Mobileslate

More custom phones

Seems that the custom phone parade doesn’t end. Siemens is in the act, support their F1 team, among other custom phones. What happened to selling off their handset division? Even with Benq acquiring the handset division, can another Asian brand build up a global presence in electronics?

Mobile Commerce Stumble

Today, Simpay decided to finally call it quits. It was perhaps one of the most forward thinking ideas — to get a bunch of Mobile Operators together and build a standard platform across borders to enable mobile commerce. All in the spirit of the European Union, folks sharing the same bench at the proverbial table. Why does this seem to be history repeating itself?

So why did it fail? Here are some thoughts. You have three of the largest operators in the world: Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone that started this with perhaps good intentions. Amena, Proximus, and movistar were brought to the party to round out the geography and get more of a continental footprint in Europe. I think some of the reasons why it all didn’t work out is because the law of large subscribers. Trying to deploy in even a progressive climate as Europe, there are things that are bound to happen. The 800 pound gorillas move slowly, when they make a move, everyone takes notice. A mobile payment platform will emerge, but it’s tough to change both Operator behavior as well as Subscriber simultaneously. Remember Mondex? A bunch of banks got together with Mastercard back in 1997 when the precursor to the SIM card, the “Smart Chip” was the rage and the next evolution of the credit card/debit card would emerge. But only after a short while, the project failed because merchants could not be convinced to setup, yet another payment system. Fast foreword to now, and in the United States, credit cards can now be used to pay for smaller fares such as coffee, sandwiches, and even public transportation. While convenient, credit cards are a rather US-centric payment method. What we should be trying to shoot for is a more universal, global payment platform–hence the mobile phone. But before we get ahead of ourselves, Operators are not Financial Institutions and the two have different governing bodies that create rules. The interesting part is that the two are on opposite sides of the payment coin. Operators understand the micropayments side, charging for minutes and data. Financial Institutions understand large ticket transactions such as Auto Loans, Mortgages as they make a bulk of their money on this. But as Operators learn more and more about payment models for data services, it seems hard for me to believe that they will want to revenue share with a financial institution. The numbers are getting very large, with Strategy Analytics reporting that in 2008 mobile data will be a $47B market. Imagine if you starting buying larger ticket items from your phone, such as electronic gadgets, food, and even automobiles. Just processing a small cut from all those transactions and this become a significant revenue stream for Banks. So what will emerge? Maybe at some point, another set of companies will get together and try it again.

Google’s Mobile Search

Google launched their Mobile Search (Beta) product. It is trying to build upon their existing portfolio of Mobile products — SMS search and Blogger Mobile. What I cannot understand is why this is just a big deal. Some of their features, allows the subscriber to now search XHTML pages and not just HTML pages. In my opinion, I don’t believe this to be a giant leap forward. But to give it a fair shake, I tried it out. The screenshots below illustrate two queries using the service from my mobile phone. The first attempt was: NBA

While I was skeptical 115,000 WAP sites about the NBA, I did notice that one of the first site that showed up was the WAP site for the NBA. However, this is a bit of slight of hand, in my opinion, since {WAP} is alphabetically *before* {WWW}. My second search was to look for the CNN WAP site. While slightly more happy about only 10,400 links to surf through (10x less), I did not immediately find the CNN WAP site. In fact, all of the first 10 links were all *web* sites and *not* WAP sites. Finally, my last attempt was for the BBC WAP site. I figured those Brits are a bit ahead of us when using WAP, since they surf over 1.82B WAP links a month (Source: Mobile Data Assocation). While I did get more hits, 134,000, the first link was the BBC WAP site. This was only a simple test, but does show that Google is making progress, albiet real slow. I don’t see how one would surf through all those links if you did not find it in the first 10 or 20. I’m still wary about using Google to search on my mobile phone, perhaps because surfing through all those results is a bit daunting. Also, I need an “All you can eat plan” before I attempt 10,000 or 100,000 links!

All aboard the Mobile Phone Fashion Express

The ARC Group forecasts that 23 Million “fashion handsets” will be sold 2010. While the number does not cause headlines, what does is the fact that so many fashion brands are getting into the act. I previously commented about Versace and Escada from Nokia and Siemens, respectively. I feel that this statistic is off by an order of magnitude. Should other brands get into the act, such as Nike, Adidas, Levis (a denim textured mobile would be highly popular), even Coca Cola could really start a brand war and the Operators and mobile device manufacturers race to lock up as many brands and marketing opportunities as the mobile games sector has done. The wireless sector is gaining more and more attention, what’s to stop any establish brand on getting into fray? The fashionistas have continued their trend worldwide including Kimora Lee Simmons and Vivienne Westwood courting Motorola while Diane Von Furstenberg and Anna Sui flirting with Samsung.

And these devices are not cheap! Most over $500 USD, they definitely fit the profile for those who are extremely fashion-conscious. When will the knock off faceplates come where I can get the same for about one-tenth of the cost? While I do applaud the efforts of these devices, I would have hope for some better results. While I understand the need to snap up these fashion brands by the Operators to boost APRU and create an image, but where was the marketing or engineer in those meetings? Why would I want an IDEN phone, even if it was a Baby Phat? While all devices mentioned are a limited edition, why not pick a larger carrier or network to promote a unique device? Whenever I think of IDEN, it still reminds me of construction workers, field service technicians, or event planners. Diane Von Furstenberg’s Samsung device is on Sprint’s CDMA network. And Anna Sui’s Samsung device is only available on T-Mobile. These are smarter choices. Finally, Vivienne Westwood’s Motorola device is GSM and available in the UK.

Maybe it won’t be long before Donald Trump will have a special edition Blackberry? How about Bill Gates (would have to be a PocketPC device) or even Al Gore, Father of the Internet? Perhaps artists with Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollack, or even Andy Warhol? There’s practically no limit — this reminds me of affinity credit cards.

Finally, Ferrari teamed up with it’s sponsor, Vodafone, and released with a Sharp Ferrari mobile phone.

Accessories — more than the value of the phone

It seems that there is no end to the extensions, add-ons, and accesories for your coveted mobile phone. I am often amazed at the myriad of things that you can buy to customize, adorn, or add attention and intrigue. One of the lastest fads is the Phonepockeâ„¢ by Mixx. It’s basically a handbag to put your mobile phone in when you put your phone in your handbag. The smart thing about these bags is the snap, so that you can attach it to the strap of your handbag or on your beltloop of your pants for easy access and audibility of your ringers. I’m sure women will be happy to have yet another handbag, particularly for their phone?

This led me to start looking at other accessories and began making a list to see if I could really spend more on accessories than the actual device. Here is what I came up with for a totally tricked out phone (all prices in USD):$349.99 ¹ Nokia 6820 (phone only, no service plan)

$9.99 Face plate
$19.99 Flashing lights keypad
$24.99 LED Flashing lights battery
$9.99 Car charger
$4.99 Screen hologram
$110.00 Jabra BT800 bluetooth headset
$29.99 Leather belt holster case
$8.99 phone strap (Dilbert)
$84.99 1GB MMC card (storing videos, pictures, ringers, games, etc.)
$9.99 neck chain (popular in Asia)
$9.99 cell chain (popular in the US?)
$9.99 desktop phone holder
$3.98 (2) ringtones at $1.99 each GRAND TOTAL $337.87²OK, so $12.12 short to equaling the price of the phone. But it still goes to show you that it can definitely add up. While you may argue that a lot of these accessories are impractical, fashion seems to dictate that some things are cheesy, hip, fun, cool, fugly, and a whole bunch of adjectives that define the way a person looks. One could say that your mobile phone is like a pair of jeans. How you wear it, just depends on what accessories you match with it.¹ Did not want the Operator’s subsidized price which can range from $199.99 to $249.99 USD. Also tax and shipping not included.
² Tax and shipping not included.

Mobile Social Encyclopedia

Stumped by a trivia question? Trying to find the answer and a library, an Internet connection, or your friends are not handy? Why not try Cellphedia. Building off of Wikipedia,it requires that there be a relative large number of active subscribers who pose questions and reply with answers, all via SMS. The information is stored in a database as knowledge, and subscribers have the ability to access as well as edit 9 different categories (art, architecture, entertainment, politics, technology, other, music, sports, and food).

Another variation on this service is AQA (Any Question Answered) from IssueBits. Based in the UK, for £1 and a txt to AQA, their 150 researchers will find the answer to your boggle and respond back with an answer up to 160 characters (maximum length of an SMS). Currently this service is only available to UK GSM subscribers. In the United States, there is a similar service Infone which provides a voice service instead of text. This is because the large portion of the population in the United States are driving while talking on their cell phone, thus voice becomes a better alternative. Their tag line: “Imagine your life with a personal assistant” is what they cell. For $0.89 USD, you get 15 minutes of a human’s undivided attention to help you with directions, enhanced directory service, teleconcierge, book movie tickets, stock quotes, flight schedules, etc. In general, I find all these services fascinating because it continues my firm believe that the mobile phone is our life. The power to access people, data, serivces, and more all from a small device that we cannot leave home without. The evolution of these services is very encouraging to fulfill the promise of all those analysts claiming mobile commerce to be a multi-billion market. It also enables the billions of mobile subscribers to extend their use on a computing platform that is truly mobile. Now if only we can figure out the battery problem, perhaps we could be untethered for longer periods of time…

Yahoo Mail from my phone

Today Sprint announced a deal to offer a downloadable mail client to use Yahoo mail on your phone. While I think that is great, I still wonder if it is really practical to do on the phones specified in the press release. While SMS is no sweat, thanks to T9 and a familiar keypad, banging out words is possible. Email on the other hand, way more challenging. Look at the interface:

Even if I want to send a rather short email, I can already see the frustration mounting. The success of the Blackberry with a QWERTY keyboard is just simply a better interface for doing email. The other devices (Treo 600 and Treo 650) mentioned do have a QWERTY keyboard which would definitely put my mind at ease of typing email on my phone.

The question is, Is this really practical? In my opinion, I would think it best to be able to access and read your email, but lengthy replies, due to the small screen real estate, a lack of a QWERTY keyboard, etc, would make it a bear. While I applaud the efforts for making this possible, and reasonably priced ($2.99/month), Yahoo email is free to sign up and free to access. Charging a nominal fee may cause push back from the subscriber base. If the fee were closer to $0.99/month, I’m sure more people would sign up for it. Since you can’t push advertising (yet) on the phone, perhaps $2.99 isn’t so bad afterall. While slow to react, I’m sure Google’s Gmail service would be keen to sign up a wireless operator to match the Sprint/Yahoo deal. Slowly but surely, the Web Portals are clawing away at their wireless beachhead. First a wireless portal, then messaging (instant and alerts), now email. The portfolio of wireless products is building, but the Operators should realize that they should not be fighting their partners/vendors over brand. The Operator needs to focus on getting white label partners in order to deploy services to increase and continue to build their brand. While Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL and others want to get higher placement in the mobile arena, the Operators need to make sure they do not become a “dumb pipe.” The value is their ability to aggregrate content, commerce and distribution in a single channel to the consumer via their handset. The gates and networks to control all of this will be the reason why Operators will stay relevant for years to come, while the Portals learn to play by a new set of rules in the telecom sector.

Mobile Handicapped

This is how I am feeling in the States United about the mobile infrastructure, mobile data services, mobile Operators, and more. I really hope the whole mobile ecosystem can understand the plight of what is going on here. While the “pointing of fingers” is endless, I will comment as well as offer suggestion. While some will argue that abrupt change effects too many people, some times, this time, we need this type of change to move on in life. Mobile Infrastructure
It is 2005, and I actually have a friend (She will remain anonymous) who still uses a Motorola StarTac (circa 1995s)! Every time I see that analog phone, I want to grab it out of her hands, throw it on the ground and squash it like a cockroach. Analog phones have got to go. I understand that there is a lot of invested capital, but again, cut off those subscribers and upgrade them to a newer plan/phone. A while back, I heard Dr. William C.Y. Lee talk at a conference about wireless spectrums and infrastructure. I strongly share his belief in that we should stop quibbling about network infrastructure and focus on services and customers satisfaction. Ending the battle of CDMA and TDMA and converging on a universal standard such as OFDM. I’m hoping to see a *true* global standard communications network where we all carry one device, we stop worrying about country codes, area codes, SMS and MMS interoperability and more. Once you are born you are given a mobile device that is yours for a lifetime (wishful thinking, but bureaucracy, capitalism, and a few other things are in the way of my utopia ) Value for Cost
While what I am suggesting is easier said than then, since Qualcomm, Nortel, Lucent and others have put their stakes in the ground, billions have been invested and sold, etc. etc. Those four words make me cringe: “When 3G gets here…”Well, like you, I’ve been waiting for a long time. I can help but be patient to see all those new services and cool things that will make me more addicted to my mobile device than my plasma television. But even when it gets there, am I really going to use all those services that they claim? I have yet to signed up for an HDTV subscription because of the price versus value. I cannot seem to justify paying $50 USD/month for 5 or 6 channels of HDTV satellite programming. Until the price and selection is there, as a technologist, even I will be a late adopter. Same goes for MMS and Mobile Video. This is probably why people are snapping pictures, showing their friends and family, but not sending them to each other. Networks for People
You would think that the vendors and operators would have learn their lesson from the plight of SMS and the lack of interoperability. MMS has yet to take off because of the same problem. I’m rather afraid that IM over the phone is already an existing problem. If you do not have the right IM client, you cannot connect to their mobile device. Probably the reason why I use Yahoo, MSN and AOL for IM. Mobile streaming video will likely go through the same pain as well. If you want to share a video and send it to a friend, you will have to know if you are both on the same network.The bottom line is that Operators need to focus on the customers and the quality of service. The network matters, but only when things do not work and the customer notices. Perhaps the Marketeers and Engineers need to be locked in a room so they can see eye to eye on this matter. Just don’t poke each others eyes out.