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CTIA Wireless Wave - Moving Targets April 21, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Entertainment, Indian Wireless market, ARPU, European wireless market, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem, Wireless Value Chain, CTIA , add a comment

The Wireless Wave article on Mobile Advertising is online now

cover_spring2008

Moving Targets: Mobile Marketing Reaches Consumers on Their Terms
                                                                                 By Lynn Thorne

Imagine you’re about to meet a blind date for drinks. On the way to the restaurant you realize you’re short on cash. You don’t know your way around the city too well – how will you find the nearest ATM? The answer is as convenient as glancing at your cell phone.

Or you’re driving to meet a new client and you have just enough time to make the meeting. Suddenly your phone sounds an alert letting you know there’s a traffic jam ahead – just in time for you to take an alternate route and arrive on time.

Perhaps you live in an area where severe weather outbreaks are the norm. You get a message on your phone urging you to take cover, as you are smack in the path of an oncoming twister. Did a concerned co-worker call you with the warning? No, The Weather Channel Interactive sent you an urgent message on your handset.

To some these stories sound like science fiction, but to a growing number of those in the know, these are the proven, and very real abilities of mobile marketing and advertising. And while consumers have been using SMS, or short messaging service, for years, the future of mobile is about to take off faster than you can text “ASAP.”

Wide Open World
Mobile marketing and mobile advertising have been flourishing in other parts of the world since the early part of this century. In Japan, for instance, two factors uniquely helped the explosive growth of this industry: networks and teamwork. Ironically, those same two factors are part of what has delayed mobile commerce in the U.S.

“The penetration of broadband wireless, which is 70 to 80 percent in Japan, is only about 20 percent in the U.S.,” says to industry analyst Chetan Sharma,president of CSC, a consulting and advisory firm helping companies in the mobile and voice communications sector. Sharma points out that in Japan and Korea, mobile carriers and the advertising industry have collaborated and joined ventures to form companies to address mobile marketing and advertising. “But in the U.S.,” Sharma says, “carriers have their own strategy, and advertisers have their own strategy. They’re not working together.”

Yet the U.S. is the biggest advertising market in the world, and it appears that the nation is on the verge of a mobile marketing breakthrough. Sharma claims it is only a matter of time before the country comes into its own in the m-commerce arena. “A lot of the problems existing today will be solved because advertisers are eager to reach consumers. Even though Japan and Korea got started with mobile advertising before the U.S., the aggressiveness of the advertisers pursuing it is greater in this country.”

Applications
M-commerce has innumerable uses, some of which haven’t even been thought of yet. However, it is already being used in some fascinating ways. Roughly half of the mobile consumers in Korea and Japan use their phones like a credit card of sorts. Near Field Communication (NFC) technology enables them to pay for purchases by waving their cell phone over a contactless reader at retailers. They can even download coupons to their phones and then forward the discounts to other users in their networks.

While that technology hasn’t yet reached America, U.S. users are benefitting from mobile marketing in myriad ways. For example, Crisp Wireless partners with media entertainment companies like USA Today to enable them to build a mobile presence through advertising. USA Today, one of the pioneers of delivering traditional newspaper content in a mobile platform, launched its initial site in December of 2005. Boris Fridman, CEO of Crisp Wireless, calls it “nothing short of the perfect mobile destination.” Fridman explains why: “They started building this significant consumer audience, and advertisers started paying attention to it. They’ve done a tremendous job at understanding that mobile Internet would become a driver for advertising dollars. For USA Today, it is no longer an experiment; it is clearly a significant business opportunity.”

AOL, another early adopter, has capitalized on the mobile commerce opportunity as well. In 2007, the company updated its portal for a richer user interface, including AOL mobile search, City Guide, access to AIM (the largest ing the platforms available, AOL has concen-trated on making mobile simple for consumers.

“We do things that make accessing our services easier, not necessarily making the mobile phone easier to use,” says Jason Gruber, director of Mobile and Telecommunications for AOL. Some examples include getting MapQuest information on the desktop transferred to a phone with a ‘send to cell’ functionality, where the user enjoys one-click access to MapQuest details. AOL was the first to introduce an I.M. forwarding service, so messages sent to a user’s desktop can be forwarded to his or her handset. “So it’s not only at the application level where we’re constantly making adjustments to the portal, but we’re really responding to the consumer base, [making sure] that the services consumers are comfortable with on the desktop can really work in the mobile space in an easy and fast way that’s relevant,” says Gruber.

Location-based service, in concert with GPS, enables companies to provide a context to their content. The Weather Channel Interactive, for example, has more than 35 million unique online users each month. It can deliver current conditions, expert forecasts, and relevant lifestyle content for 98,000 locations worldwide, so consumers in California are getting information that is specific to the west coast, while Michigan residents can be apprised of impending lake effect snows.

Since the younger generation drives a lot of the growth of mobile marketing, MTV is enjoying phenomenal increases in its mobile platforms. Greg Clayman, executive vice president of Digital Distribution and Business Development, Global Digital Media of MTV, says video is a prime example. “We’re doing five million mobile video clips a month in the U.S. That is nearly double what they were last year.” Beyond video clips, MTV’s mobile inventory includes linear video service, with clips of mobile video with DSE, and live programming of Comedy Central and Nickelodeon on V-cast.

The applications benefit the marketer as well as the consumer because ads can be much more user-specific. With browser-based advertising, ZIP codes are themain way to reach a particular audience segment. With mobile mar-keting and advertising, advertisers can utilize mobile instant messaging community) and information like gender, income, and other MapQuest, among others. Beyond imply maklimited profile data – all provided to wireless carriers by the user – to truly target the consumers most likely to respond.

Challenges and Solutions
It is easy to envision mobile marketing and advertising as an extension of the Internet, and in many ways, it is. However, there are fundamental differences that will affect the success of this new channel.

For example, advertisers cannot just expect the same ad to work on a PC and a mobile device. The huge difference in screen sizes means most ads won’t translate from one entity to another. Keyboard capabilities are also vastly different between computers and handsets.

AOL’s Gruber points out another challenge: fragmentation. “The application or service that we develop for a very simple low-end phone on one network may behave very differently and function differently than what exists on a very high-end phone.” To combat this problem, AOL has announced a client version of “My Mobile” that will make implementing AOL services on a mobile device a lot easier, no matter what kind of handset or carrier is used.

Chetan Sharma says search-based advertising has to change for mobile marketing to succeed. “On mobile devices, you have limited real estate. People are looking for answers, not thousands of facts. It becomes tricky in terms of how you figure out what the intent of the user is, so there is not so much room for error in mobile as there is for the Internet.”

There is also the challenge of demographics: plenty of industry research points to the younger generations as being the main mobile users. However, today’s device is not your teen’s mobile phone.

“Over the past few years, Newsweek, USA Today, Car and Driver, Elle, and many other traditional media companies that don’t necessarily appeal to the very young have launched mobile destinations,” says Fridman. “They appeal to a much broader audience.”

Louis Gump, vice president of Mobile at The Weather Channel Interactive, says the age limitations aren’t real. “There is a myth in the industry that everyone who uses their device for something other than talking on it is about 22 years old with a backpack. If you look at the demos, based on some of the research, what you’ll see is that the majority of the audience that uses wireless data is actually in the 25-34, and 35-44 demo with tails on either side. It’s a very attractive audience with millions of people who are in multiple demographic areas.”

Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles is the consumers themselves. Will they balk at the idea of advertising on their mobile devices as being too intrusive? Clayman predicts acceptance.
“As the mobile online experience begins to look more like the Web we’re accustomed to, consumers expect a certain degree of advertising. As long as it is something that is actually useful, people will think, ‘I see ads when I’m online or when I’m watching TV so there’s no reason I shouldn’t see them on my phone as well.’”

Besides, Clayman points out, consumers are already paying for the content they get on their mobile devices. Ads can help offset the increasing costs. “If a carrier has video clips the consumer pays for that, and if you want to double the amount of content consumers can get, you’ve got limited options. Either the carrier can pay for it and lose money, or they can charge consumers more. Mobile advertising in general can subsidize that.”

Would people be willing to pay more for their mobile services instead of seeing ads on their devices? Probably not, but experts say they will likely accept some advertising in exchange for reduced-cost service. “If they are able to decide what kind of ads they get and when they get them, consumers will be more willing to accept [mobile advertising],” says Sharma.

Growing Pains and Plans
Experts agree that for mobile marketing and advertising to be as successful as possible, the user must be in control. Gump says careful planning is key.

“From a consumer-facing standpoint, we have an opportunity as media companies, wire-less carriers, and other service providers in the industry, to get this right. We need to put the customer first. From an industry standpoint, we need to think about how our actions today will affect where we’re going to be 10 years from now and act accordingly.”

Analyst Sharma agrees. “We need to make sure that the market matures correctly and that the business models are ironed out before the market becomes too big. It’s a journey of cautious optimism to contextual nirvana.”

That journey, while in its infancy, is well underway. As companies branch out and try new forms of mobile marketing – everything from American Idol’s interactive audience voting via text message to The Weather Channel Interactive’s use of location-based services – the industry is poised to take off.
“This is just the beginning,” says Fridman. “There are about 40 million consumers that visit mobile sites monthly, which represents about 15 percent of the subscriber base. But every month that audience continues to grow. This is an incredible growth opportunity for companies who want to reach the consumers, because that number will only continue to go up.”

And those companies are taking notice. “I’ve seen an uptake in the integration of mobile advertising by the brands and the agencies in the marketplace that has really impressed me,” Gruber says. “The way those budgets have grown, the way the brands are coming back for repeat business … I’m really looking forward to 2008 being a breakout year for mobile marketing and mobile advertising.”

CTIA Wireless 2008 Roundup April 4, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Enterprise Mobility, Speaking Engagements, M&A, 3G, Devices, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mergers and Acquisitions, International Trade, Location based Services, MVNO, Indian Wireless market, BRIC, WiMax, Mobile Gaming, ARPU, Japan wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile TV, Mobile Applications, Smart Phone, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem, Speech Recognition, Mobile Search, Wi-Fi, Wireless Value Chain, 4G, CTIA , 2 comments

CTIA Wireless 2008 Roundup

http://www.chetansharma.com/ctiawireless.htm

The Sin City hosted CTIA Wireless 2008 earlier this week. On Wednesday morning, just before leaving for the convention center, I caught some portion of Ben Bernanke’s congressional testimony on the US economy woes. Few minutes later, strolling the show floor, talking to various companies, and hearing the keynotes, it seemed like I was on a different planet. Either someone failed to deliver the memo or the wireless industry is resilient enough to weather the turmoil in the financial and housing markets with some ease. The show was bigger with more attendees, the booths were returning to their glamorous heydays of the past, and the general buzz and energy at the show all seem to indicate the industry is going to do just fine and is primed for further growth. The general themes were around open network and access, user experience, and bandwidth.

This note summarizes our impressions from the show.

CTIA Wireless in Pictures

First let’s do the numbers: CTIA released their semi-annual statistics on the US market. In summary: For 2007, $23B in data revenues, 2 trillion in MOU, $139B in total service revenues, 48B txt messages/month. (We released our US Market and Global Market updates last month)

Keynotes: In terms of style, Sir Richard Branson stole the show with his pompous exuberance and pep talk (the talk of imaginary flight to Mars was hilarious; investors in Microgin and Viroo must be upset). For substance, Marco Boerries, President, Yahoo Mobile gave a nice compact overview of Yahoo initiatives and products in the market which are pretty darn good. (Marco wrote an opinion piece for our Mobile Advertising Book – “The future of Advertising is in the Consumers’ Pockets”). Yahoo has sewn together a number of deals worldwide that gives them a potential reach of over 600M users.

Vodafone is one operator which has been quite vocal in stating its positions on future infrastructure roadmap and data opportunities. Arun Sarin is probably the only CEO of major global operator who has publicly stated that Mobile Advertising will constitute a significant portion of their revenues in the coming days (Arun’s point person on the initiative Richard Saggers also wrote an opinion piece for our book “Opportunities for Mobile Advertising.” Let me know if you are interested in reading these two opinion pieces).

Microsoft’s Robbie Bach had the tough task of following the Branson-fest. He announced the arrival of a full-blown browser (finally!) for windows mobile. Also, the new windows mobile device from Sony Ericsson (Xperia) looks pretty darn cool. FCC Chairman Martin announced the rejection of Skype petition on the carterphone principle (to Skype’s dismay, it was not an April fool’s joke). Clearly, the definition of “open” is in the eye of the beholder. It means different things to different people. It has also been clear from the various activities and keynotes that the industry is trying its utmost to remain a “Self-regulated” industry and stay away from the clutches of eager politicians.

Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless conducted a panel with CEOs from Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nortel and probed them on the 4G migration path, trends in applications and services, and contrasts in adoption and introduction of new technology in various parts of the world. Final day was marked by what is now becoming a trend - keynotes from politicians. This time around Sen. Edwards and Sen. Thompson graced the podium.

Mobile Advertising: In talking with numerous players in the value chain from small developers to large operators to ad networks to media companies, the impression was that things have matured over the last six months. It was gratifying to hear that some companies are adopting strategies and recommendations we propose in our book. Still, some of the basic problems remain – majority of the inventory remain unsold indicating weak demand, CPM rates are still over-rated though they are starting to come down, and fragmentation continues to remain an issue.

The good news is that the size of the mobile campaign budgets are getting bigger with several seven figure RFPs floating around. While some companies are still trying to throw a lot at the wall in the hope that something sticks, others are maturing as companies and are more focused in their positioning and product roadmaps. Integration of various channels is starting to appear on the horizon and the integration with the publishers is becoming tighter. The issue of measurement and auditing standards remains a big issue and unfortunately not much progress to report. There are carrier initiatives and various industry bodies are taking the challenge to rally the ecosystem, but, frankly, consolidation of such efforts is necessary, we can’t afford yet another layer of fragmentation in an already complex ecosystem.

We were interviewed on Mobile Advertising prior to the show by several publications. Some of the articles were published this week to coincide with CTIA

Wireless Wave (CTIA) – Moving Targets: Mobile marketing reaches consumers on their terms by Lynn Thorne

BrandWeek – Mobile Marketing – Fantasy vs. Reality by Ken Hein

Wall Street Journal – Personalized promotions: Sending the right ads to your phone – Peggy Anne Salz

NFC: There were many more NFC-enabled devices on display this time and vendors were talking and demoing NFC and Biometrics based payment solutions. While there are handsets on the roadmap, this market is still very nascent in North America and Western Europe.

Inspiration: The inspiration for new and creative services still comes (at least for yours truly) from Japan (and Korea). I love spending time in DoCoMo’s booth for it gives a glimpse into what’s to come. No other company better understands the development of devices, services and applications that overlay on lifestyles than DoCoMo (e.g. a wellness handset that is a pedometer, heart rate monitor, body and bad breath monitor and yes, you can make voice calls too). They view wireless air-interfaces as nothing more than enablers to solutions that enhance daily lives. Various device manufacturers also displayed some really cool devices. The quality and diversity of handsets that have been introduced into the global markets over the last four quarters is just astonishing. The cycle of innovation and time-to-market keeps on accelerating.

Femto Cells: A number of players like Airwalk, Airvana, and others are bringing Femto cell solutions to the market and carriers are starting to pull this into their strategy as well and look forward to deployments beyond the trials.

4G: LTE vs. WiMAX (vs. UMB): Since the decision of Vodafone and Verizon to support LTE, UMB has been disappearing from the discussion. The 4G discussion is convulsing around LTE and WiMAX now (though Nortel did indicate its support TD-SCDMA as a 4G candidate). Without a doubt the operator community is rallying behind LTE and there might be an opportunity to finally converge to a single standard (haven’t we seen this movie before) but frankly, the advances in silicon to integrate multiple radios has made the standards debate less relevant. WiMAX has forced acceleration of LTE standardization process but is starting to lose its time (and cost) advantage. All eyes are on Sprint’s XOHM business rollouts in the coming days and months.

Accessories: I have never seen so many accessory and reseller outfits at a CTIA show. Business must be booming.

Best Booth: Thought there were several good layouts, LG and Samsung continue to impress with their creativity and “art of marketing.”

Developer and Publisher woes: Along with John Philips (Astraware) and Peter Baldwin (Cellmania), I helped facilitate a few developer session at the Mobile Jam Session organized by WIP. The issues of distribution, discovery, and monetization remain challenging for the small developers worldwide. Even with million user base, they are finding it difficult to monetize but we did discuss a number of success stories. The core elements of success that emerged from the discussion were: choosing the right market, embedding viral component into everything you throw out there, there is no room for mediocrity, and personalizing and customizing go a long way to get traction. An interesting tidbit: the number of page views for mobile MySpace app is a magnitude higher on off-deck vs. ondeck. Several of the companies are trying mobile advertising with varying degrees of success. After spending 4 hours with the developers, I sat on a carrier panel discussing mobile advertising. The contrast between the two worlds was so apparent. Clearly, more needs to be done to help both sides understand each other a bit better.

Green CTIA: There is a stronger emphasis on recycling and contributing to save the environment. The show itself is a big resource hog, so every bit helps.

Alternate Mobile Devices: The universe of alternate devices is expanding. Companies are buying wholesale data packages from the operators and integrating broadband chipsets into hardware to do digital signage (ICG), M2M (Sensorlogic), PND and much more. The definition of being “mobile” keeps on changing.

On Being “Open”: Obviously, given the recent activity around openness, getting a penny for each time the word was uttered by a speaker would have paid off for a lifetime of CTIA trips. While talk is cheap, demonstrable progress is being made by the likes Yahoo, Apple (btw, 3G iPhone is on its way), and AOL.

Another MVNO experiences turmoil: Movida - a Spanish focused MVNO which has garnered almost 300K subs filed for chapter 11.

Voice is becoming mainstream: With the product launches from Nuance, SpinVox, Vlingo, Jott, Yahoo, and many others, voice based navigation and its tighter integration with data services is becoming mainstream.

Where are the opportunities? Last week, I was moderating a panel with executives from AOL Mobile, T-Mobile, Motricity, and Formotus and the themes that emerged were around platform play, user experience, and productivity. At CTIA, in addition to these areas, there was a lot of discussion around social networking (though the market is being saturated with the MoSo noise). It is also clear that we are moving into the phase of “aggregation of fragmentation” with initiatives from Yahoo, AOL, and Google dominating the landscape.

Home Screen Effect: I have been talking about using the home screen for driving data usage for the last 8 years. I think we will see good innovation this year on that front starting with Yahoo’s One Platform. There are several other initiatives in the works where operators and OEMs will be deploying frameworks and technologies to bring information to a “click-less” idle screen environment.

Overall, no major news but industry stays vibrant, healthy, and exciting.

Your feedback is always welcome.

Chetan Sharma

Disclosure: Some of the companies mentioned in this note are our clients.

Global Wireless Data Market Update 2007 March 27, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Infrastructure, Carriers, Security, Speaking Engagements, M&A, 3G, Partnership, Devices, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mergers and Acquisitions, Location based Services, MVNO, Indian Wireless market, India, BRIC, WiMax, Mobile Gaming, Networks, ARPU, Japan wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile TV, mobile users, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Speech Recognition, Mobile Search, Wi-Fi, Wireless Value Chain, 4G, CTIA , 7 comments

Global Wireless Data Market Update 2007

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http://www.chetansharma.com/globalmarketupdate2007.htm

As you read this End of Year (EOY) 2007 Global Wireless Data Market update this week, somewhere in India, a new subscription will catapult India over the US as the number 2 global wireless market. 2007 was a banner year for global wireless data market. The global service revenues for the year touched $700 billion, the data service revenues were more than $120 billion, China signed its 500 millionth subscription, and both India (in feb 08) and the US crossed the 250 million subscription mark. 2007 continued to enhance mobile data’s role in the operator ecosystem with approx 17% of the revenue is coming from data services.

For some leading operators, data is now contributing up to 35% of the revenues however increase in data ARPU is not completely offsetting the drop in voice ARPU. From the true and tested SMS messaging to new services such as Mobile TV, Enterprise apps, and others, different services helped in adding billions to the revenues generated for 2007. Japan and Korea remain the envy of the global markets and the countries to study and learn from w.r.t. new services and applications. The US market has been steadily making strong comeback and for the first time exceeded Japan in service revenue generated from mobile data.

Chetan Sharma Consulting conducted its semiannual study on the global mobile data industry. We studied wireless data trends in over 40 major countries - from developed and mature markets such as Japan, Korea, UK, and Italy to hyper growth markets such as China and India. This note summarizes the findings from the research.

Your feedback is always welcome.

Chetan Sharma

Disclosure: Some of the companies mentioned in this note are our clients.

Carnival of the Mobilists #114 March 9, 2008

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Indian Wireless market, BRIC, Mobile Gaming, European wireless market, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain, CTIA , 5 comments

COM returns to AORTA. Welcome.

Over the past couple of quarters, the mobile industry has been pretty active with a series of initiatives, milestones, and launches and our fellow Mobilists from around the world bring you the analysis, insights, and commentary of the major events, new initiatives, gaffes and goofs, startup action and much more.

The best from the last week are:

Since June 07, Apple has been capturing the headlines like no other company in the ecosystem. Michael Mace at MobileOpportunity gives a thoughtful analysis of Apple’s iPhone SDK. Abhishek Tiwari and Tricia Duryee (at Moconews) also look at iPhone’s SDK and wonder if Apple is the new carrier? More SDK analysis by Gábor Török.

Ajit Jaokar, author and the yeoman at OpenGardens writes another insightful post, this time on “The significance of Google Gears on mobile devices” follow-up from this one.

Russell Buckley at Mobhappy talks about the “Uniqueness of the Mobile Channel” especially from an advertising perspective. Jamie Wells of Mobilestance which focuses on the US Mobile Marketing Perspectives provides insights into Buzzd, a company founded by Nihal Mehta of ipsh! fame. Nihal is well-versed with the mobile market and Jamie’s interview gives information on this new startup.

Peggy Salz at MSearchGroove provides some insightful commentary on the state of mobile search, mobile advertising and social media. She has a good podcast with Kate Edwards, CEO of Jentro Technologies.

Andreas Constantinou at Vision Mobile does a couple of brilliant posts on summarizing “Learnings from the MWC 08″ and lists his 10 predictions for MWC 09. Be sure to check out the Mobile Megatrends presentation as well.

Martin Sauter, author and curator of WirelessMoves opines on the overhyped battle between WiMAX and LTE. Media and analysts need some fights to keep things interesting :-)

Dean Bubley at Disruptive Analysis in his usual analytical style makes the case for dismantling the control over the SIM card and by association, the SIM distributors.

Dennis Bournique of WAP Review provides a detailed review of WebClip2Go a content clipping service for your mobile devices.

Paul Ruppert - the Zenmaestro at Mobile Messaging 2.0 ponders on “what it means to be mobile?”

David Cushman at Fast Future writes about Microblogging and how twitter is enticing him into getting his iPhone.

Finally, some details on the Mobile Jam Session at m-trends. It is being hosted by Caroline Lewko and Rudy De Waele at CTIA in Vegas on March 31st.

Be sure to participate next time. Andrew Grill hosts the next Carnival. Send in your entries to mobilists at gmail dot com. Until next time, happy mobile daze ahead.

Book Review: The History of Wireless February 11, 2008

Posted by chetan in : US Wireless Market, International Trade, Indian Wireless market, BRIC, Japan wireless market, European wireless market, Worldwide Wireless Market, CTIA , add a comment

The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses

The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses by Ira Brodsky, Telescope Books

Last week a colleague of mine, Ira Brodsky sent me his latest book on the history of the wireless industry and i must say i was hooked on to it until i was done. It is a brilliant book especially for us industry junkies and technology history buffs. Ira has done a superb job of mining vivid details about the history, personalities of the major actors in the drama of the evolution of the wireless industry - starting from Luigi Galvani’s frog experiments back in 1781to the most recent advances in broadband wireless, this books transports you to a front row experience of the how the industry grew, each discovery made, each opportunity missed, and how each of the genius inventors over the past 200+ years through determination and foresight brought us the current day wireless industry. I wish the book was available when i was studying science and electrical engineering in school. The terms volt, faraday, ohm, hertz, etc would have had a different meaning.

We often don’t think about how “true” inventions were made in the wireless industry and take things for granted, in fact the art of original scientific inventions seems to be an endangered species these days. The details of this book are so stunning and Ira has written such a readable book that you feel like you are a fly on the wall while Galvani, Franklin, Faraday, Volta, Maxwell, Hertz, Morse, Bell, Marconi, Edison, Bose, Sarnoff, Galvin, Ericsson, Viterbi, and others were doing their thing.

The book is effective not only in capturing the history so beautifully but for drawing the lessons from successes and failures of inventors and companies. For today’s entrepreneurs there are words of wisdom and inspiration.

CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment 2007 Roundup October 28, 2007

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Infrastructure, Strategy, Carriers, Middleware, Enterprise Mobility, Security, 3G, Partnership, Devices, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mergers and Acquisitions, MVNO, BRIC, WiMax, Mobile Gaming, ARPU, Messaging, European wireless market, Mobile TV, Mobile Applications, Smart Phone, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Microsoft Mobile, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain, 4G, Privacy, CTIA , 4 comments

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http://www.chetansharma.com/ctiaoct07.htm

The early morning full moon over the San Francisco bay was much more inspiring than any gizmos or gimmicks at the annual CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment show. Maybe it is the conference fatigue setting in but the scaled back event failed to gather steam and one had to rely on alternate sources to get a sense of where things are headed in the next 6-12 months. This note summarizes the observations and commentary from the show.

First let’s do the numbers. CTIA released its mid-year data survey for the year. In summary, as of June 2007 - 243M subs, $67.9B in revenues (first 6 months), $10.5B in data revenues for the year accounting for 15.5% of the total service revenue, MOU exceeded 1 Trillion minutes, 1B TXT messages daily. These numbers were in line with the numbers we reported back in Aug.

Keynotes - The central theme that tied the three keynotes was “Be Open, Do Good Work, and Rest will take care of itself.” The keynotes from Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook, and Atish Gude, Sprint Nextel emphasized the need to have an “open platform” for innovation, applications, and services. Haven’t we been down this lane before?

Steve started by taking a page out of our (upcoming) book, literally (page 243 to be exact) and describing a vision where mobile device becomes the remote control of your life for both workstyle and lifestyle. Too often we focus on separating out personal vs. professional but our lives are so intertwined that one minute you are setting up a doctor’s appointment and the next minute closing a sale. Companies that focus on managing the experience start to finish (waking to sleeping) independent of everything else will be the ones that dominate these turf wars. Microsoft’s big announcement was the release of device management server that includes mobile devices in addition to the desktop world (but it is limited to windows mobile devices only, Open?). Microsoft has been making impressive strides in occupying its place in the mobile ecosystem. Though windows mobile and battery life don’t go together, the fact that they are deployed with 160 operators in 55 countries, shipping 20M devices/year places them at a significant advantage in the coming days.

Facebook’s Moskovitz made the plea for openness of networks, devices, and applications to enable the social networking phenomenon on mobile. The fact that Microsoft and Facebook were doing the keynotes on the eve of strategic investment wasn’t a coincidence. Dustin brought out the elderly statesman Mike Lazaridis to announce the facebook app for Blackberry smartphones. The interesting thing was how the app was introduced - Facebook chose RIM and RIM chose T-Mobile for this app. Device manufacturers are surely getting bolder. Facebook extended its platform to mobile. Getting social networking apps on mobile is a no-brainer. In fact, the coming enhancements with Presence, IMS, Broadband, Profiling, Location, can make mobile social network a society of its own.

I thought the most forceful case for “openness” was delivered by Atish Gude, SVP of the XOHM (WiMAX) initiative at Sprint Nextel. In fact, it was exactly along the lines of our recommendations for the operators in our book. Atish talked about openness across network, devices, content, and applications to deliver a great “customer experience.” Operators focus on delivering the intelligent network by focusing on QoS, Network elements like Presence and Location, Security, and Consistency of throughput and performance and leave the innovation in applications and services on the ecosystem who know how best to exploit the medium. His definition of “device” expanded beyond the mobile phone into consumer electronics and appliances which is a smart way of looking at things. However, vision is one thing and execution is another. Will Sprint be able to deliver on this vision in a timely fashion amidst quarterly Wall Street pressure is going to define the industry more than any of the hoopla of 700MHz.

Enterprise MIA - One of the personalities was clearly missing from the show. Yes, there was an enterprise pavilion but nothing new and different surfaced. Microsoft’s late foray into the device management space was the only worthwhile news that emerged.

LBS - The LBS industry proudly presented its posterchilds TeleAtlas, Navteq, TeleNav, and others. Their imposing presence on the show floor and in some of the sessions was palpable. I have been working in or following this space since 1995 and it finally feels that there is going to be some activity in this space after years of posturing, delays, and hype. However, the true value of “location” can’t be unlocked unless it truly becomes “open” for the application and service developers. The delivery of coordinates for every request is not cheap so some form of business model or technical break through is needed to make the use pervasive. Some of the newer players displaying their wares were Telmap, locr, and earthcomber.

Mobile Advertising - It is great to see the progress over the last 12 months. The distribution, inventory, and ad networks are all improving and size of the campaigns are starting to reach six figures on average. Some of the working demos I saw were really compelling and some unique solutions are going to be introduced in the market in the next six months. Though the space is still nascent, some trends have started to emerge - companies who are focused on solving the problem end-to-end from strategy to execution to understanding the results are separating themselves from the plethora of technology providers in the space. There is tremendous amount of work that needs to be done in the metrics and auditing space in addition to the integration of silos.

WiMAX picks up steam On the heels of WiMAX being declared as part of the IMT-2000 family, WiMAX is slated to gather momentum though a lot still depends on carriers like Sprint to deploy nationwide networks and device manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung to bring cheap devices to the market. Nevertheless, Cisco’s acquisition of Navini, Beceem’s deal with NEC and others are signs of positive movement in this sector.

Mobile Video a dying market? Already? Only a couple of CTIAs ago, Mobile video took the event by storm only to find defending itself as a viable business in a short span of time. The video quality has improved significantly but the business models have not.

Entering the US market - US remains one of the most attractive market for mobile data but very few overseas firm succeed. One of the big European brands “Zed” is making an aggressive and impressive push into the US market and is expecting up to 30% (or $150M) of its revenues coming from the US market in the next 12 months. They have developed a good platform for interactive games that tie the experience across mobile and online really well. EA and the likes should take notice.

Open - not in my backyard The keynotes were in sharp contrast with some of the carrier panels. One of them seemed to be the replay of a session I attended in 2001 or was it 1997. Eerie.

Presence, IMS - The discussion around presence and IMS is intensifying. Demos are getting better and the coordination between carriers to standardize and interoperate is improving but we still have a long way to go.

Coolest gadget - NeuroSky filled the void of a gadget less show by showcasing its mind-over-matter technology. Using brainwaves which are detected by a sensor attached to your head, it allows the user to move, push, and float objects by just concentrating on them. Remember The Matrix. Now, if you throw in Philip’s amBX and Microvision’s PicoP, your cell phone becomes this gaming platform that takes the die-hards to the transcendental state of nirvana.

iPhone continues to dominate the talk - iPhone continues to set the tone of discussion in the industry. Since July, there has hardly been a mobile conference worth its salt that hasn’t had a session on “impact of iPhone.” There hasn’t been a mobile device like this one and it shows. Attendees proudly fiddled with their iPhones in public and were eager to discuss their experience and forecasts.

US vs. Europe - There was quite a bit of us vs. them discussion. CTIA’s Wireless Wave magazine started the discussion by its cover story article “The Continental Divide” (for which we were interviewed). It was soon covered by the likes of WSJ (Walt Mossberg - Free My Phone), GigaOM (How far behind is the US vs. Europe?), Steve Largent (Largent to Mossberg .. Wish you were here in San Francisco), and others. As I say in the article - the picture is more complicated .. and one needs to take a holistic view. This topic is crying for a detailed study.

MCommerce - Behind closed doors there is a lot of discussion on MCommerce and how to enable phone to become the wallet of choice (this will be music to the ears to my colleagues in Japan and Korea). Some new and interesting models are starting to appear. One is from Mobilians, a company that has had good success in South Korea and is now setting its sight on the US market. Their focus is to use the phone to enable payment of online and offline goods. In Korea, Mobilians is registering 7M transactions/ month and over $1B in goods sold/year with up to $250 items (which appear on the carrier bill). This is a totally untapped space for the carrier and is a threat to the credit card companies especially for the low cost items where the 2%+20-25c fee drives up the effective rate for the merchant. A tier-1 carrier is also looking to firm up its mCommerce strategy in the next few weeks. It should be noted that some of the smaller regional carriers who survive due to laser focus customer service are testing and rolling out innovative solutions ahead of their bigger peers. For e.g. CellularSouth launched picture application (with Ontela) and after their successful trials with NFC based payments is looking into launching WirelessWallet. Similarly, some others are in the process of getting some LBS, Mobile Search, and Mobile Advertising solutions in the next quarter or so.

Misc

· AOL Mobile re-launched its mobile suite of products. It has a good suite of assets and the company is starting to integrate and enhance the user experience.

· More M&A activities are expected in the mobile advertising space in the next 6-12 months as startups use every advantage to maximize the returns before the big boys catch-up.

· There was hardly any mention of the gPhone or the zPhone.

· Verizon and Sprint are boosting the holiday season lineups to counter the onslaught of iPhone with similar looking phones.

· Becker - a 60 year old company which launched the first ever car radio showed off its “Traffic Assist” unit which had a good user interface and free real-time traffic info for life.

· M2M players such as Telit and Numerex showed their solutions in the machine-to-machine communications space.

· Talkster talked about its free global calls in exchange of listening to ads.

Your feedback is always welcome.

Chetan Sharma

Mobile Advertising Panel Roundup April 19, 2007

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Strategy, Carriers, Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Indian Wireless market, ARPU, Unified Messaging, Mobile TV, Mobile Applications, Smart Phone, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Microsoft Mobile, Speech Recognition, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain, CTIA , 7 comments

Yesterday, I had the distinct honor to present and moderate a PAN-IIT event on “Mobile Advertising - Technical Challenges and Business Opportunities” at Google’s Kirkland offices.

I will get into the panel discussion in a minute. First, would like to join everyone in paying our sincerest condolences and prayers to the families of Prof. G.V.Loganathan and rest of the folks who were lost in the tragic Virginia-Tech incident. Prof. Loganathan was a fellow IIT alum and colleague and friend of many in the community.

Mobile Advertising Panel Discussion

Our illustrious panel included:

(Bios here)

Decades of experience in Mobile, Internet, and Advertising.

I started the discussion by giving a broad overview of the mobile advertising industry and some of the things that we should be thinking about. In random order, they are:

Mobile Advertising means different things to different people: Depending on a company’s focus, mobile advertising means different things to different companies. There are over a dozen different channels or strategies at our disposal in this framework, for instance -

No one provider offers capabilities across a majority of them, you could argue that there is no need but from an advertiser’s perspective, the situation demands aggregation and simplicity.

Forecasts: I put up a graphic that included the US mobile advertising forecasts from several leading analysts and asked the audience to guess the timeframe for the same. The original figure is below -

(Source: eMarketer, 2001)

This is a reminder that a) it is hard to forecast when you are starting from zero and b) we should learn our lessons from history. 2006/7 forecasts stand at

(Source: eMarketer, 2006)

(Data Source: Informa, 2006)

 (Data Source: ABI Research, 2007)

It is not a question of whether these forecasts will prove to be accurate in 4-5 years time, but what will it take to make these forecasts real. Can we learn from the last time around and apply the lessons to this cycle?

Japanese Mobile Advertising market: Clearly, Japan has had more experience with Mobile Advertising than rest of the markets. In 2006, the average revenue/user/year stood at around $4. For US, this figure was less than $1.

Mobile Advertising value chains: As I mentioned above, mobile advertising means different things to different people and hence there are different value chains in place though they are merging rapidly.

Measurement: It is critical for the success of the industry to have measurement tools in place. I discussed Ogilvy’s Lenova campaign that generated 188% lift in brand awareness and 156% lift in product recall.

Mobile Advertising Framework: Finally, I presented my view of the technical advertising framework that is needed to make the experience work for the user

Panel Discussion

We had a packed house and a very engaged audience. We had influential engineers, VCs, biz dev, mobile enthusiasts in the mix. I asked the panelists to summarize their view of the Mobile Advertising space and what they saw as some of the challenges going in. (paraphrasing of their comments is mine)

Everyone was bullish on the segment, however they cautioned that it will take time, as the “reach” is not there yet. Jai mentioned the oft-quoted 15% penetration for browsing in the US as a limitation of “reach”. Kosar discussed Google’s initiatives in Japan where they are doing a lot of testing to hone in on the “user experience”. Victor talked about the challenges of “user interface” and that voice represents a good solution to cut through the archaic menu hierarchy to find things. He is not worried about the supply and demand but the brokerage in the middle. Brendan talked about the “ecosystem friction” wherein we have too many players for advertisers to deal with and an aggregated or simplified view is needed for the advertisers to jump in with both feet. Coming from the broadcast and Internet marketing background at TW/AOL, Brendan thought measurement authority like Nielsen is a must.

Kosar described the concept of “signals” that Google uses to discern “intent” and how mobile presents a great experimentation field to test some search techniques and algorithms that can also be applied to online search at a later date. The reason being low threshold for wrong results on mobile.

On the question of targeting, Brendan and Jai mentioned the use of demographic data available from the carrier to make search results (and advertising) better. Kosar said that Google’s focus is on tailoring experiences for device capabilities and cannot always rely on user preferences on mobile devices since they are not always available. They want to make sure an ad shows up where user expects it to show up. Google is concerned for both the user and the advertiser. Victor used to the run probably the biggest direct marketing research org in the world at Reader’s Digest and he thought that the targeting is actually much easier in mobile due “declared intent”.

There was some discussion on the meaning of mobile advertising and how promotions and marketing are part of the same mix. Jai said that recommendation is another form of advertising which appears non-intrusive and is actually useful for the consumers. Amazon gets a good chunk of their revenues from recommendation clicks. I myself find them quite useful and end up buying dozens of books this way every year.

Victor thought that the ”promotions” piece (tied to local search) is actually going to be a much more lucrative business than the banner ads or even media search related advertising.

Kosar reiterated Google’s philosophy - “focus on the best products and experiences, and monetization opportunities will emerge naturally both for users and advertisers”.

There was active participation from the audience as well.

Katie Thompson from Trilogy (a prominent VC firm in PNW) wondered about the ad saturation levels we might be reaching and how do we address that and if agencies are worried about that aspect.

Mohan Venkataramana, President of IITPNW chapter and a veteran in the industry saw history repeating itself w.r.t. advertisements and evolution of the mobile industry.

There was general agreement that industry needs to focus on user’s needs  rather than CPC and CPMs at this stage in the game. And that user privacy issues should stay at the forefront.

Another one lamented that first the carriers need to fix the voice quality, reduce data rate plans, and make things usable before consumers are going to tolerate ads.

Someone narrowed things down to two key aspects a) location and b) relevant targeting.

There were questions about the Japanese market and if it is different from the US and if that’s the reason advertising will take longer in the US. A lot of people misunderstand the Japanese (and Korean) market. I was advisor to the senior management team of NTT DoCoMo when they were active in the US and we used to laugh about the misconceptions and the myths that perpetuated in the US market. We dealt with this issue in quite a bit of detail in our previous book (co-authored with Dr. Nakamura, SVP, DoCoMo).

We could have gone on for the rest of the night but had to wrap things up. Mobile Advertising is a broad topic and it is hard to cover all aspects of it in 90 minutes, but touched on quite a number of items and honed in on a couple.

Thanks to our hosts Google for space and food, the panelists for an illuminating evening and spirited discussion, and the participants for making it a lively exchange.

Carnival of the Mobilists #68 April 9, 2007

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Infrastructure, Strategy, Carriers, Security, Devices, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Gaming, European wireless market, mobile users, Mobile Applications, Smart Phone, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Wireless Value Chain, Privacy, CTIA , 13 comments

In 1991, Mark Weiser, in his seminal article, “The Computer for the 21st Century,” described ubiquitous computing as a “world in which humans and computers were seamlessly united”. The article opened with “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”. IBM evangelized the concept as pervasive computing in the nineties. Later in 1997, Mark Anderson, one of the best forecasters in our business, coined the term AORTA or “Always On-Real Time Access” to announce the age of “always on, always connected to any information at anytime, anywhere”. Then, in 2003, my good friend Dr. Yasuhisa Nakamura at NTT DoCoMo wrote in the Introduction of our book about broadband connectivity that will become an “air-like” infrastructure, omnipresent, without us (devices) being conscious of it. That’s the essence of this blog, discussing the ideas put forth by Mark Weiser and subsequent visionaries - tracking the AORTA evolution.

Welcome.

I am glad you could join us for the 68th edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists – a weekly showcase of best writing by Mobilists from around the world on topics that are near and dear to us. I am delighted to present you with the best posts from last week that will help carry the discussion of AORTA forward.

Ajit Jaokar of OpenGardens fame muses - why carriers are not proactive about increasing touch points with the customers?. Indeed, carriers could do a much better job by the communicating with their customers via what else – the device. Shouldn’t mobile advertising start at home?

Raddedas at TechType takes the South Korean mobile players like Samsung and LG to task for not opening up their platforms to external developers. Welcome to the Carnival and thanks for your post.

Ed at The Pisstakers writes about formatting website with graphics to fit cell phones.

James Pearce at Tripleodeon opines about “The Mobile Web is Generation Y’s”.

David Beers at Software Everywhere in his post “Is the network the (mobile) computer?” talks about designing applications and services with user experience in mind.

Barbara Ballard at Little Springs Design writes about Smart Phone Evolution. Also, if you want to dig deeper into mobile user experience, be sure to check out her recently released book on “Designing the Mobile User Experience” by John Wiley.

Shawn at Shackdiesel takes FCC to task for banning the user cell phone on flights. There is no technical evidence that there is any interference with avionics equipment, but the myth persists.

Tomas Zeman writes for Wirenode mobile blog about the need for feedback from mobile users.

My favorite post of the week comes from Andreas Constantinou who does an analysis of the slow demise of browser companies like Openwave who helped pioneer the space but failed to keep up with the times.

Apple and EMI’s journey into the bold new DRM-free world is captured well by Rudy De Waele in his post “DRM Free at Last”. EMI’s Nicoli had hinted of this in his keynote in Orlando.

CTIA saw the arrival of Zenzui and Deepfish, both from Microsoft. Carlo Longino at MobHappy ponders - “Mobile UI Trends: Is More Better?”

Some of us are still recovering from CTIA. In case you missed it, Greg Clayman of Twofones provides an excellent summary of CTIA with commentary on Mobile TV, Advertising, Search, Standards and much more. My CTIA roundup is here. Review of the best party by Shawn Conahan is here.

Views and Reviews

Ricky Cadden at SymbianGuru provides an update on N95.

Dennis at Wapreview, our host for #67 reviews AOL’s mobile portal

Zach Epstein reviews GSync by Psiloc.

Justin Oberman at Mopocket points to an interesting application for house hunting folks out there – Housefront SMS

Farooq Anjum at Anjum’s web provides an introduction to BREW.

Next Carnival is at Mobile Marketing & Spam hosted by Troy Norcross. Be sure to check it out. Until next time, Sayonara!

CTIA Wireless 2007 Roundup April 2, 2007

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Enterprise Mobility, 3G, Devices, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mergers and Acquisitions, International Trade, ARPU, Japan wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile TV, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Usability, Mobile Ecosystem, Speech Recognition, Mobile Search, Wireless Value Chain, 4G, CTIA , 5 comments

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http://www.chetansharma.com/ctia0307roundup.htm

Orlando was the venue for CTIA Wireless 2007. Pre-show events include Mobile Entertainment Live (Billboard), day long seminars on Mobile Advertising and Emerging Technology. The main themes from the show were Mobile Advertising, NFC and Mobile Payments, Mobile TV, and WiMAX. This note summarizes the observations, interviews of executives, pre-show briefings, and commentary from the above shows.

First let’s do the numbers  Just before CTIA, M:Metrics released some numbers from their most recent survey. At the end of 2006, amongst the western nations, US had approximately 11% 3G penetration with Italy leading the way with 27%. Photo messaging is picking up reaching 15-30% penetration in most markets. CTIA also released their survey numbers. 233M subs, 76% penetration, and $8.7 billion for the latter six months of 2006, up 82% from $4.8 billion in the latter half of 2005. You probably already knew most of the above after reading our research note here. Instat reported that for the first time