MobHappy

2006 Predictions 9 and 10

9. Mobile TV and P2P video struggle again in 2006

10. Happy Slapping - more attacks and export potential

Unfortunately, Happy Slapping has really gone mainstream in the UK now, with more and more attacks reported. Just in the course of the last month, we had our first celebrity Happy Slap on c-list, Myleene Klass as well as the first murder convictions associated with the phenomenon.

Just in case you missed the Happy Slap thing (which must mean you don't consume UK media), what sounds as if it might be a childish prank, is actually illegal assault. These attacks sometimes result in serious injury and murder, as we see above. The idea is that a group of kids/youths beat someone up, film it on their video phones and then circulate it among their mates, for a laugh.

Films are usually circulated by Bluetooth, so are impossible to prevent or track to their source, even if they are discovered by the authorities.

You can read my theories into the origin of these attacker here. I have actually seen some happy slapping attacks on video and they are genuinely violent and stomach-turning. It's not comic violence in any form.

Sadly, my 10th Prediction is that we'll see a lot more of these attacks, along with copycat Happy Slapping outside the UK - the US and Germany would be my best guess (assuming this hasn't happened already).

This will be accompanied by idiots blaming mobile phones and not society for the problem, as well as clueless MPs calling for action.

Member of Parliament, Mr Adrian Bailey, for example has already called for mobiles to be jammed in school grounds. Do they let anyone into parliament these days? Doesn't the man know:

1. Jamming phones will be about as effective as jamming all cuckoo clocks in schools, as this would neither disable the camera nor the Bluetooth functionality.
2. Some kids need their phones and mostly for perfectly legitimate and legal reasons - like phoning parliament to protest about the standards of MPs these days and how they seem terminally stupid in comparison to yesteryear.
3. Most Happy Slapping attacks take place away from school grounds anyway. It's like banning automobiles from driving on railway lines as a way of reducing drunk driving related deaths.

2006 Predictions 7 and 8

7. MVNOs will gain in popularity, with new services announced and launching regularly. But the thinning of the herd will also begin, with at least one high-profile casualty before the end of the year.

8. RIM will take it on the chin, even if it comes out of its patent suit okay. Push e-mail will become a commodity offering from carriers, and rivals like Visto, Seven, Nokia and Good will make gains in the enterprise market, partly because of their support of all types of mobile devices.

Things are again looking good for Research In Motion in its patent fight with NTP -- the latest update has the Patent Office saying it expects to throw out all of NTP's relevant patents, and it's moving quickly to beat the tight schedule the judge in the case has imposed. I'm not going to wade into the issue of the patents too deeply -- there are people with far deeper knowledge on that topic than I -- other than to say I think the right move is for the USPTO to revoke the patents, and I hope this and other high-profile cases will lead to a badly needed overhaul of the US patent system.

The court case, though, is the least of RIM's concerns. Several rivals are waiting to pounce as the spectre of a Blackberry shutdown has lead plenty of potential (and existing) customers to explore other push e-mail options, giving companies like Good a significant, if somewhat artificial, marketing boost, increasing their foothold in the market. This exposure will help them in the long run, in addition to any customers they can grab in the short term.

But the real rivals for Blackberry are the carriers it depends on for sales on connectivity. They're realizing that people like getting their e-mail, both business users, and to a lesser extent, general consumers. Push e-mail will quickly become a commodity, carriers offering the service either for free or very cheaply as a way to push data charges. They'll do it on all the devices they sell, whether it's through built-in messaging applications or J2ME e-mail clients. Most people, even business users, will find this a good enough solution, both in terms of cost, but also because they don't have to switch to a bulky Blackberry device, they can use whatever handset they want -- even their existing one. They might give up the Blackberry keyboard, but can get a Treo or other device that has one instead.

RIM has licensed Blackberry Connect to other device manufacturers, though devices that feature it are coming out in a trickle rather than a torrent. The crux is what RIM can add to the Blackberry service to make it better than a commoditized offering -- and from where I'm standing, I see very little. The differentiation in delivering e-mail to a mobile device and processing responses is pretty invisible, and isn't apparent at all when users have a smartphone that can handle attachments and do all the other things a Blackberry can, with the added bonus of supporting far more add-on applications than the Blackberry OS.

So, if RIM ends up prevailing in its patent fight, its stock will undoubtedly bounce and some observers will say it's smooth sailing for the company. But, in reality, 2006 will be a tough year for the Blackberry.

2006 Predictions 5 and 6

How are we doing so far? Don't forget to leave a comment.

5. Ringtones implosion accelerates, as one of the shortest boom and bust cycles becomes clear to all.

6. Gizmondo withdraws from handheld gaming sector.

Gizmondo must be one of the big failures of 2005 and I'm really, really (no, really!) puzzled as to what the hell's going on there and why they seem to have access to so much money.

Firstly, they want to take on incredibly strong incumbents in the handheld sector, Nintendo's GameBoy and Sony's PSP. Not to mention N-Gage, that was patently struggling, despite the might and distribution strength of Nokia behind them. Why on earth would any company want to try this with limited resources?

Well, if the product was competitively priced, had a bunch of extra features and crucially, a range of great must-have, exclusive games, they may just stand a chance. But no, the games portfolio was shite and limited and it was more expensive than the entrenched incumbents.

And their distribution strategy in the US was laughably to hang out in a few malls.

Were their senior execs contrite and modest in their demands while overseeing this fiasco? Did they hold back their salaries for when they could demonstrate that this unpromising approach had worked? Not a bit of it! Salaries included several million dollars of cash and options and luxury $250,000 dollar cars.

Then we have loads of corporate shenanigans including buying companies owned by directors and paying off privately incurred legal bills. Admittedly, some of these actions were corrected, but why were they allowed to happen in the first place?

And did we mention "legal, accounting and consulting costs" in the first six months of 2005 of $75 million? And a net loss of $220 million in that period?

Pretty bad stuff - what next? Maybe some of the directors were a bunch of convicted white collar crooks that investors has entrusted their money to? Err, yes actually. On this discovery, they resigned.

Someone do the decent thing and put them out of their misery. No one can really believe that this mess can be saved. Can they?

So, Prediction 6 - Gizmondo must die.

2006 Predictions 3 and 4

3. 3G won't kill Wi-Fi, WiMAX won't kill 3G. There will be no killing of rival radio technologies.

4. Operators will still struggle to find the key selling points of 3G.

Mobile operators are still struggling to figure out what to say when customers ask why they should switch to 3G. Video calling failed miserably as a USP, and cheap voice and text remains the lure of choice for some operators' 3G offerings. They think that music and video will do the trick -- but they're wrong, there, too (we'll explain why in a couple later posts). What else have they got -- mobile turkey shoots?

Operators will have some success getting people onto 3G networks through a sort of soft forced handset upgrade. While they won't stop selling 2G handsets, the only  cool ones available will be 3G ones. So if you want something new and something hot, at some point on many carriers, you'll have to go 3G. That may be more successful, really, than trying to sell people on any sort of application they've currently got.

The underlying problem here is how carriers approach this sort of thing, and their insistence they be at the middle of everything. If they haven't yet come up with something -- a few things -- to convince people that 3G can add some value to their life, they're not going to without changing how they go about it. The concern is that they'll be relegated to bit pipes, doing nothing but selling network access. There's two sides to this: first, there are plenty of successful ISPs out there that make money. Second, if they're smart, they can be more than just a bit pipe, if they're smart.

Operators need to be additive -- their role should be to add value, and if they're successful, people will pay. They need to facilitate communication, entertainment and whatever else people want to do, and make it as easy and fulfilling as they can. Typically, they take the opposite approach, limiting what people can do. Want to moblog? Use their blog site, with their rules and their charges, and lose your content if you change operators. Want to watch TV? You can watch anything, as long as it's something the operator sells you. Then, look at the flip side. Want to send something to your own blog? You're on your own. Want to watch your own video? Have fun getting everything set up. The whole attitude is "it we don't sell it, we don't want you to do it."

If carriers are going to insist on taking an active role in everything people do on their phones, they've got to take an active interest in making sure that people can do whatever they want. A total reversal of their attitude is needed, changing from explicitly telling people what they can do to letting them do whatever they want to do. Embrace this mentality, and people will figure out on their own what the value of 3G is.

So this is supposed to be a prediction -- well, that part's simple enough. Carriers won't figure this out in 2006. Expect more of the same old locked down networks and applications, and expect 3G to stutter because of it. This is one prediction I'd be happy to see not come true.

2006 Prediction 1 and 2

Welcome to MobHappy's 2006 Predictions!

While Carlo and I are away, chilling out, we've written these for your entertainment. While they're a bit of fun on one level, we also take them quite seriously and if previous years are a guideline, we're not bad at them. If we score a point of every right one, 2005 saw us with 17/19 and 2004 with 6.5/8.

We've done a full 20 - two each week day - a one liner and a slightly more considered piece. Please comment and leave feedback, as that's what makes blogging fun for everyone.

So let's crack on.

1. Apple launches the iPhone (as opposed to co-operating with a Moto phone) as MP3 and phone convergence accelerates.

2. Mobile Marketing - The Market Thaw

Mobile Marketing has been going to be big next year since 2001, unless you've been reading my predictions. But every year it's really failed to gain much traction and for every brand dipping its toes into the mobile marketing sea, you've had another running back up the beach to safer campaign territory.

2006, in my view, will start to be the sea change. 2006 won't be the year it explodes, but we'll certainly start to see more brands get involved and there's a real danger of agencies making some money from it.

Why am I thinking along these lines?

I admit there's a huge amount of gut feel here and listening to the market, but that shouldn't be discounted, as anyone who's ever read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink will appreciate.

However, this is supported by some important trends.

Firstly, we have demographics. It's always been the case that marketing departments tend to be led by people in their late 30's and 40's. Senior agency people in charge of selling campaigns were around the same age. This meant that that 5 years ago, these people weren't even using sms and needed to have it explained to them.

So despite all the evidence that their customers were big on sms and using their phones for other stuff, they didn't really feel it and couldn't relate to it. At the same time, the agencies were full of people who couldn't think joined-up mobile, so poor little mobile marketing had no chance.

5 years on and we have a new generation of marketers in charge. They won't exactly have grown up with a phone in their hands as the under 25's have done, but they'll certainly be heavy users of mobile and it'll be in their psyche. This means that when mobile ideas are proposed, they'll understand with both their brains and their hearts.

The final piece of the demographic jigsaw is customers themselves. Everyone uses sms these days, therefore it can no longer be accused of being niche. More importantly, it's so bleeding obvious that for anyone under 30, their mobile is the most important possession. They're simply obsessed and rarely spend even a minute without glancing at it, fondling it, checking it for messages. Only a congenitally stupid marketer can ignore this, especially when combined with the stats showing the rapid decline of old media in terms of consumption and influence.

Another trend is the mainstream agencies are finally noticing mobile and that they have to start changing quickly if they are to survive after the old 30 second ad is finally buried in the next couple of years. All the bright agencies are looking at the implications of this and are really starting to embrace change. I don't think these guys are going to drive the market, but they do learn quickly once something has their attention.

That doesn't mean we're not going to see loads of doomed attempts to put banner ads on phones and run 30 second ads on them.

I also worry that there's a dearth of creative people, who think up the campaigns, who understand the technology involved in mobile. While the customer shouldn't be bothered with HOW things work, campaign originators do. So unless you understand what's possible, you'll never push the envelope in any meaningful way.

In fairness, the corollary applies. The techies who run the back end, aren't capable of coming up wiith good campaigns, as they don't understand marketing. So we need people who can operate across this void, naturally and instinctively.

Mobile marketing is a child of engagement marketing and is perfectly suited to that engagement process of creating dialogues with customers. This is the secret of success in mobile and brands considering getting involved must have dialogue at the heart of their campaigns.

2006 will see a lot more innovation in sms (much more than yet another "text and win"), forays into WAP and Java, experiments with sponsored content and some intelligent (and legal) innovation in location-based promotions. It'll really start to explode in 2007/8 and brands need to start learning now before they start having to play catch-up.

Links for December 23

- The Mobility Echo Chamber (Mobile Enterprise Weblog)
- Medion, Aldi Mobile Discount Offer Exceeds Expectations (cellular-news)
- The best and worst of 2005 (Abiro - Mobile News)
- 2005: The Predictions That Were And Weren’t (MocoNews)
- UK mobile operators take fight for 3G tax rebate to Europe (The Times)
- Communications for Life (m-trends.org)
- Here It Comes - Totally RFID Checkout (RFID in Japan)
- A Look At Motorola's New User Interface (MobileBurn)
- RIM has challenges outside the courtroom (Investor's Business Daily)
- Phone Terrorists are Freedom Haters (MyPhoneRocks)

Best wishes to everyone for a happy and safe holiday season.

Carnival of the Mobilists - Best of the Year!

Welcome to the final Carnival of the Mobilists of 2005, where we feature the very best online writing about mobile. To celebrate this special issue, we asked all our writers to send in their favourite piece from 2005 – and they haven’t disappointed. I challenge anyone to come up with a finer collection.

We also have some special guests dropping in, who I hope might turn into more regular contributors in 2006.

So let’s get started on our record catch.

Mobile Jones points us to a fascinating post about how language influences and limits how we think and the implications of this on mobile design. This is a wide ranging post, taking in everything from an Amazonian tribe who can’t count past two, to companies approaching mobile from a web perspective and getting it totally wrong. Microsoft sprung straight to my mind. Go read it.

Mobile Diva, Darla Mack, has been looking at the controversial area of mobile phone virii, pointing out that there’s no way you can get a virus without deliberately installing it. She also points to a great tutorial that demystifies the mobile virus and is definitely worth a read.

Actually, getting a mobile virus reminds me of the spoof email virus that went around a few years ago. It was called a Virus for Stupid People (or something like that) and told recipients that they had caught it and must now delete all their files on their hard drive.

Rudy De Waele sends us his first piece of personal experience writing – no, not what he did in his school holidays, but writing as an adult. He does a great job of outlining the issues of buying music and the limits imposed on him by a music industry that’s way out of touch with its customers and their needs.

Troy Norcross is well known as the man who hates spam. Back in October, he introduced the world to his concept of TRVR. In order to avoid being spam, messages must be – well read it, it’s important.

For those of you who missed the first Carnival, one of my favourite posts was Dorian Porter’s exploration of how we might use digital tools in the future. Dorrian suggests that we'll have many devices and simply use the one that suits our purpose and need at the time, rather than have one device to rule them all. Go check out what the implications of this might be.

Emily at Textually chooses a post of hope for the future. The mobile phone already played a part in overthrowing an unpopular Government in the Philippines – can it go the whole hog and topple the totalitarian regime in North Korea? Find out how it might happen.

Mobile marketer, Helen Keegan, has a gripe at a recent Coke promotion – which quite obviously no one had bothered to pre-test. It’s amazing how a brand with so much mobile experience in the UK can get things this fundamentally wrong. I suspect someone tried to save budget by cutting corners, which is a bad idea when technology is involved. Read about the litany of errors.

Judy Breck is on a mission to get schools to use technology and mobile phones, especially, as part of the eduction process. It’s a tough mission, as most educators want to ban mobiles or at least restrict their use. Whereas if they saw them as learning tools, it would make their job of teaching the little darlings so much easier. Judy explores this further in this short, recent post.

I promised you some big names in this edition and the first one is one of the most experienced and best writers about technology around. On Malik writes his own eponymous blog and is also a senior writer for Business 2.0, simply the best business publication around, in my opinion. So I was very interested to see what Om would send in as his favourite post of the year.

Om doesn't disappoint with a great feature on a new wifi system offering us all to become mini-broadband providers. The implications might be free wifi wherever we go – or it might not. Read Om’s, along wqith a few other contributors', thoughts here.

The Pondering Primate nominates his post that asks and answers one of the big questions of our time – How Microsoft can beat Google?. Interesting for all of us in tech, but Microsoft especially, whose world view is starting to look very jaded. The answer lies in a theme we both write a lot about – connecting the real, physical world with a digital equivalent.

Ajit Jaokar sends us his very latest post as his best of the year. He explores NFC (Near Field Communication) as the possible answer to opening up mPayments – surely the next billion dollar prize in mobile, for those that crack the market.

Daniel from the Mobile Enterprise Blog is also a great believer in the latest is best, but he’s based this on the response from his readers. It’s a great piece on the impact that the current RIM legal situation has on the mobile enterprise industry.

Stuart at Blethers chose his post as one that questions the whole precept of mobile TV – or certainly whether anyone will actually pay for the thing. Check out his post.

Wap Review has been considering Mobile Transcoding in-depth. If you’re going WTF? or nodding smugly, I suggest you head on over and read it, as whichever reaction you have, you’ll find it equally interesting as it lies at the heart of the mobile internet. And as we all know, the mobile is the real meaning of Web 2.0 – or should it be Mobile 2.0?

One of the leading voices for the mobile movement in the last 10 years or so is Howard Rheingold. Author of the outstanding Smart Mobs book and lead blogger for the website of the same name, he is surely more responsible than any other individual writer for waking up so many people as to how mobile is radically reshaping our very society on a daily basis.

So I’m delighted to include Howard’s post as the best from Smart Mobs this year.

But, wait. That’s not all. One of the saddest mobile events of 2005 was Nokia’s decision to close down The Feature. It had become the best destination on the web for informed discussion and debate on the mobile world and it’s sadly missed by many.

We certainly didn’t want to leave The Feature out of this celebration of the best writing. So I asked the ex-editor of The Feature, keeper of the archives and now my writing partner here at MobHappy, I’m delighted to say, to choose the best from 2005. And guess what? He selected the same article that had been chosen from Smart Mobs, by Howard.

So Howard gets the double whammy of being the best of Smart Mobs and the best of The Feature too – quite an accolade.

Read Howard’s "Mobile and Open: A Manifesto" in abbreviated form on Smart Mobs or the whole thing in The Feature Archives.

Incidentally, if your company wants to be seen as a thought leader and agenda setter in mobile technology, there’s lots to be recommended to take some of the best principles of The Feature and apply them in a new context. If this sounds interesting, let’s have a chat and let’s see if we can work something out and involve these great writers who are featured here today.

Anders from Abiro is a newbie to the Carnival, but a very established and high volume blogger, who is a valuable edition to any blogroll. Like all of us, he struggled to pick his best post out of the 500 he’s written in the last year, so he cheated! He picked his annual mobile round up as his post of the year and a great read it is too. A nice mix of the important and quirky, so go and check it out.

Mike Masnick is our final guest star in this festive edition. He’s a great writer and commentator on technology, not just in what he writes, but how much he manages to produce and which is consistently, unfailingly excellent. Many times I’ve had an idea for a post and Mike’s written it first and better than I could have done, damn him!

So it’s a great pleasure to include a post from TechDirt here. Mike writes about Location Based Services, a subject dear to my heart, with a pull-no-punches piece about the ridiculous way operators look at this area. On the one hand, operators try to sell services no one wants (video calling springs to mind) and on the other, reject services that could be true differentiators. Furthermore....actually, just go and read Mike’s piece.

Another newbie to the Carnival, but big cheese on the UK mobile scene is Mike Grenville's 160 Characters. It's an excellent source of news and info, as well as a good meat space networking scene if you're in London. Mike's generously chosen someone else's writing for his best of the year and the topic is the controversial Adult sector. Julia Dimambro from Cherrysauce saw her first adult magazine when she was 13 and has been fascinated ever since. Her post explores why the controls on adult content in the UK, while they seem onerous to the industry, are actually one of the major growth drivers. Go have an ogle.

Finally, the host traditionally chooses a post of his own and I’ve gone with one I wrote back in May – The Death Knell of Privacy. While I’m a big fan of LBS and mobile tech, they do have their downsides and we need to be aware of these. Let’s pick the best for our new world and stop the worst from happening.

This is also a sentiment picked up in C Enrique Ortiz's entry "Responsible Location-Based Software - Don't Do Evil", which is both a call to action and a practical guide to the developer community to use LBS responsibly. If you're involved in this area, read it and take heed - you know if makes sense.

And since MobHappy is a joint blog, I’m going to break the rules and pick a post from Carlo too. Why DRM Will Kill Mobile Music was widely quoted around the web and rightly so. You won’t read a better summary of why the record industry should abandon DRM and focus on something it can win – like producing great music and working out how to make money doing it. As Sony have kindly demonstrated this year, DRM doesn’t work.

Thank you all the writers and readers for taking the time to contribute to this bumper edition. I’m going to wimp out of selecting my very favourite contribution this week – there’s just too many excellent pieces. But if you’re short of time and only can read 5, make sure you check out Howard, Mike, Debi, Om and Carlo. [I’ve been adding and replacing these names for 30 minutes now and have to just go with this list. But there’s another 10 or so I could have put in the top 5! Honestly, take time over the holidays to follow all the links – you won’t be disappointed.]

We’re taking a break at the Carnival and the next one will be at The Golden Swamp on 20th January 2006.

Happy Holidays!

Russell

2005 Predictions Reviewed 15 - 19

And so, we come to the final few predictions I made, with my score running at 13 out of a maximum 14 points to date. How did I dio in the final stretch?

15. Adult services continue to quietly boom

Yes, this is continuing to boom as far as all the data I've seen, which I have to admit isn't very much.

People often miss the point of mobile porn, pointing out tiny screen sizes as not being friendly to view images and video, for example. That's like saying sms doesn't work as it's hard to input the text - if there a need for something, people will put up with poor experience and usability. Especially if that need is err...urgent.

What mobile can offer the adult services user is privacy, on two levels. Privacy from others viewing what you've been looking at (computers are often shared or tracked by IT departments), but also portable privacy - no one would think twice about popping into the loo with your mobile, whereas taking your laptop would raise a few eyebrows.

Points 1.

16. Cheaper calls, fixed price packages

I was wrong on this one, but I think it'll happen this year - I was just a little ahead of the market. Watch out for an MVNO to start this inexorable trend.

What I said was that we'll see an "all the voice and data you can eat for $50 a month" package? Or $25 or $100 maybe?".

Still, no points for me on this one.

17. Java Portals

In the last two months of last year a load of brands announced that they too were launching their own Java portal and going direct to the market, cutting out the operators. This included no less than The Sun, MTV, GMTV (UK breakfast TV), Celador (Millionaire) and Endamol (Big Brother).

My prediction was that this would go strangely silent as they realised quite how difficult and therefore ridiculously expensive this would be. You see, despite Java purporting to be a common platform, it actually needs an awful lot of testing and tweaking to work on every handset.

The strange silence continues as I award myself a point, unless I've missed all the launches. I'm quite pleased with this one, as it went right against what everyone else was saying at the time.

18. WAP

I said it would continue to grow strongly. Latest stats say in the UK that it's come up from 1.3 billion page impressions a month to 1.82 billion. But the MDA are a little lax at releasing the latest figures, so it's probably significantly more.

Points: 1

19. Child Tracking Fails to Take Off

This sounds like it's a parental dream - know where your little darling is whenever you feel the need.

Unfortunately, it's flawed as a concept as you only know where the phone is, not the kid. Therefore, it's next to useless in those cases when it would be most useful - when the child is abducted or when the little fella doesn't want you to know that he's off partying, not doing homework with a study buddy.

It's certainly failed to get traction in the UK and I haven't heard any success stories, so I'll claim my point.

So there you have it, 17 from 19. Please feel free to comment or critique.

This is my second to last post for 2005, though Carlo and I will be posting virtually over the holiday period until our return on January 9th. This means that we'll be posting our predictions for 2006 during that time.

My final post will be the Year End Carnival of the Mobilists - look out for it later, together with some special guest stars!

Links for December 22

- In praise of ... texting (The Guardian)
- 3G Users Say WTF! (160 Characters)
- Italy's Mediaset buys spectrum for mobile TV (Forbes)
- DoCoMo buys stake in Japanese TV broadcaster (Telecom Magazine)
- KDDI, Qualcomm team up for mobile TV (Reuters)
- Gorillaz to deliver their Christmas speech to mobiles (BBC)
- Verizon to enter overpriced music download market (News.com)
- New Year's Eve in Times Square to be made available for mobiles (Boing Boing)

The Worst In Mobile, 2005

It's roundup and prediction season, when everybody looks back on the past year and looks ahead to the new one. We're no different of course, with Russell reviewing his predictions from last year, and our new ones to come very soon. I'm going to take a slightly different tack the next couple days, looking at the best and worst in mobile in 2005, starting with the worst. These are the products, services and ideas that went down like the proverbial fart in church this year, in no particular order:

- the Vodafone 702sMO and 702MO handsets: These were two 3G handsets Vodafone put on sale in Japan -- about two years two late. When 2-megapixel cameras were common, if not the norm, Vodafone and Motorola start selling this wonder, with its stunning VGA camera, delivering 310,000 pixels of poorly lit, blurry wonder. The 702sMO gets special recognition: in a land where flip phones undoubtedly reign supreme, why the companies thought anybody would buy not just a crappy phone, but a crappy phone in a candybar form factor, is well beyond my mental abilities. Unsurprisingly, the phones flopped and were yanked.

- Let's stay with Vodafone Japan, for its covers to make handsets look like lumps of cheese. Vodafone Japan's really in trouble, and as one of its many misguided attempts to right the ship, it released a range of covers for a Toshiba handset that let users disguise them as tires, dinosaur eggs and... cheese. Surprise, surprise, the gimmick didn't turn the operator around.

- NTP's push email product that's being hurt by RIM's Blackberry system. Oh wait, that's right, NTP's never made a product to be hurt by RIM. So they deserve a bajillion dollars.

- Verizon Wireless' EV-DO offering. Get "Unlimited Broadband Access for $59.99 a month." * with a qualifying monthly voice plan as well. ** and a 2-year contract. *** and don't think about doing anything other than web or e-mail. **** and we use a different dictionary than you, where "unlimited" doesn't mean "not limited in terms of number, quantity or extent", but rather "you can use as much as we think is okay".

- Gizmondo. It would be a shame to single out the device alone, when the company's executives deserve just as much, if not more scorn. High salaries, expensive cars, questionable relationships and ties to the criminal underworld -- all in a year's work in the handheld gaming business.

- Crazy Frog. Enough said.

-And last, but certainly not least, the Motorola ROKR. Since it's nearly Christmas, I'm feeling slightly generous, so I won't build on my extensive back catalog explaining how and why the ROKR sucks. Needless to say, it failed to come even close to living up to the ridiculous hype surrounding it. And there's nobody to blame for that but Motorola. So, deservedly, the ROKR gets my STNKR of the year award.

Now it's your turn -- what were the biggest mobile failures of 2005?

2005 Predictions Reviewed 7 - 14

This is a continuation of yesterday's review of my predictions for this year. My score so far 5 out of 6 - not bad so far.

7. Apple launches the iPhone

Well, actually I first predicted this back in August 2004, when it was genuinely a "wow! do you think so" thought. And by January, it was a pretty easy call.

I did write though "But I hope it doesn't try to cut corners by re-purposing a standard Moto phone and interface. It needs to start from scratch and show us how it should be done."

Shame they didn't listen and it must be the biggest hyped flop of the year.

Points: 1

8. Mobile Marketing Explodes - Not

I think I was spot on the money here again. A year of talk, a year of agency hype, desperately trying the crank-start the market, but in terms of results, we got a few "text and wins" and not much else.

When will this go mainstream? Every year since 2001, it's been "next year is going to be the year", apart from my predictions, of course.

Actually, certainly in the UK, the mobile marketing scene is looking grim, with one or two notable exceptions. Most of the original players are downsizing - or at least pulling in their horns - as they struggle to find a business model that makes sense.

Will next year be the year then? Read our 2006 Predictions to find out.

Points 1.

9. Blogging continues to go from strength to strength.

Hard to argue against that.

Points 1.

10. Mobile Phone Virii

I wrote that it would be a year of hype with the real story being "... that to catch one you'd have to be as unlucky as to get struck by lightening on a clear day while standing in a rubber suit at the bottom of a swimming pool."

Incidentally, if you think this predicting lark is easy, look at what Deloittes wrote in their predictions for 2005:

"Electronic viruses will run rampant in PCs, cellphones, PDAs and gaming consoles. Nuisances such as unsolicited e-mail (spam), unsolicited instant messages (spim) and attacks on Bluetooth-enabled devices (bluejacking) will become common."

MobHappy 1.

11. Mobile Video Slow to Take Off

I wrote that I thought there would be a market for short, downloadable video clips (as opposed to TV) but that because it would be "pretty costly in both data download costs and content costs" it would be slow to take off.

It certainly has, so I'll give myself a full point for 2005, though the jury is still out on the long term.

Point: 1

12. MP3 and Mobile Converge

I think we'll see that 2005 was the year when stand alone MP3 players peaked.

What is certain is that the market continued to converge, as predicted.

Points: 1

13. DRM

I said that it would be high on the agenda, but it was doomed to fail and that

"...it might be a better use of the content owners' considerable energy and talent to think how they can work with the new trends of their business model, rather than trying to stuff the fully grown adult lion back into the bag it doesn't want to go into, with their bare hands."

Well, it was certainty very high on the agenda and the whole Sony Fiasco proves my point way beyond even what I expected.

Points 1.

14. Voice is the Killer App for 3G

How the 3G operators have struggled in 2005 to come up with another reason to buy 3G handsets, other than cheap voice calls. We've had speed, video calling, dating applications, video downloading and a few others besides thrown at us.

But the phone is primarily about communication, as least so far and voice remains the master.

Points 1.

So, I'm a little embarrassed to write that my score is 13 out of 14 so far. If you disagree with my scoring feel free to tell me in no uncertain terms!

Also, if you have any predictions for next year, write to us and we'll feature the best ones in a post soon.

Tune in tomorrow for the final ones, where I'm going to lose one more point - or will it be more? And look out for next year's predictions over the holiday period.

Image from Chervokas Blog.

Nokia Gives More Details On New Gaming Strategy

When Nokia confirmed it wouldn't be making any more N-Gage models a little while ago, the surprise was, well, surprising, given it had announced the plans at E3 in May to make the N-Gage a gaming platform and extend it across multiple devices, and reiterated it a couple months ago in Barcelona. But then again, blogs can have awfully short memories. In any case, Nokia's shared some more details of the plan with developers, and it still sounds to be the right idea.

It's been pretty clear for a long time that having a single games device when there were plenty of other handsets capable of running the games wasn't the best idea. Too much of the plan's success hung on the success of the N-Gage, and when it didn't sell, the whole strategy tanked.

The idea now is yes, you can play these great games on any of these devices -- but maybe it would be better on a dedicated device, if that's what you want, or with a special gaming accessory. That sort of open, additive strategy is far better than one that says, no, you can't play that game -- it doesn't matter that you've got hardware technically capable of running it, it's just not the "game phone".

The N-Gage and its games were but one example of these sorts of closed strategies that run rampant in mobile. Far too many products and services are available to a limited number of users, whether it's for technical, financial or other reasons. Part of the promise of mobility is the huge number of mobile users in the world -- but when your product's available to only a very tiny subset of them, you're putting limits on your success. (It strikes me as I write this that ShoZu, which I posted about a few minutes ago is an example of this. Cognima Snap is a great product, but it's only sold to carriers -- but ShoZu's an analog that's open to anybody. Well, anybody with a compatible handset. But nobody's perfect :D)

(Image from sidetalkin.com)

ShoZu Widens Handset Support

Russell wrote about ShoZu, a free mobile photo uploading service a couple months ago, noting it looked like a good way to get around the problems of MMS for uploading photos to a sharing site like Flickr. It's built by Cognima, which makes the cool white-label Snap service that's pretty similar, but it sold to carriers. ShoZu offers some of the functionality of Snap, but is open to anybody with a compatible handset, and is free. When ShoZu launched, it only worked on some Symbian handsets, but it now supports a slew of Windows Mobile devices as well as some Java handsets.

I downloaded it on my Sony Ericsson K750, and have messed with it some, and it seems pretty great for uploading to Flickr -- far easier than sending them via email or SMS. So check it out again if you were disappointed by the earlier list of compatible handsets, and hopefully the list will keep growing.

2005 Predictions Reviewed 1 - 6

Back in January of this year, I wrote a whole bunch - 19 in total - of predictions for 2005. How did I do?

Over the next 3 days, I'm going to review these and try to assess my performance. I'll give myself 1 point for each correct one, with a maximum score of 19, if you're paying attention. Feel free to challenge my score if you feel I've been over-generous or (less likely!) too hard on myself.

Before I launch in though, MobHappy's new 2006 Predictions will be published during our break between Christmas and our restart on January 9th 2006. Each day, we'll feature two predictions and really nail our colours to our mast.

If you're away too, don't worry, we'll republish them at the end of that week, when you've had a chance to catch up.

OK, here's a review of the first 6 from 2005:

1. P2P File Sharing

I predicted that P2P File Sharing would boom in 2005, as kids shared video and music over Bluetooth.

This is a very hard one to score, as no one really knows - these transactions are untraceable, after all. It is happening though, certainly in schools in London and some in Germany, but the question is, on what scale?

I think I'll be hard on myself and conclude that while this form of sharing is widespread, it has yet to "boom" as such. However, it is only a matter of time and with the might of Nokia promoting it, via their Sensor app, I think we'll start to see things happen more next year.

The problem this raises for operators is that they get no revenue and no one can ever measure the scale of the abuse.

Points: 0 (or is that too harsh?)

2. Location Based Services

I said that LBS would fail to take off this year and I've been pretty much right. A few interesting grass root initiatives, but nothing mass market.

The main fuss has been kid tracking schemes, which I think are flawed anyway and there's no sign of traction there either.

Points: 1

3. SMS continues to grow like crazy.

Points: 1

4. MMS continues to flounder.

Right here too, I believe.

MMS is too expensive, too difficult to use and still has compatibility issues between networks. Perhaps most crucially, most phones aren't set up to use it - a scandalous wasted opportunity for the industry.

Points: 1

5. Video Calling fails to take off.

Right here too.

This time last year, dating was being hailed by the likes of 3 as the saviour of their video calling fantasies. Not so, I wrote, as video calling is very rarely complementary to your looks, so it's possibly the worst use for the service.

I think video calling's potential is filming things and events, rather than your face. So live action from a sports game or gig, for instance, or reporting a problem in the field.

Maybe new generations will take to the face thing, but for now, it's a dead duck.

Points: 1

6. Mobile TV doesn't take off either

Millions have been poured into mobile TV last year and this, with very little sign of traction so far.

The issue is that while people might like the idea, they don't like the idea of paying for it. Ultimately, my theory is that it'll be bundled into a bunch of other services or considered simply a cost of doing business for operators.

Points 1.

So, in total 5 out of 6, so far. The trouble with these analyses is that it's hard for us all to remember exactly what it was like last year when I wrote them. I can tell you, quite honestly, that they weren't as easy to call as it might seem today.

You'll see what I mean when your read our 2006 predictions or compare what we said with some other analysts.

Tomorrow, we'll look at how I did on things like Mobile Marketing and Mobile Viruses.

Carnival of the Mobilists Holiday Special

This week, the Carnival of the Mobilists returns to MobHappy, for an end of year, holiday extravaganza.

To celebrate, we're asking all our writers to send in their very favourite post from their writing from the whole of 2005. As you know, the Carnival exists to celebrate the best writing about mobile, so we're offering the very best of the very best.

For writers, please submit your entry today, whether you're a seasoned contributor or a newbie.

For readers, don't forget to come back on Friday. And why not tell a colleague about it? - you know they'll thank you.

Links for December 20

- SK Telecom aims to be 'center of life' (The Korea Herald)
- Opera Quietly Ships Mini Browser (IDG)
- Verizon Offers GPS Mobile Search (Pondering Primate)
- Company fined £40,000 over Crazy Frog advertisements (The Guardian)
- Qix Gets More From Virgin Handsets (160Characters)

Airline Social Networking

Back in July 04, I wrote a piece about the possibilities of social networking on planes, wondering in any airline would pick up on it.

Well, they don't seem to have done, but that hasn't stopped entrepreneurs from going into the space. AirTroductions arrange for like minded travellers to hook up while flying, for any purpose people normally want to meet each other - social or business networking or joining the mile high club dating.

You start off with a profile, including your objective. Then say when you're flying and they give you anyone matching. If you like the sound of the match, they put you in touch, take a $5 fee and you arrange to sit next to each other.

Very nice idea. The only issue with any of these concepts is that if you try it a couple of times and don't get a match, you'll give up. Therefore, establishing critical mass quickly is imperative - easier said than done.

That's why I can't help feeling that this would be better as an airline initiative. A MoSoSo app for use on the plane would be cool too.

Good luck to them though. Sometimes an idea does spread if it's good enough and the timing is right.

Story from Cool Business Ideas, via Business Week.

TypePad Vs del.icio.us

We wrote last weekend about how TypePad, MobHappy's blog software/hosting supplier had 18 hours downtime last Friday. We pay to use this service, as we want reliability, so it's galling when they have persistent problems like this.

However, a much bigger issue with these things is how companies deal with problems when they come up. It's like waiting for a train to arrive, when you're sitting on a cold, damp platform. It's mildly irritating for the first 5 minutes, but then annoyance levels start to rise exponentially. Unless, the train operator has the good sense and courtesy to tell you:

1. What the problem is.
2. When it will be resolved.

Then, if the resolution doesn't happen as and when they say, they continue to keep you updated and informed.

This doesn't remove the passengers' annoyance, but it does manage it far more effectively. If they know what's happening, you can manage their expectations accordingly.

What many people found so frustrating about the TypePad incident was that this communication simply wasn't forthcoming. What little information they did deign to let us know was via a less than prominent page on their site, was simply a blandly worded status - yes, guys, I can see your site is down, but what's the issue and when will it be resolved do you think?

This situation has been compounded by subsequent further communication issues in that they've still failed to write to all their customers to apologise (and offer compensation, if appropriate). I did raise this point on Niall Kennedy's blog, when he interviewed Anil Dash, a VP of Six Apart, on Friday night.

In fairness to the poor bloke, he does seem to be caught in the middle of a situation not of his making ie he's neither in charge of tech nor the TypePad product, but did have the courtesy to make himself available and is obviously concerned. But when I raised the issue of an apology, he wrote:

I do expect you'll get formal communication from Six Apart as a whole on Monday, with the goal there being to make sure we've got a full understanding of everything when we communicate formally.

Let's leave aside that such an email should have been sent over the weekend and not waited for the luxury of a working day to organise this. Monday has come and gone and no such apology has arrived.

Ahh...maybe as a blogging company, they'll at least use their blogs, right? Wrong! Mena Trott, founder and poster child of the company has not only ignored the issue, but hasn't updated her blog, Mena's Corner for about 5 months.

Typepad have lost touch with the "community" they so proudly talk about.

Contrast this with my other mission critical (and free) blogging software, del.icio.us. Note that while still young, they've already joined big business by selling to Yahoo! They were also hit by an outrage yesterday and did everything right. Their blog spelled out the detailed situation, was constantly updated and was open for comments all the way through.

The blog was written live by their founder, in person, who was also up to his eyes in resolving the tech issues - horribly stressful, though this undoubtedly was. The community (and there really is one here) was wonderfully supportive. In the main they were also quick to stamp on anyone less than 100% behind the team.

TypePad need to look at del.icio.us and apply this kind of action plan to their next crisis management scenario. In the meantime, the word on the street is that some leading players in the 6A management team will jump ship imminently, rather than risk further sullying their personal reputations by association with further communication and management incompetence.

They need to take some radical and powerful action, as a matter of urgency, to resolve their technology, communication and leadership issues.

Links for December 19

- RIM Chairman Hails Patent Office Decision (AP)
- Vodafone's New Growth Map (BusinessWeek)
- Doubts Raised on Palm OS Future (eWeek)
- T-Mobile Hungary Offers SIM Application Downloads (DMEurope)
- Smarter SIM card puts whole world in your hand (IHT)
- Mobile GMail (All About Palm)

Product Placement

The big story going around one day a few weeks ago was how an episode of CSI:NY would feature a plug for a Coldplay ringtone worked into the dialogue. I managed to see the episode recently, and thought the placement was pretty obvious and over-the-top -- which to my mind is the least successful kind of placement, because it cheapens the underlying content and, for lack of a technical term, is completely cheesy.

I then happened upon an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force late one night that took things a step further, but to be perfectly honest, it didn't really strike me as out of step for what's a pretty bizarre show (and didn't pop back into my mind until I saw a post on Mocoblog about it. Apparently the guys that make it sold out to Boost Mobile and created an entire episode based around the brand and its phones -- particularly their distinctive push-to-talk chirp. But it had a completely different feel to it than the CSI plug. It felt genuine, almost as if the Aqua Teen guys had just chosen to make fun of Boost for its annoying features and slightly obnoxious advertising. Plus, it helped that the show is hilarious.

Perhaps there's some deeper meaning in how mobile products are becoming so pervasive and so on, but I'm not sure that's important. Bottom line, people want to sell stuff. But in any case, it's an interesting contrast in how to, or not to, make a successful product placement.

(Picture from Aqua Teen Central)

Analyze This

There's the old saying about lies, damn lies and statistics -- it could pretty easily be adapted to fit plenty of analyst predictions as well. I saw one fly past my RSS reader today that says location-based services "may finally realize its potential in the Asia/Pacific region in the upcoming five years" (via Mobile Analyst Watch) because there's a lot of consumer interest in them. Of course, consumer interest has never really been the problem, it's all the other stuff the operators have screwed up that's held LBS back.

Let's suspend reality for a moment -- since that's apparently okay, what with the dearth of any compelling LBS, and their continued failure to take off in any meaningful way -- and imagine what else "may" happen over the next five years. I may discover a new career as a professional football player and lead the US to World Cup victory -- twice. We may have phones implanted in our heads, negating the need for handsets and/or Bluetooth headsets. Angelina Jolie may split with Brad Pitt and may decide that she's got a thing for dudes that write about mobile phones and live in Texas. I think you get the idea.

Obviously this stuff comes out of a press release that's intended to do little more than sell copies of the $3,000 report. But the underlying point is that these predictions really don't help anybody. I'm not saying there aren't analysts that do good work, I've known several of them. But these top-down one-way predictions have very little value in an information society that's increasingly based on conversation. Believing that whatever market you're entering is going to be worth a bajillion dollars a year in 2010 isn't going to make your product any better.

Dial That Number

On a recent visit to an über trendy friend, my 10 year old daughter wanted to use their phone. The problem was that she couldn't work out how to do it.

This is a kid who uses tech stuff everyday. She can use a PSP, GameBoy, PlayStation, computer, mobile phone, video camera, digital camera and (awesomely) can even record stuff on a 5 year old video recorder - don't ask me how. She can do Finger Frenzy in 7 seconds - a curiously addictive game where you type in the alphabet as quickly as possible. Not so easy!

So why was she flummoxed? They had a retro-phone on their landline, which was a dial-up version. Thus, a skill that had been esential for what? 3 or 4 generations is redundant.

We still talk about dialing a phone number, but for how long, I wonder?

Image from Ritilan.

The Carnival is Up

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists is at C Enrique Ortiz, who has done a great job editing.

As ever, well worth checking out.

Narnia is an Allegory - Shock

I took my kids to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe recently and was intrigued by the way the film worked on two levels.

My kids obviously saw it on a basic level – a simple saga of right versus wrong, with an overt Christian subtext.

For adults though the message is very different. As the story unravels, the Witch can feel her power ebbing as the 100 year winter draws to a close. As the great thaw sets in, she still continues to try to travel by sleigh, despite the fact that it’s now impossible, but even her close advisors are afraid to point this out.

After all, she’s always traveled by snow sleigh, so why should she change?

How clever of CS Lewis to allegorise the end of the record and advertising industries like that.

Our Apologies For The Interruption

Sorry there haven't been any updates today and the last week of posts has gone missing -- we've been caught in the massive Typepad outage that's been going for some 18 hours or so.

We've been let down tremendously by the Typepad service and Six Apart's response, and their updates don't give us much confidence that things will get any better. Russell praised how they handled their last crisis, but it pales in comparison to this total outage, and a cutesy choose-your-own-compensation plan won't cut it. What they did before was all well and good, but the bottom line is that they shouldn't have to do things like that -- they should be able to keep their service up and running. That is, after all, what we pay them for.

Needless to say, we'll be switching providers here shortly, so we ask for your patience as we negotiate that process, and again apologize in advance should you encounter any other irregularities here at MobHappy.

Russell adds: As Carlo wrote above, I did indeed praise the way that Six Apart handled the last event. But I also added a warning "Beware though. It'll only work once.". Shame they didn't heed it.

Sometimes, it's possible to look at an event in a company and think "Yep, that was the exact moment that they blew it".

When jewellery boss Gerald Ratner, made his famous speech at the UK's Institute of Directors, he said that Ratners' gold plated ear rings cost less than a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich - and that the sandwich would probably last longer. That remark earned some polite titters, the end of his career and the end of the company his father had built up.

Hoover in the UK took an insane decision back in the 80's to give away two free transatlantic flights with every vacuum cleaner and washing machine. That cost the company about $75 million, many Hoover senior managers their jobs and forced parent company Maytag to sell off Hoover in the UK in a firesale.

On 16th December 2005, Six Apart had an outrage on their TypePad product. This was bad enough, but to everyone's frustration, they failed to keep their customers informed, failed to explain what had happened and have still failed to apologise. A huge segment of their customer base left during the next month and their new management never managed to make a convincing case as to why anyone should ever risk paying them money for a service held together with bits of sticky tape and string. They managed to keep the rump of their corporate clients on the (unaffected) Movable Type platform, by offering huge discounts to nervous CTO's and hang onto their free Live Journal bloggers (remind me how this makes money).

But things were never the same again for Six Apart. They had lost their most influential, loyal and important commercial customer base and they had gone from the darlings of the blogging scene to the pariahs.

Links for December 15

- DoCoMo Buys 10% Stake In Korea's KTF For $560 million (cellular-news)
- Siemens boss predicts US switch from CDMA to GSM (news.com)
- T-Mobile UK evaluation delay prompts sale rumors (Telegeography)
- MTV Invests $50 million in Amp'd (MocoNews)
- Vodafone releases Nokia 6680 in Japan will they never learn? (3G)
- Cingular shuts down old AT&T LBS (RCR News)
- Top 10 Words To Add To T9 For 2005 (The Guardian)

Kids "Two Clicks" From Buying Mobile Porn

All the horror stories and questionable studies being pumped out by companies looking to create a problem that only their products can solve -- like all the mobile virus FUD), for instance -- are getting pretty tiresome. The latest one is about how easy it is for kids to get mobile porn, put out by a company that sells filtering products. They sent a kid in to a high-street shop in the UK, and the 16-year-old was -- gasp -- able to buy a prepaid phone without showing ID, and "walked out being able to surf the internet for porn, use chatrooms, buy knives or alcohol, without being asked for ID or offered a content filtered phone." They helpfully add that just one operator there actually defaults to having filters on their phones -- so it's likely they didn't send a kid into a Vodafone store.

They say "some operators are selling phones with access to everything on the web", inferring that the solution is to add filters. That's simply not true, as filters aren't effective at all at keeping really interested kids from finding what they want. That's another point, though, and one we've covered before.

My point here is give it a rest, people. Maybe putting out these kinds of stories and studies gives you a short term pop, but all it really does is reveal that you're full of crap.

And as far as the kid "being able to surf the internet for porn, use chatrooms, buy knives or alcohol" -- that sounds like a pretty hot phone and service. You might argue that if somebody could do all that stuff so easily on their phone, the operator's doing something right.

Smart Marketers Go Black

eMarketer points to some work by Solutions Research Group (SRG) suggesting that in the US, Black and to a lesser extent, Hispanic mobile users are far more likely to use advanced (ie non voice) features of their phones.

37% had downloaded a ringtone in the last month (as opposed to 26% average), 48% had sent an sms (29% average).

Another study by Yankelovich Monitor found ownership and intention to purchase WAP phones was also higher in the black community and use of P2T was three times higher.

This means that these groups are important - and not just as markets in their own right. It's because very often, especially in youth culture, what starts in the black community, crosses over at some point to their less stylish white bretheren. Many music trends start Black - rap, hiphop, Jazz, even rock and roll. Fashion too - where do you think having your arse hanging out of your trousers started? Ditto sports.

And so, I have long argued, it's the same with mobiles.

Smart marketers focus their attention on mavens - people who will spread the word about their products. Getting one maven on board and on message is worth 100,000 lesser folk. So if you've got limited resources and budgets for your mobile content, handset or app, go find some black kids who like it. They'll do all the marketing you're ever going to need.

Google To Finally Make Its Big Mobile Move?

Rumors are trickling through the blogosphere that Google is going to buy Opera. It's been rumored for some time that Google was working on its own Web browser, thought to be based on open-source software like Mozilla, reflecting its apparent preference to build its own software when possible rather than buying it. But to see this as just about a PC browser is missing the point: this buy would be all about mobile.

Until the release of Google Local for Mobile, the Goog's mobile offerings were pretty wimpy. They're still pretty uneven and incomplete, but Opera could change that. Not just with its mobile browsers, which are as good as they come -- particularly Opera Mini -- but with the Opera Platform it announced last month. Just as Yahoo Mobile offers a ton of individual services, Google could do the same relatively quickly and easily by using the Opera Platform to build its services.

But, again, why buy? Two reasons. First, when Opera changed their business model and made their PC browser free, it was because they started taking search referral payments from the likes of Amazon, eBay and... Google -- the biggest and most important contributor to Opera's revenues. So, in some sense, it's relatively cheap for Google to buy Opera when it saves referral payments.

The second, and biggest reason, again, is mobile. There's a benefit to controlling such a powerful technology on what's becoming such an important medium -- and mobile is only going to get more important. But keep in mind what are Opera's most significant relationships: deals to get its browser on handsets from some of the world's top mobile phone manufacturers. That would be instant traction for Google on some very big real estate.

Links for December 14

- China To Add 100 Million New Telephone Users In 2005 - Government (cellular-news)
- Cingular to test near-field cellphone services in Atlanta (Engadget)
- Sega/DoCoMo phone that recognizes objects (Picturephoning)
- Vodafone drops Ferrari F1 sponsorship for McLaren (Reuters)
- Ericsson signs another billion-dollar outsourcing deal (DMEurope)
- Samsung launched 164 different phones in 2005 (MobileMag)
- The Tampax Ringtone (Adverblog)
- The Costs and Benefits of Anytime, Anywhere (A VC)
- GPS racing on your mobile phone (we-make-money-not-art)

Palm and Motorola: Same Situation, Different Predictions

The Wall Street Journal's had two articles this week about Motorola and Palm, highlighting their current situation and giving an outlook for 2006. What's interesting is that both companies are coming from a similar situation -- their success in 2005 has been driven by one device (the RAZR and the Treo) -- but the WSJ's stories take opposing viewpoints on their futures:
- Analysts See Palm Rebound at Hand
- Can Motorola Ride RAZR's Edge?

The articles reiterate points I made earlier in the year, wondering if the switch to Windows Mobile would help Palm, and saying Motorola needed to follow up the RAZR with more successful handsets. The WSJ says the Windows Treo will give the company a big boost, but I'm more skeptical. Using the Palm OS was the Treo's differentiation; now, it's just another Windows Mobile PDA phone. There have been plenty of them before, and several with QWERTY keyboards. To automatically assume the Treo will sell well when none of the others have been big winners is a stretch, and doesn't take into account the risk Palm runs of alienating its existing user base by changing operating systems. Keep in mind, too, that the Treo has only been a success in the US. Palm's failed to make any sort of dent overseas with it.

Another significant point of weakness for Palm is that it's never made good on its talk of creating a family of Treo smartphones, particularly consumer-oriented mid-tier devices. Going forward, this is a crucial part of the market, and for now, it's one Nokia dominates. Given that company's renewed focus on the enterprise market with its E-Series devices in multiple form factors, the Treo's going to have itself plenty more competition -- just as it loses its main differentiator.

Motorola's challenge remains the same: build on the success of the RAZR with other devices that follow in its footsteps. The SLVR candybar phone is now on sale in Europe, it looks like, while the PEBL has gone on sale too. I'm not sure if these devices will have the same appeal as the RAZR, though. The SLVR may be too much of a rip-off of the RAZR design, while the PEBL (which I think looks pretty sharp) may push the design envelope just a little too far for it to be the mass-market hit the RAZR was. Of course, the CDMA RAZR's out too. Even though it's a souped-up model, will the design be played out to consumers? And will the price wars driving the phone's cost down make it lose some of its luxury status?

To condemn or congratulate either of these companies is awfully premature. Their recent histories don't dictate doing anything other than proceeding with some skepticism (perhaps this is why I'm not a stock analyst!). But I think on the whole, the WSJ's got the tone of its stories reversed: I see a far better opportunity for Motorola in 2006. It's just that, though, an opportunity. The company's got to follow up the RAZR with more great devices -- the focus on more. I can't help but think it's putting too many eggs in one basket by positioning the phones with the annoying four-letter names as its "design" phones. Why not let the new sense of design trickle all the way down the product line -- and do something about that horrific UI while you're at it.

Mobile Auction Site

Hunt For It is a new UK mobile auction site, where people bid via sms for listed goods and services. This makes sense, as most auction addicts know that being away from their PC at a critical moment can be fatal.

But in an interesting spin on other mobile auction offerings, they share revenue with sellers, based on inbound sms volumes. Their website claims this is 5p (9c) and the press release is 2 - 3p. But whichever the figure is, it could mean that you could get back your listing fee and more if you go with them, though listing is currently free. It's certainly not going to generate much of an income though, judging by the number of bids most auctions seem to get.

A quick visit to their website though, quickly illustrates their core problem - or any entrant into the auction market, for that matter. Namely, the paucity of current listings emphasises the symbiotic relationship between buyers and sellers. In other words, sellers want lots of potential buyers. But buyers want lots of sellers to choose from. So unless or until you can offer many buyers and many sellers at the same time, you have a big problem. This is why it's so difficult to challenge eBay, as many competitors have found out.

I know that Hunt for It are very new and it's perhaps unfair to point out how few auctions are currently offered. But, this symbiotic relationship means that it's actually really hard to get further than they are today.

As an aside, the other killer feature needed by an auction site is Trust. Having bad links on the site (click "Contact Us" brings up a page about insurance) and with a Help page yet to be written doesn't inspire any level of trust and they need to sort out some basics.

Will the mobile angle crack this market for Hunt for It? I doubt it, I'm afraid.

Story via Net Imperative.

Festive Spirit

Many years ago, when young and handsome (well, young anyway) I remember being pursued around a Christmas office party by an Amazonian female colleague waving a bunch of mistletoe and trying to stick her tongue down my throat. No, honestly.

I was reminded of this when I read about wallpaper mistletoe that you can download to your phone. So, now you can sneak up on the object of your affections innocently making a phone call, and when in range, grab them, grin cheesily and put your mobile over their head. How will they resist you?

Do let us all know how you get on*.

Available for $1.99 from Modtones.

* And, no we're not recommending this - you're on your own, my friend.

Links for December 13

- Korean Carriers Demand Standard Connector (Phone Scoop)
- Siemens absent from Cingular's initial UMTS/HSDPA launch (RCR News)
- Danglin' it Old School: Handsets on Mobiles (Boing Boing)
- Vodafone Wins Bidding for Turkey's Telsim (AP)
- But the price was pretty high... (EuroTelcoBlog)
- Cellphone technology rings in pornography in USA (USA Today)
- The Killers Offer Branded Music Phone for Holidays (Digital Music News)
- DoCoMo to Invest in Korea's KTF? (Wireless Watch Japan)
- Cell Phone Bandit Pleads Guilty (CNN)

Links for December 12

- Panasonic to kill GSM phones for 3G Linux handsets (Computerworld)
- Handset UIs don't travel (Tom Hume)
- NTT DoCoMo To Invest $6 Million In Chinese Mobile Payment Company (cellular-news)
- Sprint Unveils Movie Service (BetaNews)
- TV's mobile revolution: who wants it? (The Guardian)
- TextPayMe, A New Mobile Payment Solution (Textually)
- Xbox SMS Alerts (The Pondering Primate)
- US 3G about to "take off" - DoCoMo (i-mode Strategy)