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On the road to Pasadena May 9, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, Worldwide Wireless Market , add a comment

Have been traveling all this week. From Memphis to Seattle to leaving for Pasadena in a little bit. Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum is organizing the event on advertising tomorrow.

Online Advertising - Getting Up Close and Personal: How will new avenues for advertising influence the buying decisions of consumer?

Tim Cadogan, CEO OpenX, former SVP of Global Advertising at Yahoo! and I are giving keynotes and then joining the panel discussion with John Babcock, Partner, Rustic Canyon, Greg Market, Founder, Infuse Creative, and William Quigley, MD, Clearstone Venture Partners.

If you are in the area, would love to see you. Details of the event here.

Thanks to Lynn Foster and Joe Jasin for inviting me to the event.

Mobile Advertising Measurement May 5, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Mobile Advertising , add a comment

Milestone Group published a piece on “Mobile Advertising Measurement” which is based on our Mobile Advertising book. Thanks to Mark Zawacki, Gary Cohen, and Jim Conley.

Recap of Sacramento and Stanford events April 29, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Indian Wireless market, European wireless market, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem , add a comment

I am starting to lose count of how many events I have done related to the Mobile Advertising book but each one of them has been fun as I meet new friends and colleagues and get to visit with the old ones.

Had a pretty tight iten in sunny CA last week. Warm weather of bay area was a welcome change to the cold winter of Seattle which doesn’t want to go away. I have driven past Sacramento a couple of times before but never stopped there. Gopan, President of Techcoire (a high-tech networking organization in Sacramento) invited me to present the research from the book. The title of the talk was “Mobile Advertising: The $20B Opportunity?” The essence of the discussion was how do we move from the buzz of $20B to the biz of creating $20B in actual revenue. What are the sticking points? Where are the opportunities? and how do we go about creating a vibrant ecosystem? While there is justifiable skepticism in the advertising industry, mobile presents a very compelling conversation medium. The question is not about “if” but “when.”

After driving back and forth from bay area to Sacramento and coming late night, had a morning class with Prof Tom Kosnik’s “Global Entrepreneurial Marketing” students at Stanford University. It is a very popular course taught by a great teacher. On Prof. Kosnik’s suggestion, I skipped the standard presentation mode and straight away launched into the Q&A session and we went on for an hour. I used the slides and data to answer the questions. Frankly, I wish I could present and engage the audience this way more often. It is far more fun and both the audience and the speaker can get the most out of the session. The students were sharp, curious, and asked thought-provoking questions. Compared to other events, there were a lot more questions around privacy in mobile advertising and how to make sure the ecosystem doesn’t violate the trust of the users even accidentally. As an industry, we haven’t done all we can to ensure that, just yet. We also talked a lot about the fragmentation and differences in various market taking a more global view of the opportunity.

BookTour - Southern California

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising , add a comment

I started doing the book events in Jan with the first presentation in Vancouver, BC and after doing several events on west coast, will be doing three events in SoCA in May, Pasadena and San Diego to be precise. Hope to see some of you at these events.

CommNexus San Diego

CommNexus event registration details are now online

Wireless Content & Applications SIG Presents…

Mobile Advertising

-Hear it from the Experts!-

WHEN:
May 20, 2008
TIME:
5:30PM Registration/Networking
6:00PM Event Starts
7:30PM Event Ends

Join us for an exciting evening where we talk about this hot, multi-billion dollar phenomena, called Mobile Advertising. And who better, than the authors of the new book: “Mobile Advertising: Supercharge your brand in the exploding wireless market”. Here is an excerpt from their book: “Mobile advertising is the stuff of which great cocktail party conversations are made. Some research houses are telling us to expect a $12 billion market by 2011. Online advertising has grown to look like a business to print money, so it’s only natural for there to be a little envy among us all. But that shouldn’t cause us to forget that online advertising didn’t exactly happen overnight it was tough sledding. And while there are obvious winners today, we all tend to forget the carnage left in the wake of unrealistic expectations.”

HIGHLIGHT:

This event is also the book launch event for the authors in San Diego, so, if you are looking for your copy of this book, do come and attend!


PANELISTS:
Chetan Sharma
Founder and President     Chetan Sharma Consulting
Author

Chetan is a recognized industry expert in strategy and implementation of wireless data and pervasive computing solutions. He has a strong background in developing and launching technologies, products, and solutions for the wireless Industry, including extensive experience in managing and delivering all phases of the product development cycle. Executives from leading wireless companies around the world seek his accurate predictions, independent insights, and actionable recommendations. He has served as an advisor to senior executive management of several Fortune 100 companies in the wireless space. Some of his clients include NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, Disney, KTF, Sony, Samsung, Virgin Mobile, Sprint Nextel, AT&T Wireless, Alcatel-Lucent, KDDI, Cincinnati Bell, Reuters, Qualcomm, Reliance Infocomm, SAP, Merrill Lynch, American Express, Infospace, BEA, and HP.
Chetan is the author or co-author of five books: Wireless Internet Enterprise Applications (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), VoiceXML: Strategies and Techniques for Effective Voice Application Development (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), Wireless data services: Technologies, Business models, and Global markets (Cambridge University Press, 2004),  Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), and Wireless Broadband Technology: Conflict and Convergence (IEEE Press, 2008). His books have been adopted in several corporate training programs and university courses at New York University and Graduate School of Tokyo University. Chetan has patents in wireless communications, is regularly invited to speak at conferences worldwide, and is an active member in industry bodies and committees.

Joe Herzog
Senior Director, Search Products     Infospace
Biography coming soon.
LOCATION:
TBA

COST:
$10.00 Pre-registration (Please pre-register by noon on May 19, 2008)
$20.00 At the Door
SIG CO-CHAIRS:
Pattric Rawlins, Procopio
Atul Suri, Qualcomm

Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum April 23, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising , add a comment

I will be giving a keynote at the Caltech/MIT Enterprise forum in Pasadena on May 10th. Registration details are now online. There will be good discussion on advertising.

Online Advertising - Getting Up Close and Personal:
How new avenues for advertising will influence
the buying decisions of the consumer?

Saturday, May 10, 2008
at the California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California

As the Web rolls onward in Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0?) the business models and infrastructure of online commerce and advertising continue to evolve rapidly. With more and more advertising dollars shifting to the Web and mobile applications, will advertising become more targeted to the individual and their physical location? Will localized search and targeted advertising be able to track advertising intelligently to you, your mobile device and your proximity to products and services? Today’s program will examine coming advances in Web 2.0 and other key issues in technology and business impacting the future of online advertising, new media and mobile commerce. Is mobile advertising the next major landgrab in online commerce? Who will be the winners in the convergence of the Web, television and mobile? Are the Big Players or small nimble startups the best bet?
Today’s event will feature presentations from key industry executives, longtime wireless industry advisors, serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. It will start with keynote presentations and company presentations from cutting edge startups and be followed by a panel discussion and plenty of audience Q&A. Please join us to find out where the industry is headed first hand.

Keynote Speakers

Tim Cadogan
CEO
OpenX
Former SVP of Global Advertising Marketplaces at Yahoo!

Chetan Sharma
President
Chetan Sharma Consulting and Author
Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in
the Exploding Wireless Market

Presenters and Panelists

John Babcock
Partner
Rustic Canyon Partners

Gregory Markel

Founder/President

Infuse Creative

William Quigley
Managing Director
Clearstone Venture Partners

Producers/Moderators
Lynn Foster
Emerging Technologies Director
Greenberg Traurig LLP

Russell M. Frandsen, Esq.
Partner
The Business Legal Group

Date
Saturday morning, May 10, 2008

Location
Registration and Continental Breakfast:
8:00 a.m. at Baxter Hall, Caltech
Program:
9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Baxter Lecture Hall
Networking:
11:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon at Baxter Hall, Caltech

Cost
$40 on-line registration fee.  $50 at-the-door.  $10 for students with full-time student ID (must show at door); free to Caltech students. Registrations are taken on-line up to 5:00 p.m., May 8th. There are no refunds for no-shows.

SPONSORS FOR THIS PROGRAM

FOUNDING SPONSORS


Caltech Industrial Relations Center

Caltech Alumni Association


MIT Alumni Association

In Bay Area for the week

Posted by chetan in : Speaking Engagements, Mobile Advertising , add a comment

Spending some time in relatively warmer weather in CA. Tomorrow speaking at Techcoire in Sacramento and on friday at Stanford University.

Interview with Padmasree Warrior

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, 3G, Mobile Advertising, US Wireless Market, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, WiMax, European wireless market, Mobile Applications, Worldwide Wireless Market, Mobile Ecosystem, Wi-Fi, Wireless Value Chain, 4G , 1 comment so far

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Last year, I had a chance to interview Padmasree Warrior who was CTO of Motorola at the time and since then she has moved on to Cisco (as their CTO). The interview was conducted for the PiTech Magazine but for various delays the print edition never got released. I am publishing the interview in its entirety for our readers. Padmasree is a terrific technology leader and there are a lot of good insights in her answers.

1. What are some of the exciting initiatives you and your team are working on at Motorola?

The next decade is about the Mobile Revolution. It is quite remarkable how something as simple as the cell phone is transforming the human race by connecting the entire planet. Today almost half the planet communicates via a mobile device. The social, economic, cultural and technological implications of this are profound, particularly in under-developed countries of the world. The Motorola team is working on delivering products and experiences to enable “Seamless Mobility” which is our vision to enable access to communication, information and entertainment whenever, wherever and however people need it.

For example, recently we announced the world’s first wind and solar commercial network GSM cell site in Namibia. By incorporating renewable energy technology into this cell site, we created a cost-effective solution for operators in the region who find fuel generators too costly and don’t want to wait a long time for a main grid connection. Most importantly, we’ve created the infrastructure for people to be able to communicate with each other. That’s powerful and exciting.

2. What will the mobile device in 2012 look and feel like? What new features and functionality will be introduced by then?

The mobile device in 2012 will become an extension of your persona. In other words, it will know your preference, know where you are and will understand the context of what you need. This will simplify how people access communication, information and entertainment. For example, the mobile device will be your computer, wallet, TV, camera, music player, FM radio, alarm clock, flash light, calendar, game system and so on. By 2012 the mobile device will become your remote control for life.

3. How does “Always On” environment change how media and entertainment will evolve over the course of next five years? What does digital convergence mean to you?

The on-demand genie is out of the bottle and there is no way it is going back in. This fundamental shift in consumers’ expectations of being able to watch video when they want is having profound impact on nearly every technology component of every network that is capable of delivering a moving series of images . . . LANs, WANs and wireless.

I see convergence not as technology-driven, but experience driven. Convergence is the mobilization, socialization and personalization of content and communications…the technologies are being driven by the desired experiences. This is how Motorola researchers are going about their thinking. With deep expertise across mobile devices, home networking components, set-tops and next-generation networks, Motorola is focused on creating an integrated experience network topology that will excite the consumers and grow business for every player in the new media ecosystem.

4. If you were advising entrepreneurs, which problems would you advise them to tackle? Where is the most innovation needed? What are some of the problems that our industry hasn’t solved? What’s holding us back?

There are many problems to be solved, some are technological and others regulatory. I will answer this question more from a technological perspective. My advice to entrepreneurs is to focus on value added applications for the mobile platform that has many constraints such as battery life, screen size etc. Just forcing the internet designed for a PC onto the mobile device will not work. We need to think about innovation in areas of internet mobility, content mobility and broadband mobility. Areas of particular challenge are power management and battery life. Another exciting opportunity is to think about how this device may be used, when Wireless Broadband becomes a reality with WiMax. I don’t think anything is holding us back. I am an optimist – I believe the human mind can solve most problems. The scale of the mobile revolution is so massive that innovation will occur at many levels both in developed and emerging markets simultaneously.

5. At Java One you talked about Platform Disturbia. How do we solve the problem (or ease the pain) of industry fragmentation at multiple levels? Or is it a fact of life?

“Platform Disturbia” which is my anecdotal way of describing the fragmentation in the mobile industry can be a great opportunity for developers, but brings with it significant challenges. As content and communications go mobile - How does one move content easily and transcode it from one format to another? How does one set the hooks between different networks and mobile devices so the hand off is seamless? With personalization, where should the authentication and personalization engines be located - on the mobile device or on backend servers? Should context and location awareness work with authentication; how much should they reveal and to whom?

It is hard enough dealing with the sheer number of different mobile handsets, screens and separate operating systems. Now we want those devices to talk effortlessly with enterprise infrastructures - to enable secure communications and data sharing with field service people. We want to extend into the home and be able to upload and download content automatically from set top boxes. And deliver a whole new generation of location and context-based services that will make mobile devices even more personal and interactive.

The way to ease the pain of industry fragmentation is through the adoption of standards and for large innovative companies to be transparent about intellectual property rather than extract high royalty rates for patented technologies. The former accelerates time to market and therefore expands market creation with a unified approach. Of course, companies must protect their intellectual property and get fair, reasonable payment for their patent rights. However, often fragmentation occurs when competing technologies are created to avoid high royalty taxation.

The mobile world is a huge and divergent ecosystem where innovation needs all of us to be both visionary and pragmatic - so that we can move to Platform Utopia!

6. India’s wireless market has been exploding at a rapid pace. Could you please discuss the role of wireless communications in India’s economy? What role does India play in the global wireless market?

Yes, the wireless communications market is certainly growing very rapidly in India – nearly every global manufacturer has production and research presence in the country. India adds almost 6 million subscribers every month – that is equivalent to connecting the entire country of Denmark in India every month!

This rapid adoption of mobile communications will have a positive impact on economic empowerment over the long run. This is already starting to happen in other emerging markets. For example, merchants in Zambia use mobile phones for banking. Health workers in S. Africa use them to update records while visiting patients. In Tanzania fishermen use mobile phones to get market, weather and the price of fish while still off shore. Already mobile connectivity is generating big economic benefits according to a London Business School study. The study says that in a typical developing country, a rise of 10 mobile phones per 100 people boosts GDP growth rate by 0.6%. That may not seem much but compounded over a few years it adds up to a substantive increase in the standard of living

India plays a critical role in the global wireless market because the scale of people yet to be connected is large. This demand will become a hotbed for creativity and innovation. When we connect the billions of people, we will see new use cases with mobility. Looking forward, the opportunity in India and support of the government is quite strong. The Indian government has set the target of 500 million subscribers by 2010.

7. How do you manage uncertainty? How do you keep the team of 26,000 focused and motivated?

Managing uncertainty is exactly what innovation is all about. Not knowing the answers, taking risks, disrupting the status quo and challenging conventional wisdom are necessary ingredients to invent and innovate. As inventors, it is our responsibility to think beyond the possible and break barriers to create the never before imagined solution.

However, with this creativity comes the need of one shared vision. At Motorola, our shared vision is of a world in which communications transcends the barriers of space and time to deliver an on-demand consumer experience – what we call seamless mobility. It is this vision that connects our work and keeps our 26,000 focused on one end goal.

Most importantly, I surround myself with very smart people – individuals who are not only experts in their fields, but also possess strong business acumen blended with an entrepreneurial spirit to succeed. It is tough to find people like that, but ultimately people are the backbone of an organization, they are the catalysts for growth and success. Leadership is not about YOU but them – the teams you lead. My advice is to leaders – be humble and don’t be afraid to hire talent that is better than you.

  1. How do you keep up with all the information and technology evolution around you? You have your own blog; do you have some favorites that you read regularly?

I stay connected – to people and information. I read just about anything and everything that comes my way, it is almost addictive. I also spend a lot of time meeting customers, visiting universities across the world, chatting with students - all the way from elementary to post doctoral and interacting with industry thought leaders. This has exposed me to some truly remarkable individuals from all fields. Recently while in San Francisco, Dr. Jill Tarter invited me to the SETI Institute where I met with some brilliant astronomers and scientists and gained a unique perspective on their contributions and achievements.

I also stay connected to information - from blogs to technical papers to trade journals to books, there is always something fascinating that sparks my interest (and keeps me busy on those long cross-Atlantic flights!). Yes, I have my own blog called “Bits at the Edge” - http://blogs.motorola.com/author/padmasree-warrior/. I read many blogs and enjoy the perspective of different bloggers, whether they agree with my opinions or not.

  1. What are the key ingredients of a strategy to outsmart competition?

I always say a Vision without a plan is just a Dream. The key to success is Think Big and Act Fast. Focus on delivering value by solving relevant problems.

10. How can technology companies better understand the needs of customers?

It may sound simple but I would say that we could better understand the needs of customers by being better listeners - especially earlier in the product development cycle. As corporations grow, it is easy to get stifled by what is going inside our own walls and forget to open the doors in the early stages of concepts, to understand the pulse of the marketplace.

At Motorola, we are shifting our focus to delivering enhanced experiences to our customers. Similarly, our research efforts stay focused on discovering the problems of tomorrow and then creating solutions to solve these problems.

Let’s take the example of the original RAZR – our researchers perceived that consumers were in search of a phone that would fit in their shirt pocket; our scientists then brainstormed and developed the solution of an embedded antenna that allowed for a slimmer form.

11. How do you manage work-life balance?

I actually dislike the word “balance” in this context, because it conjures up images of conflict. My work is an integral part of my life and so are my family, my community, my friends and my self. I prefer to think of this more as an integration challenge. I have one life in which I must INTEGRATE each of these. Therefore, it is not important HOW we decide to apportion the time spent on each of these because there is no right answer. The challenge is to COPE with the guilt that comes with however we choose to spend time on each of these. Over the years, I have tried not to feel guilty about things that I am unable to do, but rather enjoy the experiences of what I am able to do. Recently I had to miss our senior leadership strategy session, instead I chose to attend my son’s middle school commencement where he received a President honor award. I had a blast being a proud mom that evening.

12. You are an inspiration to many. Who inspires you? Who has been your role model(s) and why?

Mother Teresa continues to be an inspiration to me. I do not see her just as a martyr but as a pioneer and a bold risk taker. She looked at the world holistically and her work broke down barriers – race, color, ability, wealth and economic status. She left her home country and comfort zone to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor.

13. Who are some people you would really like to meet with that you haven’t been able to meet yet?

Restricting my wishes to people that are living, I would like to meet Nelson Mandela who single handedly and irreversibly influenced the course of apartheid in the world. I would also like to meet Scott Adams – I Iove Dilbert!

14. What’s the last book that you read that really made a difference in your life?

The Alchemist – poetic style of prose that is thought provoking, makes you pause.

15. What are some of your favorite memories of being at IIT?

Dating my then boyfriend (now husband), all night chat sessions in the dorm room, the perennial hikes to street cafes at odd hours in search of chai (tea) that had nothing at all to do with drinking tea per se, heated debates about everything from solving world hunger to cutting classes the next day.

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.”

Mobile Advertising Book now available in Europe April 18, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Mobile Advertising , add a comment

Apparently, the book shipment reached Europe and the bookstores are stocked with copies so you can directly order it from your local stores (online or b&m)… incase you were waiting .. :-)

Interview with Online Center for Media Studies, India April 17, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Indian Wireless market, Mobile Applications, Mobile Ecosystem , 1 comment so far

My interview with Sunil Saxena, Dean of Online Center for Media Studies, India is online now.

At Techcoire next week in Sacramento April 15, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Mobile Advertising , add a comment

getting ready for a couple of events next week in CA. Techcoire is sponsoring a talk on the mobile advertising market. the next day, i will be talking with Prof. Kosnik’s students at Stanford University on the same subject. Looking forward to meeting old and new friends and colleagues.


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New Article: Personalized promotions: sending the right ads to your phone (Barron’s) April 9, 2008

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We were interviewed for this article. It appeared in Barron’s last week.

Personalized promotions: sending the right ads to your phone

By Peggy Anne Salz (MSearchGroove)

The advance of the mobile Inter-net, the emergence of mobile search services and the debut of full-feature mobile devices have created new and lucrative opportunities for mobile advertising — presenting consumers with interactive and personalized promotions on the fly.

Such tools and technologies lay the groundwork for mobile campaigns that are more engaging and effective than the initial efforts deployed by brands, agencies and mobile operators. While those campaigns bombarded consumers with blanket messages, today’s focus is on harnessing segmentation, location and a deeper understanding of what individual customers do on their cell phone — delivering the right advertising message to the right consumer under the right circumstances.

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Tomi’s post - Data Mining our Identity, Digital Footprint, and Social Context

Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Ecosystem , add a comment

Tomi Ahonen is one of my favorite writers in the mobile industry. His work is well thoughtful and is “very” detailed. His recent post “Datamining our identity, digital footprint, and social context” is quite insightful. It touches upon several of the key themes we discuss in our mobile advertising book like the importance of viral distribution, the fact that actions speak louder than words.

He says,

This is the future of marketing intelligence. Its no longer demographics. Identity is not worth collecting. Lets safely secure that with our customers, promise them we won’t mine their identity. But the digital footprint, that is valuable. And the social context - Like Alan Moore says, this is the Black Gold of the 21st Century, the biggest prize. We can only discover social context accurately via the mobile phone, but the companies that build upon this dimension, those companies will seem like “reading our minds” in how accurately, cannily, they will serve ever better services and products and offers and campaigns for us.

And while you are at it, request his latest thought piece on mobile advertising (details at the bottom of the post)

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.

Brandweek Article - Mobile Marketing: Fantasy vs. Reality April 3, 2008

Posted by chetan in : Mobile Advertising , add a comment

Ken Hein of Brandweek wrote a lengthy piece on mobile marketing and interviewed me for this story.

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/spotlight/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003784143

Mobile Marketing Fantasy Vs. Reality

April 02, 2008

By Kenneth Hein
Those who doubt that mobile marketing hasn’t made headway might want to go amp themselves.
Among the brands that ponied up millions for a piece of the Super Bowl this year was PepsiCo beverage Amp Energy. While its 15-second TV spots didn’t venture far from the proven realms of Big Game locker-room humor—one featured an overweight truck driver starting a stalled-out car via jumper cables hooked up to his nipples—a quieter, related effort was reaching much further out. How far? Well, to people who might not even have had the game on at all. As part of its NFL deal, Amp Energy sponsored Sprint’s exclusive Super Bowl mobile channel, which allowed it to run ads via cell phone. A photo of the Amp can materialized on cell phone screens along with music, swirling green flames and the tagline “Go Amp Yourself.” (Hopefully, none of those cell phone users elected to do it with jumper cables.)
When a Super Bowl ad effort stretches into the cellular realm, it’s surely a sign that mobile marketing has arrived, right? After all, even though the third-screen spot was a timid boil-down of the in-your-face TV version, the very idea of adapting a commercial for mobile distribution would have seemed like an alien concept only a few years ago.
Today it is a reality, sort of. Around this time 12 months ago, experts were busy touting mobile marketing as the Next Big Thing. It wasn’t. And not a whole lot is different. Mega brands like Pepsi and Burger King are still toe-dipping in the mobile pool, testing various forms of advertising and promos even as the bulk of their spending dollars go elsewhere.
As mobile expert John Hadl puts it: “It’s hard to get a real read on the value of mobile when you’re only spending $25,000 to $50,000 on it.”
But things are beginning to change. Mobile marketing is “headed in the right direction,” said John Vail, director of the interactive marketing group at Pepsi-Cola North America, Purchase, N.Y. “It’s just taking a lot longer than people thought.” Mobile analytics firms such as U.K.-based Bango are helping companies measure mobile Web site traffic, what devices recipients used and the countries they’re in. In February, 58 million mobile subscribers reported that they’d already been exposed to mobile advertising, per San Francisco-based Nielsen Mobile (a unit of Nielsen Co., which also owns Brandweek). While that’s only 23% of today’s total mobile subscribers, that number will spike as marketers’ mobile experiments continue to grow. And Hadl, who serves as managing partner of Beverly Hills-based BrandInHand, overseer of Procter & Gamble’s mobile efforts, added that a threshold is approaching: “Once there’s direct proof of ROI,” he said, “the spend will shift faster than the industry can handle.”
That might happen as soon as two years from now. Forrester Research forecasts that mobile-marketing spending in the U.S. will surge from the $270 million it stands at now to $405 million in 2009. Then it all goes exponential, doubling every year through 2012, at which point the Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm predicts mobile marketing will be worth $2.8 billion.
Marketers view the mobile marketing explosion as “inevitable,” said Bill Jones, president of Atlanta-based mobile Internet platform provider Air2Web, which counts Starbucks and UPS as clients. Some are “really trying to accelerate” the channel because “properly used it is the most effective mechanism to interact with customers and prospects.”
All of which begs the question: How can marketers profitably use mobile devices to deliver their brand messages right now?
What follows are some of the answers. Like many emergent ideas in the tech realm, mobile marketing’s birth has been attended by as much fantasy as reality, and marketers are learning the painstaking (and, at times, just painful) differences between the two. For instance, studies repeatedly show that many consumers don’t like to get ads on their phones. (A mere 10% of mobile data users deem ads received via PDAs to be acceptable, according to Nielsen Mobile.) At the same time, a third of the same respondents said they’d be OK with seeing ads, so long as the spots offset their mobile bills—say, via free minutes. “That,” said Nielsen Mobile corporate marketing vp Paul Okimoto, “is where we’re starting to see an uptick.”
No doubt, we’ll start to see many more of those. For now, here’s the story on the mobile-marketing phenom today—both fantasy and reality.
REALITY
Customers dig mobile games.
Videogames were once synonymous with geekdom, but one glance at who’s using a Wii these days (including AARP members and the physically disabled, at last check) shows how dated that stereotype is. This love affair has carried over to mobile devices. In fact, some watchers are now predicting that the global revenue from mobile games will eventually surpass that of traditional console and handheld versions. According to U.K.-based consultancy Understanding & Solutions, mobile gaming is expected to hit $6 billion by 2011.
Some brands are already prepared to embrace this passion by offering free downloadable games for mobile devices that keep their brand front and center. The latest is BK City, debuting April 21, an elaborate game with three worlds (five games in each) ranging from a castle to a BK drive-thru. It will be available across all carriers except for Verizon. POP, online ads and mobile ads, of course, will support the effort. BK City is the latest creation of Mobliss, Seattle, whose prior efforts include Nickelodeon’s Rugrats Food Fight and Brady Bunch Kung Fu.
“A lot of what mobile content advertisers throw out there is cheesy,” said Tia Lang, director of media and interactive for the Miami-based chain. But, “as players progress, our game gets more difficult. It’s fun, funny and relevant to our target.”
FANTASY
People will never use their phones to buy stuff.
Think again. Remember when everyone was worried about using credit cards online? Even some tech-savvy shoppers wrung their hands over cyberthieves stealing their identities and draining their savings accounts. (Psst—it rarely happens.) Even as those same worries have swirled around mobile banking and on-the-go transactions, the truth is that a quarter of cell users with mobile Web access have already trusted their handheld devices to do their shopping, according Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y. Sixteen percent already use mobile banking services and one-in-five respondents hope their phone becomes a mobile wallet.
Smarter brands are beginning to respond. In January, Pizza Hut began allowing U.S. consumers to order from any of its 6,200 stores using the mobile Web or text messaging. The chain said it expects half its sales to come online or via mobile devices within the next five years. Papa John’s began offering the ability to text in orders last November.
“If privacy and security issues can be caged, mobile banking and mobile wallet services could launch the next leg up for mobile operators,” predicted Joseph Porus, vp of Harris Interactive’s technology practice. Rajeev Raman, CEO of mywaves, a mobile video destination whose clients include MBW, concurs. In the near future, he said, “purchasing movie tickets, fast food and music via mobile phones will be considered normal, everyday behavior.”
REALITY
Convenience works.
Skip the cleverisms; brands that give consumers information that makes their lives easier are the ones that’ll benefit. “That’s why we bought the phone in the first place,” Hadl said.
Starbucks, for example, makes it easy to find the nearest latte with a mobile-based store locator. When is that blue turtleneck you ordered going to show up? UPS will let you track the whereabouts of your package on your mobile device.
“Too many people pigeonhole mobile marketing as just being ringtones or wallpapers,” said Air2Web’s Jones, whose company created both applications. Brands that sponsor services that tell users things like where the is nearest baby-changing station or where is the store where I can buy what I need, will thrive, added Hadl of BrandinHand. “Soon,” he said, “mobile devices won’t simply be a push medium.”
FANTASY
Texting (aka SMS) isn’t effective.
Like hell it isn’t. While many are looking at mobile video, the mobile Web and other features, the simple, text-only brand campaign often still is what works the best. Why? Because even the oldest, most primitive cell phones out there have the technology that lets people receive a text promo and respond to one. Plus, the practice of text messaging has already been widely adopted.
In December, 1-800-Free411 attached ads sent to users who opted in to receive text horoscopes, diet tips and other information from a company called Limbo. While the free-information service usually gets about 40,000 to 50,000 new callers daily, that volume shot up to nearly 80,000 a day after the mobile ads ran. Overall, Limbo received a 7.1% response rate for text ads it ran for its clients in the fourth quarter.
“The forgotten technology of SMS will be a much bigger factor in digital spends than anyone is predicting,” said Jonathan Linner, CEO of Limbo, Burlingame, Calif., who’s amused that so many marketers are buzzing about putting a movie or banner ad on a cell phone. Those people, he said, “Don’t’ get it yet. You’ll get 10 times better performance from SMS.”
REALITY
The iPhone’s changed everything.
One of the biggest hang-ups (pun intended) for mobile marketers is the lack of “high” in the tech. We’re talking about antideluvian cell phones that everybody was carrying around prior to last summer, when the Apple iPhone hit stores. In January, CEO Steve Jobs had promised the iPhone would “reinvent” telecommunications. Some disagreed. Some still do. But mobile-marketing advocates generally aren’t among them. The average iPhone user over the age of 18 is five times more likely to explore the mobile Web and 11 times more likely to use mobile video or TV, per Nielsen Mobile. An iPhone-toting American also is 70% more likely to use SMS.
“Look no further than the iPhone for proof that improving the device and user interface can radically increase media consumption,” said John Najarian, svp-media and business development at the Comcast Entertainment Group, who oversees E!’s mobile page.
Better still, the iPhone’s popularity has meant lower-price imitators—triggering a new generation of “smart phones” that experts like Chetan Sharma, co-author of the just-released book Mobile Advertising, believe will make up as many as 20% of the domestic market in two years. (More powerful data pipelines as well as all-you-can-eat data plans will help, too.) Thanks to the iPhone, Sharma said, Americans finally think the cell phone “is more than just something you talk with.”
FANTASY
It’s getting easier to run mobile marketing programs.
Dream on. It still takes about two months to get a major carrier like AT&T or Verizon to approve a text program. And that, according to Gene Keenan, vp-mobile services at Isobar, San Francisco, and vice chairman of the Mobile Marketing Assn., Denver, is “ridiculous.”
“You can by a URL and have a Web site up in two hours,” Keenan said. “It’s still way too hard for brands and agencies to do mobile.” Even worse: “Until it’s easier for big brands to participate, you won’t see the big money.”
Keenan and experts like him have likened carriers to walled gardens: nice to be part of, but good luck getting in. They exert authoritarian control over their on-deck content (that’s the proprietary stuff available only to subscribers) and move with Soviet-style bureaucratic slowness in approving marketing programs.
For instance, WAP sites and banner ads have to be customized by handset and by carrier. “It introduces a lot of complexity,” Sharma said. “You can’t press a button and have a program launch nationwide. You have to negotiate everything and get your content approved.”
But stay tuned; fantasy might turn to reality by this time next year. “You can get over the wall,” Hadl said. “You’ll get hot and sweaty doing it, but you can get over. AOL already proved that this [walled approach] is a model for failure.”
REALITY
The mobile ecosystem is evolving rapidly.
Quick as the pace of technology is, sometimes it never seems quick enough. But mobile advocates hamstrung by tools that haven’t kept pace with their marketing dreams may soon be doing a high-tech jig. In November, Google announced Android, a new Linux-based operating system for mobile. Microsoft just inked a deal with Nokia that’ll bring its Silverlight platform to mobile. And this quarter, Yahoo! will launch what it calls onePlace, a mobile bookmarking tool that will allow better control of information. These developments come on the heels of AOL’s ‘07 purchase of Third Screen Media, a company that serves banner ads to mobile Web sites. Nokia bought the mobile agency Enpocket last year, too.
All of it, said Sharma, means that “there’s a cautious optimism” out there. “Optimism, because of the uniqueness and reach mobile presents. Caution because of the enormous fragmentation in the industry.”
FANTASY
There is one killer application.
Just like Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd debated whether New Shimmer was a floor wax or a dessert topping (it’s both!) on Saturday Night Live, each marketer seems to have his own miracle claim for mobile marketing. And so far, nobody’s quite nailed it.
Take GPS-enabled initiatives, which some see as the potential holy grail of mobile marketing. CBS Mobile announced a test earlier in the year that’ll pinpoint ads to customers based on where they happen to be standing, and Burger King’s Lang has been lovingly nurturing the idea of “serving customers an ad at lunchtime, asking them if they’re hungry.” The problem? “Those kinds of things are fantasy.”
Hardly the only one. “My fantasy is offering Pepsi Smash [music programming] as video-on-demand optimized for the third screen for millions to view,” Vail said. P&G, General Mills and others are currently in test with Cellfire, a company whose technology allows customers to store e-coupons on their cell phones.
There’s the dream of direct-to-consumer mobile video, alive in the mind of BMW Mini as it kicked off a program with mywaves in January. Still others are excited about mobile search; more than 46 million used their phones to search for information in the third quarter of last year, per Nielsen Mobile.
Alex Muller will tell you that GPS-driven mobile marketing won’t be a fantasy for much longer (then again, he’s CEO of GPShopper, which enables mobile-using customers to track down the best deals on stuff they want to buy.) “There will be a point,” he said, “where flipping through a paper circular won’t make sense.”
REALITY
There needs to be standards.
Mobile marketing is still a lot like the Wild West: a landscape of many players of various reputes, each a competitor peddling his wares and promises. “We need to develop more standards to reduce the friction out there,” said Jordan Berman, executive director of media innovation at AT&T Mobility, New York. “There needs to be more uniformity about how programs get off the ground. I’m on the MMA board of directors and we all agree it is a confusing marketplace out there.”
Then again, people said much the same thing about the Web itself when it was new. The growing pains, Berman said, are natural: “Online is like a toddler; mobile marketing is still in the womb.”

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.