Zapping April 19th

Japanese don’t like (or hate) the iPhone…softbank offers the phone for free in its plan – 1 Billion app (soon to be) downloaded – the battle between Larry King vs Aston Kutcher (Demi’s boyfriend) on the most followed on twitter…Nico we are still waiting for your twiller you may now be able to monetize it with tipjoy – nokia profits down of 90% – for the fan…we are still waiting Maria Sharapova to announce an Android Sony Ericsson phone!

virtual world from scratch on the iphone

A Tokyo-based start-up called Genkii is building a unique app that has the potential to not only let a few iPhone users connect with each other, but thousands of them – at the same time or asynchronously. Sparkle is poised to become the first virtual world for the iPhone.

iphone OS 3.0: 1000 new APIs, 100 new Features

iPhone will be availabe in Malaysia through Maxis and in Indonesia though Telkomsel by the end of March! Which is a great news for the region after the launch in Singapore end of last year!

iPhone OS 3.0, my highlights:

• developers to create multiplayer games that work over a local wireless connection
• better maps integration
• “push” messages to users through their programs, it is a feature that reminds me of Phonebook 2.0 designed for Android
• Sell monthly subscriptions that is a significant step! This will completely bypass current Operator Premium SMS offers…
• MMS application
• Spotlight…Amazing! It is the best desktop search I have ever used.
• The long awaited cut, copy, paste feature though it looks a bit difficult to use.
• Bluetooth

  

  

  

  
  
  

The new operating system would be available to current iPhone users at no charge sometime this summer. It will sell for $9.95 to owners of the iPod Touch.

Industry analysts saw a decrease in iPhone sales and expect couple of hardware changes in the coming months! And I am sure we will see a form of iPhone nano!

Mobile 2.0 Paris March 10th

From an overall perspective today was very intense and the speakers were interesting and some of the panelists were extremely sharp and pinpointing the right issues (Jerome Bouteiller, Frederic Dumeny). One of the major challenge I found is to take out from our minds that Mobile users are not always PC users and that services need to be conceived only for a mobile usage! I think that in some cases comparison with the web makes no sense… Take the e-commerce, it’s been years users are downloading ringtones with premium SMS, or are using paid adult services and this is truly a mobile service.

I am going to give some remarks on the different panel I attended:

1. Widgets Panel

Duality between Applications (connected apps reachable in 1 click and widgets in container what webwag or goojet is doing reachable in more than 2 clicks) and Widgets Containers. What I understood at the end, by discussing with WebWag is Widgets in a container is targetting Joe “The Plumber” and Maggie “the Hockey Mum” i.e low-end mobile phone users.

Container of usual services (weather, news, mails, social networks, local information, traffic) target low-end phones and provide a very easy and intuitive way of consuming information. How do they make money by providing White Label widgets to companies, Revenue Sharing on advertising, or Value added services.

I, now, understand why VCs are so attracted by these companies.

2. Mobile Advertising Panel

Nothing really new. There is a strong shift towards the mobile internet from the brands. Applications are a hot topic.

Nevertheless the environment is still very complex, no tracking system (though marvellous, nokia interactive, microsoft, sofialys, phonevalley are implementing solutions). Cellfish summed up very well: bottom line what still work pretty well today is Push SMS.

All the panelists saw a strong demand in Geolocalization.

3. Mobile Social Network

I was very disappointed by this Panel, as the panelists did not speak too much of Social Network…Gemalto released their new Multimedia SIM Card, project name UPteq.

I am suprized by Orange, they are very proactive in different mobile services areas with my Social Place, Jingo and of course Studio 34 their content arm.

4. 2 Platforms, 2 Strategies: Iphone vs Android

The best Panel by far.

Visuamobile created 18 apps, have more than 1 Million download, 14 persons, 9 developers, 11 servers and 200 mb of bandwidth.

There is a problem of Search Engine Optimization on the app store – not a new topic but so true… Visuamobile manged to drive traffic through PR with bloggers, newspapers online and offline…

I discussed also with Mr Silberzahn from Digital Airways. It was a pleasure talking to him, as I guessed this company is healthy, well managed and have good on-going projects. For him Android is the way to go, it is a fact most of their new projects are on Android. DA specializes on developing UI on any devices, Mobile, Netbooks, Set Top Boxes and PND. Historicly their competitors are Purple Labs vs Streamezzo or Bluestreak (client lead solution)

5. mCommerce

Same comment as for the Mobile Social Network…it was very bad we did not talk about true transaction based model implemented in Europe whether in NFC or through Mobile Operators. I am thinking of Austria, Germany….or even the best example which is M-Pesa in Kenya where fishermen sold their fish before coming back to the harbour…

Mobile Monday March 9th Paris

This mobile monday was sponsored by Device Anywhere.

Voxmobili, Device Anywhere, Orange Partner, Xelasys were presenting their different solutions.

I found this Parisian MoMo interesting however a bit disapointing in its form, sound was not very good especially for the Orange part…and I fell there was a lack of substance in the companies’ speech.

Nevertheless, I was impressed by the solution offered by Device Anywhere that literraly let you test your application/service on hardware mobile phones (2500 in total) connected to servers. So at the end it is not an emulator it is a mobile phone that you use to test your services! So it looks like a very good solution never tried it though.Device Anyzhere recently made a partnerships with Zed,  one of the largest mobile content supplier.

Vox made a good impression to me too. I was following their different solution especially their phonebook 2.0 integrating social network in your “event historic” (SMS, email, Facebook Status…). They mention the service from Device Anywhere is good and compliant to their requirements of testing their apps on different mobile phones.

Xelasys specializes in the application of multilingual databases (dictionaries, translators, lexicons, glossaries…) from the PC to mobile (Iphone, Smartphone, Pocket PC, etc.).As said by the head of Xelasys there are a bunch of techies looking for a good marketer to help them and I think they are right! They also need someone to help them financially and markertingly.

This week I am attending Le Mobile 2.0 a forward looking event, the cream of the mobile in France…

Mobile World Congress 2009

My feedback of the show:

1. Openness: a lot of companies opened their platform and now provides API for developers to work on it. (myGamma…)
2. Applications stores: Nokia, Samsung, Orange, SFR…all of them are opening app stores! Guess it will be harder for the users to understand what will happen!
3. Mobile Widget or mobile connected applications: Qualcomm through Plaza are strongly ahead. Operators are also interested Orange. In their recent announcement it was said by the end of 2009 80% of their mobile “signature range” will be sold with new widgets. Also worth to mention are companies like Goojet (financed by american and french VC), webwag…
4. Green: The universal charger initiative (without Apple…though it is predictible) – the Solar Energy phone designed by Samsung and LG. Nokia got an award for an Outstanding Environnmental Contribution (more info here)
5. Mobile Advertising: admob! admob! admob! and a mobile company that does affiliation for mobile web site! texomobile already more than 130 000 affiliates! Sybase released a mobile advertising platform that allows content providers, publishers, and enterprise to insert text ad into a SMS
6. Mobile Payment: Mobile payment englobes 3 different notions nowadays: mBanking, mCommerce and mRemittance. Tranfer money to your friends or relatives in your home country, several experiences launched with the Philippines operators, namely Globe. A leader in that space is a German company called Paybox (recently acquired by Sybase 365). Maxis have a great mRemittance system with Transfer To Explanation of the service: “Hotlink i-Share is a first-in-Malaysia service by Maxis that was launched in April this year and enables its prepaid subscribers to share airtime credit with their friends and family to several countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines through an easy-to-use “shared top-up” application…”
7. New mobile phones: I will only mention one: The G2 which apparently is close to perfection…what a plan!

And to finish the list of the awards and their winners! One remark in the Champion for Global Award Mobile Innovation we find a chinese company which is great as more and more I think that innovation in the mobile space will come from Asia!

Best Mobile Game: Winner: Gameloft – Real Football 2009

Best Mobile Music or Video Service: Winner: BBC iPlayer on Mobile

Best Mobile Advertising Service: Winner: Turkcell – Tonla Kazan

Best Mobile TV Service: Winner: MobiTV – MobiTV

Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service Winner: Vodafone – Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited

Best Mobile Internet Service: Nokia – Nokia Sports Tracker

Best Mobile Money Service: Safaricom and Vodafone – M-PESA

Best Mobile Handset or Device:
INQ – INQ1
Highly Commended: Nokia – Nokia E71
Highly Commended: T-Mobile – T-Mobile G1

Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development: Nuance Communications – Airtel-T9 India Consumer Vernacular Messaging Campaigns

Best Service Delivery Platform: NewBay Software – LifeCache Social Networking Solution 2.0

The Green Mobile Award: Smart Communications – Alternative Power for Cell Sites program

GSMA’s CEO Award for Outstanding Environmental Contribution: Nokia

Government Leadership Award: The Government of France

THE 2009 MOBILE INNOVATION GLOBAL AWARD CHAMPION: Cootek, China (Most Innovative Wireless Dev)

Samsung paves the way with a 12 megapixels phone

This new phone will be released during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2 weeks from now. I couldnot find any pictures nor press release from Samsung however many blogs talk about it. It is totally in line with the article I wrote last year on Better cameras on Mobile phones. I believe we will see more & more camera features in mobile phones!

And China Mobile created the Open Mobile System…

Yes they did it – the OS is from Android but with the support of the chinese 3G TD-SCDMA.
The first phone to support it will be the oPhone from Lenovo. China mobile already developed couple of applications such as mail, music downloads, sms.

Is it surprising?

• No, China Mobile have a subscriber’s base of 350 Millions it is in their financial interest to not only make the phone but as well design the OS.
• No, Chinese vertical integration (from the standard of transmission up to the handsets) is a move comparable with what Japan did 10 to 15 years ago.

What next will be innovations coming from China to the occidental world!

Short Film on mobile phone evolution

Enjoy this short movie done by the GSM Association – nice images – I like the Mobile Payment images, and also we see lots of image from South East Asia, China, Japan!

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Ultra local search and mobile marketing

I do think that Local search will find its way in the coming years for the following reasons

- shifting of advertising revenue from traditionnal media to digital will bring more money in Internet and thus will enable companies to live with advertising business model search

- ultra local search is typically the place for your local baker’s to promote its latest products/sale to you, we can imagine tomorrow services like: time determined online marketing campaign relayed with a SMS campaign to nearby custome; indeed I would be happy to opt-in for such a service. Imagine you are woke up by your bakers SMS on a sunday morning giving you an opportunity to make a surprise on a sunday morning