- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * Nokia 6600 – How to Maximize the Value of My Investment?
- * Interesting Mobile Blogging Tools Emerging
- * Picks from the US Mobile Entertainment Scene
January 2004 was the month when the US wireless industry shifted gear and the AT&T Wireless auction process initiated the long-awaited consolidation on the market. My private opinion is that Vodafone is out of their mind if they don’t bid seriously. It is their last chance to get a significant presence on the US market. With an acquisition they could do with a stick what DoCoMo has been trying to do with a feather: impose a successful imported wireless data business model on a US carrier. Verizon would also like this arrangement: they could retain their market share lead for quite some time. The only problem is that Vodafone might not find enough suitors for their share in Verizon…
In the previous issue of MEOW I touched upon the social software craze, a phenomenon certainly certainly soon to be implemented on mobile platforms as well. Creating this worldwide ‘who-knows-whom’ social fabric will act as a B2B service and an underlying platform speeding up service adoption. In January we saw Google move into that space with a web site called Orkut.com. Many MEOW! readers were pleased when I pointed out my favorite LinkedIn - my network is now at 122,000 business contacts which means I have created an ‘access platform’ to reach pretty much anyone I need to for business purposes.
I try to keep this newsletter brief and crisp and there are lots of ground left uncovered, please feel free to contact me to discuss any mobile-related issues that are on your mind.
In the next issue MEOW! will report from the GSMWorld Congress in Cannes, France. With the rising optimism on the mobile market that will probably be a very good show.
Best regards,
- Tapio Anttila
- tapio@anttila.net
NOKIA 6600 – HOW TO MAXIMIZE THE VALUE OF MY INVESTMENT?
The smart phone market is starting to heat up. The trend of people giving up on PDAs starts to be visible. Seamus McAteer from Zelos Group estimates in his recent study that 42.5 percent of all handsets sold in 2008 will be full feature OS handsets: “There is no reason not to believe the growth to be explosive”. So what will these handsets then be used for? Where are the applications? How are they being merchandized?
(Bringing over the Nokia 6600 from Finland to the US (where it is not being sold yet) was in itself equal to asking for trouble. Finding the Cingular WAP and Internet settings was a task where friends and Google are a better source of information than Cingular itself. When the settings finally work I can access any other WAP server except for Cingular’s own. Go figure.)
I would like to find some useful applications for my phone. Typically I am ready to spend money when I am in a situation and context where I see the need to pay for them. For travel related mobile services that would be when I am on Expedia or Hotels.com, not when I am visiting operator’s or Nokia’s web site or WAP portal. I guess we need to wait for a while before this hits home on the market and operators certainly don’t want it to hit home: walled gardens are supposed to become their ‘churn busters’.
How are the handset vendors doing? Nokia outsources their application store ‘Nokia Software Market’ to Handango and Digital River in the US and EMEA, respectively. As I already have ripped Handango in pieces in earlier newsletters, let’s do the same for Digital River. I was in Finland with my new phone and the product literature asks me to go to Nokia Software Market to buy applications. The site is branded ‘Nokia’ but there is a disclaimer whereby Nokia leaves all the responsibility to Digital River, including content decisions. Suspicious. There are a total of 50 applications for the 6600, divided into five categories. One of those categories is personal productivity where I can find 5-7 applications with surprisingly few being equipped with the Nokia OK certification. One of the apps is called ‘Biblical Quotes’. Connecting religion with personal productivity smells American and I need to check the origin or Digital River: They are indeed headquartered in a small town called Eden Prairie in the state of Minnesota…
This example just shows that we are still far away from having mature distribution channels for smart phone applications. One may want to ask whether they will continue to sell more and more in a situation where their real unique selling points (camera, memory) are being included into mid-tier handsets.
Oh, and there are some ‘try and buy’ applications as well as permanently installed applications stored on the MMC card that comes with the 6600. Opera browser is my favorite, it really makes my phone usable for web access in situations were I absolutely need to go on the web. However, the program is installed on the MMC card and cannot be reinstalled on the phone memory or on another card. Why have a memory card slot in the phone in the first place if you cannot switch cards? The same critic applies to the Kodak oFoto application: I have to use the application from the original MMC card but what if my photo library is on my other MMC card?
INTERESTING MOBILE BLOGGING TOOLS EMERGING…
I spoke with the folks at Cimarrones Inc. in New York. They have founded a site called TagandScan.com which allows people with mobile phones to blog multimedia notes about items and venues in the physical world and place them on a map further later retrieval by users either on a mobile or on a PC. Although this is a seemingly early stage company, the idea is fascinating. It is realizing the vision of individuals being able to attach a mobile story to a geography. Tourists will be able to consume personal stories while visiting monuments, hear personal musical memoires, see photos and video clips that once belonged to a personal experience at a location. The possibility to add commercial messages into the flow is there as well. Geocaching as a modern day treasure hunting will become possible. Cool.
It is often better to position your product to be able to address large parts of the market from the start rather than focusing on the very high end. Wireless Ink has created a set of portal technologies that enable a ‘write once, run anywhere’ mobile blogging. Their consumer site is at www.winksite.com and you can easily try it out yourself. An added feature is content syndication – you can add syndicated content to your own portal to make it more compelling as a destination as well as offer your own content for syndication.
Soon there will of course be all too many blogs and nobody has time to read them or find anything valuable ion them any longer. In comes Feedster (www.feedster.com) who have developed a search engine for blog feeds.
PICKS FROM THE US MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT SCENE
Comments: Truvideo will be able to bring relatively high quality video into mid-range handsets. The client is very small and the compression algorithm order of magnitude better than the competition but proprietary. These companies must find a ‘content niche’ to get around the problem.
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- Funmail has launched a wallpaper syndication service whereby artists and content providers can submit content for multi-carrier distribution for over 100 handset models. Nokia estimates the wallpaper market to be worth $3.2 billion in 2007.
- http://www.wallpaperuniverse.net/
Comments: Content provider enablement is an important goal for the industry. We nee more announcements like this.
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Online music retailer MusicRebellion.com began offering digital songs for sale using a new payment scheme that begins pricing for all tracks at $0.10, with the price raising or lowering based upon demand as market conditions change. “Our behaviorally based download model is predicated on the belief that the public will purchase music legally when given a fair price, a quality product, and an easy to use system,” said Digonex’s Jeremy Eglen.
http://www.musicrebellion.com Comments: The point in the dynamic pricing could be that it increases the ‘reactivity’ by which the consumers rush to find and buy a new release. Interesting. Again, you could combine the social proximity logic into this type of an approach: your social network would help to fish early bird deals for you…
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- New Media corporation has developed a multimedia product suite that offers a breakthrough in on-demand media creation. The enabling technology, EaselOS, is a multimedia operating system that combines real-time authoring, automated media processing and communications – all in a single package.
- http://www.newmbc.com/nmbc_main.html
Comments: This is the coolest technology I have seen in a long time. Demonstrated on a MS Smartphone, the technology is able to ‘animate’ a push to talk conversation in real time! The company is looking for further funding and I would be happy to explain more and to make an introduction for those interested.
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented herein are those of the undersigned and do not represent the position or message of any company I might be affiliated with.
