On Hulu moving to Cellphones, Driving mobile video usage

Hulu has done well as a browser-based video destination. In march 2009, it reached he third position in video internet website with 2.6% market share. (which is good but still really far behind Youtube, 40% market share). With Newscorp and NBC Universal as shareholders, Hulu is a promising start-up. Hulu aims to provide free and legal content sponsored by advertising to users. More recently, Disney just joined the investors enabling TV series like “Lost” or “Desperate Housewives” from ABC available on the network.

So, it’s not surprising to hear that Hulu is headed to cell phones. An anonymous mobile industry executive says the video service will soon appear on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, according to Business Insider.

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!

Google in ‘late-stage’ talks to buy Twitter

Google offer should be equal or exceed facebook last autumn offering of 500 Million Dollars. The difference is Google might give a part in cash and shares.

Twitter lets people post short 140-character messages; people often subscribe to follow the stream of these tweets from acquaintances and, increasingly, companies and celebrities

SMEs are also using twitter, it can be a night club in Singapore (The Butter Factory) and even a milk factory in France!

Local content and reviews…a killer LBS service?

In today’s online edition of the New York Times there is an article describing one of the Internet Trend the local reviews and ratings. In an earlier post, I talked about Ultra Local Search. And i more and more feel that these type of service i.e combining search and location will be a killer one.

AroundMe is a good example, AroundMe allows you to quickly find out information about your surroundings. AroundMe quickly identifies your position and allows you to choose the nearest Bank, Bar, Gas Station, Hospital, Hotel, Movie Theatre, Restaurant, Supermarket, Theatre and Taxi. AroundMe shows you a complete list of all the businesses in the category you have tapped on along with the distance from where you are. For every listing you can choose to see its location on a Map, view the route from where you are, add the information to your contact list or even email the information to a friend. The Nearby listing allows you to find information using Wikipedia about what is around you.

Once the advertising will be allowed you can imagine the amount of local ads it will be able to generate!

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)

Mobile commerce could be… mobile banking

I have been reading recently a lot about mobile commerce. I wil make couple of articles on this topic.

Mobile commerce refers to the ability to conduct a commercial transaction over a mobile device.

Therefore all these actions falls into the definition of mobile commerce:

• buying a song from the itunes store with your ipod Touch
• buying ringtones through an SMS + services
• wap billing
• view and make funds transfers through your mobile web banks portal, or via sms
• mobile to mobile transfer
• peer to peer credit
• exchange of G$ on mygamma mobile social network against contents, products, gifts…

Having said mobile commerce can apply to a connected or non-connected devices, through SMS, Mobile Web, via your Banks or your credit card supplier, via virtual money of a social network or more simply (…or not) via your telecom operator.

I will focus today on Mobile Banking.

The US Mobile Marketing Association recently released a Mobile Banking Overview. In this report the services US banks are offering today consist of:

• Account alerts, security alerts and reminders
• Account balances, updates and history
• Customer service via mobile
• Branch or ATM locations information
• Bill pay (electic bill) deliver online pay;ents by secure agents and mobile client applicaitons
• Funds transfers
• Transaction Verification
• Mortgage alerts

Future services that banks will likely provide:

• Mobile commerce
• Mobile paments
• Contactless payments  using NFC
• Mobile Coupons
• Location Based services

I will add these ones:

• Mobile donation
• Mobile health services
• Credit on demand
• And of course a lot of financial services inclusive buy and sell stocks and shares for our Wall Street guys

The different channels that banks uses to provides these services are SMS, Mobile Web and Applications.

Though Mobile Banking faces many challenges:

1. Interoperability…between operators, mobile protocols, mobile phones…
2. Security…risks can be cloning, hijacking, malicious code, malware, man in the middle atack, phishing, redirecting, SMiShing (use of SMS to facilitate bogus reauests), spoofing, Vishing (victims are tricked into disclosing sensitive personal information though a phone call)
3. Scalibility, reliability
4. Distribution

Who are the suppliers of these services: mFoundry, Sybase 365 (who recently acquired paybox a mobile wallet), lemon way, mobank (just finalized a second round funding), clairmail…

Two very intesresting blogs – Mobile Banking by Brandon McGee – Insiden by Denis Vachet

Mobile Banking is a reality. The services provided today are not enough to enable more people to use them. Because all these services can be found on a PC via the internet. Us, westerners are PC people hence we need to have value added or dedicated services to use our mobile. Therefore instant payment, instant credit, transfers, mobile donation…needs to be part of the mobile. Unique features and/or impulsive’s will make the mobile experience unique!

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!

2009 Mobile Applications Store’s Year?

The iphone app store created an earth quake in the Mobile application industry. Its seismic waves are:

• The android market
• Nokia buying Symbian and making it open & free to use. Thus enabling the creation of an application store embedded in the OVI platform
• The Blackberry application storefront
• Operators creating their own application store such as SFR in France

2009 hence will be the year of companies that will be able to create an application that not only will work on one platform but will be able to quickly integrate to different platforms – Android, Apple, Symbian, Windows and RIM – the other OS  being negligible.

Companies that will be needed will be farm of developers able to quickly adapt application from one OS to another at a cheap price. Ideally a kind of linkedIn of developers for mobile phone. I do not know any but I am sure it exists. I know there are Android Dev group, The Symbian Developers corner, Babaflash in Indonesia for Flash application and so on…

A pretty exciting year ahead!

Happy new year to all!