Mobile Groove

Voice — speech recognition and natural language understanding — are poised to transform our daily lives and disrupt all industries — not just mobile. Thanks to companies like Nuance Communications — which is also the speech-recognition engine behind Siri, the virtual personal assistant on the Apple iPhone — we are rapidly moving toward a voice-enabled future. We catch up today with Vlad Sejnoha, Nuance Chief Technology Officer, to get an inside track on the topics he will address at M…

In brief: A run down of some significant mobile search stats and studies in the run up to Exploring the Future of Mobile Search, an exploratory expert workshop organized by the European Commission, where MSG will give the keynote address.

It’s encouraging to see a much sharper focus on mobile search and a growing realization among mobile operators, content providers and publishers/developers that there is a lot more to mobile search than the universal model we know from the online Internet. Mobile phone form factors push companies to develop new mobile search services that deliver us relevant results in tune with our intent and context. All the better if these services make use of features and functions such as voice recognition, image recognition, location-awareness and Augmented Reality.

Another development that makes search essential is the avalanche of apps and app stores, and the drive by all the players in the ecosystem to make these content and services storefronts a commercial success. Case in point: Apple’s decision to snap up Siri, a voice-activated digital personal assist that takes the concept of search to a new level (allowing us to find not search!)

TWO-THIRDS OF MOBILE AD IMPRESSIONS ARE DELIVERED TO FEATUREPHONES, according to the latest Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART) from ad network Millenial Media.

While the iPhone OS was the leading smartphone platform on

In brief: A sneak peek at my upcoming personalization report and a request for case studies. The second in the series on mobile personalization examines Openwave and features an exclusive Q&A with Mayur Pitamber, Openwave Product Management Strategist. We ask the question: Is Openwave gearing up for something big?

It was great to have the last days off and even better to map out an exciting line-up of MSearchGroove projects for the next 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 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?

The advance of the mobile Web and the growing popularity of Internet destinations on mobile phones give importance to the mobile browser and anticipate another impending battle for the control of the user experience.Are browsers the new application framework, as this post from GigaOm suggests? It argues – in my view, quite convincingly – that “browsers, plus the right downloads such as Flash or Silverlight, will drive the consumer experience more than the OS.” The po…