem is centred on enabling users – buyers – to find the content that they want.

User Research

At Xiam, we recently commissioned TNS Global to carry out transnational – UK and US – research into the experiences of mobile content users which found clear evidence that discovery was standing in the way of a satisfactory mobile user experience. More importantly for the players in the mobile ecosystem, discovery of content is standing in the way of significant revenue opportunities, and creating a user experience that deters customers and will, ultimately, lead to increased customer churn.

The study, which began with a representative sample of 2,666 mobile content users and derived quantitative and qualitative research by focussing more closely on the most active users, revealed an enthusiastic but frustrated demand for easy to use content and applications.

A key finding of the research highlighted that content discoverability was a significant issue, with eight out of ten users reporting a problem obtaining content on their mobile handsets. When it came to finally finding the content for which they were searching, mobile Internet users were, on average, unsuccessful 27% of the time.

Users were frustrated by the time required to find the information they were searching for, and access the specific content that they wanted. Slow page loads, too many layers on websites, and too much irrelevant information are frequent annoyances for mobile content users.

Yet the opportunity presented by mobile content was reiterated by the fact that almost two-thirds (63%) of consumers surveyed indicated that they would spend more time browsing and purchase more content if it was personalized and easier to find.

How We Search

Though mobile content is a relatively new arrival on our plate of entertainment and services for consumption, users are already set in their ways, accessing the same types of content and doing so via the same search tools. Both, more often than not, an extension of their traditional, online content and search habits from their laptop or PC.

Mobile web browsers tend to use search engines (with Google the most frequently referenced), bookmarked sites or to enter URLs directly.

This reflects, very clearly, that there is no significant, regular influence on users as to the content for which they search:
• Search engines are a powerful tool for giving you specifically what you were looking for, though they are far from flawless
• Bookmarked sites are sites that the user has previously visited and had a productive experience of using
• Directly entered URLs indicate that the user knew precisely where on the mobile they wanted to go

Using the mobile network operator’s content portal is one of the less often used methods for accessing content, and was rated in our survey as least effective for finding desired content. Respondents reported that the service provider’s portal was often poorly organised, and that relevant content was not easily and directly accessible.

Those same users reported that they would increase the time and money spent on mobile web browsing if relevant content was easier to find. 59 percent said they would spend more time accessing content – translating to, on average, 65 minutes more per month. And 37 percent said they would spend more money on content purchases – translating to, on average, £5 more per month.

A further criticism of service provider portals was focusing too much on content downloads (i.e. sales) rather than on providing information and a service. Information on events and special promotions, as well as relevant recommendations based upon previous choices of the individual user would enhance the operator’s value to end users significantly.

This element – recommendation enabling discovery – is primary to any mobile content service as it cuts through the time consuming search procedure, and improves the experience of the user. The model adopted and made famous by Amazon – ‘if you liked this, you might also like this’ – is a simple and effective one. The more sophisticated this can be, the more effective the results will be.

And with the myriad different types of content and applications available, a tool to enable the discovery of content that is highly relevant but might otherwise go unnoticed can be especially valuable. Valuable to the user; valuable to the manager of the portal or store; and valuable to developers and publishers of the content, who will focus their efforts towards a provider that can enable their offering to be discovered.

One of Qualcomm’s key messages to the industry is that the mobile experience has to evolve beyond simple search and move toward personal discovery, making the user’s experience more intuitive. These results point to a huge opportunity for operators to increase mobile data usage and sales by providing personalized mobile apps, content and services.

Colm Healy is vice president of EMEA services and general manager of Xiam Technologies for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS).  QIS helps accelerate consumer adoption and consumption of mobile content across all networks and devices by delivering a more engaging mobile experience that is contextual and relevant to consumers’ personal interests. In his current role, Healy manages all business relationship and deployments of Qualcomm’s services solutions within the EMEA region. As general manager of Xiam Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary acquired by Qualcomm in March 2008, he continues to lead the team’s efforts in selling and deploying Xiam’s discovery and recommendations products to a worldwide network of mobile operators including Vodafone, Orange, O2, AIS and Globe.

Disclaimer: Xiam is an MSG supporter.

I suspect his thought-provoking blog will do more than set the tone for my book; it will impact the app store debate that will likely dominate 2010. Just look at the recent raft of app announcements: Analyst firm IDC predicts there will be more than 300,000 iPhone apps by the end of next year, compared to 75,000 Android apps; Samsung takes the wraps off its Bada app platform; and (just today) Orange officially opens its app store to users in the U.K. and France, offering more than 5,000 apps for Java, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Connect the dots, and the avalanche of apps turns up the pressure on providers and mobile operators to be good retailers and put stuff we’re likely to appreciate where we can find and buy it. Common sense really.

Or is it? Not is we consider the statement from Nenad Marovac, Managing Partner, DN Capital, who was speaking at Heroes of the Mobile Screen earlier this week, In his view, “Operators should be pipes and shut up.” Hmmm… not much room in that model for mobile operators to wield the stockpile of analytics they collect (such as our browsing patterns and past purchases) to present us with a selection of apps we’re likely to appreciate.

In preparation for my own industry report on personalization and recommendation I have spent the last weeks interviewing a who’s who of industry players and their customers (mobile operators/service providers) who are convinced  the company with the most (and best) data wins. It’s a battle between operators (really smart pipes) and aggregators (Google & Co.) – and personalization and recommendation could just be the capabilities that distinguishes the leaders from the also-rans.

With that in mind, we continue MSG’s special podcast series on the top players in personalization, and conclude with Part 2 of my interview with Stephen Oman, Amdocs ChangingWorlds Worldwide Director Sales Engineering. Changing Worlds is an Irish provider of personalization technology that was recently acquired by Amdocs and is now part of Amdocs Interactive.

In Part 1 we dissected the content discovery dilemma, looked at on-portal challenges and examined the results of the company’s recent study that underlined the importance of personalization in determining and delivering mobile advertising.

In part 2 we explore personalization off-portal and across app stores.

ROLE OF THE MOBILE OPERATOR: As Stephen sees it: the operator has a spot at the “center of the Internet.” Their job: “helping the subscriber to go on to the Internet, helping them find the right content, helping them with additional suggestions which they might be interested in, and so on.  In doing that, they’re becoming if you like a partner to the subscriber when they are browsing the internet.” So, there’s an opportunity here for the operator to “set themselves up in essence as the home page for the mobile Internet for their subscribers.”

APP STORES: In many ways, it’s a repeat of the content discovery problems we know from on-portal. But it’s also an issue that independent developers will also face as they try to engage people and compete with similar, rival apps across the store. As Stephen puts it: Making an effort to personalize the content will “help people find more niche types of applications that may exist, and that would never appear in the what’s hot today or what’s in the top 10 for today.”

LONG-TAIL VERTICAL APP SCHEMES: Reports show that many apps downloaded are actually productivity apps. Additionally, apps are being downloaded by professionals in line with their professions. So, will we see a plethora of app stores split across lines such as task (apps to do “x”) or jobs (apps for doctors, for example)? Stephen was intrigued by the idea and agrees that we will likely see the launch of vertical app stores (similar to the vertical content portals that offered only ringtones or wallpapers). “It’s pretty much the same as you see in retail, you do have retail stores that sell pretty much everything, but you also have niche retail stores that cater for particular audiences.”

THE GROWTH OPPORTUNITY: In a word: convergence. “Increasingly the mobile operators’ customers are expecting and demanding that if you like connected lifestyle….Crucially, they’re looking to be able to access services across many different devices: their mobile phone, online, through their TV, through digital TV, and that convergence of access is essentially going to improve and drive growth in the mobile digital economy.”

Editor’s note: This special focus on personalization and recommendation continues in the New Year with a look at a cool new recommendation company coming out of stealth mode and an analysis of Novarra. I had to reschedule this one a few times, but this time it is timed to some important news. Not one to miss!

Disclaimer: ChangingWorlds is not an MSG supporter.  However, MSG has published a by-lined thought leadership column authored by a ChangingWorlds senior executive. MSG has also participated in an invitation-only  thought leadership event organized by Amdocs.

Listen to the podcast here. [15:12]

Related posts:

PODCAST: ChangingWorlds Reveals Real Impact Of Personalization On Mobile Advertising CTRs; Google Shows Mobile Advertising Is Hot (Again), But Will Personalization Make The Market Sizzle?

SPECIAL REPORT: GETTING PERSONAL Openwave Adds Mobile Analytics; Are Gateway Providers The Ones To Watch? PLUS New Report/Project With GigaOM Pro

PODCAST: Bytemobile CMO Adrian Hall: Operators’ Can Win On Personalization; Does A Widget Bar Do One Better Than An App Store?

MSG DEBUT VIDEO: Xiam Talks Targeting & Filtering; Make Way For The Personalized Web!

GUEST COLUMN:Using Personalization To Pump Up The Volume & Increase The Value Of The Mobile Internet

Mobile Groove — the monthly podcast I produce with Inma Martinez, leading digital media strategist, “free radical” and advisor to venture capitalists — zeroes in on Google, dissecting its mobile strategy and asking some uncomfortable questions.

ANDROID SHIPMENTS

There’s no denying the phenomenal popularity of Android apps. But how many Android devices have shipped and how big is the Android market – really? Great questions and we wish we had the answers. For some reason, it’s radio silence at Dell and across the 10+ manufacturers in the Open Handset Alliance. Inma will continue to dig for facts and figures, but right now your guess is as good as ours. Listen in and let us know.

GOOGLE’S GAIN

Google snaps up AdMob for $750 million in stock. Is Google banking on a boom in mobile advertising? Or does this latest spree (AdMob and Gizmo5) lay the groundwork for a much larger (and much smarter) scheme to dominate mobile? Inma’s take: Google is doing more than acquiring capabilities to take on rivals (Gizmo5 allows Google to take on Skye, for example). “The Web giant is buying up distribution relationships with mobile publishers – even if it has to buy it at a loss.” (By way of background, AdMob served ads for more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications worldwide with a sharp focus on iPhone apps.)

RIVAL AD NETWORKS

AdMob’s price tag sends a clear message to the market: no one (!) can offer a cheaper price for a mobile ad network that has created similar value. What does this mean for Millennial Media, JumpTap and other ad networks making their mark? And while we’re at it: what is the impact on mobile valuations – period? Inma is looking forward to huge deals that show mobile is a serious and solid industry.

GOBLET OF ROCK

This time we salute Europe’s media superstars for harnessing mobile to produce fantastic results. From great apps to sharp monetization strategies European publishers are showing they “get” mobile. Inma’s pick: The Daily Telegraph and an awesome iPhone app she encourages us all to take out for a spin. Since I’m still reeling from an excellent presentation I recall from the last Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin, I raise mine to The BBC – specifically, BBC World and Tom Bowman, VP Strategy and Operations, BBC Advertising Sales. In addition to developing a cross-platform strategy that has placed mobile in the middle from the get-go – it has also monetized it through mobile advertising with fantastic results. This approach has allowed the BBC to become a Broadcaster 2.0. (More details on the BBC World mobile advertising strategy and the results it has delivered to date in my bi-monthly column for my favorite trade publication, EContent magazine. You can read all the columns here.)

On the occasion of so much excitement in the mobile space Inma also raises a second goblet of Rock to ACCEL Partners, for taking the dive and staying dedicated to mobile. By way of background, ACCEL recently sold two of its portfolio start-ups for a total of $1.5 billion. (AdMob went to Google for $750 million in stock and Playfish went to games publisher Electronic Arts for about $300 million.)

Until next time – keep it fun!

Listen to the podcast here, [17:27]

While the iPhone OS was the leading smartphone platform on Millenial’s network, with 33 percent of smartphone share (ahead of BlackBerry’s 31 percent), Samsung was the top device maker, thanks to the predominance of featurephones. The company also said the US mobile web audience grew to 64.8 million users, and that its ad network reached nearly 80 percent of them.

The report also features a section on mobile app analytics, provided by Mobclix, which says that the iPhone App Store is the biggest on the block, with 115,000 apps, and also leads in downloads, with 100 million per month. Android Market is a distant second, with 20 million per month, and BlackBerry App World even further back in third, delivering 300,000 downloads per month.

Millienial adds that traffic to advertisers’ sites represented almost half of the mobile campaign destinations on its network in October, while app downloads accounted for about 30 percent. Source

The bottom line: Mobile web use – and the market for mobile ads – continues to grow. But don’t overlook smartphones, which still account for a huge chunk of the mobile web market.

—–
THE MOTOROLA DROID SOLD 250,000 UNITS IN ITS FIRST WEEK, according to GigaOM and based on a report from mobile analytics company Flurry. The new Android device, available only on Verizon Wireless in the US, has been well received by commentators, and now, apparently, by the market as well. Flurry says that the sales are more than four times those of T-Mobile’s MyTouch 3G in its first week of sales in August, but of course pale in comparison to the 1.6 million iPhone 3GS devices sold in its first week. Source

The bottom line: Is Motorola clawing its way back from the precipice? Could be – since software has long been its Achilles heel, turning to Android could turn out to be a smart choice, and one that saves the company.

—–

MORE THAN 3 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE UK HAVE REDEEMED A MOBILE COUPON, says Juniper Research in a new report. The analyst firm says that mobile coupons enjoy a redemption rate six times higher than traditional paper coupons, again highlighting the viability of mobile marketing to deliver results for advertisers and brands. Source

The bottom line: Mobile coupons seem like a no-brainer, if only because people are less likely to forget to bring their phone to a shop than a paper coupon! But combined with opt-in campaigns and any number of targeting techniques, they represent a valuable resource for retailers.

—–

THE NUMBER OF MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING USERS IN LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICA WILL INCREASE TENFOLD BY 2015, says a new report from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan and mobile social networking provider Colibria. F&S says the market will amount to 527 million users and be worth $2.4 billion in six years, reflecting the increased popularity of the services, but also the prevalence of mobile as an Internet channel in emerging markets. Source

The bottom line: It’s easy to predict the growth of mobile social networks, but anybody eyeing the space has to keep in mind how people in emerging markets use their mobiles and access the internet primarily through them.

Perhaps Patrick Moorhead, Director of Emerging Media at Razorfish, put it best. He was quoted saying: “(T)his is a wake-up call to clients who say mobile is not a real opportunity, because it is. Google doesn’t get involved in anything it doesn’t think has scale.”

But mobile advertising is more than big business. The fact that Google had to buy AdMob is a clear confirmation that mobile is also different.

MOBILE IS MOBILE

Mobile is a new medium (the 7^th Mass Media, actually) and squeezing online ads onto a small screen – even if that screen is a smartphone/touchscreen device – short changes advertisers and the people they hope to reach with their marketing message. SMS and display banners have their place in the marketing mix. But my own research and a recent mobile marketing survey conducted by Netsize underline the growing interest in richer advertising formats, as well as in-application advertising (in-app ads).

Connect the dots, and brands/advertisers are exploring and executing strategies that make the most of the mobile device and the range of exciting formats available.

Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO, picked up on this key aspect. His take (from an email statement): “Google validated what many companies including Millennial Media has known for years – that mobile is a different market with a huge potential for advertising, possibly a bigger opportunity than online media.”

Google, which introduced AdSense for Mobile in June, has also had to acknowledge that online and mobile are different. The program, a way to land display ads (from online advertisers) on mobile phones, ended up dumping ads on mobile devices, a modus operandi that doesn’t work if the ad landing pages are not optimized for mobile.

But don’t assume content adaptation alone solves the problem. As Rachel Pasqua, Director, Mobile Marketing, iCrossing, pointed out during a panel I moderated on SEO and mobile search: It’s not enough to optimize ads; advertisers also have to think through what people do after the click. In her view, mobile campaigns that drive results have mobile at their core.

ADMOB’S ADVANTAGE

AdMob, a company that has focused on innovative made-for-mobile advertising formats (and analytics) from the start, “gets it.”

From early 2007 (the company was founded in 2006) executives including founder Omar Hamoui caught up regularly with me to brief me on cool new ad formats and innovation coming out of the “Ad Lab” it had with Apple. This sharp focus on richer advertising formats plus the technology platform to monetize mobile inventory and the analytics capabilities to optimize the delivery, tracking and reporting of mobile ad campaigns (which I personally road tested in my mobile advertising how-to white paper) has clearly paid off.

A few other aces in AdMob’s hand:

A huge footprint in CPC (cost-per-click) performance marketing. We read in the September AdMob Mobile Metrics Report that AdMob serves ads for more than 15,000 Web sites and applications around the world. The number of monthly ad requests in the AdMob network hit 10.2 billion in September 2009 (up from 1.6 billion in 2007).  BTW: The premium space is wide open to players such as Millennial Media, the next company I profile in MSG’s Meet The Mobile Ad Networks series.

A deep understanding of the in-app advertising space. AdMob is the largest ad network for in-app ad inventory on the iPhone. AdMob kicked off 2009 with the launch of Download Tracking for iPhone applications (allowing advertisers to accurately monitor App Store conversion rates and measure their return from advertising on AdMob’s network). If quickly followed with an iPhone Advertising Exchange, a concept similar to the banner and link exchange services we know from the Internet. As Russell Buckley, AdMob VP Global Alliances, put in this MSG interview at the time: “The new-launch iPhone Download Exchange is about allowing developers with apps and ad space to serve ads that promote other apps within the Download exchange, and get traction for their own apps in the process by placing ads for free on other applications.” An excellent way to build relationships and good will in the developer community in my book.

A drive to innovate new ad formats. It’s beyond the scope of my analysis to list all the new interactive ad formats AdMob quietly and cleverly brought online in 2009. The highlights: the capability to blend graphical display (banners) with iPhone-specific actions, including maps, calls (initiating a voice call from an ad), iTunes (opening the iTunes store to purchase music or video content from the store), audio (listening to recorded or streaming audio content) and – most important – integration with the App Store to download apps. And let’s not forget the cool new iPhone ad units that went live in July.

I caught up with Thomas Schulz, Vice President & Managing Director, EMEA, at the time of the launch to talk through the nuts & bolts of these new formats, which include mobile social networking (as he put it: turning a brand message into a conversation by letting people click on the banner to access the advertiser’s content/updates on Twitter, Facebook etc…); mobile search (allowing people to search in a company’s mobile site by typing a keyword query directly into the banner); and a multi-panel banner (allowing people to answer multiple calls to action in a single rich media ad).

And the list goes on….

WAS THAT THE PRIZE?

As a loyal BlackBerry user, I am the first to side with executives such as Boris Fridman, Crisp Wireless CEO, who correctly remind us that iPhone is not the only game in town. (More in this post.)

So, did Google snap up AdMob for its impressive reach, its innovation, its grasp of iPhone/in-app ads or its mobile analytics?

Or was it — as Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, an interactive marketing agency suggests – AdMob’s stockpile of data that clinched the deal.

As he put it in this must-read post:

“With the acquisition of AdMob, Google now has access to usage data of many of the most popular mobile apps — especially the apps in the iTunes App Store. For iPhones. If Google is taking on Apple for mobile OS market share, they just scored a huge competitive advantage. Google will know more details than ever about how people are using iPhone apps, how they are engaging with advertising within those apps, and users loyalty to those apps.”

I am intrigued by Ian’s take – so much so that I have scheduled a straight-talk podcast with him next week to discuss this in more depth.

So, is it all about giving Google a leg up on understanding and segmenting app users based on how they interact with in-app ads?

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, sure leaves that impression. As he put it in this interview with Bloomberg: “One the key success points for the iPhone was this enormous development of apps, and particularly free apps, which are advertising supported. Now that we have our Android platform coming out, and really with some serious partners behind it, it will also be important to have that be true for Android as well as the others.”

The takeaway: As I have pointed out in many posts on MSG and throughout my ongoing research into content discovery, mobile search and personalization: context matters. Contextual information (what mobile operators have, by the way) is what Google lacks. The AdMob purchase covers all the bases to close this gap, paving the way for the delivery of mobile advertising everywhere – particularly on the Android platform.

TOUCH WEB RULES (?)

But what we should be asking ourselves is how this new realization that mobile is indeed different will likely impact the wider mobile Web. The advance of touchscreen devices, app stores and new advertising approaches/formats are all coming together in a new kind of interactive mobile Internet, a brave new place where new content, new experiences and even new mobile search services will set the bar.

In a September blog post AdMob referred to this Internet (the one we experience on iPhones and other touchscreen devices) as the “Middle Web.” This “space that lies between the full Web experience you find on a PC and the ad-less Web experience you remember from the first Web-enabled mobile phones.”

This new Web throws up as many issues as it does opportunities.

• What does it do to usability?
• What does it mean for mobile advertising and how do we make it easy and inviting for people to interact with company sites and ads?
• And one AdMob didn’t ask: What is the impact on mobile search?

Tough questions, but Taptu, a mobile search provider, has some of the answers in its series of white papers. Like AdMob and Google, Taptu shares the view that the advance of touchscreen devices, app stores and new advertising approaches/formats changes all the rules.

In this new Web – which Taptu calls the Touch Web – people demand optimized sites (for touchscreen devices) and specialized mobile advertising that makes the most of device functionality and all the features that make the Touch Web more interactive and potentially more exciting than the mobile Web. During my last trip to London, I caught up with Taptu CEO Steve Ives and Bob Last, Taptu SVP Business Development, to talk about the impact of everything in the middle of the Web on the future of the Internet.

This is serious business.

Taptu has crawled, indexed and graded websites (assessing factors such as their suitability for touch devices and their page weights –key since it impacts the speed of browsing on mobile network and the end-user experience) to create an index of Touch Web-friendly sites.  (Taptu counts 120,000 to date.)

To make sure Touch Web-friendly sites also figure highly in mobile search results Taptu has also fine-tuned its algorithms to “decide whether to return results from the Touch Web, the mobile Web or the wider Web” depending on factors such as the searcher’s device and what thy would likely appreciate.

To round out the experience Taptu is exploring innovative new ad formats for touch devices. In an MSG exclusive with Andreas Bernstrom, Taptu COO, treated me to a glimpse of how people might interact with ads on a touch device, a fascinating briefing I captured in this detailed post.

A highlight: Search results are displayed in a card format optimized for presentation on a touch device. I watched as Andreas not only breezed through the card results (depicting images and information in an easy-to-browse format); he could actually flip the cards over to see more details (say, the discography of a particular band or the tour dates of a group). And if you like what you see, then share it (!)  – Twitter it, post it to your personal site or just send it via email to your friends.

The bottom line: if mobile is different, then the Touch Web is a brave new world. Google (with AdMob) is well-prepared for the challenges and opportunities this new Web brings. At the other end of the spectrum, Taptu will most certainly be out of the gates first with a mobile search service (and advertising approach) that makes the most out of the Touch Web. Now the pressure is on companies across the ecosystem to do more than develop a strategy for mobile; they should also brainstorm on tactics to address/harness the unique characteristics of the Touch Web.

Look for more news from Taptu soon- Steve and Bob assure me there are some amazing things in the pipeline.

Disclaimer: MSG has contributed comments to the Taptu Touch Web white paper.

Comscore says that the iPhone represents a third of those touchscreen devices, while the top ten list is filled with a number of touchscreen featurephones. Source

The bottom line: These numbers shouldn’t be too surprising, as smartphones continue to grow in popularity, and touchscreens make their way into the featurephone segment. Peggy adds: The touch web is here and will likely require content, experiences and mobile search tools to make the most out of it. Watch MSG for more on the touch paradigm and the potential business opportunities for companies that get it right.

—–

THE NUMBER OF NEW APPLICATIONS STARTED FOR THE ANDROID PLATFORM NEARLY DOUBLED IN OCTOBER, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. The company, which tracks application and developer activity in app stores and across multiple platforms, says it’s seeing a lot of iPhone developers beginning to work on Android apps.

Android is gaining a lot of momentum as more devices hit the market – particularly in the US, where Verizon Wireless has made quite a splash with its marketing campaign for the Motorola Droid, and is also introducing the HTC Droid Eris. Meanwhile, T-Mobile USA recently announced it would introduce carrier billing and some other measures to try and increase its Android customers’ downloads. Source

The bottom line: Mobile developers will go to where the users are – if the developer and distribution experience is easy and rewarding. Apple and Android are leading the way, while others (notably Nokia’s Ovi and Symbian) still trail behind.

—–

THE VALUE OF COUPONS REDEEMED VIA MOBILE WILL HIT $6 BILLION WORLDWIDE BY 2014, says Juniper Research. In a new report about mobile coupons and NFC-enabled “smart posters”, the firm says that ARPU from offers from NFC coupons and smart posters will exceed ARPU generated by NFC payments in 5 years.

Juniper says, though, there are some potential stumbling blocks: consumer apathy, lack of willingness to change and consumers having to learn a new payment method. Source

The bottom line: Another confirmation that the mobile device is destined to be a payment device we use at the point of impulse – once we overcome the hurdles, of course. Peggy adds: Look for an in-depth look at this topic and more in the Netsize Guide 2010, a must-read mobile industry almanac available for free download beginning February 2010.

Following on from the phenomenally popular future-focused chapter that wrapped up last year’s Netsize guide (a chapter I was proud to co-create with Stan Chesnais, Netsize CEO), this year’s publication will continue to explore the personal experiences and business opportunities emerging as our virtual and physical worlds converge. Another highlight: 25+ interviews with C-Level executives and influencers.

I’m particularly interested in connecting with companies and pioneers taking mobility to a new level with the help of technology that links digital information with real-world places as we pass by.

The buzzword here is augmented reality, and I am pleased to report I already have an interview scheduled with John Ellenby, GeoVector CEO. GeoVector, a developer of mobile technology that recently launched its directional search and pointing application for mobile phones and released World Surfer for download from the Apple iTunes App Store and Android Market.

I’m also looking forward to a Q&A with Ogilvy’s mobile advertising mastermind Scott Seaborn, who is quite bullish about augmented reality and the central role it is likely to play in a wide variety of mobile marketing and promotion campaigns moving forward.

However, the Netsize Guide isn’t just about cool stuff on the horizon.

It also looks at the impact of app stores on the mobile business ecosystem that (at least traditionally) has the mobile operator at its center; the evolution of social media and the excitement over the social address book (more specifically, who owns it?); the trends that matter in mobile communitainment (games, music, social networking); and pivotal importance of personal engagement in mobile marketing and advertising.

I’m pleased to report that key players including Google, Sony Ericsson, Nokia Interactive Advertising, the Mobile Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, are already on board – a line-up sure to make the Netsize Guide 2010 a runaway success. (Another boost: Netsize’s decision to promote the guide via a destination within the new Thought Leadership section of MSearchGroove. This commercial offer, one of MSearchGroove’s growing portfolio of media solutions, allows a select group of companies to launch a branded microsite on MSearchGroove, thus presenting their commentary, case studies and subject matter expertise to a wide audience of executives and influencers.

This year’s guide also has a strong emphasis on mobile CRM, mobile commerce and case studies that illustrate how industry verticals (Education, Finance, Healthcare, Retail, Enterprise) are using mobile to fundamentally change/improve how they do business.

The bottom line: It’s not about mobile; it’s about mobilizing. We fully understand that mobile is personal, portable and part of our daily routine. Now the mobile industry has to stop talking to the mobile industry and reach out to verticals just beginning to explore what mobility means for them.

Against this backdrop, I am particularly open to hear how you (or your customer) has implemented (or is planning to implement) mobile. From mobile education case studies in emerging markets to cool new ways companies use mobile to super-charge customer service and CRM – I want to hear your story. All the better if the service harnesses a unique characteristic of mobile (context, location data, personal preferences and browsing patterns) to get the job done.

Ironically, this was also the topic of my recent article for EContent aptly titled the Immersive Enterprise.

I enjoyed connecting with companies including EMC, Liquid Machines, SecondLife and ThinkBalm, a super-cool company offering independent IT industry analysis and strategic advisory services to technology marketers and immersive Internet advocates. I was extremely impressed by Erica Driver, co-founder and principal at ThinkBalm, who invited me to join her ThinkBalm Innovation Community, a collaborative community in SecondLife dedicated to propelling the enterprise use of the Internet forward.

In addition to some surprising observations (which I recount in my article) Erica also shared the findings of a recent ThinkBalm survey of 66 immersive Internet practitioners. More than 40 percent of those surveyed saw a positive economic benefit from investments in immersive technologies in 2008 and 1Q2009, and more than half expect to obtain a positive total economic benefit in 2009. Looking to the future, over one third (36 percent) said their organizations will definitely expand their investments in 2009 an 2010, and another 38 percent indicated they might even expand their investment.

In my article I interpret this as proof that the next round of innovation will have to enable us to work in multiple locations, multiple dimensions (!) and across multiple devices.

But it was Martin Frid-Nielsen, CEO of Soonr, a company offering mobile cloud services, that put it best.

As Martin sees it: it’s not about enterprises embracing mobility, it’s about them absorbing mobility into every aspect of what they do. “The concept of mobility will be a given going forward for every company everywhere.”

If you have similar opinions/insights or if you want to be considered for inclusion in the Netsize Guide 2010, contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com)

Deadline: October 30.

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter.

The bottom line: Mobile data revenues continue to grow, and are a bright spot for mobile operators among sinking voice spending. It’s also notable that given the U.S. recession, mobile data spending grew so strongly.

—–

NOKIA’S OVI STORE IS SEEING STRONG GROWTH, the company says, citing a 50 percent increase in downloads in August over July, with user registrations up 250 percent in the month. Nokia says it’s approving about 500 pieces of content per week for the store, including apps, games and content like ringtones. 27 operators in 8 countries currently support direct billing for the Ovi store, but Nokia says that the feature will be available in more than 20 countries by the end of Q1. Source

The bottom line: It’s nice to see the download figures rise, but without a breakdown of what kind of content users are grabbing – or how much they’re paying for it – it’s difficult to assess this market from an operator or content provider perspective. What are users downloading? And who’s making money in the Ovi Store?

—–

PRINT PUBLISHERS SEE MOBILE PLAYING AN INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT ROLE IN THEIR ONLINE PLANS, says a new survey from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, the group that audits U.S. publishers’ subscriber figures. A third of those surveyed see mobile having a significant impact on their revenues within three years, and 70 percent say they’re paying more attention to mobile this year than last. 33 percent think they’ve got a good plan in place for the mobile market as well.

Also, 17 percent of those surveyed said they already had a smartphone app for their publication, and a further 56 percent plan to develop one in the next 24 months. Source

The bottom line: Print publishers are struggling, and it certainly looks like they are approaching mobile with much more determination than they initially did the web. They’re looking for new sources of revenue, and have big hopes for new platforms. But mobile in and of itself is not a business model for them, they’ve still got to figure out how to create value and generate revenues from it.

—–

NEWS AND REFERENCE APPS GET THE MOST WEEKLY USE AND STAY ON IPHONE USERS’ DEVICES THE LONGEST, says a report from mobile apps analytics provider Flurry. The company looked at the weekly usage rates and retention rates for several different types of apps, in an attempt to assess the level of user loyalty. It explains that the news and reference apps feature the most regularly updated content, hence their high usage and continued attraction.

It also found that “entertainment” apps, which it also calls gimmick apps (think iFart, the Zippo lighter app), have the lowest retention rate, highlighting how users download them, use them a few times, then delete them. It also broke out a couple of other sectors of usage patterns: one including apps like e-books, which get used intensely over a short period of time, and another holding navigation and productivity apps, which don’t get used as often, but are retained on devices for a long time. Source

The bottom line: These are some interesting figures that deliver some insight into how users – subconsciously, perhaps – view and utilize apps.

—–

THE NUMBER OF U.S. SMARTPHONE USERS ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES HAS TRIPLED in the past year, says new research from Nielsen. The company says there were 18.3 million unique users of mobile social networking sites on smartphones in July, up from 6.4 million in 2008. Facebook was the most popular site, getting twice as many users as the nearest rival, MySpace. Source

The bottom line: This follows last week’s data points that told a similar story and predicted even more growth for mobile social networking in the coming years. The mobile is an inherently social device, so expect to see ever-higher numbers.

Mobile Groove, the monthly podcast that focuses on the news and companies that matter most in mobile — is back with a great line-up of topics and the usual mix of insights and outspoken observations from co-host Inma Martinez, my über-connected and always professional partner in crime. (We missed posting on Friday, but the reason for the delay will be clear when I take the wraps off an all-new MSearchGroove, so watch this space.)

Mobilize, the conference Inma attended in September, left a lasting impression. Her SWOT analysis: a great line-up of startups and a high level of energy and VC activity in the Valley. Where does this leave Europe? Inma (also based in London) connects the dots in some recent investor reports and concludes Europe may see its best and brightest in mobile “defect.” Is the U.S. the place to be if you are a mobile entrepreneur? Listen in and let us know what you think.

Speaking of startups, Inma also outlines the highlights from Seedcamp, a program created to jumpstart the entrepreneurial community in Europe by connecting next generation developers and entrepreneurs with over 400 mentors from a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR and PR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists. One company that stood out: VouChaCha, a U.K. startup that delivers vouchers to your mobile phone. Where is the hold up in Europe and why aren’t coupons a de facto part of our daily mobile routines (as they are in the U.S.)? You tell us!

Other success stories Inma shares: Flirtomatic, iScoot and eBuddy.

CONTEXT MATTERS?

Will location-based services excite women? Well, we beg to disagree.

Listen to the lively podcast here [23:54].

What about women who are interested in bargains are willing to drive miles in pursuit of discounted designer clothes, for example. (Think of the success of outlets in the middle of nowhere?!) Will an app that tells women what’s on offer nearby fly or fail? And where are the female-focused apps anyway? Men may have their iPhone app that celebrates flatulence – but where are the apps that target women? Talk about leaving money on the table!

BLYK MEDIA & SOCIAL MEDIA

In a follow up to the last podcast Antti Öhrling, Blyk Co-Founder, joins Inma for lunch and the opportunity to explain Blyk’s real business objectives. It’s not about mobile advertising; it’s about mobile media. Inma tells us it is an ambitious model – but one that could work well for Blyk. Listen in and find out.

And we discuss the buzz around social media, giving Vodafone (and the fast-followers sure to make headlines in the next weeks/months) huge credit for Vodafone 360. Why is social media big in mobile? Inma tells us that part of the reason could be the popularity of Twitter on mobile. (She should know; when it comes to mobile London is the Twitter capital.)

We also revisit Spotify and dissect its mobile ambitions. Is it gearing up for a showdown with Apple? Listen in and let us know what you think.

RAISING OUR GOBLET

This time Inma salutes Mark Curtis, the mastermind behind Flirtomatic, a phenomenally successful freemium flirt and fun service.

Fresh from several mobile advertising events, I raise my goblet of rock to Dagmara Brylack for sharing a milestone mobile advertising case study during Mobile Marketing Forum Europe (which I analyze here). I also recognize Mark “Mr. Mobile” Wächter, for his work to launch MMA Germany. When it comes to mobile advertising, Germany is a potential powerhouse (!)  and future posts here on MSearchGroove will highlight the stats, campaigns and companies that make this market the one to watch.

Until next time – keep it fun!

PERSONAL THANKS

Our thanks to the Grant Butler Coomber team (and Billy Burnett) for their continued advice and support on how to build awareness of this podcast series and other MSearchGroove initiatives.  I fully recommend them as our PR team of choice if you want to build your brand in Europe. In the U.S. I am indebted to Jeff Fishburn (“always-on” at OnPR) and Liz Erk, whose agency, The Jaxson Group, also advises MSearchGroove. Her talent: securing major media placements and speaking engagements for client companies.

But most of all – thanks to you, our listeners. We welcome your ideas, suggestions and elevator pitches. DM us on Twitter (@mobilegroove) or email us at mobilegroove AT msearchgroove DOTcom.

Related posts:

PODCAST: Thought-Provoking Mobile Groove Series With Inma Martinez Debuts Today; Offers Inside Track On Industry Disasters, High-Flyers & What’s Highest On Investor Radars

The bottom line: Finally Google reveals the terms that deliver results in mobile search. But mobile search usage is still lagging, no doubt due to a laundry-list of universal shortcomings MSearchGroove has analyzed in this recent post. The new Google Keywords Tool is good news for marketers and publishers, but another proof that mobile search as a service has a way to go. Peggy adds: Or does it simply underline the pivotal importance of content discovery – not mobile search – as a primary means to explore the wealth of content at our finger tips and find what we are likely to appreciate?

***

MORE THAN HALF OF INDIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS USE THE MOBILE WEB, says a new survey from Indian mobile ad firm InMobi, and a third of the students engage with brands that advertise online. The students’ favorite sites to visit on their mobile devices are search engines, news sites and social networks, and the company says that mobile internet usage is spread across a multitude of income groups. Source

The bottom line: More evidence pointing to the popularity of the mobile internet in emerging markets, and the ability of mobile ads to reach consumers there.

***

MOBILE APP STORE SALES WILL HIT $4.2 BILLION IN 2013 in the US alone, says a new report from the Yankee Group. It calls the sales growth, along with a quadrupling of US smartphone users to 160 million, a “gold rush”. The firm also offers some advice to developers: they say those with consumer apps should focus on BlackBerry, while enterprise developers should focus on the iPhone and Android platforms, because of the lack of those types of apps for each respective platform. They also add that pricing and marketing are important considerations for success.

The company says that one out of four downloads in 2013 will be for paid apps, and predicts an average price then of $2.37. It also puts the value of this year’s US download market at $343 million. Source

The bottom line: This is a very bullish prediction, without a doubt. The 160 million smartphone figure is pretty brazen and clearly based on the belief that most devices sold over the next four years in the US will be smartphones. The advice about choosing platforms seems a little odd, considering that to drive downloads and sales, developers may be better off going where the users they want to target are.

—–

ONE OUT OF FOUR PEOPLE INTENDING TO MAKE A PURCHASE IN MOBILE OPERATORS’ SHOPS LEAVE WITHOUT BUYING, according to a new report from Amdocs. The company says that retailers could save half of those lost sales opportunities by improving the customer experience (and, of course, Amdocs has a solution for that — you didn’t think it was just sharing this info for fun, right?). It cites the main reasons for the lost sales as an inability to get a device right away, the inability to get the “touch and feel” of a device before buying, and a lack of experts to consult about devices’ features. Source

The bottom line: The reasons Amdocs sites as barriers to purchase all ring true — and combined with the general unpleasantness of many operator retail outlets thanks to long lines, dummy devices, and other factors, it’s not hard to see why many would-be buyers end up frustrated.

***

CONSUMERS WILL DRIVE MOBILE HEALTH SERVICES FORWARD, NOT COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS, says the analyst firm Berg Insight. Remote medical monitoring and diagnostics have been hyped for quite some time, but the applications and devices have been slow to emerge. The firm suggests instead that it’s consumer applications, such as smartphone apps and networked personal medical devices, that will lead the way. Source

The bottom line: The personal, always-on, always-with-us nature of mobile devices makes them perfect for medical applications, while their growing functionality makes them ever more useful in this area. In addition, software apps promise to deliver many of the benefits of dedicated mobile hardware at a lower price to consumers.

***

65 PERCENT OF APP DOWNLOADERS ARE MALES AGED 18-34, says GetJar. This demographic is prized by many marketers, even though they often find it difficult to reach, suggesting that apps are a great way to do so. 81 percent of all downloaders were male, while almost two-thirds of them download apps 3-4 times a week. GetJar’s research also found that 72 percent of its app downloaders use the mobile internet more than the internet on PCs — and this isn’t just limited to emerging markets, with 62 percent of US GetJar users and 69 percent of UK ones agreeing. Source

The bottom line: It’s clear that GetJar has some seriously dedicated users, who could serve as a useful bellwether for the overall apps market. It’s not too surprising to see the young male dominance — but also suggests that developers and app stores may not be doing a great job of reaching other demographics.

In absolute terms, though, it’s an average of 1 paid app per month on Android, 2.6 paid apps on iPhone and 2.0 on iPod Touch. Broken down into those who “regularly” download paid apps, they tend to download 5 paid apps per month, spending $9.

Another interesting observation from the report is that iPod Touch users download an average total of 18 apps per month – whereas iPhone users grab 10 each month. Source

The bottom line: Apple’s App Store remains the gold standard, demonstrating that consumers will download – and pay for — apps when it’s easy to browse and simple to install. At this point, most of the other app stores out there are poor imitators that don’t pay enough attention to the usability aspects of their offerings and how they integrate into the installation process of compatible devices. Meanwhile, iPhone users are dropping some decent money on paid apps, and creating advertising opportunities with free ones.

***

MOBILE NET ADSPEND TO QUADRUPLE TO $2 BILLION BY 2014, according to Juniper Research. The firm says that mobile internet ad spending worldwide will approach $500 million this year, and almost reach $2 billion by 2014.

This doesn’t even include SMS advertising, which Juniper says will be overtaken by mobile Internet ad spending this year. Overall, total mobile ad spending will hit $1.4 billion this year, and $6 billion in 2014. Source

The bottom line: Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen a lot of predictions like this, highlighting the expected growth in the mobile advertising market. Perhaps the most important thing to takeaway is that these predictions signal the high interest in mobile advertising – but to hit these lofty targets, the entire ecosystem will have to work to deliver the right solutions for brands and consumers.

***

THE U.S. AD MARKET WILL FALL BY $1.6 BILLION THIS YEAR, says the Yankee Group in a new report. Spending on TV advertising will fall by $2 billion alone, the firm says, as budgets shrink and consumers shift to the I nternet on both PC and mobile. Another key factor the report cites is the booming amount of inventory available on these platforms, which it says put constant downward pressure on prices. Source

The bottom line: Like the previous point, there have been several of these reports lately, showing a significant drop in ad spending, but they typically show mobile as one bright spot. Again, the opportunity is there for mobile advertising to grow and take dollars away from other platforms – but only if the ecosystem can deliver the right opportunities.

—–

HARDLY ANYBODY’S WATCHING MOBILE TV, according to a new report from In-Stat (that shouldn’t really surprise anybody in mobile). Despite mobile TV’s failure to live up to the hype that’s surrounded it for several years, the firm says that 54 million people will watch analog free-to-air TV on their mobile this year, reaching 300 million in 2013. That’s an important distinction: in many developed markets, analog TV isn’t available on mobiles, or it’s somewhere in the process of being switched off in favor of digital terrestrial broadcasts. This means that growth will come largely in developing markets.

The report, it should be mentioned, was conducted on behalf of a mobile TV chip company and contains many of the type of stats that other reports about mobile TV have mentioned: those who use it tend to use it several times a week, and spend a decent amount of time watching. But the issue remains that there simply aren’t very many people at all using mobile TV. Source

The bottom line: The report’s author says that free-to-air programming supported by advertising would boost the mobile TV market. That might be true, but the lack of uptake seems to be largely built on a real lack of interest for mobile TV among consumers. Furthermore, if mobile TV accesses freely available signals, cutting the operators out of the picture, they’re unlikely to want to subsidize handsets that would support it.

***

M-COMMERCE IS MOVING SLOWLY, at least in the U.S., says a new report from eMarketer. One survey it cites says retailers say budget constraints are the biggest factor keeping them from expanding their efforts, with consumer apathy apparently not even included in the survey. Another poll in the report says that more than half of U.S. consumers would be willing to buy pizza or movie/event tickets by mobile, with just 34 percent saying they’d buy games and just 24 percent saying they’d purchase mobile video/TV content.

The report talks about one more survey, which says that the most popular form of purchase via mobile among US m-commerce users is, as you’d expect, mobile content. Next, is consumer electronics, which it says has been bought by half the people who have used m-commerce. A small sample size (just 137) could help explain that figure. Source

The bottom line: Perhaps the biggest factor holding back m-commerce is a lack of real demand. For many types of goods, shopping on mobile isn’t a great experience. But for other kinds of products – in particular, services that are consumed on the go like events or travel – some market may emerge.

***

OPERA MINI SEES 25 MILLION DOWNLOADS on GetJar alone, the site says. GetJar says Opera Mini is the most downloaded mobile app of all time, and that it alone has served up 7.5 million downloads of the latest version of the app since the beginning of the year. Source

The bottom line: Two main takeaways here: Opera Mini, as most readers probably already know, is a hugely popular app across multiple platforms and app stores. Second, the smartphone app stores aren’t the only places sending mobile users lots of downloads.

In brief: MSearchGroove proudly steps up to the plate and hosts the Carnival of the Mobilists for the first time.

The last weekend in August and I spent much of it at a two-day summer festival in Siegburg, Germany, where I’m based. I’ve been on a natural high with good friends, great food and a wonderful line-up of home-grown entertainment. But not all the excitement was at the local fairgrounds. The Mobilists have also come up with a mix of thought leadership and must-read posts that give us new perspectives on mobile and start our adrenalin flowing.

Andy Favell and the team at mobiThinking.com do us all a great service and compile a comprehensive list of mobile industry facts and figures. The first in this series focuses on the size of the mobile Web and the implications for marketers. What do the numbers tell us? Should investors/companies take advantage of the economic slowdown and move ahead while others are standing still? Read on, find out and tell us what you think.

Another round of important mobile stats comes from Jose Colucci at Mobile Strategy, who continues the countdown of the 12 Reasons Why Canadian Banks Should Really Offer Mobile Services. Jose expertly brings together figures that show significant growth and penetration (despite strict government regulation, a lack of competition and a sky-high mobile data plans and pricing).  The bottom line: over 70 percent of Canadians have wireless access. Is Canada an untapped market for banking services? Is there a first-mover advantage for financial institutions that get involved? Read on, find out and tell us what you think.

With all the buzz around app stores and the proliferation of mobile devices (beyond just phones), the timing couldn’t be better for this post from Antoine RJ Wright. In it he recounts Nokia’s size, scope and industry influence, and wonders if the Finnish giant has the resources and marketing muscle to sustain three brands/strategies: Ovi, Symbian and Maemo. Could Maemo be the “wild card” in Nokia’s hand? Read on, find out and tell us what you think.

Tsahi Levent-Levi at VoIP Survivor, a blog in RADVISION’s blogs network providing insights into the VoIP industry, connects the dots in recent analysis/commentary and examines the outlook for mobile VoIP. Will current interest among carriers create the conditions for a viable market? Or will it simply advance the shift to IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) – a technology that defines how to set up advanced services for 3G cellular networks – and put operators back in the driver’s seat? Hmmm…should Fring and Truphone watch their backs? Read on, find out and tell us what you think.

A refreshing new idea comes from Judy Breck at Golden Swamp. She uses the debut of  Half the Sky, a new book documenting the plight and progress of the world’s women, to start a long overdue discussion about the impact of mobile on women in the emerging markets. Must women such as Saima Muhammad, a Pakistani woman who routinely beaten by her husband until she started a successful embroidery business, continue to endure their terrible fates in silence? Or does personal mobility offer the promise of liberation and freedom from oppression? What is the outcome when the world’s women have access to the Internet in their pockets? Read on, find out and join in the conversation at Golden Swamp.

Meanwhile, Dennis Bournique at WAP Review uncovers disturbing inequities in the price of mobile data in the developed world. He successfully argues the case for a rethink based on his shocking observation that (currently) all prepaid data is “wildly overpriced.” So, what is fair price for mobile data on prepaid plans? Dennis does the math and provides us a reasonable model that makes money and sense for everyone. Read on, find out and give us your take.

Some eight operating systems are battling for market supremacy. Will there be only one? Digital evangelist Ian Wood (thankfully) moves us past the academic discussion and back to basics in a post that draws from his vast personal experience and road tests. His conclusion: look for consolidation that will see three OS providers emerge. Who will make the winner’s circle? Read on, find out and let us know what you think.

Kudos to C. Enrique Ortiz at About Mobility for asking the question: is Apple a control freak? He connects the dots in recent developments – such as the decision by Apple to reject both Google Voice and Riverturn’s VoiceCentral application – to communicate an uncomfortable truth. But it’s not about whether Apple is morphing into a monopolist; it’s about the larger impact on the ecosystem and the third-party developers that have made iPhone the success it is. What are the arguments (pro and com)? What’s at stake? Read on, find out and speak out!

Finally, MSearchGroove uses COM #189 to showcase Mobile Groove, its new, no-holds-barred podcast series. I join with series co-host Inma Martinez, a leading digital media strategist and advisor to venture capitalists who has been referred to as a “free radical” by Red Herring and Fast Company. Together we raise our goblet of rock and speak out on the rise and demise of Blyk, what went wrong at Spinvox and what we can expect from Microsoft moving forward. Read on, have fun and contact us with your ideas/input! (mobilegroove AT msearchgroove DOTcom)

Post of the week goes to Judy Breck at Golden Swamp for prompting us to see mobile as a tool (for change) rather than a technology. Access to the mobile Internet gives everyone – particularly women suffering in isolation – a voice, allowing them to connect with people and peers who can amplify their message and fight their cause. Thanks, Judy, for reminding us why mobile is amazing and why we must strive to bridge the digital divide.

***

If you’re like me, then use the last days of August to catch up on your reading and check out the Carnival posts we unfortunately missed on MSearchGroove.

COM #186 at allaboutiphone.net (Topics include: what brands want from targeting; U.S. wireless data stats from Chetan Sharma; and a look at whether Europe risks losing its competitive edge in mobile. A highlight: an answer to the question – does Steve Jobs hate the App Store?)

COM #187 hosted by Jamie Wells at mobilestance.com (Topics include: five iPhone apps that could make publishers money; a discussion around the future of paid content; an in-depth look at what a mobile Web OS experience could offer; and an exclusive interview with Blyk.)

COM #188 at Golden Swamp (Topics include: how location adds context to content; a look at the cool new Layar Reality Browser2.0; an analysis of Nokia; and a new take on mobile education.)

Thanks to COM contributors and readers.

Look for the Carnival next week at WIPJam - and be sure to catch up with Caroline Lewko and the great WIPJam team at the next Jam Session on the World Tour: WIPJam@OSiM (Open Source in Mobile), September 16, in Amsterdam.

When I first met Inma Martinez at Mobile 2.0 Europe I was struck by the depth of her knowledge and the strength of her determination to speak her mind. I made the decision to work with her at some level. A few in-person meetings in London (where she is based) and many Skype chats later we are proud to take the wraps off Mobile Groove, a monthly podcast series here at MSearchGroove that will provide short, digestible and insightful commentary on what’s hot in news, investments and developments impacting the mobile space at all levels.

Mobile Groove will air on the last Friday of every month and consist of three thought-provoking segments: The Big Picture, a wrap of the month’s news and views; Street Groove, an informed discussion of the companies and technologies sure to rock the mobile space; and The Radar, a roundup of talk on the street and what is highest on investors’ radars.

OUTRAGEOUS & INSIGHTFUL

The first in the series kicks of with a look at the the rise and fall of ad-funded MVNO Blyk, the controversy surrounding voice-to-text provider Spinvox and an in-depth look at the key platform players (Apple, Google and Microsoft) – specifically the news via Taiwan handset makers that Microsoft plans to adopt a dual platform strategy to promote its Windows Mobile OS (operating system) and, thus, take aim at both Android- and iPhone-based platforms.

Inma, who stands out as an über-connected advisor to venture capital firms, also gives us the inside track a new fund by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs that may spell relief for European startups and smart people with brilliant ideas.

We joined forces to provide industry commentary and insights on the top market news in the mobile industry. But it doesn’t mean you can’t get involved. We welcome your ideas, suggestions and elevator pitches. DM us on Twitter(@mobilegroove)or email us at mobilegroove@msearchgroove.com.

Listen to the podcast here. [22:25]

A ROUND OF THANKS

And finally, thanks (again!) to Inma, for the energy and excellent ideas. Thanks to Annette Kramer, a Stradbroke Partner and presentation coach, for her kind offer to do the intro and outro to our podcast series; and to Alfred DeRose, Brian Avery and the team of professionals at Tego Interactive, a company helping to build businesses – including mine – through converged Web and mobile solutions. The company has been instrumental in creating some new features and functionality (including a mobile site) for MSearchGroove, with more soon to come, so please check back regularly.

And a special thanks to RealWire, an MSG partner and supporter whose global news release distribution service (specializing in the online media and mobile) consistently delivers reach, audience and exceptional analytics. MSG uses RealWire for all press releases, and I recommend you do the same.

For now our podcast will be accessible via the MSearchGroove web site home page. In September Mobile Groove will also be available for download via a dedicated iTunes channel.

Regular readers will know that I work with a variety of organizations and publications, evaluating companies and candidates for awards ranging from the Meffys (awarded by the Mobile Entertainment Forum to recognize excellence and innovation in mobile entertainment and services) to the Smaato Mobile Advertising Awards (recognizing the best in mobile Web and in-app advertising) to the EContent 100 (a list of the 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry).

I am proud that EContent named me to its panel of judges to evaluate the 100+ candidates across the categories: classification & taxonomy; collaboration; content commerce; content creation, production, & digital publishing; content delivery; content management; content security; fee-based info services; intranets & portals; mobile content; search engines & technologies; and social media. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the many mobile and Internet companies that have contacted me to be considered for inclusion in the list, and issue a final call for candidates.

Round 1 of the judging wraps up on September 1, so please reach out to me this week. (Please note that your contacting me does not compel me to put any company name on the final list of contenders and, of course, in no way guarantees that any company will be named to the list.)

This year my participation in the judging team has not only introduced me to a number of new mobile industry innovators (companies you’ll see profiled on MSearchGroove in the coming weeks). It has also exposed me to new thinking about digital content creation and distribution.

The industry is at a critical crossroads. A milestone that speaks volumes: the storm brewing the media and digital industries after Rupert Murdoch’s very public announcement (after posting record losses of $203 million last quarter) that his News Corporation intends to charge for online newspaper content.

WILL WE PAY FOR CONTENT?

Artesian Solutions, a company specialized Web-based market intelligence and surveillance software (automating the process of search through machine-based surveillance), has an interesting take. Artesian CEO Andrew Yates issued a statement today arguing that Murdoch’s brave strategy may just (literally) literally pay dividends.

As Andrew puts it: Murdoch’s play is “based around ‘quality’ and this is tough call for a commodity that people are not currently prepared to pay for…. However he argues that one positive consequence of charging for content is that through targeted information and the learned behaviors of the subscribers, newspapers will be able to build a 24 hour, 7 days a week relationship (rather than once in the morning) with the subscriber and therefore tailor content to the demands of those paying for the service. The subscriber will get what they want, when they want it on whatever device they chose. Surely, this will be good for the consumer.”

Intrigued by this view I caught up with Andrew to ask why he can be so sure that we – people that have grown up accustomed to free content, search and social networking services – will change our habits and pay for news, for example. A few minutes into the call we were passionately debating the pivotal importance of personalization, relevancy and context – and the value they bring to our content experiences across platforms and devices.

CONTEXT & RELEVANCE

Artesian, for example, has built a B2B business model on providing its clients content in tune with their profiles, preferences and strategic focus. Using a variety of tools and techniques (advanced algorithms, natural language search the order and frequency of keywords, for example) Artesian effectively filters out information that we don’t want and gives us what we do.

In this scenario, the value of content is its quality – which is a function of context and relevance. Put another way, customers pay for genuinely useful content and they pay a premium for the choice of having what they need where and when they need it. With this in mind, the next deliverable on the Artesian roadmap is a service that delivers a daily dose of information to customers on their portable devices (PDA, smartphone, iPhone etc…).

My take: Artesian is one of a new breed of cool companies that makes its money by making choices for us to provide us choice content we appreciate. By spidering the indexes relevant to our interests and objectives (and not attempting to index or deliver the entire Web), companies such as Artesian are defining paid-content models that hold a great deal of promise for publishers everywhere (particularly in mobile). I would certainly pay for a daily dose of exactly what I want (gleaned from the sources I know and trust, as well the social media spaces, such as Twitter) delivered to my BlackBerry. All the more valuable if the technology employs explicit and implicit personalization (as Artesian does). Will we, as my close colleague Alan Moore suggested, pay for quality content? I vote ‘yes.’ As they say in Cologne, where I am based: What costs nothing, is nothing.

KOOABA MAKES MEDIA INTERACTIVE

Another value to focus on (because it can pave the way to effective/engaing advertising and increased revenues for publishers) is interactivity.

The merging of the digital and physical worlds is a hot topic at MSearchGroove and a big part of the Netsize Guide 2010. (Netsize has commissioned me to write it for the third year running and we just kicked off this exciting project at a meeting at Netsize HQ in Paris last week). But it’s more than a good read; it’s a great business model for the companies that can bridge those worlds.

Kooaba, a visual search and image recognition company and I have had high on my radar from the start (and that goes back almost two years), has an approach that spells good news for old media (specifically, print) anxious to get more mileage out of their content assets.

It’s hot off the presses (no pun intended!) and I caught up with Herbert Bay, Kooaba CEO and founder, to get the inside track on this new Kooaba and where it’s heading.

By way of background, Kooaba, which offers the Kooaba App for the iPhone and other devices, is strong in image recognition. It’s one of a number of companies providing the technology that allows people to interact with content and advertising using their cameraphones, paving the way for the all-important transaction.

(Little wonder why Amazon acquired visual search company Snaptell last month and this month released Amazon App for Android, an app that includes the experimental Amazon Remembers feature. With it people have two ways they can use their device camera to find and remember items available for sale on Amazon.com: they can either snap a photo of an item or scan a barcode.)

Kooaba’s new-look website is chock-full with information about the Kooaba App and case studies from clients ranging from BMW and EMI to Heineken – all a testament to the power of this technology to enable advertising and encourage commerce.

But the real news for me is Interactive print, Kooaba’s solution that effectively gives old print media a new lease on life.

In practice, people capture the content with their cameraphones and Kooaba makes the connection between the printed content and the cool interactive stuff it links to (videos, interviews, and special offers/discounts – the works). Additional functionality in the back-end lets people search, archive and even share this content. Read a job offer in the classifieds, save it for yourself in your personal library or share it on Facebook. Read an interview, get one-click access to the video and then pass it around.

Will people pay for that interactivity? Perhaps… But it’s likely the real money will come from advertisers willing to pay a premium to deliver a more interactive advertising experience and – more importantly – measure the results. (Kooaba’s solution has analytics/tracking baked in.)
Herbert is bullish about the power shift that can happen when publishers are back in charge of their content and their advertising revenues (as opposed to aggregators and search engine companies.).

But I am even more excited about the potential for interactive learning. This technology can literally make books come alive! (A wonderful boost to the quality of education in the developing world.)

The bottom line: Relevancy rules! Whether it’s built into the algorithms that allow companies such as Artesian charge for relevant content or architected into Kooaba’s solution that makes print content contextually-aware (because it can morph to match the context of the people who activate it with their cameraphones), we want what we want and will gravitate to those companies that can give it to us.

The bottom line: This is sort of a chicken-and-egg situation. Does the fact that roughly a fifth of tweets come from mobile users make location information slightly irrelevant, or will the availability of the location info drive more mobile usage? We’ll take the glass-half-full view: getting 20 percent of tweets from mobile devices is a solid amount, and giving users the chance to leverage their location should increase it further.

—–

MOBILE AD BUDGETS BUCK THE WIDER DOWNWARD TREND, and will hit $5.7 billion by 2014, says Juniper Research in a new report. While overall ad spending is being hit by budget cutbacks, mobile is set to grow, as it offers engagement with the consumer and a more quantifiable ROI than other mediums.

Still, that $5.7 billion will only account for 1.5 percent of the total global ad spend in 2014, with many advertisers as yet unconvinced that mobile has a big enough reach to justify higher spending. Source

The bottom line: Mobile advertising’s characteristics – quantifiable ROI, direct engagement with consumers – mean that it’s more than just a fad, and will be a valuable tool for marketers. Still, questions persist about reach, even if they show a slight misunderstanding of mobile, because it’s not particularly a broadcast medium. Where mobile will succeed is in getting advertisers connected to the right individuals directly, rather than by the broadcast, shotgun approach.

—–

US MOBILE MUSIC CONSUMPTION DOUBLES, BUT REMAINS LOW, according to new research from Forrester. The firm says that 10 percent of US adults listen to music on their mobile devices at least once a month, compared to a quarter of people in the UK and a staggering 70 percent of Chinese citydwellers.

Revenues remain low, though, and are projected to hit just 866 million euros in Europe and $263 million in the US in 2013, with almost two-thirds of US people surveyed saying they had no interest in buying songs on their phones. Source

The bottom line: Mobile isn’t immune from the malaise in the wider music business, with consumers reluctant to pay for songs on their handsets. This shouldn’t be at all surprising: there’s really nothing about mobile that makes it much different than any other platform, since consumers haven’t shown a lot of interest in buying songs over the air. Streaming and radio-like services look like they might enjoy more success on mobile.

—-

SMARTPHONES GRAB THE HEADLINES, BUT FEATURE PHONES GRAB THE SALES, says NPD Group in a new report. In the second quarter, feature phones accounted for 72 percent of all handset sales in the US, though this is down five points from the previous year. Smartphones accounted for the other 28 percent, although they saw almost 50 percent growth from the previous period. Overall, NPD says that unit sales were up 14 percent in the US in Q2 from the previous year, with the ASP up 4 percent to $87. Source

The bottom line: It pays to keep in mind that while the likes of the iPhone dominate media coverage, the vast majority of users are still on feature phones – so developers, marketers and content producers need to keep them in mind.

—

SMARTPHONE APP STORES TO DELIVER 6.67 BILLION DOWNLOADS IN 2014 in the US alone, says Frost & Sullivan. The firm appears to believe that much of this will come from free applications, but doesn’t offer any guidance on revenues. Source

The bottom line: It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to see lots of app downloads coming as more and more app stores come online from handset vendors, OS providers and operators. But if most of these apps are going to be free to download, where are the revenues going to come from? Paid sponsorship by brands or in-app ads?

It was great to have the last few days off and even better to map out an exciting line-up of MSearchGroove projects for the next few months. One that I am particularly honored to announce: my collaboration with GigaOM Pro, the new research arm of the highly respected tech blog GigaOM. By way of background, GigaOM Pro has brought together an impressive roster of industry authorities and analysts (including my esteemed colleague Chetan Sharma) to “address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.” The GigaOM Pro solution: Make timely, highly relevant analysis and insights accessible and practical.

I’m on board to write an in-depth examination of personalization and recommendation technologies and business models, a natural next step given my long track record analyzing mobile search and my deep involvement in the recommender space. (This includes work with Strands, a major provider of recommender systems, on recommender industry events including RecSys 09 – October 22-25, NYC.)

The report is an ambitious undertaking and I am naturally interested in connecting with personalization/recommendation companies –so please contact me directly if you wish to be considered for inclusion. peggy@msearchgroove.com

Why the buzz about personalization?

The advance of Internet-specific smartphones and the spread of app store schemes turns up the pressure on mobile operators (and their content providers) to decipher data transactions (on and off the network), combine it with location and demographic data and use the results to create a 360-degree view of the individual.

Where does this shift leave mobile operators?

They are hard pushed to turn analytics into competitive advantage. Sensing this business opportunity (that execs tell me they estimate hovers in the hundreds of millions of dollars), a slew of companies (such as Amdocs, Bytemobile, Novarra and Qualcomm) are among the first out the gates with revamped offers to arm operators for the ultimate battle with Web giants for the mobile customer. This special series profiles the players jockeying for position in the marketplace.

This week we look at Openwave, which has recently productized its existing analytics capabilities and business intelligence know-how, and packaged it up as Mobile Analytics.

The solution – designed to aggregate usage data and behavioral information across a variety of sources, including on-portal surfing and open Web browsing, to generate meaningful reports –dovetails with other Openwave offers (behavioral targeting, profiling, usage pattern analysis) to lay the groundwork for the delivery of relevant content and advertising.

I caught up with Mayur Pitamber, Openwave Product Management Strategist, to discuss the role of the mobile operator, debate the value of personalization and what we can expect next in the Openwave product roadmap.

AN EXCERPT OF OUR Q&A

Q: Let’s talk about the fit with mobile advertising. You have just launched the complement to your own mobile advertising solution, which is Mobile Analytics. What’s the level of interest in mobile advertising? I’m hearing some operators get it, but many more don’t…

A: There was some hype about it at first, but operators are starting to see the value of it now and they are also beginning to understand the real value of the data they have. The last months have been marked by a surge of activity and RFIs and RFPs specifically for mobile analytics solutions, which is new in this market. We didn’t see this last year.

A lot of what happened and the initial excitement around mobile advertising industry was quite premature. It’s not just about offering targeted advertising; it’s about offering relevant products and services based on the user’s behavior. The operators can use analytics to gain profiles of these users, the sites they frequent and what they do while online. It’s when this information can be aggregated and provided to media agencies and brands that it really becomes valuable.

It’s all about helping operators to provide the mobile audience metrics that the brands are looking for. Not necessarily going through the GSMA, because they have some of that [covered in their] initiative, but doing that directly. With the solution we’re offering the operators can provide those metrics directly to the brands, to the media agencies, to the publishers, and be a vital part of that mobile advertising ecosystem. And with our solution there’s no need for us to insert tracking or cookies or JavaScript, or anything like that. Every Web page goes through our gateway and we can basically track on that. So, that’s a key differentiator.

Q: There are, of course, other solutions in this space. A long list of gateway providers: Qualcomm, Amdocs, Ericsson, Nokia, Bytemobile, Novarra. And the space is getting crowded.

A: Obviously, there are competitors out there.  All gateway providers can provide parts of this sort of solution. However, I haven’t come across a solution [similar to ours] with this [breadth] out there in the market at this point in time. Being a gateway provider for the last 10 years, we’ve been providing this type of reporting to operators. But now we’ve added more features and made it more user-friendly. So, it’s a mature business intelligence product that we’re bringing to the market.

Q: In early August, Telstra announced it had implemented your Mobile Analytics solution. The press release says it’s all about providing Telstra a “dashboard view of intelligent analytics and rich reporting capabilities across its mobile device portfolio.” To start, how many of your operator customers have this solution or perhaps the analytics solutions that preceded this?

A: We have deployed previous versions of this analytic solution to some six tier-1 operators around the world.

Q: Let’s say I’m an operator and I don’t have a solution from Openwave, but I like the analytics.  Can I just have that, or is it a package deal?

A: Previously, the solution was just built around Openwave products. But obviously, we want a bigger market share, so we’ve designed the solution such that it will work with any other gateway, any other vendor of gateway products.

Q: You said before competing on analytics is the way for operators to be “a vital part of the ecosystem.” Can operators really play this central role?

A: That’s a really good question. I think it’s quite difficult to answer as well. The operators have traditionally been sluggish. Their bread and butter has been voice revenues and SMS revenues. To really get them incentivized to offer new services such as mobile advertising, you need a compelling business case. I’ve spoken to dozens of operators around the world. Some of them are in advanced stages of creating any-time mobile advertising organizations. Others have only one or two mobile advertising product managers. For these operators, the business case – for whatever reason – is just not compelling enough for the decision makers to say okay, let’s really invest in this.

Q: This jives with what people told me while I was conducting interviews for Mobile Advertising Research UK. As one executive at a mobile infrastructure company that counts over 300 network operator clients observed: Mobile advertising only becomes interesting for an operator when “the type of revenue they can envisage is around 2 percent of their overall revenue to 5 percent, and with an opportunity to grow to 10 percent of revenue. This is the revenue that will really make them sit up and make it work.” Another figure that stands out: GBP 28.6 million, which is what the IAB reckons was the mobile ad spend in 2008. What’s your take?

A: I can believe the ad spend for the U.K. I think the hold up is the thinking about the role of the mobile operator. We have to be clear about what they can do. In my view, the role of the mobile operator will be to provide incentives for people to use new services so that additional inventory and mediums become available to insert ads. And obviously, once those mediums become available, that becomes attractive to brands and advertisers. But, right now, it’s difficult for operators to manage their inventories. They have SMS inventory, MMS inventory, on-portal, off-portal. All of these are different systems and it’s difficult to provide brands and advertisers a consolidated view of what is available out there. So, it’s when there is a clear view of the different inventories out there and the tools to manage these inventories, and make these inventories available to third-parties such as the brands and media agencies, that I think mobile advertising will really take off.

Q: Are you convinced operators can start acting like media companies? Or are there going to be a lot of carriers that focus on access over audience?

A: The tier-1s I talk with have created organizations to manage mobile advertising. They’ve created sales forces to go out and sell inventory. So, they are already acting as media agencies and helping brands identify which inventory they want to use. But again, these are just the big tier-1 operators.

Q: Advertising is messaging – and loads of it. Or it could borrow from TV and be video-centric? We don’t know. In any case, we have more data usage – both from people surfing with their smartphones and brands that want to reach them. What is the potential impact on the network side of things? What are you seeing?

A: We’re seeing huge increase in data traffic volumes. A data tsunami is going to hit operators within the next 12-24 months. And some operators are quite oblivious to this. So, [with Mobile Analytics] we’re helping the operators to identify trends on the operational front as well. We’re saying ‘Hey, you need to do capacity planning and optimize your networks because this is going to be your traffic in 6 months or 12 months.’

Q: Let’s move to the report on North American mobile Internet trends you issued that may have got lost in the CTIA shuffle. It made some interesting points, and I understand you are about to release another one soon. What were some of the key observations and what were the surprises?

A: That report was basically based on data from one of our customers in North America. Many of the trends we saw confirmed what the market was thinking. For example, everyone is doing social networking on mobile. The top sites, as you could guess, were Facebook and MySpace.

In terms of search, we were able to also track some keywords. Something that was interesting: people – when they wanted to find Google — wouldn’t enter Google on their mobile phone and go to Google. They would actually enter ‘Google’ in a Yahoo search engine. This operator had Yahoo as a search partner. Anyway, that tells us that a lot of search use may be because of usability. It’s easier to type it [a destination] in a search box than to navigate to it on the Web.

Q: Finally – what about app stores? They’re hot. What is the value-add, if any, from analytics?

A: One of the operators we’re working with is in the process of opening an app store. They know that not all users are going to go through the apps. If you figure the iPhone app store has tens of thousands of apps and growing, users would lose patience sifting through all that. This operator wants to analytics specifically on this [operator] app store to identify the top ten apps. But it goes beyond this to include how many times have the apps been downloaded; who has consumed them; and whether the users have shared apps with other people. More importantly, the operator is providing this app store data to the application developers, so they also have insight into how their apps are being used and how many people have downloaded their apps. So, Mobile Analytics can be used to identify the audiences going to these app stores – and that can be used to build the business.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Generally speaking, the value of data is not in the data itself, but in the mashups we create when we combine it with other data stores. Put another way, the way to wring the value out of analytics is to combine it with location and demographics data, which is why Openwave is keen to feature both in its Mobile Analytics solution. Mayur tells me we can expect location in the next months. (Openwave is also gearing up to announce another customer win for its analytics offer in South East Asia.)

Likewise recommendation capabilities are moving up the list to take a center spot in Openwave strategy. As Mayur put it: The next version of Mobile Analytics will come with recommenders “bolted on.” No word yet on what the recommender will allow (delivery of content or advertising – or both?), how it will achieve this (based on item-to-item or user-to user – or both?), or how it will integrate with Openwave’s underlying Integra platform. But read between the lines, and the sharpened focus on recommendation is at least a welcome testament to the timing and importance of my upcoming GigaOM report on the same topic.

Openwave, unlike some of the gateway providers I’ve examined/profiled in this series, is also bullish about mobile search. The company demo points out that Mobile Analytics potentially improves mobile search, allowing operators to deliver relevant results individuals will find useful.

I am reminded at this juncture of a related post I wrote about the potential for operator-centric, operator-powered, operator-controlled mobile search. With the right tools and technology mobile operators can follow our virtual breadcrumb trail to optimize our mobile search (and advertising) experiences, using our actual usage patterns to give us the answers/results we will most likely appreciate.

My take: Personalization is a hot topic but personalized recommendation and search are even hotter. The space is crowding with gateway providers that are using their position in the network to give their operator customers insights into what people are doing on the network (on- and off-portal). The end-game is about helping operators make business decisions based on new subscriber behaviors and trends. Openwave is one of a number of companies in this space – but it has its eye on the prize: drilling down in the data to help operators manage bandwidth allocation, deliver targeted mobile advertising AND fine-tune recommendation and mobile search. What better way for operators to compete against Internet and search engine giants, and potentially win?

Next in the series: We discuss personalization with Novarra.

On the heels of the extremely popular posts on Blyk and MSG’s exclusive interview with Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO and Co-founder of Blyk, the timing is perfect to deep-dive into Orange UK’s mobile advertising aspirations now that it has formally folded Blyk’s MVNO activities into its wider strategy.

The first service that draws from Blyk’s mobile advertising model – an approach built from the ground up to encourage a dialogue between brands and people that want to her their message by delivering people relevant advertising in tune with their preferences and profiles – is Orange Monkey.

The first Pay As You Go (PAYG) package for the U.K. market offers free music to customers when they top up their mobile. (Although PaidContent suggests the service is not about free music since the tunes you get to listen to (not own) when you top up add up to about 600 minutes each month. This translates into GBP2.14 ($3.53) for customers regularly paying GBP30 ($49.23) in phone credits. But that may just be picking nits since people are getting music at no extra cost.)

More about Monkey: it provides exclusive music, pre-release tracks and other content from Universal Music’s catalogue and relies on British broadcaster Channel 4 to get the word out to the target demographic (16-34 year-olds with mass market phones) via the Channel 4 portfolio including 4Music, billed the most watched music channel in the U.K. A clever twist and nod to the power of multi-channel promotion: The 4Music team will be the editorial voice of the official Monkey website which will carry news, artist features, playlists, exclusive content and competitions. (Check out the Orange site for more details and a video demo of the service.)

The promotion is about building buzz, loyalty and community. So, where does/will Blyk’s mobile advertising approach come in?

The focus on engagement and social networks is baked into the offer. As well as free music, Monkey offers customers free texts, allows for playlists to be shared on social networks, and it “delivers great offers from relevant brands direct to their mobile.”

Prior to the Monkey launch I was pre-briefed by Marc Overton, Orange VP of Wholesale, Business Development & Partnerships, who walked me through the concept and – more importantly – where brands and Blyk fit in the scheme of things.

AN EXCERPT OF OUR Q&A

Q: To backtrack for a moment, Orange essentially owns Blyk and the capabilities it has built to deliver targeted information and ads. What is the plan here?

A: We have been keen to get this [Blyk's end-to-end capability] as a core part of the Orange organization. We already have mobile advertising and cross-platform capability, and for us, this allows us to have fundamentally different relationship with our customers. It’s not about ad hoc adverts or repurposing display adverts; this is about targeting and tailored information delivered in a timely fashion as part of a broader proposition that has great benefits.

Q: Blyk has run over 2,500 campaigns. What sets the stage for what we might see from Orange?

A: The Lucozade campaign stands out. It gave out vouchers and consumers could redeem them for a free bottle of Lucozade. The response rates were overpowering just based on a [Blyk] subscriber base of 200,000. If we can start delivering that to our subscriber base of 16 million, then we can generate results and create something quite special. (By way of background, the Lucozade Energy campaign, documented in this case study, delivered vouchers via a bespoke WAP site Blyk members could visit to read about the promotion. A click on a link on the site sent an SMS voucher sent to their handset. Voucher requests from the Blyk activity accounted for 35 percent of total requests for 1 percent of the media spend.)

To do this you need the ability to design an end-to end creative campaign that delivers campaign and targeted to consumers. It’s something that isn’t easy to do. To do it ourselves means we would be sitting here in a year to 18 months having a similar conversation. It [the partnership with Blyk] gets us to market ahead of the rest of the competition in the U.K., and gives us the experts [Blyk support] that have been doing it and establishing the category so we can have these conversations [with brands] and off the back of it we can do develop some unique and unrivaled propositions.

Q: Such as?

A: Keep in mind that we have also signed a strategic partnership with Barclays in the U.K. to develop mobile payments and that will come online in the next year to 8 months. Linking mobile payments with mobile messaging – being able to tell people about relevant offers and where to redeem those offers – is going to be an exciting proposition, particularly combined with location services.

At a larger level, it’s about us as an operator having a deeper relationship with our customers and giving them assistance beyond telling them what their bill looks like. We are the place they can come to for great offers and benefits that they wouldn’t know existed if we didn’t have this [advertising] ability.

From an awareness level – telling customers about new products coming to market and get that community, dialogue and click-through going on between customers and brands – we are looking to target different segments with different types of messaging and campaigns. It’s a bit of a journey, but we’re confident we’ll get the right mix.

Q: What does this push look like on a practical level? Who is in charge of what and what is my relationship – as a brand or advertiser – with Orange?

A: Orange will do the ad sales, supported in this by Blyk. I see this as a team effort and the way we work together and reward each other is based on that team working. It is without a doubt a different skills set that Blyk has built, and there is a credibility and value to having Blyk support our ad sales force.

Q: You mention other segments and I left us hanging in our last post with the observation that operators can use the Blyk approach to target more than youth. What are your plans in this direction? Will we see a Blyk-like offer for customers over the age of 24?

A: Absolutely. We’re keen to offer this capability to all our customer segments. The model will likely change depending on the segment and type of customer, so it is our intent to have this as a core capability for our media business. We’re not restricting it just to the youth market and not just to consumers; it will be business professionals as well. In our view, Blyk has created a highly intimate way for a mobile operator to communicate with its customers, and it shouldn’t just be restricted to young people.

Q: Would it be a messaging option you offer to brands? Or would you use this to promote your own offers and perhaps also do your part to solve the content discovery dilemma: surfacing all the apps and content people can’t find and buy because mobile search doesn’t cut it yet?

A: It’s a conversation and we could us it to draw customers’ attention to a variety of offers, including our own [two-for-one price movie deal] Orange Wednesdays. We could also use it to launch propositions for [content/app] partners, or simply package it up for advertisers. Filling up the pipeline won’t be a problem.

Q: Earlier you referred to Orange as a ‘media company.’ That’s very different thinking for a mobile operator. Can you elaborate on this strategy and how it ties back in with the group and what I imagine would be your big-picture goal to offer brands a cross-media approach?

A: You’re right about the cross-media possibilities. That’s the group ambition and one that brings together other [group] capabilities such as our heritage as an Internet provider and portal provider with Wanadoo, our content production facilities in Spain and our mobile ad sales force in the U.K. We have capabilities – from a media perspective – that other operators don’t have. It’s a core part of our strategy to leverage these assets and capabilities and relationships into the media world. We’re doing a launch in a couple of weeks and talking to the media agencies about our ambitions in this space. We can brief you on this, if you like. This is a serious part of our business and the upcoming announcements demonstrate this.

Q: Sure thing –let’s connect then!

MONKEY BUSINESS

Since Marc couldn’t go into the specifics of the Monkey launch, I checked back in with Mat Sears, Orange Head Corporate & Consumer Communications, to fill in the gaps around the service and find out how it’s done to date.

Predictably, Mat couldn’t provide stats on a service that only launched July 30th. However, he did say the offer is “flying off the shelves.” Will advertising follow? Orange is getting in gear, and MMS and SMS ads (again, following the Blyk blueprint) are next on the agenda. The focus is on lifestyle companies around music (clothes, cosmetics, soft drinks), rather than other music labels or individual artists (extending their message to the community through a dialogue), although we may also see some campaigns to promote music and related events.

WHAT WORKS?

My take: Orange ranks high in my book as a mobile operator making the inevitable shift from access company (telco) to audience company (media player). It was one of the first operators out of the gates with a comprehensive mobile advertising offer, opening its Orange World portal to advertisers back in August 2006. Incorporating Blyk’s operations is a logical step in the strategy and choosing to focus on segments beyond youth makes hard business sense. I wonder if Orange will crack the code and grab the attention of the prosumers or any of the other potentially lucrative segments Novarra outlined it is path-breaking report. (Look for more on Novarra, next in the series Getting Personal, a special MSG report on personalization technologies.)

While it’s a smart move for Orange to target other segments, it begs the question: how should Orange tweak the Blyk blueprint to achieve its business objectives?

Free content/services works with cash-strapped youth. But how do you get the attention of affluent mobile professionals or life-stressed muli-taskers? (And let’s not forget the same dilemma faces Blyk copy-cat service providers such as Croatia’s ad-funded MVNO Tomato Plus and Gigafone, a mobile marketing services group that borrowed more than a page from Blyk’s founding concept.)

Happy coincidence that I was thinking this through when I bumped and connected with Alan Moore, an esteemed colleague and renowned social media/engagement marketing  pundit you’ll see a lot more of on MSG. (In fact you can get in the mood for our regular laid-back, hands-on look at what YOU need to know about social media marketing by checking out my two-part interview with him on behalf of bnetTV here.)

So, what are the do’s and don’ts for Orange (and really any company serious about advertising) moving forward?

1)   Think beyond offers that are about content and apps. Youth may like them, but the real value may lie in the mashups that bring it all together (with calendars, contact books, communities, you name it!) to simplify/enhance our lives on mobile.

2)    Don’t get hung up on free. As Alan pointed out in an invigorating rant on Skype, and again in his must-read post, Spotify is a case book example of how functionality (allowing people to do something with the content they get for free and share the end-results with the people who matter to them most) beats out freebee. As Alan puts it: “Last.FM or Spotify have understood that “FREE” is not the kicker, it’s the quality of the service that ‘enables’ its users in a rich variety of ways. Playlists, recommendations, personalization, discovery, contextualization, location, sharing are again part of this new vocabulary.”

3)    Think big – and think networked. Enabling people to interact with content on their terms is they way things are. Get it right and reach will follow.

Last week, we outlined the opportunities and challenges created by the proliferation of app stores. The takeaway: app stores may have turned people on to applications and whet their appetite for new content types, but they also turn up the pressure on companies across the ecosystem (operators, OS providers and handset-makers-turned-content-providers) to make finding and buying applications/content a no-brainer.

Indeed, personalization is the new business mantra, and it goes for content/apps as well as advertising. Guest columns from Barry Smyth, Chief Scientist of Changing Worlds, an Amdocs company and recognized pioneer in personalization technologies, and Jim Levey, a former Director of Product Marketing for Search and Digital Advertising at Amdocs who has joined MSG’s roster of authors and influencers, will examine the models and mindsets required to turn personalization into competitive advantage.

In the meantime, it’s productive for us all to be on the same page, starting off with an understanding of the offers and an overview of the competitive landscape.

This week the focus is Bytemobile, a company that sits between the operator and the individual, collecting the data (such as browsing behavior on- and off-portal) that – in theory – allows its operator customers to deliver individuals personalized content (and advertising) they are bound to appreciate.

What are the practical benefits of personalization? Where does Widget Bar (software that enables operators to insert a personalized toolbar on the screen of any mobile device) fit in to the scheme of things? And what’s in it for brands? I caught up with Adrian Hall, Bytemobile CMO, to get the inside track.

Listen to the podcast here. [15:30]

WHY PERSONALIZATION?: The advance of the iPhone has impacted the space on two levels: it has highlighted the continued need for content adaptation solutions (to display Flash properly, for example) and it has increased the desire of people to experience rich-media content across all devices (not just smartphones). “So, there’s still a very strong market for the content adaptation as a class of product, but clearly as devices increase in functionality and in capability, there’s a need still to influence the way the end user interacts with data, even on a device as sophisticated as the iPhone.” To allow operators to personalize data (and brand the overall value-added services experience) Bytemobile has introduced Widget Bar. (You can view the demo here.)

As Adrian puts it: The idea is to have a personalized toolbar on the screen of any mobile device (smartphone on down to mass market device), “which offers efficient user access to services like local news and weather, enhanced search, email and social networking.”

By way of background, the Widget Bar got a bit of a boost in July when Bytemobile launched a – well – starter pack for mobile operators that includes:

• The operator-configurable Inline Portal application that intelligently brings portal content to the top of every web page.
• The Search Bar application, that provides an always-present search query box (piggy-backing the search engine preferred by the mobile operator), thus facilitating content discovery and enhancing mobile browsing.
• The Share application that simplifies the sharing of mobile web content with other users directly or through popular social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter.
• The Notifications pop-up application that gives operators a way to inform subscribers of relevant updates such as promotions and operational messages on roaming and data limits.

Connect the dots, and for Bytemobile it’s all about enabling operators to own and brand the all-important interaction between people, their phones and their peers.

APP COMPARISON: “Widget Bar is basically a clientless application window, if you like, so it helps mobile users to gain access to useful applications and personalized content of their choice.  As I said, it does this using a consistent presentation format. So, what it basically offers is a series of ‘mini-apps,’ if you like, that sit across the top of the screen of your device.” What does the use case look like? Imagine people that get access (through the carrier data plan) to apps as part of a larger offer. “Hypothetically, $10 a month would get you access to the choice of 10 applications that you could populate across the top of your device….So, you can then choose little mini-apps that are basically zero-click apps of your choice that are somewhat personalized by the operator.” The result: a populated Widget Bar across the screen of any class of mobile phone that is “updated in real time, basically in the background whenever we happen to refresh a Web page that we’re searching on as part of a session on our mobile phone.”

OPERATOR PERSONALIZATION: It all starts with Bytemobile’s Unison platform, a mobile Internet platform that enables operators to deploy fully integrated, multi-service solutions from a single node in the core data path of the network. As Adrian puts it: “We actually sit in the data path and so we get access to see how users search the Web, what advertisements they click on, [and] their browsing behavior.” This insight allows Bytemobile to build up a real time user profile of that particular user.

DRIVERS: Adrian tells me the main reason operators are interested in (and currently trialling) Widget Bar is to fight back the competition coming from Web giants and handset makers. “Operators captured a lot of their data revenue through their portals.  Now, as the walls of the walled gardens break down and portal traffic and portal revenue is reducing, we’re all going to the open Internet.” As a result, carriers are looking for ways to capture “the mindshare of their consumers rather than the consumers going off to the app store and some of the other products from Google and Apple that immediately take the consumer away from the carrier, from the carrier’s brand and the carrier’s applications.”

MOBILE ADVERTISING: “The key to effective advertising and more effective click through rates clearly is the ability to analyze the browsing behavior of particular [individual] consumers.  Because we can analyse browsing behaviour in real time, it allows us to work with the carriers and their ad providers, be it the ad networks that they’ve chosen or in-house facilities that they’ve built, to much more effectively target ads to consumers.”

PROFILING: Bytemobile’s ability to personalize content goes back to the insights it gained offering products and solutions to monitor how people use services such as video in order to implement fair use policies. “Typically when we talk to carriers, they see that 2-3% of users are typically using 50-70% of bandwidth and clearly they’re not paying for that amount.” Sitting in that sweet spot between the carrier and the consumer (monitoring video use) has also allowed Bytemobile to focus on personalization. As Adrian puts it: “It’s personalisation that’s going to end up increasing either the click through of an advert…or staying with the carrier and the value-added services that particular carrier can offer versus just going straight out to a Google or an Apple [destination], and ultimately increasing the chances of making that carrier a dumb pipe.”

WHAT’S NEXT?: In a word, execution. It’s all about helping operators implement Bytemobile’s personalization solutions. Adrian tells me operator deals are in the pipeline, but no details yet. He also reports that large-scale user experience trials conducted in cooperation with operators show the vast majority of users accessed the Widget Bar application several times per week. (No numbers from Bytemobile, so it’s not possible to quantify this “vast majority.”)

Other observations from Adrian:

• Bytemobile users reported finding navigation tools such as the Search Bar application extremely useful
• The Inline Portal application effectively doubled users’ visits to the operators’ portals
• Instant user access to the latest portal services and content, the continuous presence of the operator’s brand on the web browser, and the accurate targeting of content delivered to users all resulted in increased click-through rates

My take: Hmmm – it wasn’t so long ago that mobile search was widely regarded as a silver-bullet solution that would allow content companies/developers to present their offers within an acceptable click-distance and clinch that all-important sale. However, the usability barriers outlined in this post from my last mobile search masterclass have shifted industry focus from mobile search to tools and technologies that allow content owners/developers to employ a more proactive approach. Against this backdrop, content discovery (and the solutions to present content/apps where users can see and buy them) is back in the spotlight, all the better if these solutions bubble up content/apps to the surface that are in tune with our individual preferences. (And it’s not just about content; personalization can also be harnessed to deliver people advertising that they are more likely to appreciate.) Bytemobile is one of a new breed of companies allowing operators to connect the dots in the clues people leave behind (browsing behavior, for example) to serve up content they are bound to like and – more importantly – brand it to reinforce their value-add. Will this allow operators to do battle with Google, Apple and all the other companies jumping on the content/app bandwagon? It’s too early to call that one – but solutions such as this certainly create a more level playing field and play up the importance of personalization data only the operators can access.

App store frenzy? That’s what comes across when you connect the dots in the raft of recent announcements. Mobile operators ranging from U.S. mobile operator Verizon Wireless (which has borrowed a page from parent company Vodafone to launch a carrier-wide app store based on Java ME that can target more than one device) to China Mobile (which tells TelecomAsia.net that it’s moving full-steam ahead on its Mobile Market app store where it plans to take 50 percent cut of app sales revenues) are jockeying for position and a piece of the action.

Interestingly, much of the operator excitement centers on the new mobile advertising opportunity app stores represent. As Jonathan Kelly, who heads up Vodafone UK Marketing, recently told me in a briefing: “I see some quite interesting opportunities in apps and widgets. A likely scenario could involve a sponsored widget, where the brand actually works with us to create a widget or application that we then prominently place in our app store.”

Beyond that, Jonathan sees other opportunities around actually embedding advertising within a widget. “You could have some sort of utility widget that’s providing weather, and there’s no reason why certain relevant companies may not wish to have some advertising embedded within that.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Apple’s App Store, RIM’s BlackBerry App World and Android’s Marketplace may have been the first to the party, but they have company. The recent JavaOne conference kicked off its annual convention by opening the doors of the Java App Store, a global marketplace for Java apps headed by Sun Microsystems. It comes on the heels of other app store news elsewhere in the industry including Nokia’s launch of the Ovi app store, a storefront offering available in Australia, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ireland and the U.K, offering 20,000 titles (a fraction of which are apps) to an estimated 50 million Nokia devices globally.

Not to be outdone, Sony Ericsson takes the wraps off its new PlayNow Arena, the only player that opts to outsource much of the work to GetJar. The Lithuania-based company is billed as the world’s largest independent app store, with over 450 million mobile application downloads to date in more than 200 countries, will take on the mammoth task of managing and stocking the app store’s virtual shelves. The takeaway: make way for more companies and models.

An interesting newcomer that merits a closer look is WeFi.

This community-based WiFi network provider that has a new twist on the app storefront strategy that covers the bases to place it (and companies like it) firmly in the emerging app store ecosystem. Its blog outlines the quiet but clever launch of a combination “Wi-Fi powered launch-pad” and applications portal called WeFiApps, an app store offering a range of apps (communication services, entertainment, and information) in partnership with companies/providers including Fring, joiku, Nimbuzz, IM+ from Shape Services, VuFone from NewAct and Hollywood Star from HOVR. These apps (a combination of free and paid) are currently accessible on any WiFi-enabled Symbian S60 mobile phone.

CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES

Is the flurry of excitement and activity around app stores a sign that we are entering into a new era of innovation and market opportunity?

Or should we worry that it’s the walled garden scenario all over again? This well-written opinion piece from Knowledge @ Wharton suggests the tight integration between mobile networks, device manufacturers and operating systems vendors limits our choices. It asks us to think through a case in which the new Palm Pre has a must-have app. In this scenario iPhone users in the U.S. who want it would have to switch devices (from iPhone to Pre) and mobile operators (from AT&T, Apple’s only provider to Palm’s partner Sprint).

The role of the operator amid this fragmentation and confusion remains unclear. However, it is clear that the majority of mobile operators want to stake their turf in this new services creation environment, a position they will cement by offering an app store-like offering or simply by opening up their APIs to enrich or enhance services offered by third-party developers.

How big could the market be? The jury is out on that one, but a recent survey from Airwide Solutions, a provider of mobile messaging and wireless Internet infrastructure, applications and solutions, found mobile operators expect significant growth in apps downloads within the next two years. The methodology was a bit fuzzy and percentages were diverse, but on average, operators said they expected 18.3 percent of the customers to be downloading apps within an average timeframe of 2.9 years. Overall some 43 percent of operators expect 20 percent of their customer base to download apps by 2011.

USER EXPERIENCE & SERIOUS SHORTCOMINGS

App stores schemes from handset manufacturers and mobile operators alike increase our demand for centralized solutions, one-stop-shops where we can find and buy the apps we want.

But how do these virtual shops really stack up? Alfred DeRose, Co-founder & Managing Director of Tego Interactive, a Web and mobile product and services company providing development and integrated solutions for the needs of major brands, content publishers and mobile network operators, recently conducted an informal road test of Ovi and documented his experience in his blog.

The process users follow to purchase an app from Ovi (excerpted from Alfred’s blog):

1. Select the item you want to purchase.
2. Select Buy .
3. Enter your Nokia account user name and password. If you do not have an account, select Create a Nokia account, and enter the required information.
4. Select to pay using your credit card or through your phone bill. If you already have your credit card information stored in your Nokia account, and you want to use another credit card, select Edit payment settings, and enter the required information. To save your credit card information to your Nokia account, select the Save this card to my Nokia account check box.
5. Select the e-mail address to which you want to receive a receipt of your purchase.
6. Select Purchase

While Nokia made a wise choice not to duplicate the one-click payment model from Apple that has effectively disintermediated operators from the app value chain, the process is tedious and complicated, hardly the user experience that encourages the all-important impulse buy. As Alfred puts it: “The best content will sit on the virtual shelves unless the buying process is clean and simple.”

Another prerequisite he highlights is the critical need for quality content discovery tools.

With an abundance of mobile apps at their finger tips, people certainly can’t claim they offer a lack of choice. But they can complain about the tedious navigation process and confusing hierarchical menus they must endure to find and buy content they like. If operators, providers, developers and handset makers want to sell more mobile content, then they are going to have to harness technologies and techniques to help users discover the content they want.

Put another way, it’s Retail 101 all over again, and the advance of app store schemes turns up the pressure on the emerging business ecosystem to remove the pain from the content discovery process and provide users with what they want – and perhaps even before those users know they need it in the first place.

The takeaway: Amid the activity and excitement that marks the emergence of a plethora of app store offers and schemes, many companies have lost the plot. It’s not about how many there are or who operates them. It’s about making finding and buying apps a no-brainer. The players in a position to give people the apps they want (allowing developers to rise above the noise and make money in the process) will be among the leaders not the also-rans.

(NOTE: I am proud to announce that Alfred DeRose has joined our roster of authors and influencers contributing news, analysis and thought leadership to MSG. He will focus on issues and solutions related to design, usability, mobile advertising and content discovery. You can reach him at alfred.derose@tegointeractive.com .)

Disclaimer: Tego Interactive is an MSG supporter.

No matter how you look at it (or who you ask) mobile search, the model that has effectively retrofitted Internet search for mobile devices, is riddled with shortcomings This was the message that came across in the interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research UK, the presentations I and other search authorities made during the recent Mobile Search Masterclass in London, and, more recently, in the mobile search assessment white paper (Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone) I co-authored with Peggy Albright. (DOWNLOAD)

Is mobile search broken? More importantly, how can we fix it? These are the questions I put to a variety of executives representing companies from across the mobile search and advertising business ecosystem. Read between the lines, and their answers – along with my own conclusions – point to areas of improvement and opportunity in mobile search.

MOBILE ADVERTISING RESEARCH UK

Primary research and C-Level interviews with agencies, brands, operators and third parties reveal mobile search is missing the mark. Their gripe: the poor quality of mobile search (specifically universal search powered by keyword queries and PageRank algorithms) is to blame for a lack of interest and investment in paid search advertising.

As a leading executive at a global brand put it: “Just between the two of us, our spend for search is by far not in the [single] digits yet – and it won’t be….We do a lot in mobile, but the basics of search are not yet at the level of sophistication consumers would expect from us.”

At the other end of the spectrum, agencies are far from upbeat about the short-term outlook for mobile search. As one managing director at a mobile marketing agency put it: “Just the way the content is indexed prevents advertisers from creating a cohesive plan to integrate search in their [mobile] advertising strategies. There is just not the volume to get in and really do some targeted search [advertising], and that’s what brands want: to make advertising personal and relevant to every search the consumer makes.”

Against this backdrop, many sources questioned whether the U.K. adspend figures for 2008 released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) – the trade body for digital marketing – and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) didn’t overplay the importance of paid search advertising.

The study – a U.K. first – shows that mobile adspend bucked all market trends, increasing by 99.2 percent year on year to reach GBP28.6 million. Mobile display advertising – which includes banners, text links, tenancies pre/post roll and in-game – accounted for GBP14.2 million in 2008, 49.8 percent of all mobile advertising spend, while paid-for search advertising was estimated to account for GBP14.4 million, 50.2 percent of all mobile advertising spend.

As Harry Dewhirst, Co-Founder & Operations Director of RingRing Media Ltd., an independent media agency in the U.K., pointed out during the conference Mobile Advertising Research UK and again in a private briefing with MSG: the amount spent on paid search (from his vantage point) is considerably less than display. The reason: mobile search is “not up to scratch” and fails to deliver people “information in a digestible format as quickly and as conveniently as they need it.” (During the conference Harry raised eyebrows when he identified mobile search as a chief obstacle to mobile advertising – period.)

Harry further tells me the poor mobile search experience means fewer people use search, and that has resulted in a “lack of depth” in search terms. While the terms “plumber” and “London” might draw crowds of online searchers, they can’t pack them in on mobile – yet. “And until they do, search queries will continue to be focused on branded terms like ‘Facebook’ and ‘MySpace,’ and used as navigation.” Despite these issues, Harry reports conversion rates for search are higher than display. “This indicates a positive future for mobile search advertising, but the repeat usage and quality of results isn’t good enough yet.” (Ironically, this sentiment is echoed and documented in the summary analysis of the Masterclass below.)

But there are some bright spots. Harry, who knows mobile search inside out from his previous experience at Medio Systems, a mobile search provider, gives high marks to Taptu, a socially-assisted service that tackles issues such as poor quality results and even worse rendering by summarizing the content/search results in a page that allows people to pre-screen the results before clicking. He is also upbeat about other vertical solutions such as directory assistance search services that are designed from the ground up to give searchers what they need on the move.

MOBILE SEARCH MASTERCLASS

A summer highlight for me has been participating for the second successive year in the mobile search masterclass, a course delivered as part of The City University London’s Masterclass series. Once again I joined an impressive roster of industry authorities from companies, and once again Colin Bates, CTO of Mobile Commerce Ltd., presented some amazing insights into mobile search usage, trends and behavior.

It’s worth sitting up to take notice because Mobile Commerce, like an honest broker sitting between all the major U.K. mobile operators and all the mobile search engines, effectively powers customers’ search boxes. In a nutshell, Mobile Commerce takes the search terms people type into operator portal search boxes and federates them out to a variety of information retrieval sources to deliver a results set made up of  regular Internet search results (Google, Yahoo Microsoft), specialist mobile search results (local search and a variety of verticals), and paid search advertising linked to keywords. Mobile Commerce also offers an increasing number of content owners/publishers a similar service through its Monetised Mobile Search solution, a plug-in service that allows client companies to put a search box on their mobile site and generate revenues from paid search advertising.

As a result, Mobile Commerce has an invaluable insider’s view into what people search for and the results they receive. The bottom line: Nearly 12 months on from Colin’s last presentation and mobile search is still (!) broken.

VOLUME

The surprise: mobile search volume has doubled and in some cases tripled. However, part of the reason for this meteoric rise could be Mobile Commerce’s own success in signing up customers (such as major U.K. newspapers and Virgin Media). Colin put it down to growth in mobile publishing and the number of publishers that placed a search box on their pages. [Hmm - will more publishers take charge of content (and advertising) by controlling the search box?] And let’s not forget the impact of the iPhone and other cool handsets that make the Internet fun to surf on our phones.

What are people searching for? The stellar growth Colin sees – partly because Mobile Commerce powers mobile search for The Sun – is in a category he calls “Glamor,” a term that comprises all the hot half-nude models (Page 3 girls) featured on the newspaper’s third page.

More people are using mobile search. Are they getting what the want?

In a word, no.

Colin’s road test of mobile search services offered by Google and Yahoo (similar to last year) makes it clear mobile search has a way to go. While the search engines excel in Internet search on a mobile phone, their mobile-specific results are – well – “rubbish.” A search for directory assistance delivers a link to the media relations department for World Aids Day, and a simple search for nearby post offices delivers a list of locations no longer in operation. As Colin put it: “The tools (such as Google Maps) are great, the data is out of date.”

Why are mobile search results served up by Internet search engines so poor?

1)    Mobile robots can’t spider the “mobile Web.” There is no sure-fire way to identify a site by URL (for a while .mobi or m.sitename. was a help). The advance of the iPhone and multi-mode sites that adapt content and change markup to match the incoming device type also muddy the waters.

2)    Indexing mobile pages – where information is dynamic, spread across multiple pages and impacted by user input and user-generated content – is a nightmare to index.

3)    The existence of data silos (such as downloadable content) and the lack of cross-linking data make it difficult to rank results and power PageRank algorithms.

4)    People have little say in their search results. On the Internet what we click on (or don’t) is important feedback (an indication of what we find relevant) that fine-tunes rankings and results. We do this on mobile too, but relevant results are often too many clicks away to be seen, used or appreciated.

PERSPECTIVES

Despite the many shortcoming of mobile search, people are using it more than ever before.

What are the drivers?

For one, supply. More players offer mobile search this year than last.

All the U.K. operators offer mobile search on their portals and an increasing number of publishers have also implemented Mobile Commerce solutions.

(In fact, this flurry of activity prompted Mobile Commerce to launch its Monetised Search service in the U.S., where U.K.-based search engine Taptu has signed up as the first client. Bob Last, SVP of Business Development at Taptu, said in a statement: “Working closely with Mobile Commerce since last year, Mobile Commerce significantly improves the availability of relevant ads for our users. The U.S. is our busiest market for mobile searches at Taptu and we are very pleased to be extending our involvement with Mobile Commerce to monetise more of this U.S. search traffic.”)

Demand is also a factor.

People are using mobile search – but it’s not the way they use it on the PC. It’s more about snacking, snippets and quick answers than research and information retrieval. This is what Mobile Commerce concludes (and proves) after a thorough analysis of search terms, search results and what people clicked. Because it powers the complete process it can make the connection between what people query and what they consider a valuable (accurate) result.

The company has developed a system of some 20 categories, ranging from Single User Search (which comprises all the Long Tail terms that literally only came up once in 12 months) to Social Networking (which accounted for a 16 percent of searches over the last year).

Connect the dots, as Colin did, and specific categories (such as Social Networking) are about navigation. In other words, people are typing them in order to find the mobile site. This is further supported by the dramatic dip in searches for Facebook plummet right around the time the social network launched a proper mobile property.

REVENUE

Mobile search may broken but paid search advertising – at least for a few categories – is paying dividends. Specifically, the categories Adult, Games and Personalization (downloadable mobile content) received the largest ratio of clicks against paid search adverts in the results set.

Read between the lines, and we have a confirmation of the pivotal role of paid search advertising in content discovery (a trend I have tracked and documented in articles such as this one for New Media Age – subscription  required).

Why should mobile content companies harness paid search ads to promote their content? Because it works. As Colin put it: “The mobile search model is broken, and publishers have very little control over how their sites appear in the results set – if at all.” In practice, using advertising – specifically text and banner ads – enables content discovery and drives results. It’s also cheap discovery since (at least in the U.K.) CTRs for display ads have tumbled from GBP 15 per CPM to “around GBP 5.”

The avalanche of mobile content – and now mobile apps – turns up the pressure on publishers and developers to rise above the noise and make their stuff findable and buyable. Until companies fix the bugs in mobile search, display and banner ads remain the only sure-fire way to get the message out.

BETTER MOBILE SEARCH

But publishers and brands don’t have to limit their focus to the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). The real excitement is in search tools and technologies that make the most of mobile and even harness other people to improve the overall experience.

An example Colin offered is Shazam, which he described as “mobile content search without the box.” The phenomenally popular mobile music discovery provider grew from 20 million users (in September 2008) to 35 million worldwide (in February 2009), with over a million tracks now being tagged every day across the world. (Release) It has deployed by 75 carriers across 60 countries, and is a popular application in the Apple App Store, the Android Market and the BlackBerry App World.

In Colin’s view, “mobile-specific search tools” that enable made-for-mobile search (as opposed to universal Internet search) are bound to improve mobile search and make money for the companies that develop them.

In my own Masterclass presentation (and ongoing mobile search research) I have taken it a step further, identifying 10+ categories of mobile search and assembling a list of super-cool companies harnessing context, location and the wisdom of crowds to improve the precision of search results and the quality of our mobile search experiences.

A welcome addition to the list is Alabot, a mobile search provider based out of Pune, India, with offices in Kuala Lumpur and London. I first met Akshat Shrivastava, Alabot founder, at a mobile search conference, where I had the pleasure of presenting him with the Bronze in the category Best Technology Innovation – Software. Earlier this week Akshat sent me a DM via Twitter (@peggyanne) with the great news: Alabot has secured funding from a global innovation fund and sealed a deal with a Malaysian mobile operator to develop a multi-lingual (English, Bahasa, Chinese, Tamil) mobile content vertical search service.

The text search service will start off serving up ringtones and wallpapers from the operator’s online content stock, or “low hanging fruit” Akshat tells me is just the beginning. As he put it: “Content services that require a syntax or Internet access aren’t getting traction [in that region] because they are not intuitive or interactive.” Moving forward, Akshat tells me plans are to extend the service to other content verticals and expand reach via deals with several OEMs. Rock On!

SEARCH AS CONVERSATION

Strong demand for more interactive (translated: natural language search services) isn’t limited to emerging markets.

In North America, ChaCha, a people-powered search service that uses specially trained individuals ChaCha calls “guides,” has answered more than 150 million questions via mobile phones and the Internet, making it one of the leaders in SMS search.

Intrigued by the power and potential of voice search on the iconic iPhone, Peggy Albright and I recently completed Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone, a performance analysis of voice-enabled mobile search services offered by Google, ChaCha and Vlingo (a spoken interface to the Yahoo search engine). Download the free white paper here.

A chief finding: ChaCha “proved superior” to the two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone. Specifically, ChaCha proved to offer exceptional results, with its human guides interpreting the search query accurately in the majority of cases.

To be clear, the study was not a road test of speech recognition technologies. To evaluate the overall performance of voice-enabled mobile services offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo for iPhone with Yahoo!, the researchers asked a series of 18 queries representative of six typical mobile search categories (Navigational, Directions, Information Local, Information General, Social, and Long-Tail). For each query the researchers evaluated nine performance characteristics including response time, results accuracy, voice recognition accuracy, number of results received, keytaps required, relevancy of the result, location awareness, use of advertising, and presence of other value-added features.

According to the study, ChaCha interpreted natural language search queries, that is, queries asked as questions, accurately in 94.4 percent of the tests and delivered an accurate search result in 88.9 percent of cases. The Google voice recognition technology interpreted queries accurately in 16.7 percent of tests and delivered accurate search results in 22.2 percent of tests. The Vlingo for iPhone voice recognition technology correctly interpreted queries in 72.2 percent of cases and delivered accurate results (via Yahoo!) in 27.8 percent of tests.

A clear finding that emerged is the importance of people-power. As Peggy Albright pointed out: “The use of human agents [by ChaCha] to help interpret spoken queries and conduct searches makes a positive difference in the quality of results delivered when compared to traditional search engines that use algorithmic software to find requested documents or information on the basis of keyword matches.”

In the report I also identified a key advantage ChaCha has over its competitors: Its keen focus on social search, an approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint truly relevant information and potentially better answers.

Beyond tipping the scales back in favor of results that are relevant rather than search- engine optimized, social search also lays the groundwork for a conversation with people on their terms, paving the way for the delivery of mobile advertising that is relevant and more likely to be appreciated.

MY TAKE:

Universal mobile search has significant shortcomings, weaknesses that brands and agencies tell me has convinced them to put paid search on the back burner. (There are exceptions: Colin from Mobile Commerce reminds us that for some segments – specifically mobile content – paid search is a potent means to encourage content discovery.) We have a choice: we can wait for providers to improve universal mobile search, or we can harness tools and technologies to deliver a better experience NOW. An obvious and excellent alternative is social search, often called “people-powered search” because it harnesses people to deliver results tailored to searchers on the basis of who they are and what they like. The interviews and insights collected in this analysis outline where mobile search misses the mark and reveal a huge opportunity for companies (such as ChaCha) that give a personal touch to search results (a perfect fit with the mobile phone, which we’ve already established is an intensely personal device).

It’s still in the early days, but the place and the power of people in mobile search is clear. As the worlds of mobile search and mobile social networking collide, they produce opportunities for companies to tap the community – both implicitly and explicitly – for much better quality results and the delivery of much more relevant advertising.

Disclaimer: The complete report is available for free download from MSearchGroove. This white paper is published by MSearchGroove. It contains the findings of independent research and analysis carried out by Peggy Albright, Albright Communications, and Peggy Anne Salz, MSearchGroove in January 2009. The research methodology was developed by Peggy Albright. The research was sponsored by ChaCha. The opinions expressed in this white paper are those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of the organizations referenced in this paper.

Related reading:

Context, Social Media, And Cool Interfaces Rock Mobile Search; MSG Teams Up With mTrends To Map Out The Brave New Landscape

Mobile Search Masterclass: How Google & Yahoo Really Measure Up; Is Paid Search The Path To Discovery?

Mobile Social Search Makes Its Mark; Will Group Searching, Sharing & Collaboration Take Social Networking To The Next Level?

EXCLUSIVE & EXPLOSIVE: New People-Powered Mobile Search & Advertising Solution Puts Mobile Operators Back In The Driver’s Seat; Will Search Giants Have To Watch Their Backs?

Will Tapping The Wisdom Of Crowds Outsmart Mobile Search Giants?

In brief: An analysis of what Blyk’s partnership with Vodafone Netherlands really means, an exclusive Q&A with

It’s been a bit quiet at MSG as I finalize the plans and partnerships that will transform MSG into a media company and lay the groundwork for an ambitious mobile marketing publishing project that has already earned the endorsement of several major industry organizations.  (More in a press release soon via RealWire, a global news release distribution service and MSG partner that, like the online media industry that is its focus, is always-on, always-connected and always professional, which is why I can recommend them so highly.)

But I couldn’t end the week without posting an analysis of the exciting (but not unexpected) news from Blyk, combination mobile engagement media company, mobile advertising startup and MVNO, that it had signed an deal with to roll out its branded service in partnership with Vodafone Netherlands and to share revenues with the operator.

Connect the dots, and Blyk has executed on the game-changing strategy that Antti Öhling, Blyk co-founder and CEO U.K., outlined in May in this exclusive Q&A. In it he provides solid logic for “making the switch” from MVNO (a model he called a “proof of concept”) to youth engagement media. The reasons range from scale and speed (both accelerated through partnership with operators) to the ones that matter most to advertisers: reach and engagement.

As Antti put it: “An MVNO means that you have to make up-front heavy investments. We needed to do it in the U.K. in order to get the whole machinery working. We needed to have access to all the tools that the operators have in their server rooms. Now that we understand how to use it [technology] we know how to help them. We know exactly how they can combine operator infrastructure with our ad engine and campaign management. We can make every campaign pixel perfect but what’s more important is that they [campaigns] are extremely relevant to the receiver. We saw the MVNO model as too slow for growth. If we partner with operators, we can triple or quadruple the speed, and reach the scalability that many advertisers are looking for.”

And while we’re reviewing the milestone statements from this Q&A (opinions that have new and significant meaning in view of the Vodafone Netherlands partnership), allow me to bring your attention to the one from Antti that speaks volumes (literally) about why operators would/should tie up with Blyk for a Blyk-branded service in the first place. In a word, brand.

As he put it: “Blyk is a simple end-to-end proposition that covers everything from ad platform, campaign management, user experience and audience management to technology.  Sometimes when I discuss this with operators, I say, ‘Think of Blyk as a Coke.’ as this example makes our role easier to understand. We have the recipe and we have the brand. People understand Blyk; young people understand what it means when we come to a country.  The recipe is how you make it work.  The operators have the factories for making all the refreshments they need, and they have their existing distribution channels. Basically, they have the works. But if they bring Coke in there, they can get so much more volume and so much more value. It’s a lot more interesting – and lucrative – to have Blyk as part of the operator offer. In other words, they can expand their reach to offering another well-known product.”

EXPERIENCE EXPERTS

Jonathan MacDonald – friend, esteemed colleague and, importantly, an architect of Blyk strategy – highlights another ace that plays in Blyk’s favor as it enters into this and other partnerships with mobile operators: breadth of offer.

Based on a background briefing with Antti Öhling, Blyk co-founder and CEO U.K., Jonathan pieces together what he calls the “Blyk partnership Blueprint” (which he shares in this post).

The model:

1)    Position yourself as an MVNO (as Blyk did) to perfect the process of linking brands with people. As Jonathan, an eyewitness to this stage of the company build-out observes: “Over time there was constant improvement of processes and tools which all connected to creating a true experience for Blyk members and creating the world’s first network as a media.”

2)    Productize this offer. Create a comprehensive capabilities mix whose components (in the case of Blyk) include: “Blyk brand, Blyk user experience, Blyk approach, Blyk audience management and of course, Blyk advertising sales.”)

3)    Partner with mobile operators. Use the existing infrastructure and capabilities of the mobile operator, experts at customer acquisition, billing and delivering great service.

Intrigued by this model, I caught up with Pekka Ala-Pietilä, Blyk co-founder and CEO, earlier this morning to deep-dive into Blyk’s real business objectives and the real value of brand in the scheme of mobile advertising. (My personal thanks to Irene Nyberg, Blyk Head of Analyst Relations and International Press, for arranging this briefing on short notice.)

AN EXCERPT OF THE Q&A WITH PEKKA ALA-PIETILÄ

Q: What have you achieved in the U.K. and how will you bring this to bear in your partnership with Vodafone Netherlands and others in the pipeline?

A: There are three elements. We have developed the capability to make ads relevant, that has allowed us to create an opt-in audience that want to receive this advertising. Beyond this, we have changed the whole context of advertising. Advertising ceases to exist because it is perceived as content. And that is one of the great aspirations of advertisers: to get to a level of relevance where what they send is perceived as valuable information, valuable content and important social currency. The fact that the audience responds positively to this response is reflected in the third element of this: our net advocacy scores. [By way of background, Net Advocacy is a measure of the volume of positive and negative word-of-mouth.] With over 40 percent, we’re at the same level as YouTube and Facebook. That is important for advertisers. Net advocacy is high and so are response rates. They have stayed at 25 percent for over 20 months now. [NOTE: Some 200 advertisers, including major brands such as Coca-Cola, L'Oreal and Sky, have run some 2,500 campaigns to date, reporting an average response rate of 25 percent.]

Q: You have achieved brand awareness without yourself spending on advertising and promotion. It worked in the U.K., but what will be the strategy for other countries? And how do you quantify your brand strength?

A: We believe the Blyk brand has several facets. The consumer-facing brand has the capability to spill over. Consumers are connected and can find out about our brand on the Internet or from other sources, so we believe that is how awareness will continue to grow. Our brand also has a great crossover effect when it comes to advertisers. We work with all six major advertising agencies and a large number of international and global brands. Finally, our brand is known to mobile operators who know what we achieved in the U.K. and what we plan to do in The Netherlands. Many forget that we have successfully recruited youth, the most difficult audience segment to reach because you have to get to them through the clutter of other media. We did this because youth is an extremely important segment for advertisers.

Q: The news is the partnership. But why not just go it alone?

A: Mobile advertising is not a technology game. Technologies can be bought. Of course, you need to have a good technology, and we have it. But it comes to the ability to deliver a seamless end-to-end media experience, which is why we are a media company. Operators are telecom companies and all the corporate DNA and KPIs [key performance indicators] are telco-driven. In the model [Vodafone Netherlands partnership] the operator brings the telco capability, the infrastructure, the billing and the ability to acquire customers and on a mass scale and feed that into an opt-in database that you need to make advertising work. We bring the audience management – the member experience – and we manage it for them. We bring the processes, how the media works between the members and the advertisers; and we bring the technology and the ad sales force. All this means we can get off to a flying start, and that’s a great benefit for operators.

Q: You have a kind of turnkey solution here; one that you say gets you off to a “flying start” when you move into a new country. What countries are on the roadmap?

A: We have a model that doesn’t only allow us to grow fast in a country. We can roll it out in number of countries in parallel.

Q: Such as?

A: We are moving in Europe and Asia. One of the guidelines we follow is the interest shown by advertisers, the markets they think are important. Asia is where broadband has not and never will take off to the same level that it has in Europe. There mobile will be THE digital media. There is no other digital advertising channel available.

Q: We hear that a lot – but why is advertising the major revenue source for every mass media except mobile? And where are the mobile operators? My own mobile advertising research (Mobile Advertising Research U.K.) revealed value chain confusion is to blame, along with a lack of awareness and education. What’s your take?

A: For one, the industry has tried to take the online experience – such as search and banner – and apply it to mobile. We have not yet come up with an adaptation that is right for the mobile context. It’s the same as in the 1990s, when we learned that you cannot force mobile on the Internet and saw that WAP didn’t work.

Second, operators have taken a purely technology approach. They have brought in multiple platforms, in some cases two, three, even four technology platforms, and none is generating revenues. So they have gone for piecemeal and not complete solutions and it’s only a recent revelation [among operators] that this isn’t going to work.

But awareness is changing and that will sharpen the focus on mobile advertising. Another development that has raised the stakes is the intention of the Internet companies – Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and others – to make money and a business out of mobile advertising. So, there will be an interesting increase of efforts and tensions, and this will create an increased sense of urgency on the part of the operators to put more effort into mobile advertising. There will be a battle between players to decide who will be first to create the foundation and grow to become the game-changer in mobile advertising.

Q: My own research also revealed a growing concern that the number of mouths to feed in the value chain exceeds the revenues to share. How many mouths are in your value chain?

A: We have only three mouths to be fed: agencies, operator and us. So, there is more than enough to be shared and go around. If the value chain is a puzzle then, you are right, there are too many players that need to be taken care of, and you have more companies than revenues to go around. On the topic of costs, we can partner in way that the incremental cost for an operator to actually build this capability from the technical side is low. The production cost and what’s need to achieve economies of scale for producing [advertising] messages is also low. On top of that the incremental cost for us to connect [our media offering] with different operators is again low. So, when you look at the cost competitiveness of different alternative value chains or solutions – the one we have built is almost unbeatable. There are revenues to share and the partners involved [Blyk and the operator] already have an optimized cost structure.

Q: Lastly, a look back to your off-portal play. You have a partnership with Velti and a sharp focus on content portals and providers. What does this tell us about Blyk objectives? Some could argue this conflicts or that you could be spreading yourself too thin…

A: This is not a zero-sum game. That model only applies when the market is stagnant – but on the mobile side – content and consumption the market is on a growth curve. What happens off-portal – and promoting it – is a way of helping acquaint people with mobile and encouraging them to use services and content, and that is a benefit for everyone. A parallel is i-mode. There are open and closed spaces – and helping both to grow is a win-win for everyone.

Q: It’s about content and services. But what about apps? Companies tell me they are excited about apps and getting in now with advertising schemes and strategies. Is Blyk going to jump aboard the app bandwagon?

A: We will have an aspect in our business which will definitely, and in due course, be aligned with the elements you mentioned. Having said that, we don’t see the need to rush to the app stores – especially when our core business has so much potential. We have more then enough work and opportunities just focusing on what we do.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?

My take: Connect the dots, and Blyk has its eye on the prize: developing the capabilities – in partnership with mobile operators – to be a game-changing engagement media in reach and response.

It’s also about leveling the playing field and helping mobile operators understand the terrible truth: mobile operators are no longer in the access business and focusing on growing subscriber numbers obliges them to overlook the very opportunities (such as mobile advertising) and value creation opportunities that Internet brands are rushing to embrace.

Indeed, let’s not forget how bullish Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on mobile advertising. In August 2008 during a guest spot on CNBC’s “Mad Money with Jim Cramer” he stated: “Over time, we will make more money from mobile advertising. The reason is because the mobile computer is more targeted. Think about it–you carry your phone everywhere; it knows all about you.”

But it’s more than a play to make sure the Internet – where network operators (who owned the networks) and media companies (that owned the content) lost out to Internet giants such as Google – doesn’t repeat itself.

Mobile has to be different, which is why the partners (Blyk and Vodafone Netherlands) have also agreed to maintain the Blyk brand to their mutual benefit. (Makes sense… Why start with a new brand when Blyk already has a high net advocacy rate and high profile with agencies and advertisers?) Against this backdrop, a Blyk brand in the arsenal is a great way to jumpstart a youth-focused mobile offer wrapped in a proven media model brands and agencies understand. Now it’s up to the partners to turn it on and turn up the volume (literally) to build the opt-in database of members that will attract the brands.

But does it have to stop with a youth brand? I doubt it. A look under the hood a the breadth of the Blyk offer tells us this is a turnkey solution that clever operators could brand and turn on for other customer segments that advertisers want to reach (other age groups or illusive prosumers, for example).

And why not?

After all, the solution is the same (Blyk built it); the value chain is manageable (always and only three mouths to feed); and a raft of recent research reports tell us people everywhere respond positively to mobile advertising that is relevant to their interests and respectful of their right to co-create their advertising experiences. (Or at least they have to have that option. No doubt the 90/10 rule that holds for the Internet – that 90 percent are lurkers and 10 percent are contributors who get involved – goes for the mobile Web, but it’s best to ask permission all the same, and it’s a great way to gather the demographic data that so far only the social networks can.)

And if this sounds far-fetched then consider a surprise finding that emerged from the interviews that fed into Mobile Advertising Research U.K.: a growth opportunity lies in building the capabilities mix to improve audience segmentation and deliver demographics brands and agencies know from other media.

From the report: “However, this opportunity also represents one of the greatest challenges to mobile operators. While they wield powerful data about their customers, many operators have not yet structured their organizations to deliver this in a form that brands and agencies appreciate. As one executive at an application provider put it: ‘Operators must be able to segment the audience into media segments that make sense. Till now they haven’t done a good job at that.’”

Maybe the Blyk Blueprint shows the way…

***

RELATED READING

·       Blyk: Inventory Doesn’t Make Mobile Operators Media Companies; Why Mobile Advertising Must Be Relevant

·       Ad-funded MVNO Blyk: Alive & Kicking – AND Coming Exclusively To MSG

·       Mobile Advertising Success: Orchestrate Don’t Dominate

·       PODCAST: Blyk COO Leif Fågelstedt On Stats, Response & Competitive Landscape; Mobile; Does Blyk Break The Mould?

·       Podcast: Blyk COO Leif Fågelstedt On Mobile Advertising,

Meanwhile, GetJar, which runs an independent, multi-platform app download site, says it, too, has seen more than 1.5 billion downloads of the 50,000 apps it carries. It says the five most popular apps are Opera Mini; three mobile social networking apps, eBuddy, Nimbuzz and mig33; and Google Maps. Source

The Bottom Line: The attraction of app downloads rolls on, and not just for iPhone users. One question, though: how many of those 1.5 billion apps on iPhones get actively used? Still, in some sense, it’s not that important. The big download figures show what mobile users will do when the browsing, download and installation process is quick and simple – something that can’t be said about many previous attempts at app stores on other platforms.

***

INSIGHTS ON MOBILE DATA USAGE. Peggy has passed over some stats from Comscore from the Open Mobile Summit, a top-notch conference and networking opportunity that MSearchGroove is proud to sponsor as a media partner. In fact, MSG will be a sponsor and speaker at the next Open Mobile Summit in November in San Francisco – but more about that later. The figures show some interesting points about mobile media usage, including that a higher percentage of US mobile users are mobile media users (meaning they use browsers or apps, or download media) than Europeans, at 35 percent to 28 percent.

Also, an interesting figure on UK mobile browsing habits: 74 percent of mobile browsers in the UK hit operator portals, but those portals only account for 12.4 percent of all pages viewed. This shows that users are comfortable going off-deck to find the content they want, like Facebook, which alone generates 23 percent of all the mobile page views. Facebook and the other top 20 destinations account for 67 percent of the pages viewed, though Comscore measured 167,000 sites.

Comscore also reports that mobile banner ads continue to be dominated by ads for mobile products. 65 percent of mobile banners in the US are for mobile products, while the figure jumps to 85 percent in the UK.

The Bottom Line: There has been plenty of evidence to document the growth in mobile web use, but these stats illustrate that it’s definitely coming from off-deck sites, at least in the UK. Facebook continually emerges as a top mobile web destination, revealing the desire for mobile users to stay connected to their social networks while they’re away from their PCs.

***

ENTERTAINMENT COMPANIES TOP MOBILE ADVERTISERS LIST, according to mobile ad provider Millenial Media. The company has released a report of the top ten industries that are using mobile advertising – excluding mobile apps, ringtones and other downloads, which the previous data point suggests makes up the bulk of the market. Movie, TV, music and video game companies topped the list, followed by telecom companies, “portals”, dating services, retailers, consumer packaged goods companies, the automotive industry, the armed forces, education and travel companies. Source

The Bottom Line: These sorts of stats will likely vary widely based on the ad provider’s network of sites, and other factors, though they do illustrate the breadth of companies that are using mobile advertising. Still, taken in concert with the previous data point, it looks like ads for mobile services and downloads dominate.

***

FACEBOOK, TWITTER TOPS AMONG YOUNG BRITISH MOBILE WEB USERS, says a new report from CCS Insight. A survey of more than 1,000 people between 16 and 35 in the UK revealed that more than a third of them regularly access Twitter and/or Facebook from their mobile device. It also found that men are twice as likely to access the mobile web as women, and that young people expect mobile content to be free. Source

The Bottom Line: Again, Facebook’s name pops up as one of the most popular mobile web destinations. That’s not surprising, but the difference in use between women and men is, at least in terms of the size of the gap. This highlights an area in which operators, content providers and handset vendors could do more.

***

WHAT DO US CONSUMERS REALLY WANT IN THEIR MOBILE PHONES? A new study from online retailer Wirefly says that US consumers are most interested in basic factors when making a handset purchase, such as size and color, with almost two-thirds saying they were more concerned with these aspects than the high-tech features of a phone. Source

Meanwhile a separate survey from Data Development Worldwide found that 40 percent of US shoppers looking to make a mobile device purchase in the next three months wanted a single device that could handle a variety of tasks, such as a smartphone or netbook.

The Bottom Line: It’s hard to take much away from either one of these surveys, really, apart from a confirmation of the old adage, “different strokes for different folks.” Physical form factors obviously remain very important, but so too is functionality. Witness the reaction this week to the Nokia Surge, a social-networking-centric device that’s being launched on AT&T. Much of the online reaction was to call the device ugly, but its design stems from AT&T’s desire to sell more low-end QWERTY devices – a desire borne out of consumer demand for such devices that can make texting and emailing easier.

ALMOST HALF OF MOBILE DOWNLOADERS GRAB APPS MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK, according to some research from GetJar.com, a cross-platform app store. GetJar’s users are an active bunch: 15 percent download once a week, and another 10 percent do it several times a month. About a third of the 5,000 respondents in the survey say they download because they always have their phone with them, while 28 percent do it to pass the time.

A third of those surveyed say they use apps while they’re commuting or on public transport, and perhaps a little surprisingly, 27 percent say they use them at home – though this follows earlier research on mobile TV usage, which found that many subscribers also used it quite often at home as a second or personal screen. Source

The Bottom Line: GetJar has been around for several years, and is the largest independent source of mobile app downloads in the world, so its data can be quite useful to get an idea of what users of devices other than the usual smartphone suspects are doing. These figures show that it’s not just iPhone users who have a voracious appetite for apps – a point that’s often missed by many.

***

ONE OF EVERY 7 MINUTES OF US MEDIA CONSUMPTION NOW COMES FROM MOBILE, according to new research from ad agency Universal McCann and AOL. They also report that 80 percent of US smartphone users are satisfied with the quality of the internet service on their mobile device. Almost 40 percent said they’d taken action based on mobile ads, and 22 percent said a mobile ad had influenced a purchase decision they made. Still, reach remains something of an issue: the survey says there are 63 million mobile web users in the US, with 19 million of them accessing the mobile web on a weekly basis. Source

The Bottom Line: More evidence that mobile is already an established part of the media landscape, and one to which marketers need to be paying attention. Furthermore, the survey highlights the viability of mobile ads and their ability to influence viewers.

***

MOBILE DISPLAY ADS INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS AND RECOGNITION, says the IAB UK, based on research by Brand Driver using banner ads for Kit Kat candy. The group says that being exposed to mobile banner ads significantly raised spontaneous and first-mention awareness of Kit Kat, and was particularly effective at doing so among 18- to 34-year-olds. It also says that incentives are important to mobile ad viewers, with 51 percent in the survey saying they were more likely to interact with a mobile ad that offers something to them in return. Meanwhile, creative is also important, as 41 percent says they clicked through just because they were interested in a particular ad. Source

The Bottom Line: Taken in concert with the above data from the US, once again this research reinforces the utility and ability of mobile advertising to effectively engage audiences. The ability to incentivize advertising also gives mobile a leg up, by making it easier for marketers to offer something in return, such as free downloads or the chance to enter a competition, as Kit Kat did here.

***

SALES OF LOW-COST HANDSETS AND OPEN-SOURCE OS SMARTPHONES ON THE RISE, says Juniper Research. The company predicts that annual sales of low-cost handsets will rise 22% through 2014, to over 700 million, as growth in emerging markets continues for mobile operators. Meanwhile, it separately predicts that the number of smartphones running open-source operating systems (such as Symbian and Android) will grow from 106 million this year, to 223 million in 2014. Source

The Bottom Line: Emerging markets continue to be a strong growth area for the mobile industry, and content providers should keep them on their radar. Meanwhile, the diversity of smartphone operating systems isn’t going away, meaning developers will still need to deal with the hassle of fragmentation to hit their target markets.

***

MOBILE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PCS FOR YOUNG AMERICAN WOMEN, according to research from SRG. Its recent Women and Digital Life Study found that women under 25 spend twice as much time – 2.8 hours per day – on their phones, compared to the 1.2 hours per day for women over 40. The young women spend slightly more time on their PCs (2.9 hours) than their mobiles, whereas older women spend significantly more, 3.5 hours per day. Unsurprisingly, the study found that younger women also used more features of their mobile more often than older women. Source

The Bottom Line: It shouldn’t be too surprising to discover young people using their mobiles more frequently and for more activities than older users, but perhaps the biggest takeaway here is the length of use figures for PC vs. Mobile. They’re essentially equal for young women, showing that mobile can be just as viable a way to reach young women as the web via PC.

***

MOBILE M&A ACTIVITY STANDS OUT, while much of the rest of the market is quiet, says The Jordan, Edmiston Group. The company tracks merger and acquisition activity in the media, information, marketing services and technology sectors, and says 171 deals worth a collective $4.1 billion were done in Q2. While activity is still down significantly over previous years, the company says it has seen an uptick in recent weeks, and that mobile remains something of a bright spot. Activity in the Mobile Media & Technology sector was up 46 percent in the first half of 2009 over the previous year. Source (PDF)

The Bottom Line: Like many other corporate transactions, M&A activity remains low given economic factors. But mobile is still a hot area, and one that’s widely tipped to outpace many other technology sectors in the short to medium term. Still, it’s a buyer’s market, at least for those with access to capital, particularly as many startups and smaller players struggle to find the funding they need to keep going, and keep growing.

The bottom line: These results highlight the potential of compelling, relevant and properly targeted messages. In particular, they illustrate how much more likely are consumers are to respond to SMS and MMS ads than simple Internet banners.  Peggy adds: Mobile Advertising Research U.K. confirms this, but there’s also a lot of mileage left in banners. For more on what makes for a great mobile advertising experience and a balanced value chain check back tomorrow for my take on a new-launch Hardees campaign.

***

TOP APPLICATIONS ON THE APPLE APP STORE HAVE MORE THAN 1 MILLION USERS, according to AdMob’s latest Mobile Metrics Report for May 2009. The report found that the most popular free applications in AdMob’s iPhone network generated the majority of usage, with the top 5 percent of applications garnering more than 100,000 users in May, and some apps showing more than 1 million active users.

A further 14 percent of applications had between 10,000 and 100,000 active users, while 54 percent of applications had less than 1,000. AdMob reached 15.1 million unique users through iPhone and iPod touch devices across 2,309 applications in May, with the average user accessing four applications.  44 percent of iPhone ad requests came from devices running the new version 3.0 of the iPhone OS, compared to just 1 percent of iPod touch requests.  Source

The bottom line: These numbers from AdMob underline the ongoing popularity of apps on the iPhone. But they also offer some insight into the potential value of in-app advertising for developers and content providers, since the apps in AdMob’s iPhone network are all free to download, and earn money solely from advertising.

***

SUBSCRIPTION VIDEO AND MUSIC ACCOUNT FOR 40 PERCENT OF MOBILE DOWNLOADS IN THE UK, according to a study from GfK, as the model grows in popularity against pay-per-download sales. The research also states that casual and classic trivia and word games lead the mobile gaming market with 27 per cent of sales, while the budget sector (£3 or less) is also enjoying success through basic and retro games.  It also adds that nine per cent of the mobile tariffs signed up in the UK in Q1 have bundled-in flat-rate data.
Source

The bottom line: This study illustrates the growing popularity of the flat-rate model, both in mobile data access, but also in content subscriptions. Still, the content-subscription model contrasts with the booming pay-per-download app store model.  Will one triumph over the other?

***

AD-FUNDED MMS REVENUES TO HIT $8.7 BILLION by 2014, says Juniper Research in a new Mobile Messaging report.  The report says that annual growth rates are reaching 94%, with SMS and mobile email continuing to dominate the person-to-person (p2p) mobile messaging market.

The report, entitled “Mobile Messaging & IP Evolution”, found that the Far East & China would lead the global ad-funded MMS market by a considerable margin, followed by North America and Western Europe.  The adoption of push MMS and SMS in mature and emerging markets has enabled network operators to support ad-funded voice and SMS tariffs, and combat falling ARPU, while providing brands with new advertising channels. Source

The bottom line: These are bold projections from Juniper.  P2P MMS messaging still has a way to go before it reaches the usage level of SMS, but these projections suggest that MMS advertising could prove to be a lucrative revenue stream in its own right.

***

MORE THAN 60 PERCENT OF MOBILE USERS STILL ONLY USE THEIR HANDSET FOR VOICE AND TEXT, according to a KPMG survey. The survey of 4,190 consumers in 19 countries also says that consumer satisfaction rates with mobile services have increased. Music satisfaction is up to 66 percent, video 52 percent (from just 14 percent), IM 44 percent and live TV 38 percent.

The factors influencing users’ next mobile content purchase, according to the survey are, in order: clarity of pricing, cost, ability to save content, download speed and the ability to try content before purchasing it.  36 percent of respondents said they would accept mobile advertising, while 49 percent said they would accept it in music and 28 percent in games.  Source

The bottom line: The level of acceptance of mobile advertising is encouraging.  However, the headline is arguably the most pertinent point: for over 60 percent of consumers, the mobile internet doesn’t exist and text messaging is the only data application of a mobile device.

***

MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT REVENUES ARE EXPECTED TO GROW 28 PERCENT ON AVERAGE over the next year, according to the Mobile Entertainment Forum’s quarterly Business Confidence Index, up one percent from its last survey.

Content owners are much more optimistic about their revenues, with the anticipated average income up from $6.1 million to $17.1 million.Revenue in Western Europe is expected to be down 10 percent, North American revenues are predicted to be up 8

percent. 81 percent of respondents said they were as confident as last year about the future of their business. Source

The bottom line: This MEF study illustrates a bullish mobile entertainment market, unbowed by the economic climate.  It could be that, aside from the natural obligation towards market confidence, stakeholders believe the purchasing of relatively low cost content through microbilling will remain popular as consumers delay the big ticket items and seek alternative forms of entertainment.

***

APATHY AND PRICE RULE IN NOT SELECTING THE iPHONE, say the latest findings from The NPD Group.  The study showed that the primary reasons consumers do not want to purchase an iPhone are “lack of interest” (55 percent) and “high price” (42 percent).

One in five mobile phone owners say they want to purchase an iPhone, but have not yet done so, and NPD’s report indicates data plan pricing and exclusivity remain key obstacles.  18 percent of consumers who have not purchased an iPhone cited the expense of the data plan, while 21 percent said they didn’t want to switch carriers.  Source

The bottom line: Reasons why Apple’s iPhone isn’t persuading everyone to leave their current carrier and device seem quite simple: they aren’t actually that bothered.  Given the previous data point, which revealed that 60 percent of people only use voice and text, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

***

iPHONE USERS TOP SMARTPHONE LOYALTY ratings, according to a new survey by Crowd Science.  It also says four out of ten BlackBerry and other smartphone users would switch to Apple’s iPhone as their next smartphone purchase.

On the other hand, only 14 percent of non-BlackBerry smartphone users would switch to a BlackBerry for their next purchase. Meanwhile, a huge 82 percent of iPhone users are loyal to the brand. Source

The bottom line: In contrast to the previous report, this one highlights the attitudes of smartphone users who, almost by definition of being smartphone users, care a little more.  The study is as much a study of consumer brand perception, and the iPhone steals the show as expected, but BlackBerry may take note of the small minority who would switch for their next purchase.

***

MORE THAN HALF HAVE MOBILE SECURITY FEARS, according to mobile security specialists, Cloudmark Inc.  The report says mobile spam now affects two in three consumers, more than 50 percent worry about mobile security, and only 7 percent believe the information they send over the phone is secure.

Cloudmark also says the concern about mobile security is detrimentally affecting the adoption of mobile services such as banking and e-commerce, with more than two thirds (69.3%) of consumers stating that they wouldn’t use value-added services such as mobile banking.

Two thirds of consumers (65.9%) have received unwanted or unsolicited messages (spam) on their mobile phone. While a majority of spam messages could simply be seen as a nuisance, 29% of respondents had received malicious spam such as phishing messages, fraud messages or messages containing inappropriate content.  Source

The bottom line: This report highlights the ongoing fears around the security of mobile devices, which will likely become more prevalent as smartphones become more pervasive, and spammers and malware authors pay more attention to mobile. However, we should also remember that the mobile security specialists who produced the report might have a small agenda of their own.

IS THE APP INDUSTRY WORTH NEARLY $7 BILLION? Will Apple do nearly a billion dollars in revenue in its first year of the App Store? While the exact numbers are debatable, you can’t ignore the monster success Apple has had with its store (which also drives device sales, by the way). How much money has Apple made? This post, titled Apple has made no more than $20 – 45m in revenue from the app store, gives us a figure. One I might add is not too shabby for a product yet to see its first birthday. What makes this more remarkable is that Apple has captured between 1-2 percent total market share worldwide (including feature phones), and only 10.8 percent share worldwide in the smartphone segment. Few (save Juniper) have taken a stab at valuing the total app industry.

StatCounter’s recent announcement that Opera Mini surpasses the iPhone’s Safari as the most popular web browser for mobile phones is testament to the potential of the greater industry. Opera Mini is the most downloaded Java application of all time. So, while I am excited about the enthusiasm for the iPhone, I find the conversation is missing a big-picture perspective. The question we should be asking is: What is the total app market worldwide really worth? After all, Opera Mini’s success story underlines the potential of the app market beyond just the iPhone.

So, allow me to take a shot at valuing the total app industry, worldwide, for pay-apps (apps you pay to own on your phone).  This is the total value excluding Of course, we have to exclude free apps like Opera Mini.

In a nutshell: If Apple can do nearly $1 billion in sales its first year and has 10.8 percent smartphone market share worldwide, how much is the total smartphone app market worth?

This post from AppleInsider tells us that Apple could do $777 million in App Store downloads in 2009.

A 10.8 percent worldwide smartphone market share implies that the total mobile app market is $7.2 billion, if all smartphone users spend as much on apps as iPhone users do. We know that this won’t be the case. A much more likely scenario is one in which smartphone users will spend far less.

So, let’s assume users with these handsets (other than the iPhone) spend half (50 percent) of what iPhone users on App downloads. Now let’s do the math.

$7.2 billion is the extrapolated industry valuation of direct revenue from apps if consumers spent as much on apps for other platforms as they do the iPhone. Let’s take $7.2 billion minus $777 million (iPhone app share), and multiply that by 50 percent. That gives us a valuation of $3.2 billion for the non-iPhone app market, or $4 billion total, including the iPhone.

($7.2 billion – $777 million) * 0.5 = $3.2 billion non-iPhone app market.)

Given these assumptions, the total addressable market for non-iPhone smartphone users is approximately $3.2 billion in 2009 alone. This, of course is direct app revenue, and does not include advertising, in-app sales, carrier data revenues, feature phone app sales, and other yet-to-be-developed revenue models.

What does this figure represent? Is this pent-up demand in search of a marketplace? It sure looks like it. In any case, the number is staggering, and why this fact hasn’t gotten more attention is surprising.

But I can tell you from my experience at Opera, the success of the iPhone app store is great for the industry. Apple’s app store (although benefiting from massive multimedia marketing campaigns) is the proof-point our industry needed to see its own much greater potential. Apple gets high ranks for making the job of marketing or selling an app that much easier. Mainstream consumers now realize it’s not rocket science to load an app on their phone. Now it’s part of an every-day routine for many mobile users.

Apple has created a market, but does it dominate it?

AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Report recently released compares mobile Web usage to market share of mobile devices. As this chart from AdMob shows, the iPhone literally tops the charts for mobile Web usage – and that despite the fact the device only accounts for 10.8 percent market share of devices (according to Gartner’s latest estimate).

Symbian is next, followed by RIM and Windows. With the launch of the Palm Pre, greater penetration of Android devices soon to come, and Microsoft opening its Windows Skymarket app marketplace, it’s a safe bet that consumer spending on apps on other platforms might total half of what iPhone users spend on apps (If you disagree, please make your case for lower estimates in the comments below, or email me – ben@mobspot.com .)

Let’s put a growth-figure in here. If we accept the figures from Ovum, which predict 15 percent per year growth for smartphones, then you end up with an app industry worth nearly $7 billion.

Not bad. We are excited about the App Store concept, which has taken much of the pain out of discovering and buying apps. Now is the time to get equally excited about the opportunity for apps on all platforms.

And why shouldn’t we be excited? Apple’s App store has caused a shift in consumer behavior. It has captured our interest (even passion), encouraged us to explore the mobile Web, and put downloading and purchasing apps central to our daily mobile routine.

Where does this leave Apple?

It may be riding the cool factor now, but where is it written that cool apps will only be created for the iPhone? I’m confident developers are already working on more great apps for other platforms.

Apple also doesn’t have a monopoly on delivering a great consumer experience. I’m sure developers are hard at work coming up with new approaches that likewise set the bar.

My take: Apple has created a market. But it has also paved the way for some fast followers to follow suit – and even go one better. I’m excited about the avalanche of apps we’re sure to see available across all platforms, and the impact on mobile industry and consumer behavior at all levels. What do YOU expect?

About the author:

Prior to founding Mobspot, Ben was Director of Global Marketing at Opera Software, where he led multiple record-setting product launches of Opera Mini. Opera Mini is the most downloaded mobile application in the world. He has a BA from the University of Washington and an MBA from Copenhagen Business School.

The bottom line: As illustrated numerous times within this section, the data dominance and superior browsing experience allowed by smartphones is undeniable.  Making mobile Web user experience smooth, easy, and compelling – as these handsets often do – is shown to consistently drive mobile data traffic.  That many consumers probably can’t tell and don’t care about the difference between mobile websites and HTML sites is also testament to technical developments.

***

GARTNER SAYS THE NUMBER OF MOBILE PAYMENT users will increase by 70 percent this year.  Its report claims that 73.4 million users of mpayment in 2009 would represent a leap of 70.4 percent from 2008.  By 2012, it says mobile payment will reach more than 190 million, more than 3 percent of total mobile users worldwide, attaining a level at which it will be considered “mainstream.”

Gartner defines a mobile payment as paying for a product or service using mobile technology such as a short message service (SMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), and Near Field Communication (NFC). It includes transactions that use cash, bank accounts or debit and credit cards, as well as non-carrier stored value accounts, such as travel cards, gift cards or PayPal. It does not include transactions that use mobile operators’ billing systems, such as purchase of mobile content or telebanking by mobile to the service center via an interactive voice response (IVR) system. Source

The bottom line: Although the definition of mobile payment is ambiguous here, these figures demonstrate that the mass market is slowly growing confident in using their mobile to pay for and transfer money.  Much effort has been made to foster consumer confidence in the micropayment mobile payment space, and the adoption of mobile banking technologies still varies drastically from region to region.  There are regulatory and security challenges to overcome, particularly with the emergence of NFC technologies, but these figures give strong reason for hope.

***

SPEECH APPLICATIONS ARE TO TRIPLE by 2014 according to a new Datamonitor report. The report claims that as we get used to using mobile computing devices in ‘hands-busy’, ‘eyes-busy’ environments, speech recognition technologies are expected to gain considerable traction. The global market for advanced speech recognition (ASR) in mobile handsets will increase from $32.7 million in 2009 to $99.6 million in 2014. Meanwhile ASR in-vehicle telematics is expected to grow from $64.3 million in 2009 to 208.2 million by 2014. Source

The bottom line: An exciting array of new voice applications has been promised for some time now, without seeming to gain mass market adoption.  This Datamonitor report suggests the market is still full of potential, and with technologies emerging to intuitively allow users to control device functionality with their voice, these projections may herald the beginning of significant penetration.

Peggy adds: A space to watch is voice-activated mobile search, where “Just say what you want,” the guiding principle of voice search to avoid complex and confusing navigation, and to provide a shortcut to information (in the network) and services (on the mobile device) the user wants, is particularly compelling.

***

OPERA’S MINI BROWSER RECORDED MORE THAN 23.4 million users worldwide in April, a jump of 140 percent from the same period one year ago. Page views in America grew 129 percent over the last year; unique users grew 11.8 percent; and there was an average of 198 page views per user in April. U.S. carrier subscribers are said to be viewing more data-intensive pages than those in any other country. Opera said the average page viewed is about 32KB compressed (almost 320KB uncompressed).

Top 10 sites accessed via Opera Mini in the U.S., by number of unique users:

1. Google.com
2. Facebook.com
3. MySpace.com
4. Wikipedia.org
5. YouTube.com (up from 7)
6. Yahoo.com
7. NYTimes.com (down from 5)
8. AccuWeather.com
9. My.Opera.com
10. ESPN.com

Source

The bottom line: The mobile Internet is continuing to see heavy usage and mass adoption, although we should remember these figures are largely coming from BlackBerry handsets operating Opera. The handsets do have massive appeal, as clearly does mobile Internet content.  However, we might also remember that, as a corporate device of choice, their users may not always be paying the bills

***

AN AENEAS STRATEGY STUDY OF U.K. ATTITUDE TOWARDS mobile advertising found that 64 percent of consumers would grant permission to receive mobile advertising if they were incentivized.  The majority of the 1,002 consumers surveyed had a more negative initial attitude, but this changed if advertising was made relevant (65 percent positive), permission was asked (67 percent positive), or if the consumer was in control (69 percent positive). It placed mobile amongst the most popular traditional media (print, outdoor, and television) and above the Internet and radio. 

The research also revealed that 52 percent claim engagement with the brands they love is important, five advertisements per day is most accepted by consumers, 52 percent of consumers doesn’t mind listening to a brand message while waiting for someone to pick up the phone, and 54 percent would send an interesting offer they have received to  friends and family

Tarik Fawzi, of Aeneas Strategy Consulting and Management, commented: ”The consumer research shows some unexpected results regarding consumer attitude towards mobile advertising. Also mobile is compared with other media. This shows consumers know what they want and are open towards mobile advertising, if it is offered on their terms.” Source

The bottom line: This study shows once again that relevancy and control of mobile advertising are critical to its consumer acceptance and success.  The challenge mobile advertising faces is in making campaigns relevant, and offering control, but still maintaining a strong enough number of eyeballs to keep brands spending.

Peggy adds: This consumer research will also be discussed during Mobile Advertising U.K. (June 15 in London), when MSG, which was commissioned to research and write the report in collaboration with Aeneas, will present key findings from interviews with 15+ industry executives and influencers.

***

41 PERCENT OF U.S. CONSUMERS ARE LIKELY TO PURCHASE a multimedia handset with a data plan as their next phone, says a new study by the Yankee Group. BlackBerry and Apple are the top two brands, considered by 44 percent and 30 percent of prospective buyers, respectively.

Meanwhile, in enterprise, the same analyst claims that 75 percent of small to medium businesses anticipate some reduction in their business technology investments due to the economy. End-user software and hardware are the two areas that will experience the biggest budget cuts. Source

The bottom line: These two nuggets from Yankee illustrate the ongoing consumer affair with smartphones, and the rich data consumption experience they allow, in the face of predictable technology cutbacks which the environment has imposed on smaller businesses. It’s tough out there, but consumers remain enthused about compelling mobile data experiences, if the data plan is right.