UPDATE: Today is the last day to register and get one of my specially discounted VIP passes.

Here’s a link that will take you straight there: https://www.openmobilesummit.com/lon/register/step1.aspx?dc=MSEARCHVIP

* * *

Now in its second year the Open Mobile Summit (May 26-27, London) covers all the bases to again set the bar. I attended and spoke at this exceptional event last June and was struck by to things: the sold-out crowd and the balanced mix of speakers and authorities from companies and organizations across the entire ecosystem.

Doing business (and making money) in an Open Mobile world will require new thinking and business models. The caliber (and variety) speakers my esteemed colleague, Robin Batt, Open Mobile Media Founder & Executive Producer, has brought together for this purpose will undoubtedly deliver the audience some answers.

This is not just another mobile conference; it’s an industry happening – which is why MSG is extremely proud to be a media sponsor. It’s rare to find such an impressive gathering of thought leaders in such an intimate setting, and I look forward to connecting with this year’s speakers (participants include Spotify, Gowalla, Admob, Ogilvy, AKQA, Yahoo, the BBC, Google, BSkyB, MTV, FT.com, Opera, Vodafone, O2, HTC, Nokia and more – and all at the top executive level.

It’s just four weeks away and there are limited seats remaining, so you should register now.

MSG has 5 guest passes at just GBP850 (retail GBP1395). If you’d like one, register here with VIP code MSEARCHVIP . https://www.openmobilesummit.com/lon/register/ (First come, first served.)

WHY ATTEND

Whether you’re a start-up or a media giant, Internet company or mobile operator, ad agency or software company, mobile and Internet convergence presents a huge opportunity. Over two days the Open Mobile Summit provides participants a clear vision of how the industry will evolve in the next 12-18 months, which – in our fast moving space – is invaluable.

At the Open Mobile Summit you can:

• Understand the business drivers of all the players in this fast converging ecosystem – the key to finding a successful business model for your services
• Explore all the hot topics –mobile advertising, the future of search and discovery on mobile, the role location and social, content monetization models and mobile payments, apps in the cloud vs. the mobile Web and the impact of the iPad, to name a few
• Do business with all the influential people –operators, handset manufacturers, Internet and media giants, agencies, software and application start-ups
• Meet with me (a little humor here, of course)

So, register as soon as possible to ensure your place – if you’re quick, you might get one of my specially discounted VIP passes.

Here’s a link that will take you straight there: https://www.openmobilesummit.com/lon/register/step1.aspx?dc=MSEARCHVIP

I outline the key data points and takeaways further down in this post.

But the real story is the insights the report gives us into winning players and strategies (that is, who will be selling the most and how).

APP DISTRIBUTION AND APP STORE PROLIFERATION

Chetan documents a real and gradual shift from on-deck stores (translated: mobile operator offerings) to off-deck plays that are primarily DD2C (Developer Direct 2 Consumer) – potentially the toughest kind of sales pitch for developers more adept in tech than marketing.

Indeed, developers are going to need some help with that. Little wonder that Patrick Mork, GetJar VP Marketing, singles out app payment and in-app advertising and reveals these are the next features/functionality in the GetJar pipeline. (Smart! It’s all about making it easier for developers to make money from their apps).

And then there are the regional differences that Chetan has expertly uncovered.

Particularly in emerging markets, the mobile apps- mobile advertising business ecosystem has become robust enough to provide developers added revenue. It’s a big business if we consider that Asia, with the lowest pre-paid subscriber rates, also accounted for 37 percent of global downloads.

Overall, Chetan estimates advertising based revenue accounted for about 12 percent of the overall revenue, but that figure is projected to rise to 28 percent by 2012.

Finally, the report confirms two observations that run through my own research and writing like a leit motif: the business imperative to improve content discovery and the potential for a Long Tail of app stores (not just an “app for that” – but an app store for that!).

Farmers Markets and Supermarkets? I’ll have more on that scenario later this week when I catch up with Mike Lurye, Director, Product Marketing, Amdocs Interactive, to explore the characteristics (choice, convenience, payment, personalization) that can potentially separate the leaders from the also-rans.

GETJAR PODCAST

But first the highlights from my podcast with GetJar’s Patrick Mork, who was instrumental in guiding the research project from the start. We discussed the report numbers that really stand out and the business model strategies they support.

HYPERLOCAL: Developers will need to adapt their business models to the regions. Direct sale of apps in developing markets versus ad-supported schemes in emerging markets. This divide spells fantastic opportunities in mobile advertising for companies that can tap them. (One reason why GetJar is gearing up to launch a partnership with a major advertising company to enable this scenario everywhere.)

THERE CAN BE ONLY A FEW?: GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs is bullish about the outlook for a fortunate few stores that have the right capabilities mix (GetJar among them. Of course). In his view: “There is no way that this many app stores will survive in the long term and while the value of the global app economy is set to be astoundingly high by 2012, we think only a few app stores will share this revenue.” Why? Patrick puts it down to the virtual nature of commerce in an app store. “In a virtual economy such as the app economy retail is different and you don’t need that many players.” The selling point is relevant content and app stores that have this – and consumer traffic – are in the winners’ circle. Another reason why only a few may survive: “Developers have finite resources…. They are resource-starved and will therefore only work with a few app stores because they won’t have the time or energy to work with many of them.” (After all, he adds, it can be a pain and drain to open accounts with multiple stores, connect to the back-end systems and upload the content. “Our value proposition continues to be that GetJar is a one-stop to upload it in one place.)

APP SHORTCUTS PAY-OFF: Patrick and I finally got the chance to discuss the runaway success of app shortcuts, literally shortcuts to mobile websites. Put simply, brands and content companies can promote their mobile website as if it was an app(!) Before you dismiss it, consider this: Facebook counts a whopping 45 million downloads of site shortcuts via GetJar. That number beats their iPhone app downloads by a mile!

Listen to the podcast here. [15:32]

My take: The app economy has officially arrived. In 2009, app downloads worldwide were approx. 7 billion with Asia accounting for a whopping 37 percent of the total. Total downloads are forecast to skyrocket to almost 50 billion in 2012 – a year on year growth rate of 92 percent. This would mean that the value of apps sold would be greater than the value of CDs sold in 2012 ($13.83 billion). But we shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet. The business models are unclear, the market is fragmented and real success is linked inextricably to local and regional market conditions. The hard truth: It’s not a single market and one-size-fits all app schemes won’t deliver. Will app stores be on-deck (operator managed) or off-deck (direct-2-consumer)? Or will there be hybrids? Will the prevailing model be paid apps or ad-supported apps? Or will it be a mix? I’m not avoiding the question when I say ‘all of the above’ and everything in-between. Chetan’s report paints a buoyant picture of a young market (“the proliferation of apps in many directions”) and hints at the key capabilities that will clinch the deal for app stores and there developers.

The bottom line: We need more engaging and creative approaches to mobile advertising in those markets where this model will rule (emerging markets). And we need the various channels of mobile advertising (messaging, Web, search and coupons/barcodes) to work together more tightly. Finally, content discovery is an issue the industry must recognize and solve.

In closing a positive – and possible –scenario (from Chetan) if we get this right: “Connectivity breeds apps. It is a given that as consumer electronic devices become wirelessly connected, consumers are looking to download apps on those platforms. Apps download on the iPod have been every bit of a success as they have been on the iPhone. Similarly, we will see a significant uptick in the apps for devices such as the iPad, telematics platforms in vehicles, digital cameras, navigation devices, picture frames, weight scales, and the list goes on and on. These apps will entertain and amuse consumers, analyze data on the devices, connect users with content and friends, and will interconnect various end-points in the pervasive mobile ecosystem in a much more profound manner.” It’s shaping up to be a great space indeed!

Kudos to Mark Hawkins and the team over at the Mobile Data Association

On the face of it, the partnership between BBC Radio 1 and all the major U.K. mobile operators is aimed at allowing listeners in the U.K. to send the radio station picture messages (MMS) from their mobile phones for the first-time ever all day today (December 11) free of charge. But dig a bit deeper and the event has been set up as a springboard to encourage people to use their phones to do more.

To this end the MDA has also launched an educational website with the long-term aim of helping people to send picture messages: http://www.getsettings.org. The idea is to provide people a “single, unified hub of settings information” and address configuration issues around older handsets in circulation and SIM-only contracts.”

Of course, this problem isn’t limited to the U.K. and I hope this educational effort sets a precedent other professional organizations and mobile companies follow.

NIGHTMARE AHEAD

In fact, the job of solving the myriad of issues around customer education to make using our phones and accessing the mobile Internet a no-brainer is widely considered to be the chief business imperative of the coming year.

This is the view that came across loud and clear at MIDAS: Managing Innovative Devices and Services, an industry event I attended and spoke at last year (organized by my esteemed colleague Abraham Joseph, Founder, Device Management Forum).

During the event we discussed the advance of the mobile Internet and what the impact would be on stakeholders (device makers, mobile operators and software vendors, distributors and retailers) when we all need assistance to surf the Web, send email and download/install apps. The scenario, we agreed, was a nightmare.

Fast forward, and the problem is no longer a discussion point for passionate technologists; it’s a business issue for companies across the ecosystems banking on us all to use our phones to do more.

Yes, people need assistance to understand and configure their devices. The MDA recognizes this, which is why it has launched an educational web site for precisely this purpose. However, people also need fast track training to get on the mobile Internet and the industry is under pressure to have to come up with some solutions – sooner than later.

PEOPLE ARE BAFFLED

Indeed, a raft of studies shows that we are baffled by our new phones and features. One that stands out comes from independent research firm Coleman Parkes, which asked 4,000 people in the U.K. and U.S. about their pet mobile peeves. (The study was commissioned by Mformation, a provider of mobile device management (MDM) technology. But vendor spin aside it sheds some important light on this real problem.)

Among the key data points, the survey found that a whopping 85 percent of people said they were frustrated by the difficulty of getting a new phone up and working. Additionally, 95 percent said they would try more new services if phones were easier to set up and 61 percent said they stopped using an application if they could not get it working straight away.

So, we know people would like to do tasks as browsing the Web, reading email or sending picture messages, but the complexity of mobile phones (really handheld-computers at this point) is too much for them.

TOP TEN HEADACHES

During the MIDAS event that impressed me with the scope of this problem, I met with Wouter Deelman, CEO of Qelp, who blew me away with his presentation and an eye-opening list of the Top 10 device management challenges. (By way of background, Qelp is a Dutch software-as-a-service company sharply focused on solutions that increase revenues and reduce customer support costs.)

Wouter co-presented with Blyk, a Qelp customer and ad-funded MVNO model (this was before Blyk shifted its focus to becoming a media company). Blyk revealed that it had achieved a 60 percent success rate getting users to accept Over-the-air (OTA) settings (critical since much of Blyk’s ad-funded model was built on users’ ability to receive and respond to MMS mobile advertising messages). In effect, Blyk admitted a 40-percent failure rate – a problem Blyk said it solved by working with Qelp.

Indeed, OTA settings top Wouter’s list of Top 10 device management headaches.

1. Over-the-air (OTA) settings require user acceptance.

2. Some devices do not support OTA and require manual configuration.

3. New handsets are coming to the market through different channels (not just via mobile    operators), so the problem and the responsibility to solve it is fragmented.

4. Remote access to a device requires access to the mobile Internet (which is what most users are trying to set up in the first place).

5. Users are confused when settings arrive, and often don’t know what they are for or where to store them on the device.

6. Each handset has a different UI (user interface).

7. Call center support is an option – but costly for the operators and frustrating for the users.

8. Second-hand devices are preconfigured incorrectly.

9. Network operator settings get preference over MVNO settings.

10. New IMEI ranges and handsets not yet recognized by the operators systems.

It may seem that Apple’s iPhone and the slew of new touch screen interface devices/ smartphones solve this problem (because they come preconfigured by the iPhone exclusive channel on the market and most available services are displayed via icons on the screen and not buried in a sub-menu).

But the range of new devices and multitude of UIs only exacerbate the problems. And let’s not forget the many people unlocking their

iPhones because they want to have the devices and the operators they want (!) and therefore need to configure the device themselves, manually.

NEED HELP? GOOGLE IT

Can the device management issue impede the growth of mobile Internet usage? The jury is out on this one – but it’s common sense that we would use it a lot more if we could. (We cannot use what we cannot use.)

Ironically, the mobile operator – the player you would expect would want to educate us to use mobile data (and generate additional data revenues in the process) – appears to have missed the plot – and the opportunity.

In a recent must-read guest post for VisionMobile, Wouter road tested six U.K. mobile operator websites to look for support and set up email on a Nokia N96. The result: a mix of irrelevant results and no results at all. Wouter’s conclusion: for an end-user seeking help to get a service up and running on their mobile phone, the answer is not just a few clicks away.”

Wouter then looked for the same information using Google. The answers are marginally better – but the search results do include sites such as Know Your Mobile, that do the job just fine.

Understanding that Google is destined to play an increasing role in customer care (becoming the first place people look for help to configure their phones) KPN (also a Qelp customer) has applied search engine optimization techniques to ensure it’s website (and brand) at least show up in the top Google search results. (Daily statistics now show that 50 percent of KPN’s subscribers go to Google first for answers.)

The takeaway: The MDA has literally done us a service in the U.K., but there is a lot more work to be done. The advance of the mobile Internet has encouraged us to check out the wealth of apps and content available. However, many of us need help setting up our phones before we can explore this brave new world. Providers have a choice: improve customer education and support, or deal with customer frustration (and lost revenues) when people quite literally turn off.

In brief:

Mobile Groove — the monthly podcast I produce with Inma Martinez, leading digital media strategist, “free radical” and advisor to venture capitalists — is back. This time we kick off with a hard look at Nokia strategy and question the wisdom of its decision to sue Apple.

NOKIA, APPLE & DOPPLR

Do shareholders see value in lawsuits?  We also piece together the logic behind the quick, quiet (and we think clever) acquisition of Dopplr, a social network company that lets members share personal and business travel plans and exchanging travel advice. Shame that Nokia’s marcomms did such a miserable job of communicating the real value of this move, leaving it to the likes of Tech Crunch to speculate and miss the plot. Are we on the mark? Listen in and let us know.

FLIRTOMATIC

Picking up on the last program (where Inma salutes Mark Curtis and his team at Flirtomatic) we look examine the company’s tremendous track record and recent expansion into the U.S.

By way of background, the freemium flirt and fun service (with 1.5 million users and operations in the U.K., Germany and Australia) announced an agreement in late October with U.S. flat-rate carrier MetroPCS that positions Flirtomatic as the preferred mobile social networking service on the operator’s Mobile Web Portal. According to Flirtomatic stats, Flirtomatic mobile users log in around seven times and send over 30 messages each day, resulting in over 30 million messages each month and over 160 million WAP page views.

Why is Flirtomatic on a roll? One reason is Mark’s pragmatic approach to mobile. As Inma puts it: “Buzz is dead!” Mark didn’t drink the Kool-Aid – and neither did we.

I’ll have more from Mark when we connect for a special podcast series looking at the line-up of companies that won the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009 (Flirtomatic, Aloqua, Waze, Yoose and SPBTV).  My personal thanks to Neil Robertson from IF Communications for his help lining up audio interviews and his good work keeping me in the loop with Smaato and other companies in his growing roster of clients.

START-UP WOES

Matthäus Krzykowski over at VentureBeat (@matthausk) caught our eye with a Tweet (to the world, not us) asking why funding is tougher than ever to get. Inma reviews her deal flow to recount the mega investments in mobile. Her take: 2009 is the year that the Valley woke up to mobile. So, why is Europe in a slumber? Listen in and let us know what you think.

GOBLET OF ROCK

This time we change the format to salute companies and sectors that rock. Inma’s pick: Spanish start-up LemonQuest, a global publisher of mobile games and personalization products for network operator portals. The real news (via PocketGamer): “LemonQuest is planning to launch an ambitious massively multiplayer mobile game in the fourth quarter of this year, after recently acquiring a Chinese firm with the necessary technology (and 240,000 registered players).”

Researching the next Netsize Guide has brought me in contact with some cool companies in Augmented Reality (namely, GeoVector and Layar). Since I also focus the chapter on the future of mobile on image search and recognition, I must also toast Kooaba, a company I have followed since the start.

Until next time – keep it fun!

Listen to the lively podcast here [17:47].

The Mobile Groove series:

PODCAST: Mobile Groove Continues With Blyk’s Media Strategy, Spotify’s Chances Against Apple, What Women Really Want PLUS Cool Startups From Mobilize & Seedcamp

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: 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.

The bottom line: The ARPU metric has been under fire for some time, not least because it only looks at revenues, and says nothing about profitability. Consumers having multiple connections is a trend that will proliferate, as more users get 3G dongles, e-book readers and other types of connected devices. This trend could accelerate the move towards another key metric in the industry.

***

MOBILE MAPPING GROWING, BUT PC SITES STILL RULE, according to ABI Research. The firm says that internet mapping sites will get 440 million monthly visitors next year. ABI has also noted that while big names like Google, Mapquest, Sohu and Baidu currently dominate the mapping space, more and more players, such as navigation vendors like TomTom and NAVTEQ, and even mobile companies like Nokia, are launching their own navigation sites. Source

The bottom line: Expect mobile use to fuel the next stage of growth in mapping services, as more and more devices get GPS functionality, making maps so much easier to use, and mobile mapping applications improve. PC mapping isn’t going anywhere, but mapping on the mobile makes much more sense in many scenarios. This calls into question the need for standalone GPS units – which is why GPS vendors are pushing hard into the mobile space.

***
COMPANIES ARE HAPPIER WITH THEIR ROI FROM MOBILE ADS THAN FROM TRADITIONAL MEDIA ADS, says a new report from the Aberdeen Group. Nearly two thirds of top-performing companies, such as Coke and Best Buy, said they’re satisfied with the average return on investment they’re seeing from mobile marketing, compared to just 40 percent satisfaction with traditional media ad ROI. This helps explain why 62 percent of those companies are increasing their mobile marketing budgets. Source

The bottom line: Mobile marketing has a couple of really big benefits going for it: it can be relatively inexpensive, but more importantly, it gets results. By building interactive campaigns that seek to do more than just hit consumers with a broadcast message, mobile marketers can deliver strong results, and track those results more accurately than with traditional media ads.

***
THE GREEN FASCINATION WON’T EXCLUDE MOBILE, according to Juniper Research. The company says that by 2014, global shipment of environmentally sustainable mobile devices will reach 485 million per year by 2014 in a best-case scenario. Even with more tepid interest, Juniper says sales will hit 105 million that year. Source

The bottom line: Will this growth really be powered by consumer demand, or will it simply be the effect of sustainability making its way deeper and deeper into all types of consumer products and electronics? Either way, it’s certainly a welcome trend.

***
MOBILE MARKETING FORUM EUROPE SHOWCASES SURPRISING STATS and results to write home about. Peggy is working on a more in-depth analysis of the milestones and best practice major brands (including Lufthansa, BMW, Nike, Coca Cola and P&G) shared during this important event. In the meantime, here is a rundown of the facts and figures that speak volumes about the increasing use and effectiveness of mobile in brand campaigns.

• Nike spent 30 percent of their marketing budget for the phenomenally successful Human race campaign on mobile.
• Coke reported a 7.4 percent increase in brand equity after the rollout of a mobile campaign. It also counted 500,000 downloads of a branded app with no media spend, demonstrating the tremendous viral value of mobile campaigns.
• BMW revealed about half of 500,000 views of a video to promote its Z4 model car were on mobile.
• P&G noted a whopping 80 percent increase in brand recognition among individuals who had interacted with the brand via a mobile game. It also recorded an incredible 80 percent savings by using mobile (instead of traditional channels) to promote and manage a free product sample giveaway campaign in Thailand.
• Lufthansa, which has fully integrated mobile in the passenger check-in process, reported 11 percent of total check-in is performed by people on their mobile phones.

Source

The bottom line: Peggy will have her take on Monday, but from my vantage point these are impressive proof points that underline the central position of mobile in the marketing mix.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yankee further suggests smartphones are the most competitive battleground in wireless today, and predicts U.S. penetration will reach 38 percent by 2013.  More competitive device entrants, tighter budgets, and increased consumer expectations are factors that will force OEMs and operators to collaborate in order to grow. Source

The bottom line: The proliferation of full-featured handsets and the advance of payment mechanisms (other than the ones operators offer) have created some tension, making this an interesting space to watch.   It’s also worth pointing out that, while 41 percent will choose smartphones, the majority (59 percent) of consumers are not going for smartphones as their next device, nor may they even care to upgrade.

***
IDLE SCREEN TECHNOLOGY ENGAGES 82 PERCENT IN TRIAL by Celltick’s LiveScreen Media platform. The Telefonica mobile operators group announced the launch of an innovative idle screen marketing solution, Livescreen Media, which broadcasts news, sports, business, entertainment and lifestyle teasers – as well as advertising messages directly to the mobile idle-screens.

Movistar, the Mobile Phone Company from the Telefonica Group, tested the service as part of a six-month trial in Mar del Plata, Argentina, involving around 5,000 customers, and results showed 82 percent of users engaged with the new communication channel on the idle screen.  The platform is also able to segment users based on location, handset type and areas of interest which are generated from tracking user response to idle screen messages. Revenue is generated from content downloads, subscription services and advertising fees.  Source

The bottom line: As I posted on my own blog, the Idle Screen presents an enormous opportunity to drive increased data traffic and service engagement, if issues of bandwidth and battery life can be overcome.  82 percent engagement is a massive proportion of users, albeit in a local and rather limited trial. In my book it begs the question: Is further proof of concept really required?

***

PURCHASES ON MOBILE CONSIDERED SAFE BY 71 PERCENT consumers, says an eMarketer summary of recent mobile commerce statistics. The round up reveals the kind of products people want to buy from their phones, which include pizza, movie tickets, hotel rooms, and fast food the most popular.  Internet Retailer, a ranking of America’s 500 largest e-retailers, provides us more proof that mobile commerce is gaining some traction in the U.S. It reports that 5 percent of the top 500 online retailers offer m-commerce sites or iPhone apps. It estimates the U.S. m-commerce market will total $1.6 billion in 2009. Source

The bottom line: This report suggests that the U.S. is ahead of the game in m-commerce. Peggy adds: It also lends credence to the view that mobile advertising (communicating the brand message via mobile) could be just a side-show. The real excitement is building around selling stuff via mobile, a scenario that could put mobile operators (with their trusted payment mechanisms) back on center stage.

***

EUROPE TO HAVE 130 MILLION MOBILE LBS USERS BY 2014. A Berg Insight report predicts that the number of European users of mobile location-based services will grow significantly from 20 million users in 2008, propelled by local search, navigation, and social networking services.

Among the drivers: On-device application stores will provide greater access to mobile services for a broader audience, flat-rate data plans will make pricing transparent and more operators are opening their location platforms up to third parties.  More than 20 percent of mobile handsets shipped in 2009 will feature GPS, and the installed base in Europe will surpass 50 percent of total handsets in 2013.  Source

The bottom line: Berg adds more fuel to the location fire with this report. Technological penetration, consumer education, and basic marketing remain key to the success of location services. And we shouldn’t forget that there’s a big difference between having the technology and using it on a regular basis.

***

NOKIA ANNOUNCES OVI STORE VISITS FROM CONSUMERS IN 152 COUNTRIES.  Two weeks after the initial Ovi launch, Nokia has revealed a range of statistics about the service. It says that the Ovi Store is accessible from over 75 Nokia devices in five languages and taps into mobile billing from 27 operators. When it comes to free downloads, the Applications category tops the list. Games is the top catgory in premium content.  Many of the most popular applications involve messaging, such as Twitter, Facebook and SMS applications. Source

The bottom line: All-systems go for Ovi. After what I described as a difficult launch, these statistics illustrate that the Ovi Store is now bedding in and beginning to enjoy use with a broad reach.  With improved user experience (which will come when the store becomes pre-installed on devices) will come increased, carrier independent use with a significant global footprint.

***
MOBILE REVENUE GROWTH SLOWS TO 3 PERCENT in Q1 2009, according to a Strategy Analytics report. Down from 8 percent a year earlier, the report, “Wireless Operator Performance Benchmarking, Q1 2009,” says nearly 40 percent of all mobile operators saw revenues fall in Q1 2009, compared to just 16 percent in the same forecast period in Q1 2008. The research, which tracks the operational and financial performance of over 175 mobile operators who account for 80 percent of global subscribers, found that a quarter of the operators in emerging markets also saw service revenues fall in Q1 2009. Source

The bottom line: Bleak reading from Strategy Analytics illustrates that the economic downturn has made a global impact on operators, and very few are immune.

****

U.S. FLIRTING ADDICTION SEES AN AVERAGE OF FIVE DAILY LOG-INS AND 26 SENT MESSAGES.  Statistics from Flirtomatic, a U.K.-based mobile and online flirting service that recently launched in America, reveals mobile flirting behavior using their service is remarkably similar on both sides of the Atlantic.  This has allowed Flirtomatic to reach critical mass in the U.S. – much earlier than expected.

By way of background, Flirtomatic, with 1.3 million U.K. users and a frequent listing in the top 5 mobile websites, stands out as one of the mobile Internet’s social networking success stories. It also offers an effective platform for advertisers, and reports an impressive 10 percent CTR.  A witty and effective campaign for Storngbow cider in the U.K. resulted in users sending (gifting) their buddies a whopping 340,000 drinks (delivered as drink tokens to their mobile phones) in just two weeks. Source

The bottom line: Given the previous gloomy story, I thought it reasonable to conclude Data Points on a lighter note this week.  Flirtomatic’s story illustrates what can be achieved if the platform, offering and audience are all in synch and the effort is made to benefit consumers, carriers, advertisers, and partner brands.

***

Is the global downturn for real? It may have impacted the mobile industry at all levels at the start of the year, but the message at the Mobile Marketing Forum was that mobile is bucking the trend.

Between panels and during networking breaks I learned that more brands are taking mobile more seriously. Specifically, those brands that have successfully experimented with mobile in the past are now including mobile as a key component within their marketing mix. The top-notch spot of mobile in the advertising mix – and the mix of brand success stories we heard during the sessions – are sure signs that brands are coming on board. But don’t just take my word for it. Mike Wehrs, MMA President/CEO, reported that marketers are becoming more comfortable integrating mobile within traditional campaigns. As he put it: “Mobile is moving from experimental to essential.”

Indeed, mobile advertising in North America, Europe and APAC has experienced sustained growth. While you can argue that actual growth is still marginal, the development is nonetheless a positive if we consider that budgets earmarked for traditional media have been slashed.  What do the numbers tell us? Peter Johnson, VP Market Intelligence and Strategy at MMA, reckons mobile advertising revenues will increase from $1.36 billion in 2008 to $1.7 billion by end-2009, and rise again to $2.16 billion in 2010.  Peter concluded that, based on his recent research, more consumers are accepting mobile marketing as a relevant and valuable part of their digital lifestyles.

Brands and agencies are understanding the value of mobile advertising, and becoming more adept at using mobile in innovative ways. Highlights included exciting new campaigns from Coca Cola Zero, Sunglass Hut, Kodak and Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Center, and MGM Hotel. Whether the format was text, MMS, display, rich media inside gaming, or couponing – or a combination – the point is: Mobile delivers results and a positive ROI.

A cross-media approach that stood out in my book was Coke’s campaign. The company teamed up with Nokia to emblazon Coke’s distinctive red on Nokia handsets and rounded out the offer with an assortment of Coke ringtones and wallpaper for free download.

Other campaigns illustrated how mobile can connect real world experiences with real results. Using mobile to trigger interactivity and brand interest at the point of purchase (POP) Sunglass Hut encouraged its young customers to be glamorous fashion models and capture their image with their cameraphones and upload it to the Sunglass Hut website to enter a contest to win a free trip valued at $10,000. But the real appeal of the campaign was how the brand connected with young people, thus demonstrating how mobile can be an emotional branding mechanism. Put simply, it’s an innovative and emotive way to convey the essence of the brand. It’s also a magical moment when a brand can inspire this excitement at the all-important point of purchase.

The example of a campaign run by MGM Hotel in Las Vegas showed how mobile marketing can be harnessed for effective direct marketing and sales promotion. In this scenario, the brand used a mix of mobile messaging and highway billboards to connect with consumers and allow them to book a room from the road by sending the request to a shortcode.

In addition to streamlining the reservation process and delivering a confirmation directly to the consumer’s mobile phone, the campaign also continued the one-to-one conversation with consumers when they arrived at the hotel. The result: A continuous conversation that drives continued sales. Consumers stay on the hotel premises and are invited to enjoy perks such as discounted snacks and treats, free dinners and a range of incentives around the casino. The brand’s objective was to reward customers and keep them on the premises, and the ongoing conversation via mobile text achieved this.

What do these varied success stories have in common? All these campaigns were simple, innovative and effective. A clear message to brands that they don’t need whiz-bang technology or high-cost production to drive positive results. Peggy adds: Another confirmation of the key message of my recent mobile advertising white paper: The innovation is not in advertising formats, but how we use them.

But it’s not just brands that are waking up to the pivotal role of mobile in the advertising mix. As Charles Johnson, General Manager, Microsoft Mobile, put it:  “There is growing realization that mobile is the only medium that can complete the entire marketing cycle from awareness and activation to engagement and sales.” Microsoft is walking the talk, taking the wraps off  Bing, an online search portal designed from the ground up to give consumers more relevant search results. Microsoft intends to elevate the mobile search and advertising experience in a similar fashion. In fact, the company’s search and advertising platform, which is media agnostic, is geared to serve adverts that are highly targeted and contextually relevant.

Another factor that contributes to the sustained growth of mobile advertising, and the increased interest of big-name brands, is the proliferation of smartphones. The phenomenal popularity of these devices – specifically the Apple iPhone – has triggered an astounding shift in user behavior. In fact, Paul Palmieri, CEO, Millennial Media, counts 59 million uniques (that means 59 million advertising opportunities).

The MMF showcased the progress made by brands, but it also reminded us of the work ahead to define and refine the metrics that will help marketers measure success as well as failure. Fortunately, Markus Munkler, Senior Manager, Industry Initiatives, Vodafone, could update us on some significant progress. He pointed out that there are cross-industry efforts underway in the U.S., bringing together the MMA, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the U.S. Media Rating Council, to standardize ad measurement and reporting.  The initiative – which is similar to the one spearheaded by the GSMA aimed at generating cross-operator mobile advertising metrics based on usage data submitted by all five U.K. operators – is a vital step in creating a framework for global media planning.

Connect the dots, and there is a groundswell of interest and enthusiasm around mobile advertising across the ecosystem. As Paul from Millennial Media, pointed out: Following the post 9/11 downturn, online advertising enjoyed “hockey stick” growth between 2002 and 2005. Mobile advertising is likewise close to a tipping point, an impressive growth trajectory we will likely see as the global recession recedes and markets recover.

My takeaway: Kudos to the MMA for once again assembling industry leaders from all corners of the ecosystem. Communication, education, and understanding how companies up and down the value chain view the opportunities and obstacles are imperative to get the industry on track. Signs of progress are abundant and inspiring: These folks are serious about success and determined to develop standards and metrics to create a level playing field and foster global trade. Where are the brands? For the most part, brands are content to stick their toes in the water. What will move them to take the plunge? The industry must provide brands reach, standard formats across channels, standard metrics and reporting, and the ability to tap into mobile operator’s vast stockpile of subscriber intelligence for better targeting and relevancy. That’s the brief, and we shouldn’t believe that a single entity can fulfill the vision of mobile. Cooperation and collaboration are essential, and there is no market to fight over until we create it – together. Only then will the mobile advertising industry realize its full potential, and deliver an effective and engaging brand message that will revolutionize they way we communicate, respond to marketing and consume content.

The bottom line: It’s encouraging to see traction for this particular approach to mobile search. Peggy adds: The question remains: Will mobile-only search, which essentially promotes a subset of wealth of content/apps/stuff out there, continue to flourish? Or will it be Web search scenarios, enabled by the usual list of suspects all over again. I have some positive views on the potential of social search in mobile, and share these via podcasts (such as this one) and my contributions to mobile search white papers.

And while we mull over the prospects for mobile search, I invite you to consider the graph below from StatCounter Global Stats (based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites) showing the companies that lead in online search . Charles Knight – my esteemed colleague and the “voice of alternative search” at MSG partner site AltSearchEngines - has launched a contest and asks: What is the one word that best describes Google’s lead? (Google is the read line at the top.) “Alarming” is my pick…

Since AltSearchEngines doesn’t focus on mobile search (which is why we have partnered), allow me to share the StatCounter Global Stat chart for mobile search, and likewise ask your views. Why does Google lead the pack? (Particularly when the mobile experience offered by Google is known to be unsatisfactory…) What do YOU think?

***

OPERA BROWSER EDGES OUT iPHONE IN MAY, according to Web-analytics firm StatCounter.  The Norwegian browser firm Opera Software saw its mobile browser surpass the iPhone’s popularity last month. Based on aggregate data findings on a sample of over 4 billion page views per month, the study said 24.6 percent of Internet pages downloaded to mobile devices went through Opera’s mobile browser, and 22.3 percent through the iPhone. Source

The bottom line: Although Opera would likely have lost out if the iPod Touch had been counted, these figures are still significant. It can also be read as an indicator of BlackBerry’s mobile Internet dominance.  The American smartphone is widely perceived as THE corporate device, so while Internet appetite might wane after some time for the casual user, maybe it’s BlackBerry’s leagues of loyal prosumers that keep Opera that little bit ahead of iPhone.

***

MOBILE ADVERTISING IS EXPECTED TO BE WORTH $5.7 billion by 2014, according to Juniper Research. The report says a need for customer engagement and a quantifiable return on investment will drive growth in mobile advertising, but brands are still doubtful that “mobile has sufficient reach to warrant substantive ad spend.” 

Mobile will still account for only 1.5 percent of total global ad spend by 2014. Jupiter points out that, although this year will see the mobile Internet become the most popular delivery channel for advertisers, CPCs and CPMs have fallen sharply over the past year.  But there is a bright side: Response rates in mobile advertising remain substantially higher than those in other media. Source

The bottom line: A mix of good and bad news on mobile advertising from Juniper, and another voice supporting changes many in the industry agree are critical:  More engaging mobile advertising campaigns and agreement on key performance indicators and measurement tools. Let’s hope Juniper’s advertising spend proportions are a just a miserly prediction.  Peggy adds: After all, word is – and this was expressed at this week’s Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) event in NYC – that the industry is only waiting for a few solid success stories to drive significant ad spend. More on the mood/news at the MMA event in a special report from Jim Levey, a former mobile advertising executive at Amdocs, whom I am proud to report has joined our roster of authors and correspondents. Jim will be tracking and commenting on mobile advertising industry developments that matter.

***

AVERAGE MOBILE MARKETING BUDGETS WILL INCREASE 26 PERCENT this year, even as overall marketing expenditures decline by 7 percent, according to new Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) research presented at its New York conference. 

But although mobile is fighting against the downward momentum of spending, at 1.8 percent it still only makes up a small fraction of total marketing budgets. The MMA projects that mobile ad spending will grow from $1.7 billion this year to $2.16 billion in 2010.  MMA says SMS campaigns remain the most common at 66 percent, followed by having a mobile Web (53 percent), and mobile email marketing (33 percent). Source

The bottom line:  This research puts a more positive spin on the state of the market (as opposed to Juniper’s rather sobering report above). That mobile marketing spends are going up during a generally down time can only be encouraging.  However, the challenge must remain in convincing brands to dedicate a greater proportion of their budget to an exciting new medium, whether that’s through tried and trusted messaging campaigns, or using richer new mobile media.  Growth and innovative mobile development still needs risk-takers and brave allocation of budget from the big-name brands.

***

GLOBAL MOBILE VIDEO USERS WILL total more than 534 million by 2014, according to a forecast issued by Pyramid Research.  It says a strong percentage of mobile net additions will come from emerging markets. The study adds that mobile video subscribers will rise roughly 8.5 percent by 2014, citing the availability of improved devices and networks as the keys to driving adoption. The Asia Pacific market will lead the mobile video growth spurt, claiming 281 million subscriptions by 2014, and India will also experience a dramatic uptake. Source

The bottom line: Mobile video has only very recently begun to penetrate western markets, thanks to the improved user experience and larger screens available with the latest smartphones.  Although eastern markets are ahead of the game in this respect, and the projections largely focus on these geographies, the predictions still seem bold. The provision of adequate bandwidth and the development of LTE technologies will be critical for the global take-up of mobile video, whether it’s accessed via streaming, downloads, or by accessing the 3G Video Call channel.

***

NOKIA’S POPULARITY IS FADING FAST AMONGST TEENS reports online teen hangout, Habbo Hotel.  A survey asked 112,000 teenagers in 30 countries to choose their top cellphone brand, and just 21 percent of respondents chose Nokia, down from 29 percent last year. Source

The bottom line: The Habbo survey numbers are reported to have excluded key emerging markets (such as India and China, where Nokia is market leader), and may also have had a strong bias towards respondents from America, where Nokia’s market share is much less.  However, there’s probably some truth in the suggestion that Nokia could do with re-energizing their brand for the global youth market.

***

NEARLY 60 PERCENT OF U.S. MOBILE PHONE OWNERS TEXT, with 94 percent of teens the largest user group, and 20-somethings at 87 percent.  So say results from the second annual Vlingo Consumer Mobile Messaging Habits Report. Among those in their 40s, usage jumped from 56 percent in 2008 to 64 percent this year, and for those in their 50s it jumped from 38 percent to 46 percent. The report explains that texting is also gaining on sending/receiving calls as the primary use of mobile phones, with 35 percent of all respondents using their phones for texting more than for calls. Almost half of respondents do both in equal numbers.  Text message volumes have risen across all age groups, although the 13 to 19 age group remains the most active with an average of more than 500 texts per month.  It also claims that more than a quarter of mobile users drive while texting. Source

The bottom line: The rise of messaging in the U.S. appears undaunted in this report, with ever-climbing numbers not always reflecting responsible use of America’s favorite non-voice mobile communication channel.

The bottom line: Another reason to be optimistic about the development of the mobile advertising market in the U.S.  Forecasts that growth will be stunted in 2009 are now tempered by bullish predictions for 2010. Advances in handset penetration, the spread of ad-funded content/services schemes, and a wealth of app store offerings should result in an even greater take-up of mobile advertising.

***
THE MOBILE INTERNET, MOBILE EMAIL AND MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING ARE USED BY MORE THAN HALF of mobile phone users. A mobile Internet poll carried out by user experience consultancy Webcredible showed that of the respondents who used the mobile Internet (52 percent), over half (55 percent) used it primarily for emailing and social networking. Source

The bottom line: We know that the growth of mobile Internet usage is linked to the youth demographic and their particular usage pattern (transferring their fixed-line Internet/PC behavior to mobile). This study provides us with some numbers to back this up.

***

SMARTPHONES REPRESENT A MINORITY of U.S. mobile device purchases, accounting for 23 percent of handset sales volume in Q1, says recent data from market research firm NPD Group. Yet as a percentage of overall handset sales to consumers in the U.S. from January through July 2008, smartphones represented 19 percent of all handset purchases compared to just 9 percent for the same period in the previous year. This rise was put down to declining prices, streamlined form factors, and Internet connectivity bringing devices into the mainstream. Source

The bottom line: It’s easy (particularly if you are focused on the mobile content industry) to lose sight of the fact that smartphones, despite the hype and their urban cool factor, remain a minority in the marketplace. The percentage is rising, but there is no doubt a large and untapped market opportunity in catering to plain-old, low-end devices.

***

51 PERCENT OF U.S. SUBSCRIBERS ACCESS ENTERTAINMENT, games, news, and social information via their mobile phones every week, according to a new study published by research and consultation firm Frank N. Magid Associates. Based on a January 2009 survey of 4,000 U.S. consumers between the ages of 12 and 64, Magid says mobile content users now spend about the same amount of time with content (39 minutes) as the average user does sending text messages (38 minutes) or talking on their handset (44 minutes).

The study also suggests that mobile entertainment content like games, music, and social network services are used for longer periods of time than ‘utilitarian’ content such as news, weather and sports scores. Behaviors are split along demographic lines (as you would expect). For a whopping 80 percent of 12-34 year olds, mobile social networking is the thing to do; news consumption is dominated (79 percent) by 18-54 year olds. Source

The bottom line: Encouraging stats that outline how we use the mobile Internet and underline the role of the youth demographic. The one to watch is the richer, data-heavier mobile content consumption habits of the 12-34s.  So called ‘utilitarian’ content often leads towards instant hits – quickly check the headlines, scores, and weather – but means reduced browsing time.

***

AUDIENCE TARGETING MOBILE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS OUTPACED demographic targeting campaigns by nearly four times in April, according to Millennial Media, which has released its April brand advertiser-focused Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART). It says that this translated to major increases in purchase intent for key age groups, while the complexity of mobile ad campaigns demonstrated a lift in the number of users being driven to an established destination. Source

The bottom line: These figures underline the importance of delivering relevant mobile advertising content to a known audience with known interests, as opposed to bracketing by demographics.  While it’s a given that social networking and entertainment are consumed by a generally younger demographic, the ability to tailor advertising directly for people with specific interests – whatever their age – is critical to the success of mobile advertising.

Peggy adds: Indeed, as my close friend and colleague Tomi Ahonen – a late-40-ish, Scandinavian who is totally (!) into rap music and Formula 1 racing – has reminded me many times. No one fits the mould – and no one should. Plug that in your age demographics! An approach based on demographics is fundamentally flawed, with the difference that we will perhaps tolerate the mismatch between who we are and how brands sell to us on TV (commercials for pension schemes during the network news and ads for annoying ringtones on music television), but on mobile it’s spam. I’ll have more on the Millennial Media stats in a briefing with Paul Palmieri, president and CEO of Millennial Media.

***

BLACKBERRY APP WORLD’S LOCATION APPLICATIONS are four times more expensive than iPhone and Android location apps, according to a Skyhook Wireless Report. The study found a marked disparity in application cost between the three stores, with the average price of a location-aware application in the Blackberry App World store being $13.60, compared with $3.60 in the iTunes App Store, and $0.84 in the Android Marketplace.

The Apple App Store has the greatest number of location-based applications (over 2,300), and the highest percentage of paid LBS apps (over 75 percent). 67 percent of Blackberry apps are paid, and 80 percent of Android Marketplace apps are free.

The report found that the most popular location aware apps were for Travel, Navigation, and Social Networking, but new apps like Music, Finance, and Games were also beginning to gain traction. Source

The bottom line: These mobile application storefronts cater to slightly different markets, so they will price their products accordingly.  However, such an obvious inequality in pricing for similar applications using identical location technologies will surely persuade many prospective customers to think twice before joining the BlackBerry camp, especially when Microsoft and Palm application storefronts come online giving consumers more choice and increasing overall competition between storefronts.

***

APPLE SOLD 3.9 MILLION HANDSETS DURING the first quarter of 2009 to more than double its market share, says Gartner. Smartphone sales hit 36.4 million, representing a 12.7 percent increase from 12 months earlier. The report also says that smartphone sales represented 13.5 percent of all mobile device sales in 1Q09, compared with 11 percent in 1Q08.  It also reflects a doubling of Apple’s market share from 5.3 percent to 10.8 percent. Source

The bottom line: These statistics make Apple the third-ranked smartphone manufacturer by volume.  Although it remains in Nokia’s shadow – Nokia still commands a 41.2 percent share – it will be interesting to see how the imminent arrival of Nokia’s application storefront, the Ovi Store, and its success or otherwise, impacts on Apple’s apparently relentless growth.
Mark Hawkins is a Director of the Mobile Data Association and a freelance communications practitioner of mobile technologies.  He previously managed global communications for MX Telecom, the mobile data aggregation group.  His personal blog can be found at http://amarkhawkins.wordpress.com

The webinar dovetails well with my mobile advertising projects, including Mobile Advertising Research U.K., a research project MSG has undertaken to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K., identify growth opportunities in the emerging mobile advertising marketplace, and benefit stakeholders, shareholders, and consumers worldwide.  It draws upon primary research, including in-depth interviews with 15+ mobile executives, agencies, and mobile networks, including an interview this week with Freddy Friedman, Mobixell Head of Advertising. With my MSG hat on I will also request a later briefing with Mobixell (for MSG) to discuss recent news, new customers, and the role of mobile in a multi-channel advertising strategy.

I’ve also wrapped up my contribution to a series on audio-visual presentations on mobile advertising produced by Henry Stewart Talks (HST), which will likely go live in early June. HST, a company with a 35-year tradition, provides access to world class seminars by leading thinkers and authorities from around the globe in one online resource.

The company commissioned me to summarize the findings of both volumes of my extremely popular mobile advertising white paper series (sponsored by Bango): Mobile Advertising for Newbies, which provides a how-to guide to mobile advertising and analytics; and Mobile Advertising For The Masses, which examines the market opportunity for running campaigns in a mobile social networks.

I am pleased to have the opportunity (as part of HST’s Marketing & Management series) to educate the marketplace about mobile advertising and the pivotal role of mobile analytics.

I’m also honored to join the impressive roster of mobile advertising executives and thinkers including: Harald Neidhardt, CMO, Smaato Inc.; Michael Becker, EVP of Business Development, iLoop Mobile; Gerry Christensen, CTO, Zoove; Diane Strahan, Vice President of Mobile Services, NeuStar; Chris Torbit, Vice President of Mobile Services, SmartReply; James Darcey, Senior Vice President, Single Touch Interactive; G.D. Ramkumar, Co-founder and CTO, SnapTell; Ramin Vatanparast, Senior Strategy & Business Development Manager, Nokia; Saul Kato, Founder, Qwikker; and Phyllis Reuther, CTO, Archipelago Network.

I’m especially excited to learn more about Phyllis’ new endeavor, and will keep you posted on MSG. (By way of background, Phyllis was previously CTO at Mobile Content Networks (MCN)-a company that began by providing a platform for federated mobile search and has since extended its reach to provide a combination PPC content promotion and vertical paid search program.) I also encourage you to download her talk for an expert overview of mobile search and advertising.

The individual HST presentations cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from an overview of the burgeoning mobile content market, and the barriers to success and challenges faced by content developers and owners to establish long-term customer relationships and revenue streams, to an in-depth look at the emerging practice of consumer-centric marketing, detailing the opportunities and challenges arising from its adoption.

A particularly interesting talk reviews the use of current opt-in methods – like the Common Short Code – with new mobile enabling technologies, such as Bluetooth alerts, “StarStar” (**) dialing, interactive voice response, 2-D (or QR code) image recognition, content-embedded techniques, and location-based services.

I still have the opportunity to take your views and perspectives into account, and I would welcome your input to this defining work.

If you have an interest in being considered for an interview for MobiAD World Focus, please contact me directly or send an email to my assistant Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter.

Since teaming up with Rudy De Waele, blogger at mTrends and  dotopen founder, to develop mobile search case studies in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), and seeing the positive response to our work to date, I’m convinced mobile search is back again at the top of the industry agenda. And with good reason: Search is the de facto interface to all things digital in the online space, and there is every indication that it will be the same in mobile.

From mobile advertising, where our queries trigger the delivery of related advertising (in the best case scenario, we’re not there yet), to social media, where the content we appreciate and discuss across destinations ranging from MySpace to Twitter allows us to restore balance in an otherwise purely algorithmic approach that tends to promote search engine optimized websites over what we find genuinely relevant and useful, mobile search is where the action is.

But as Rudy and I have both pointed out in our recent presentations, mobile search is not about the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft). Rudy spoke at Next09, and you can find his slides  further on in this post; I spoke at the European Mobile Media Conference, and my deck can likewise be found after the jump.

Indeed, context and personalization change all the rules (!)

A highlight of our recent presentations: A comprehensive overview of the market and (thanks to Rudy) a SWOT analysis of the players that stand out in their category such as Google (universal search with a poor mobile offer and an even weaker grasp of social search), and Twitter (a case of mobile search + social media = real-time results that really reflect what we discuss/share).

In my own mobile search research – an on-going project that began back in 2004/2005 when I wrote the first report on mobile search and content discovery, a 220+ page report published by Informa Telecoms & Media – I have recently identified some 60+ companies and 10+ categories of mobile search I would like to share with you (below) for your feedback.

INTERACE

• Text: ChaCha, 4INFO,MINFO, textperts (acquired by 118118), Answers.com, AnyQuestionAnswered, Ask, AskMeNow
• Voice: Google, Yahoo, Vlingo, Microsoft, ChaCha (Watch this space for an expert assessment of the voice-enabled services offered by Google, Vlingo, and ChaCha. ( I am proud to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Peggy Albright, MSG Associate and founder of Albright Communications, and even prouder of the results.)
• Visual: IQ Engines, Kooaba, Mobile Acuity, Searchme, SnapNow, SnapTell, Tin Eye Mobile, Nokia
• Navigational: Boopsie, kannuu, Nuance (through Tegic acquisition)

ACTIONABLE

• Universal: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL (based on Google), Medio Systems, JumpTap (although a much stronger focus on mobile advertising)
• Federated: MCN, Motricity (managed mobile search platform providers)
• Operator-centric search: Amdocs, Qualcomm, IBM and this company coming out of stealth mode
• Alternative search: Defined as every service except for Google, and includes a long tail of 1500+ search engines (tracked by AltSearchEngines) with ambitions to go mobile – some sooner than later
• Vertical/content-specific search: abphone, vtap, Truveo
• Local search: Hundreds of players that offer local search via SMS services, on their own WAP sites, and/or as part of a nearby shopping scheme. (Fortunately, the local mobile search landscape is the topic of an upcoming column on MSG from Martin Wilson, founder of Indigo 102, an independent consultancy with a focus on mobile local search and services, so watch this space!)

SOCIAL

• abphone, ChaCha, Hiogi, Taptu
• Twitter in a class by itself!

It’s work in progress, but it’s all the more exciting if we remember that – in mobile search – the players that matter and the business models that deliver are wide open to discussion.

Indeed, the central role of mobile search in a wide variety of mobile services around sharing, advertising, location, and context-aware activities turns up the pressure on an even broader range of businesses (operators, brands, agencies, enablers – everyone!) to understand what mobile search delivers (and doesn’t) and the companies/models that do it best.

To help mobile professionals and practitioners navigate this tough terrain, Rudy and I have joined together on a project to produce the definitive mobile search market overview, a work that will draw from primary research, case studies, and exclusive forecasts to document this exciting space and present our recommendations for strategies to harness growth opportunities on the horizon.

I still have the opportunity to take your views and perspectives into account, and I would welcome your input. The project, widely distributed via our sites and via our network of sites, supporters, and influencers, will also offer a commercial opportunity to companies interested in conveying their value proposition to a growing community of senior executives and decision-makers in the mobile space.

If you are a mobile search company with an interest in being considered for an interview, please contact me directly or send an email to my assistant Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

However, smart companies know that a sluggish economy spell opportunity for businesses that know how to move forward when the economy is standing still. Indeed, the doom-and-gloom mood hasn’t stopped 50+ industry heavyweights from around the world from meeting in London in June for an executive brainstorm about the future profit opportunities in an open mobile world.

I am reminded of the recent MSG podcast with Tom Huseby, Managing Partner, SeaPoint Ventures, and his observation that there is plenty of money and opportunity in mobile, but it’s up to entrepreneurs to structure their good ideas so VCs get it. Mobile has enjoyed an exceptionally high growth trajectory and even the credit crunch can’t discourage VCs from investing. “On the whole, venture capitalists have not run out of money. The bars are high and it’s difficult, but my gosh, my advice to entrepreneurs is keep working on your idea until it does appeal to the money, or don’t use the money to do it.” What has VCs excited? Open systems, open storefronts and open operators – and lots of apps.

Against this backdrop, the timing couldn’t be better for an industry event sharply focused on what open is (and isn’t). Yes, it’s about new and increasingly open business ecosystems (where mobile operators can still play a central role provided they play according to the new rules). But open means much more. It’s about the convergence of platforms and devices to blur the boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds, and transform communication, content, advertising, search and retail.

More importantly, open is about the shift from command-control to coordinate-cultivate, a seismic shift in how we do business and make money.

How do we get there from here? What models are sustainable and which are hype? There are no easy answers. However, the Open Mobile Summit (June 10-11 in London), produced by Robin Batt, an independent consultant with 13 years experience in the space, certainly covers all the bases to offer attendees insights that will allow them to take charge of the wave of change rather than be crashed by it. (In fact, even Google is attending!)

I was so impressed by the line-up of topics and top-notch speakers that I immediately signed on to be a premiere media sponsor and moderate the session on mobile advertising. I am pleased to report I now have 5 heavily discount passes to share with readers at just £995, valid until 26 May. VIP code: MSG. Register here http://www.openmobilesummit.com

The Open Mobile Summit, like the emerging value chain it represents, brings together world-class speakers from mobile operators, handset OEMs, wireless software houses, and Internet and applications companies, to explore how to profit in an open mobile economy. I hope you will join me and senior executives from T-Mobile, Vodafone, TeliaSonera, O2, Google, Nokia, Yahoo, RIM, Acer, LG, Motorola, and Symbian – plus a mix of VCs and industry analysts at this powerful cross-industry networking event.

The Open Mobile Summit provides an executive summary on all the key strategic developments – and growth areas – in mobile today. Including:

• App Stores: Fad or Future?
• Who will own the mobile desktop?
• Beyond the phone
• Internet vs made-for mobile
• Future of the Operator Deck
• Inter-connected Entertainment
• Mobile Advertising
• Where’s the value in open mobile
• How to monetize mobile Internet
• Open APIs and Smart Pipes

Full agenda here http://www.openmobilesummit.com/agenda.aspx

Speakers include:

Operators:

• Christopher Schläffer, Group Product & Innovation Officer, Deutsche Telekom * Keynote Speaker
• Kenneth Karlberg, President Business Area Mobility Services, TeliaSonera * Keynote Speaker
• Yves Maitre, SVP Devices, Orange
• Dr Mike Short, Vice President R&D, Telefonica O2 Europe
• Hossein Moiin, Fellow Mobility, British Telecom
• Tanya Field, Director, Mobile Data Group, Telefonica O2
• Pieter Knook, Director Internet Services, Vodafone
• Ed Candy, Former CTO, 3
• Nabeel Mardi, VP Device Development, T-Mobile International
• Christiane Vejlø, Head of Innovation, 3 Denmark
• Chris Bruce, GM, BT Openzone
• Geraldine Wilson, CEO, Truphone
• Martin Wrigley, Director Technology, Orange

Devices:

• Alan Brenner, SVP, RIM * Keynote Speaker
• Christy Wyatt, Vice President, Software Platforms and Ecosystem, Motorola * Keynote Speaker
• Aymer de Lencquesaing, Senior Corporate VP, Acer
• Marco Argenti, VP Media, Nokia
• Jin-Sung Choi, VP Mobile Communications, LG Electronics
• Jon ‘maddog’ Hall, Chief Advocate, openmoko

Internet / Applications:

• Hugo Barra, Global Director Mobile Applications, Google
• Mitch Lazar, MD, Yahoo! Mobile, Europe
• Frank Keeling, MD Europe, Glu Mobile
• Steve Ives, CEO, Taptu
• Ray Anderson, CEO, Bango
• Paran Johar, CMO, JumpTap
• Ted Wugofski, CTO, Handmark
• Russell Buckley, VP Alliances Admob / Chair MMA
• Ilja Laurs, CEO, GetJar
• Jakob Berg, CEO, Popcatcher
• Rob Lewis, CEO, Omnifone
• Sean Kane, Head of Mobile, Bebo Inc

Software and Silicon:

• Lee Williams, Executive Director, Symbian Foundation * Keynote Speaker
• Morgan Gillis, Executive Director, LiMo Foundation
• Kiyo Oishi, CEO, Access Systems * Keynote Speaker
• Rich Green, former EVP, Sun Microsystems
• Jon S von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera
• Jay Sullivan, VP, Mozilla Foundation
• Enrico Salvatori, SVP & GM, Qualcomm Europe
• Gil Rosen, Vice President – Strategic Initiatives & Customer Experience, Amdocs Interactive

Analysts and Organizations:

• Henry Stevens, Entertainment and Media Director, GSMA
• Philipp Diebert, Executive Program Manager, NGMN
• Tim Raby, MD, OMTP
• Mike Grant, Partner, Analysys Mason
• Matt Hatton, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason
• Caroline Gabriel, Rethink Research
• Simon Torrance, CEO, STL Partners / Telco 2.0
• Philipp Hoschka, Deputy Director, w3c
• Peggy Salz, Editor, MSearchGroove
• Ajit Jaokar, Founder, Futuretext
• Stewart Anderton, Principal Consultant, Ovum
• Robert Andrews, Editor, paidContent:UK

Content / Media / Agency:

• Christian Lindholm, Partner, Fjord
• Scott Seaborn, Head of Mobile, Ogilvy Group UK
• Sunil Gundeira, VP Mobile, Disney EMEA
• Barney Wragg, Independent Media Consultant
• Rob Unsworth, VP, Digital Chocolate

Investment community:

• Rajeev Chand, Managing Director Wireless, Rutberg & Co
• Rod Hall, Executive Director European Comms, JP Morgan
• Kaj-Erik Relander, Partner, Accel Partners
• James Enck, Senior Partner, mCapital

I hope to see you there, and if you want to catch-up or meet-up, then please reach out to me at peggy@msearchgroove.com – or schedule a slot with my PA Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

To fully understand the significance of Scanbuy’s decision, it’s important to review the events and announcements that have effectively dealt companies up and down the mobile barcode business ecosystem (Scanbuy included) a new hand of cards.

First came the decision in February by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the patent claims filed by NeoMedia Technologies, a provider of barcode scanning solutions. The move prompted NeoMedia to push forward in March on a patent licensing program and tie up with other vendors (3GVision, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Tag, and NeuStar) in a pilot program based on open standards in a bid to show interoperability between the technologies out there and – more importantly – position NeuStar, a short code registry, as a central clearinghouse in the middle. More about this model and Jonathan’s own take in the podcast.

I appreciate that the barcode space is a tough one to navigate, which is why I also recommend this simple primer from Tim Green over at Mobile Entertainment.  Unfortunately, he wrote it before this flurry of activity.

So, what moved Scanbuy to open up the specs to the code that Jonathan stresses has been “labelled” proprietary (thus repeating the discussion around semantics that we began in this earlier interview on MSG)? At one level, it is a giant step toward building a viable ecosystem. But we can also read it as reaction to the pilot program (supported by players 3GVision, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Tag, NeoMedia, and NeuStar).

In response to my comment that NeuStar is clearly positioning itself to play the honest broker in a kind of hybrid model, Jonathan reminds me that Scanbuy can now also play the role of a trusted third party. “We don’t have a proprietary code or reader any more.” (Before Scanbuy’s wise decision to go open, other barcode companies could make a case that it was a closed shop with Scanbuy the only company that could both issue EZcode barcodes and decode them.) The argument from other vendors was that they didn’t have a choice because Scanbuy was the only company that could provide the technology, Jonathan explained. “But that now is off the table.”

NUTS & BOLTS: Scanbuy has committed to publishing the specifications for reading EZcodes, giving companies/developers the ability to create EZcodes. “So, a software company could create software for handsets which enables handsets to read those codes, and they could also create server side software which allows them to create the codes.” Plug-ins? They appear to be work in progress. “We’re looking at that; we made the announcement first. [As to] how we implement it, we’re looking at a lot of different tactics on how to release it and what the best way is.” De-coding? “Anybody who currently creates handset software to de-code barcodes could integrate these specifications into their current decoders.  So, 3GVision, for instance, who have software which de-codes QR and data matrix, could build in the functionality to also de-code EZcodes.

PROCEDURE & SUPPORT: For now, it’s all through Scanbuy. “Over the coming weeks they’ll be able to look at the specifications and create a platform which meets the specifications to create the codes on their own, if they want.” Meanwhile, Scanbuy is thinking through the details of offering support. “Support will probably not be free, however. So we’ll make the specifications free, support is probably going to cost.  What it’s going to cost, I’m not sure.”

OPEN STANDARD: Open is the direction the industry needs to go. While the pilot program, led by NeuStar, may be on the mark, Jonathan wonders whether it might not be too much, too soon. “Too many players, too early, can create too much competition and confusion in the market and it’s not necessarily a good thing.” As he puts it: “To have multiple players, you have to have multiple revenue opportunities for those players to be able to operate and compete, and it’s not clear right now what everybody’s revenue model is in that scenario.”

NEUSTAR: “We’ll see what happens over the next few months.  Obviously we are playing the most active role in the U.S. today as the only authorized code and the only authorized platform provider, so, we’re a major player in the space in the U.S. and we believe we’ll continue to be going forward.” (NeuStar has a strong focus on the U.S. market, thus Jonathan’s comments are limited to that geography.) Not satisfied, I put the question to him straight: What is Scanbuy’s position and will it participate in the pilot? “They [NeuStar] are positioning themselves as the clearing house which everything goes through. It’s not clear to us that they will play that role, so for us participating in the pilot at this point, we don’t know that it’s in our best interest to do that at this point [time].  We believe that if that is the final structure that the carriers decide is the best for the U.S. market, there will be a role for us to play. But it’s not clear. By no means is this the de facto structure for the U.S. market.”

DRIVERS: What is going to move barcode solutions out into mainstream mobile marketing and advertising campaigns? “This market will happen if readers are built into phones by the carriers, not by pushing downloads to consumers.” (By way of background, Scanbuy’s ScanLife handset application has already been pre-loaded on handsets from LG, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and been made compatible for mobile phones running on Google Android as well as BlackBerry, iPhone, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.) “The carriers need to decide, OK, are we bundling readers on our phones or not? Sprint in the U.S. is about to start pre-loading our software on their phones, which is great news for the industry and for us.  But we need the others to get on board, and this has to become standard in every phone just as your Internet browser is that you use on your mobile device.”

EUROPE: Spain and Italy lead the pack – mainly because operators in these countries have chosen to pre-load readers on all their handsets. “What you’re starting to see [in Spain] is widespread code use. Marketers can go to several different campaign managers and get their codes, and they [the codes] will work across multiple operator platforms and handsets in the market.  If that’s the ecosystem that evolves, codes will be everywhere and they will be completely integrated into all marketing materials at all levels for marketers and media.”

DIRECT/INDIRECT MODELS: Which models are popular where? Japan has embraced a direct model (routing the user who scans the barcode directly to a site/destination). The trend in Western Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. is toward an indirect model, where scanning the barcode takes the user to a third-party server (where the site/action linked to a specific advertising campaign can be stored but also changed on the fly to freshen the sales pitch or simply point the user to a different site). “What you’re seeing in countries like Australia …is this hybrid approach where the campaign managers create a direct code that has a URL embedded in it, but that URL goes to their platform and the platform then tells it what URL to link to. So it’s a direct code but it goes through a campaign manager’s platform, not to the person who is putting the code out.” Could the U.S. adopt a similar model to make barcodes work? It could, provided that “code readers are ubiquitous on all phones; they read direct codes but the codes go to authorized campaign manager platforms.”

OUTLOOK: Is huge (!), but not all countries are moving at the same pace. “The markets where carriers and handset manufacturers are embracing it and getting phones into the market with software on them will take off the fastest.” In 2-3 years “codes will be everywhere in Spain and Italy.” In the U.S., the timeframe is “probably 3 to 4 years, and Latin America is probably 3 years.” Are we heading for a shake-in or shake-out? “From a competitive standpoint, I think you’re going to have major players in different geographies and the players in each geography will get stronger; there won’t be a lot of competition in each geography.” There may be a couple of players, but there are not going to be ten, for example. And this goes double for clearinghouses. “There aren’t going to be ten clearing houses in Spain or Italy or the U.S.

HOT TOPICS: In the U.S., it’s about “patent-related questions” and figuring out the right structure and ecosystem to take barcodes to the next level. In Europe it’s about growth – because the market is growing – and identifying the catalysts for even stronger growth. What’s next for Scanbuy? The excitement builds as the company nears the launch of two carriers in Spain, laying the groundwork for the first cross-carrier launch in Europe. “Spain will be the first country to actually launch and be operational with an interoperable system, and therefore our other markets around the globe, Latin America, US, Denmark, will be interoperable with those platforms so we’ll have a multi-country, 5 to 7 country interoperable system up and running in the next six weeks.”

My take: As I wrote earlier, the focus on open standards changes all the rules. The Scanbuy announcement signals a new chapter in the barcode industry (and a long overdue rethink on the part of Scanbuy). It also jumpstarts an equally overdue discussion around openness. But – as we know from similar discussions elsewhere in the telecoms and IT industries – there are different degrees and definitions of openness. How open is open and which open is best? The jury is out on that one.

In the meantime, there’s no overlooking the overlap between Scanbuy’s new push toward open standards and the progress of a pilot program (in which Scanbuy currently has little interest) aimed (likewise) at establishing open standards and a viable ecosystem. From my vantage point, the laundry list of fragmentation and intellectual property issues has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. But that’s not an excuse for not moving the market forward. Scanbuy’s decision marks real progress toward openness – and there is no turning back for anyone. Now all parties will have to walk the talk (and abandon the rhetoric we read across the blogosphere) if they want mobile advertisers to embed barcodes in their marketing strategies and not just dabble with one-off experiments.

Speaking of walk the talk, today Scanbuy’s EZ codes features on the cover BrandDigital: Simple Ways Top Brands Succeed in the Digital World, a business book by branding expert Allen Adamson. The 2D barcode on the back cover connects directly to the title’s page on Amazon’s mobile website, making this the first book to be sold in North America that includes an EZcode to sell the title via the mobile device. As Jonathan put in a statement: “This is a perfect example of how a 2D code placed on any physical media can send an interested shopper directly to a purchase opportunity. The mobile commerce experience has improved substantially over the past twelve to eighteen months, and we expect to see more of these applications in the future being initiated through our technology.”

This scenario also figures prominently in the Netsize Guide 2009, a 250-page mobile industry overview I wrote and offer for free download via a link on the homepage (sidebar).

Barcodes or visual search? Which technology approach will best link our virtual and physical worlds to support commerce? What do YOU think?

(I should mention at this juncture that the MSG global mobile industry research project and publication will feature a section on barcode companies and showcase successful mobile advertising campaigns. If you are a company in this space, or would like MSG to consider a mobile advertising campaign case study for inclusion in this work, then please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

At the other end of the spectrum, this shift in mindset also turns up the pressure on mobile search providers to develop services that are (likewise) more useful, engaging and personal. Indeed, improving the mobile search user experience is at the center of a sustainable and successful mobile search and advertising strategy. Users are encouraged to explore the wealth of content and applications at their fingertips, and their urge to discover leads to more queries and more opportunities to deliver paid search advertising. It’s not quite the fixed Internet all over again, but there are similarities.

The outcome is a virtuous cycle where useful search results and targeted advertising convince users that mobile search is a useful way to find content and applications that matter to them. What’s more, the advance of app stores (similar to the excitement the industry experienced when content portals were the rage) underlines the critical importance of a better interplay between search and advertising moving forward.

I am therefore encouraged by improvements (from companies such as Yahoo), and excited by the increasing popularity of new mobile search paradigms, ranging from multimodal search (which has received a much-needed boost thanks to the iPhone); to approaches that integrate human input/judgment to deliver search results we’re much more likely to appreciate. (I am currently compiling a comprehensive directory of mobile search providers, so please contact me to be included. If your story is interesting, I will also profile your company on MSG.)

A category of mobile search high on my radar is visual search. (Companies include: Idée, IQ Engines, Kooaba, Mobile Acuity, Searchme, SnapNow and SnapTell.) I am pleased to report I am close to confirming a date for a podcast with Philipp Schloter, Nokia’s general manager of Point & Find. Nokia (which MSG covered here) just last week took the wraps off a new beta of its visual search service. The technology is cool but the real excitement is about the fit with mobile marketing campaigns. As Julian Pate, Client Partner at interactive marketing agency AKQA, put it in a statement: “The Nokia Point & Find service marries the digital world with the physical world in a way that actually has meaning for brands and consumers. Not only does it allow consumers to engage with brands in an innovative way but provides brands ‘point and purchase’ opportunities with an on-the-go audience.”

This same value proposition is echoed by SnapNow, a U.S.-based visual search company I profiled in my regular column for EContent magazine.

In it I examine the proliferation of pilots and projects that harness mobile to hyperlink images and items, enabling consumers to access information, make purchases or just browse the Web for similar cool content, by simply snapping a picture using their cameraphones. I also interview Tony Keaveny, Head of Sales for SnapNow UK, who updates me on what the company is doing to “snap-enable” content ranging from print to video.

As Tony puts it: “Your phone becomes your mouse and the world around us becomes the Web. It’s about transforming print, packaging, video, outdoor, or just about any other advertising into a portal enabling communication and – more importantly – commerce.”

Tony walks the talk, which is why he has also kindly offered to “snap-enable” the MSG logo, which means you can get more information about MSG by taking a picture of the logo with your cameraphone and sending it to pic@snapnow.co.uk. I’ll think of a contest to make it worth your while. In the meantime, this is  great (!) because MSG is in demand as a media partner and now you can connect to MSG via the  logo on brochures and posters  at industry conferences such as the Open Mobile Summit, June 10-11 in London, a top-notch industry conference organized by OpenMobileMedia, where I chair the session on mobile advertising.  I invite you to read the column here – and to explore the other great content at EContent.

On a personal note, I am proud to be a contributing editor and look forward to collaborating with Michelle Manafy, EContent Editor-in-chief on a special social media issue sure to set the bar. More about that when I put out a call for pitches here and on Twitter (@peggyanne). Michelle is also the programming chair of Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summits (ESS), annual events that encourage deep discussion and practical analysis of the search space. The next one is May 12-13 in NYC. This week Michelle wraps up Buying and Selling EContent Conference, an event that brings together leading executives knowledgeable in the techniques for buying and selling content. She gives her views on the marketplace and the role of user-generated content in this pre-conference audio interview.

But visual search is just one of the 15 categories I have identified in the process of compiling a comprehensive overview and SWOT analysis of the major mobile search players, together with Rudy De Waele, Mobile Web 2.0 luminary and founder of dotopen, an open innovation consulting firm advising start-ups and established companies helping them define business models, forge alliances and pursue funding opportunities.

Our work is in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), an organization providing customer-driven support to the EU policy-making process.  The purpose of the workshop next week in Seville, Spain, is to identify mobile search trends and recommendations for policy makers. I cannot attend the event, but look forward to publishing a summary analysis of key points raised during the workshop on MSG.

Connect the dots, and mobile search innovation is shaping up to be a major focus in 2009.

The last word on the increasing importance of mobile search comes from Nokia (via AltSearchEngines.com). During his presentation Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia’s new Markets unit, told the audience mobile is the future of search. (Hmmm…Does this conviction mark a new chapter in Nokia’s own mobile search strategy? It’s a topic I’ll raise in my upcoming podcast…)

Notice anyone missing? Service providers and mobile operators.

In fact, their absence in this line-up tells us these players are either content to leave it to the handset makers and Internet giants (a first step on a slippery slope to being a dumb pipe perhaps?), or are simply oblivious to the vast arsenal of capabilities at their disposal, capabilities such as customer relationship data, personalization technologies, and location information that allow them to fight back. In my view, if these players could open up to make all the above available to developers (in a standardized, no-brainer way), then they would cover the bases to be much more than just another application store. With their reach and resources, operators and service providers could be the super shopping malls of the mobile Internet.

Last week I explored this in a post that outlined how Qualcomm and its Plaza Mobile Internet platform potentially change all the rules, levelling the playing field and allowing operators and brands to play a central role in this brave new Open Web. This week I’m back with an exclusive look at Amdocs, a company preparing to take the wraps off an application store platform that ups the ante. Thanks to Jessica Francisco, Amdocs account manager at Weber Shandwick for reaching out, and thanks to Idan Carmeli, Business Development Manager, Amdocs Interactive, for giving MSG the inside track on the company’s app store strategy.

Idan’s controversial yet correct observation: Service providers must learn how to leverage third-party developers. “The biggest question that should be on operators’ minds is: How do I convince developers to use me and not any other of the app store channels that are available in the market?”

The answer: Operators must open up and offer their assets – their customer billing relationship, their customer information, their ability to deliver content personalized to customer segments, and their network capabilities – to developers. “Operators know how to sell content and bill for it. Now they have to be open to third-parties and give them the tools they need to sell to their customers.”

An excerpt of our Q&A:

Q: Some call the app store model the killer model. Google et al have app stores in place, what is the impact on off-portal?

A: It accelerates the move to off-portal, which isn’t good news for service providers. But there is another side to this. The increased interest of consumers in finding cool content and apps means it’s a good place for operators to be [in the middle of this exchange] if they can find ways to better monetize this marketplace.  We’re helping service providers create an environment – an ecosystem similar to what we’ve seen from Google and Apple – that leverages their [service provider's] unique assets to bring developers and application providers on board.

A: There is nothing written about your app store platform and offer at this time. What can you tell us about it?

Q: We will be formally launching this new solution [at WC 2009] next week in Barcelona, along with other Amdocs Interactive offerings. The app store is a platform that allows service providers to, on the one hand, provide tools for developer communities to create applications, and, on the other hand, gives them [developers] a channel to present these apps on the content store. So there are two sides: One, a commerce platform and all the enablers on top of the commerce platform that are derived from our acquisition of Qpass that allow developers to create, upload an application to an existing content store, define how much they want to sell it for, sign the contract with the service provider for the revenue share – the works. Two, the tools for developers to actually build applications that aren’t just generic applications because they can access service providers’ services, such as SMS, WAP access and location as well as other available customer information . The aim is to connect all this – in a convenient way — into developer toolkits that are provided by the service providers to the developers to help them build applications they can later sell through the [service provider's] app store channel.

Q: Does the application store come with apps to start? Or do you help service providers populate it with apps so they have something to sell from the get-go?

A; As part of Amdocs, we have our own framework in place for working with third parties in the mobile start-up arena and we have a framework for building relationships and creating a channel between the start-up community and the innovator community on behalf of our customers.  So, we can leverage these relationships and all these start-ups that are part of our program in order to populate an app store. It’s not the focus of our solution, but we can facilitate this.

Q: So you offer the nuts and bolts for an app store. But I also know that you have mobile search and personalization capabilities – through ChangingWorlds, for example – that could potentially make this a self-learning storefront…

A: Definitely. Our ultimate vision for everything we do in Amdocs Interactive is to bring to market solutions that leverage all our assets. So eventually we will want to embed relevant capabilities in our app store solution. For example, we recognize that personalizing the app store experience for the consumer is an important value-add for both the developer and the consumer as it solves the relevancy issue that’s causing real pains for third-party developers on other mobile platforms.

Q: In other words, developers might pay a premium to content providers for the ability to target individual consumers? What would the deal look like?

A: It would be the service provider saying to the developer ‘you have this app that certain consumers are more likely to appreciate than others, so let’s make a deal and I’ll make sure the apps consumers see are the ones most relevant. Something like that could be reflected as a premium in the revenue share model between the service provider and the application provider. But first service providers should get where they want to go, and that is being able to launch an app store as quickly as possible because nobody is waiting for them.

Q: A devil’s advocate question here: What is the USP of an app store run by a service provider? Apple and Google have a lot of mindshare already…

A: When opening up to third-parties, service providers  actually create an edge for themselves by creating an edge for their partners. Our app store is not just a content store, but  an end-to-end process and a set of tools for developers that allows them to offer apps to users in a way that they find compelling because they are personalized, or location-aware, or indicate presence, or simply build on the history of the consumer relationship because the developer has access to this data. That’s an edge Google can’t provide its developers.

Of course, the sharing of customer data would take place in a secure and controlled fashion because these are big issues. And let’s not forget reach. If I’m making a choice to develop something, say, for the Palm Pre platform, , I had to take into account it’s not that big a platform yet in terms of how many users are using that. But if I go to AT&T, I have a subscriber base of upwards of 70 million customers. This is scale the service provider needs to learn how to leverage and offer to third-party developers.

Q: Let’s talk about some business basics. What is the monetization model and where does mobile advertising fit in?

A: The basic monetization scheme is the revenue share from the download of the application.  On top of that the mobile operator can charge for the value-ads we identified, such as placement on the store, perhaps boosted by mobile advertising across the network, as well as access to personalization information. It’s easy to imagine a number of models. In one scenario, it’s an 80/20 split in favour of the developer for the basic upload and distribution through the store. But the operator could take 25 percent for better placement, or 30 percent for better personalization. Lots of business models are possible.

It all comes back to the core assets. Once service providers can make it easy for developers to do business with them, then there’s basically no one better placed than a mobile operator to monetize these apps. They know their customer base better than anyone, and that includes Facebook, Google and even Apple.

Q: What about the developer? What capabilities do you offer them to help monetize their apps? I could imagine top of the list would be mobile analytics and some visibility into sales and mobile advertising campaigns…

A: Definitely. In fact, in the very first concept mock-up that we developed for our product, the most prominent feature on the developer profile page – the page where the developer manages himself — is a dashboard of revenue and usage performance for his applications.  For us, this is an important piece of what the service provider needs to offer developers so they’ll come to their [service providers'] platform.

Q: What about mobile search? A gripe I hear is that people can’t find the apps they want. You have mobile search within Amdocs, are you going to use it to make shipping in your app store less of a chore?

A: Yes, search is absolutely part of our roadmap – that and our personalization capabilities will be part of the app store.  But there is more than that: Amdocs is also an established BSS player and systems integrator,  and we’re priming our solution to best leverage the differentiation potential of the customer data, the customer billing and the business intelligence that’s coming from the BSS.

Q: What about the marketing and the branding? Is it powered by Amdocs? And who gets the developers on board? Amdocs or the operators?

A: Good questions. I think we’re going to collaborate with our customers on this. In the case of making sure that everyone hears about their (service providers’] app platform, it’s ultimately going to be the responsibility of our customers to communicate the app store and why it’s a good proposition.

Q: A big picture question: Is it too late for mobile operators to join that app party? I mean we already have Apple, Google, all the big names…

A: We’re seeing increased interest from our customers because they realize they have to be in on this. They have to be on that train before it leaves the station.

Q: It hasn’t left already?

A: Everybody else is announcing app stores.  Any service provider that goes to the market now, it’s not going to be the first; it’s not going to be the second. But any service provider that enters the market now will need to offer an app store. It’s table stakes.

It’s all about the future of the mobile industry. It’s time [for service providers] to seriously bring partners into their business. That’s that bigger issue at play here. If you look at other examples, such as Amazon in the retail industry, it gets this. It’s a retailer with an online store. But with its Amazon Web Services offering, it’s suddenly become more than that. Now you can ask yourself: What does a retailer have to do with providing computing services to developers and application providers?  It’s only when you dig a little bit into that that you realize that if you want to make sure that your business keeps growing and expanding and capitalizing on 100 percent of the opportunities that you have, then you have to learn how to work with partners in the best way possible.

My take: I am reminded here of The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability, a must-read business book by Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. In it he points out that scale, once an expression of internal operational and innovative capabilities, is fast becoming a measure of external resources and reach. Put simply, size is about “exerting influence over vast networks of companies and managing assets you don’t own.” All the big names – Microsoft, Google, Nokia, eBay and Amazon – are giants because they pursue a kind of keystone strategy that not only aggressively furthers their own interests but also promotes their ecosystems’ overall health. They have become undisputed market leaders because they appreciated the positive impact their platforms could have on their business ecosystems – and took steps to help other businesses in their ecosystem achieve high performance. This in turn has paved the way for sustainable results over decades.

Mobile operators should borrow a page from this winning strategy and leverage the broad range of content and capabilities available in their business ecosystems to improve the end user experience. Concretely, mobile operators should create platforms in the form of services, tools, or technologies and allow other members of the mobile content and services ecosystem free access.

With companies such as Amdocs and Qualcomm lining up to do just this -in the case of Qualcomm, it’s initially more about widgets -  it’s clear that Google, Apple, Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft and Handango (RIM) could get some serious company. We don’t have implementations yet – but we do have platforms that cover the bases to help operators gain a competitive position in the center of this value Web (NOT chain – that’s old school thinking)…

I am proud that EContent named me to its panel of 14 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. (We spent one month in our judging wiki, reviewing previous list members and considering a slew of worthy new contenders. In addition to casting votes, we were involved in lively discussion and debate – a process that was daunting at times, but always incredibly rewarding.)

More importantly, my participation in the judging team allowed me to introduce my peers to mobile industry innovators high on my radar and emphasize the role of mobile-only search and personalization companies in the scheme of things.

Content may not be convergent yet, but the all-pervasive nature of digital content reinforces how important it is for organizations of all kinds to maximize this essential resource and, as my dear friend and mentor Tomi Ahonen would say, Think mobile.

Congratulations are in order for the four new (mobile) additions to the EContent100: ChangingWorlds, CrispWireless JumpTap, MCN and SurfKitchen. They join other movers and shakers that made the list including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Twitter. As today’s press releases show, SurfKitchen was recognized for its innovation and influence in mobile content and service delivery; MCN was commended for its position as a leader in federated mobile search and search merchandising; and JumpTap was honored for its advances in mobile search and advertising. (Click here for the full EContent list.)

A special thanks to Julie Ginches at JumpTap for not only issuing a press release, but also recognizing my involvement in the judging team. I would also like to extend my personal thanks to the dozens of mobile content and search companies that reached out to me directly and encourage you to keep the conversation going. I will be a member of the judging team for years to come – and will work with EContent in every way I can to ensure that those companies hard at work to make digital content work are recognized for their accomplishments.

On a personal note: I invite you to peruse my EContent columns (aptly titled Agile Minds) here. EContent has also promoted me to the position of contributing editor, so please reach out to me directly with your pitches. I am always open to good ideas! As I have said many times, my mission, and the purpose of MSG, is to identify and amplify voices the industry should hear.

Disclaimer: JumpTap has sponsored an MSG podcast series; MCN is an MSG supporter

Granted, Nokia has been talking up its visual mobile search capabilities since 2007, when it snapped up Pixto, a San Francisco-based startup specialized in the technology. But now we’re seeing real results and Nokia execs say a launch is imminent. (More specifically, the app will enter public beta testing “very soon” in the U.S. and the U.K.)

But the real news is Nokia’s bid to be the leader in visual search and the implications for the other players up and down the value chain.

It’s good news for the user. Reams have been written about features and functionality (visual and voice-enabled schemes as well as the tighter integration of location and maps) in the mobile search experience, improvements that are sorely needed to deliver a better quality mobile search experience. (Take my word for it. Together with Peggy Anne Salz, I am road testing mobile search services and documenting their many shortcomings.)

Nokia’s Point & Find’s is more than a mobile search tool, however; it represents the core of Nokia’s larger business strategy that brings together software, services and advertising. Put another way, Point & Find is a perfect articulation of a new vision within Nokia and a new emphasis on ways to bridge the physical and virtual worlds.

Search is already the de facto interface to all things digital in online and mobile settings. Add to that location and harness the camera capabilities of the device we have with us at all times and you have a powerful combination.

The true potential of this scheme can be seen in the rise in visual search and the advance in bar code/QR code campaigns. In fact, Peggy Anne has conducted briefings with a number of visual search companies and the companies, including Mobile Data Systems (MDS), which provide barcode technology and symbologies to get the inside track on progress to date and issues to tackle. Her take includes a look at the competitive landscape and constructive criticism directed at an industry white paper that tips the scales in favor of proprietary solutions, so please check back.

But MSG isn’t the only one excited about this new territory. As Philipp Schloter, Nokia’s general manager of Point & Find, told me at the event: Nokia is gearing up for “exciting journey.” Now that I’ve had a glimpse into Nokia’s product map and future innovations, I can only agree. While a few concepts such as nano-scale wireless technologies are a few years away (more on that in another post), Point & Find is here NOW. Fortunately for all of us at MSG, it’s a search, discovery, and advertising application we can track from day one.

So how does Point & Find work? The user points the camera at a physical object and is presented with a selection of Internet links associated with that object. (They are displayed on the screen.) It’s then up to the user to click on whatever link they’re most interested in to access a service or content related to that object. The service is pretty much a no-brainer. It serves up Internet links to the handset (zero-click).  Speed is another plus: The content comes up on the screen immediately, as soon as the device “sees” the physical object.

And how does it work on the back-end? Nokia has created a simple tagging tool for Point & Find that the company and its content, brand and advertising partners are using to build content for the service. Once tagged, the URLs for all images and related Internet information that have been tagged for the service become part of the Point & Find database. Obviously, at the outset, this database will be specific to the particular services offered, and Nokia will be building it and commercializing it one content sector at a time. But the concept is unlimited, and Nokia clearly intents to build it out as far as it will go.

Where will we see Point & Find? Well, it’s literally coming to a theater near you.

Nokia will kick off Point & Find with a full-fledged service around movies–a category sure to be a crowd-pleaser–that also allows Nokia to exploit the full capabilities and features of its new service. Use cases and scenarios are easy enough to imagine. A user can point the camera phone at a movie poster and Point & Find returns links to related content and services such as the film trailer, reviews, the nearest cinema showing the film, ticket sales sites or nearby stores that sell related retail products.

The list goes on – and so do the applications. In fact Philipp mused that Nokia’s Point & Find could sit at the center of a wide variety of services. Whether the physical object we capture with our phones is a building, a public landmark, city street sign, restaurant, item in a store window, a book or a magazine cover-it doesn’t matter. The system can deliver information, content and advertising related to the object. Looking ahead, Nokia believes the service could also evolve to include user-generated content and content published via social networking or other sites. (Peggy Anne adds: Smart move, since this content is popular and tough for the usual pick of search engines to index. Could Nokia take the lead in creating linkages between physical content and the cool stuff WE create? Now that is an interesting business model indeed! )

But it’s not just about content; context is also critical. Philipp and his team have combined key devices capabilities and features – such as location-awareness artificial intelligence and pattern recognition technology and analysis – to intuit the real-time context of the user when they use Point & Find to capture an object. As Philipp pointed out: Knowing context allows the system to predict what the consumer needs to know about the object. “Phone search is limited,” he said.  “What if the phone could guess what you want?”

But even more fundamentally, the phone now becomes the way to access information and interact with the world around us. As Philipp explained it, it’s all about creating a world in which everything is interactive (a concept that also sits at the center of Nokia strategy).

Indeed, the ability to create interactivity out of non-interactive objects is one of Point & Find’s most vital attributes. And if Philipp is right it may also develop into a hugely lucrative business for Nokia as brands and advertisers take advantage of the service to connect with consumers at the point of discovery–the best moment to encourage an impulse buy. Not to mention the pitch Nokia’s mobile advertising arm can make to its clients.

Point & Find will be free to consumers. To start they can download it to their N95 devices (a rather limited demographic for advertising), but plans are to make it available to run on any GPS-enabled camera phone.

How will it make money? Nokia and its partners will generate revenues through advertising and other tools such as lead generation and ecommerce capabilities. Philipp is also betting on Nokia’s partners to come up with other innovative ways to generate revenues from the service. To this end he’s staffed professional services team at Point & Find to help Nokia’s partners develop and deploy monetization strategies.

To be clear: There are other image-based mobile phone discovery tools out there (here’s a good list to use as a primer). And Peggy Anne is investigating a variety of bar code companies and applications already on the market from the likes of SnapNow. But let’s get real: This is Nokia, with all the market scale and established ecosystem that the name implies.

***

My take: Nokia is committed to owning the visual search space and has committed a staff of 30 to build the business and further develop the technology. The business area has the buy-in of Nokia senior execs and “quite large” funding from the company (as Philipp put it). The market is crowding as players ranging from Google to Kooaba line up for a piece of the action. But the connection between the app and the phone – which Nokia can exploit to its advantage – plays in its favor. The space will heat up in 2009 – but that’s precisely the excitement and interest we need to move this mobile search/mobile advertising scheme a giant step forward.

The good news: Recent stats from mobile Web champions such as dotMobi confirm the full-force arrival of the mobile Web. (It is indeed great news and I have the green light to post my earlier Q&A with Paul Nerger, dotMobi VP of Advanced Services and Applications.) The bad news: We need more than numbers to drive uptake and make the mobile Web an indispensable part of our daily routine. (And it must become that if we are indeed going to crawl out of the chasm and blaze into Mobile Web 2.0.)

How do we get there from here? Before we develop a roadmap, we must understand the issues. We must connect with the thought leaders, trail-blazers and futurists at an event keenly focused on the mobile Web megatrends that matter.

Fortunately, Ajit Jaokar -  CEO of the publishing company futuretext – perhaps best known as the co-author of Mobile Web 2.0, the milestone book that started it all – has organized a one-day conference to accomplish all of the above.

Aptly titled Mobile Web Megatrends, this one-day event (Monday, September 8^th @ University of California, Berkeley) features C-level speakers from companies including AdMob, Cellfire, iLoop Mobile, Nokia, Opera – to name a few.

From APIs to widgets, and from Android to QR codes, this unique event is sure to push the boundaries. (As it should. Open sits at the core of all Ajit does and is also the focus of his upcoming book Open Mobile.) Some sessions that caught my attention: The Obamamobile – Media and mobile convergence; Trends Driving the Mobile Web & Related Business Opportunities for Startups; and iPhone – The iStore and the future of mobile applications. (You can check out the agenda here.)

MSG is proud to be a media and blogging partner for the conference. Unfortunately, I won’t make it to the inaugural event in California (I’m in a plane on my way to CTIA on that day), but I will connect with Ajit soon to plan and provide pre-event coverage and podcasts with the speakers.

In the meantime, indications are good that this won’t be my last chance to be involved with the conference. Ajit tells me organizers have requested to repeat his path-breaking event in several countries – including Germany, where I am based. I’m honored that Ajit has asked me to speak at that event as well – so more on the program once the date and venue are set.

My take: Mobile Web Megatrends is going on tour (!) It clearly has its finger on the pulse, so expect to see this conference make some waves.

www.mobilewebmegatrends.com

Or is the hype around mobile browsers distracting us from widgets as the approach to bank on? Certainly the move toward web-based applications and away from native applications makes customized widgets a key component in our personal mobility experiences. (Peggy S. tells me we can look forward to a lively debate on this topic, beginning with a thought-provoking column from her favourite widget guru, Dave Evans, SurfKitchen CTO, so check back regularly.)

Logically, the browser is not likely to control our mobile Web experience (we really may not choose to replicate our Internet experience on mobile devices, which speaks in favor of a new made-for-mobile approach). However, the browser is in a pivotal position to drive our mobile Web experience, and this alone is reason to examine recent commercial solutions and their potential impacts on how we interface and interact with mobile content.

The last weeks have seen some milestones developments that will no doubt impact how we experience the Internet on our phones. There’s the trickle of news about what we can expect from Mozilla; the news that Skyfire has rolled out the beta release of its mobile browser (an excellent review is here); and a mobile browser speed test of Skyfire, Opera 9.5.1 and Safari from Laptop Magazine, to name just a few examples of the attention mobile browsers are getting lately.

And while we’re at it, who said the winner’s circle won’t include a few surprises?

I’m thinking here of Bitstream, a U.S.-based company that introduced one of the first real mobile browsers some six (!) years ago. Because a mobile browser that targeted smartphones was years ahead of the market, Bitstream shifted its strategy to adapt the technology for use on both high-end and mass-market devices.

The result of that effort is ThunderHawk version 3.0, a browser that marks a comeback for Bitstream and a turning point in how we can access, navigate and enjoy Internet content on our mobile phones.

I caught up with Anna Chagnon, Bitstream’s CEO, for a demo of the browser and an in-depth briefing on where it all goes from here.

What does Bitstream have in mind?
In terms of distribution, Bitstream has devoted 2008 corporate funds and personnel to promote its browser technology to mobile operators and OEMs. Anna tells me the company is pursuing a multi-pronged business model, which is smart.

Bitstream has a client/server version of ThunderHawk that can be scaled to all kinds of phones and a server-based “client-less” solution that eases deployment to all of an operators’ handsets, and, Anna tells me, work is under way on a client-only browser for high-end phones. 

While the company is aggressively targeting operators and device manufacturers with ThunderHawk, it is also targeting content companies and enterprise IT departments that want digital content sent to mobile devices. And Bitstream is also considering the option of licensing ThunderHawk as a white-label product. As Anna puts it: “It’s possible that if people approached us from other browsing companies we’d be open to that, and clearly what we want to do is get the technology out in the marketplace.”

What does Bitstream offer?

At its heart, Bitstream is a digital font company, and it drew from this core competency when creating the ThunderHawk browser. In fact, ThunderHawk effectively replaces the fonts used in the original content contained in a Web page with a proprietary font technology that has several positives. It is more readable and scalable on mobile devices, minimizes the scrolling needed to scan content, and eliminates a lot of the heavy lifting in a network that is required to send data streams associated with fonts in the first place. In fact, it substantially cuts the time needed to load pages – period.

So what is Anna’s assessment of the browser market today? “Some of what the iPhone has taught us is that people will browse on phones that have the right experience level, but until the market takes off there will always be questions about how many and how far the technology goes,” she acknowledged to me.

But it is her view that “until you have a full desktop browsing experience, [the market is] not going to go very far, which is why our experience is really the image of the desktop and tools to help users navigate through that on a smaller screen.”

To this end, the ThunderHawk browser offers patented zoom-in and out modes and a split-view screen feature that gives users the ability to simultaneously view a miniaturized display of a full HTML Web page as it would appear on a desktop, as well as a section of highlighted text, in a larger typeface that the user scrolls through for reading. (Opera Mini, to name just one comparison, gives a layout-perspective and the zoom in-zoom out capability, but not the split-screen feature.)

ThunderHawk users can also employ the browser and assorted soft-keys to open links and conduct Web searches and make one-click calls directly to phone numbers on Web pages.

But grabbing a piece of the action in the mobile browser market will hardly be an easy task for Bitstream. Opera, ACCESS and open source solutions, such as Webkit, are likewise jockeying for position in the marketplace. But the pay-off will be worth it. ABI Research reckons this segment of the mobile browser market (which it calls open-Internet browser, or OIB) will skyrocket, with nearly 700 million browsers delivered in 2013, up from 76 million in 2007.

The bottom line:

As in any mobile technology marketplace, vendors that have differentiating solutions as well as a breadth of products can find advantage. Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer at MultiMedia Intelligence, a market research firm, is impressed by the ThunderHawk browser, as I am. But Bitstream might have a better chance at the big leagues if it focuses on helping mobile content companies and application developers exploit its enabling technologies (which Frank describes as ahead-of-their-time and core to Bitstream’s “strategic competitiveness”).

Bitstream should also borrow a page from the way Adobe Systems licenses its products in the online world, and license its technologies for use in creating mobile content too. “That would be the holy grail for them,” Frank suggested. And I couldn’t agree more.