MobHappy

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.

Mobile RSS Makes More Noise

Mobile RSS has heated up a little bit over the last week, some people pushing its value as a marketing tool, but mostly because of Yahoo's launch of a free RSS-to-SMS service. RSS for mobile devices is something I feel pretty strongly about, so I wanted to throw my two cents in (even if it is a week late).

Here's the thing about mobile RSS: it's not about blogs. Yes, the most common use of RSS is to let people know when blogs they read have been updated, but it can be so much more than that. Think of the quantum leap from simple blog headlines to podcasts -- automated audio delivery through RSS. In the mobile realm, RSS doesn't necessarily have to deliver multimedia content, but it's perfect for delivering all sorts of content beyond just blog updates.

Russ Beattie points out a few ways people can make use of Yahoo's service:

Then there’s all these custom site feeds out there as well! Subscribe to a custom Simply Hired feed and you can know instantly when there’s a new job for you. Subscribe to an eBay Store, and know when a new item is available before anyone else does. Same thing for Craig’s list - be the first to hear about a new apartment available or car for sale. Subscribe to, um, I don’t know, a Surf Report Feed and you know when the tide is perfect for hanging ten right away. ANYTHING that can be made into a public RSS feed can now essentially be linked directly to your phone.

That's sort of the point right there -- anything. Throw anything into an RSS feed and it can be pushed to phones. You can even get an approximation of push e-mail: get a Gmail account, or any other that supports RSS, and throw it in Yahoo's service. Maybe it won't deliver the full emails, but it will let you know when there's something new.

So where does that leave us? Waiting for all kinds of content to be put in RSS feeds so it can be simply and easily accessed from phones, or sent out over SMS. That's where the marketing opportunity comes in. Forget something like "MobHappy updates, brought to you by Cillit Bang", make it content people would actually want on their mobile -- sports scores brought to you by ESPN, news headlines from The Times, weather reports from UmbrellaCo, and so on.

Mobile RSS is undoubtedly cool. But it will be a hell of a lot cooler, compelling -- and profitable -- when there's a lot more content (and that's content in the catholic sense, content of any and all kinds) available in RSS feeds.

Mobile Search, But Missing The Point

I'm not staking a claim to Russell's spot as the Mobhappy go-to guy on mobile search, but I wanted to make some comments about the mobile search AOL announced today. At first glance, it looks like it's better at transcoding than, say, Google's WML search, but that's not so important, really. Transcoding full HTML sites is great, but the mobile Internet isn't just about cramming the wired web into a mobile phone; it's about understanding the needs of mobile users and the types of things they want from the Internet.

If I want sports scores on my phone, the best way to get them isn't try to transcode ESPN's full site to fit in a narrow column on my phone. If I want weather, weather.com's full site isn't great. You can't just give people a transcoding search engine and say, okay, that's the mobile Internet and mobile search taken care of; you've still got to recognize the fundamentally different nature of mobile search from typical Internet searching, and then cater content to it.

Mobile searching doesn't -- and shouldn't -- involve much browsing, it's just too painful. Using transcoding falls somewhere in the middle of my optimized sites vs. optimized browsers argument, but like solely relying on an optimized browser, it's sort of a "dumb" approach to a problem that needs a smarter solution. Offering a mobile-oriented site that's been designed to strip out the elements not necessary to a mobile user and that emphasizes what's relevant and most important is still a better solution.

There's a fine line here. As a user, I want access to everything. But I also want the content to be in a format that's easy to naviagate and use on my mobile device. I'm not convinced transcoding fulfills this, and I'm not convinced even of its value alongside mobile-intended content in a decently powerful browser. But to think that transcoding is the answer to mobile search is completely wrong. As we've said before, mobile search is about mobile info. Searches have to point to information, not just to results that might have the information if the transcoder can handle it.

ROKR II, Son of ROKR: 1000 Songs, But No iTunes?

Motorola's talking to BusinessWeek about its plans for the ROKR line, and says it will introduce a the next model in the first quarter of 2006, "updated to address the main criticisms of the first release," with a megapixel camera, standard headphone jack and 1,000-song capacity in a slider design.

It's not clear, however, if the phone will be compatible with iTunes, with Motorola saying it's up to Apple and Cingular: "We will definitely do an iTunes version if that's what Cingular wants," says Ron GRQS, head of Motorola's phone unit. But what will Apple want? The arbitrary 100-song cap of the original ROKR was apparently at Apple's behest, as they didn't want to cannibalize iPod Shuffle sales. If they capped the first ROKR to protect sales of $100 Shuffles, why would they let Motorola put iTunes on a phone that would rival the nano in capacity? Moto's in a rough spot here -- if they release another ROKR without iTunes support, they'll probably get railed for it. Release another 100-song phone, and it'll be just as dead as the ROKR.

The article doesn't do much to restore confidence in Motorola, or Cingular, for that matter. The carrier's exec in charge of consumer data services says, "What we're doing with Apple is the first simple means for people to carry music around with them," which isn't at all accurate (either in the context of phones, but particularly in the context of devices like, um, the iPod, or hell, even the Sony Walkman), but that can be dismissed as PR grandstanding. But things take a slightly curious turn when BW says Cingular "is also hard at work training retail sales people to present the ROKR as something other than an iPod phone." Without the iTunes capability, what else is there? An uncompelling, ugly old phone with Motorola's famously horrible user interface?

It's as if both companies expected the iTunes brand and the iPod association to be some sort of magic tonic, but buyers are smarter than that. The success of the iPod isn't just because of its brand, it's because it's a great product. The ROKR, simply put, is not. Motorola needs to focus on building great phones, not just on creating handsets that can have the iTunes icon stamped on them.

The Mobile is the PC of the Developing World

As we sit with our broadband connected computers, surfing the web, rattling off email and IMs, Skyping Intercontinentally and publishing our ideas and opinions all over the world with blogging software, it's easy to forget that much of the world just isn't like that. Broadband connections (or even dear old dial up connections) are a rarity in much of the developing world, including (but not limited) to the massive populations of China, India and Africa.

So in these countries, the mobile phone combines the functionality of the telephone and the computer, for many people. This is just one of the driving factors that will see the mobile replace the computer as the primary device that most people use most of the time to access the mobile internet - including us in the West, by the way.

An important stakeholder in these countries are NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) and charities, who often need to keep in touch with remote workers or indeed, whole communities who are completely cut off from all other sorts of communication. SMS can be used to quickly and efficiently disperse messages and information that would take days or weeks to disseminate in any other way.

One company trying to develop a solution for these organisations is FrontlineSMS, who have contacted us asking MobHappy to help find them some non-paying trial customers to help test their PC-based group SMS management system.

So if you are involved in an NGO or charity, please contact them via their website here. Or, if you know anyone who might be interested, drop them an email now, while you remember.

SIM Card As Web Server?

SIM card company Axalto says it's got a new product that allows mobile users to publish a blog on their SIM cards, which then acts as a Web server, allowing publishing "with a single click" and immediate access by others to view the site.

Huh?

From the company's press release:

Now this multimedia content can be easily published as it is directly stored on the new SIM which acts as the user’s web server...Users do not need a PC nor do they have to upload their content on a remote web server, making the whole process much simpler. Once the photo has been taken, it only takes one click for the user to decide to publish it on his/her blog. Then his/her friends can have immediate access to it from a PC or a mobile phone. This breakthrough was made possible by an innovative implementation of the web server onto the SIM card which supports large memory as well as the USB (Universal Serial Bus) protocol. The tremendous card capacity allows to store large amounts of multimedia content while the TCP-IP protocol enables connectivity between the SIM card and the Internet world."

My technical advisers are skeptical of the claims and suspect some miscommunication between the engineers and the marketing department. My question is this, though: even if you could put a Web server on your SIM card and publish a site from there, via your phone, why would you want to? I'm hard pressed to think of a single situation where it would be preferential or advantageous to just simply sending photos and blog entries to a remote server.

The Stats Are In...

There's been a boatload of studies and statistics released this week, the biggest being the annual Mobinet study from AT Kearney and the Judge Business School at Cambridge. I like this study quite a bit; it's a pretty unbiased source, it's pretty comprehensive in scope and depth and they've been doing it for six years now, so they've got historical data. The findings are in an easy-to-get-through PDF that I highly recommend you check out. But I've gone through it, and I'll summarize some of the key findings and their implications here:

Handset replacement cycles are moving fast in developed markets.. The study doesn't cover most emerging markets, leaving out big places like India and Africa. In the areas it does cover, it says 53% of people have phones that can access data services like e-mail or the Web. They also say that in the places they surveyed, more than half of handsets are less than a year old. Since it's nearly impossible to find a handset that can't do data these days, that says that basically all the multimedia handsets are less than a year old. Conversely, it would appear that people that aren't replacing their phones are holding on to them for a long time. (Keep in mind these are self-reported results from surveys, so they're not airtight).

A pretty damning figure: 57% of all users say they're willing to spend no more than $5 per month on mobile data services -- including text messages, and the most important factor in choosing a mobile service is cheap voice calls. That's backed up by another piece of research this week that says it's cheap voice plans, not fast data driving 3G.

Why aren't people using data services more? Cost and poor content, mostly. Paul Whitaker's got some thoughts on this, particularly about how confusing data tariffs are. Let's go back to the first number, that 53% of people have multimedia handsets. So roughly half have the devices, half don't. About half of people don't want to pay more than $5 per month for data. What are the chances those are the people with devices that can't use them? This makes me think the biggest factor in growth of new services is getting people handsets that can support them, first off, then giving them an easy, low-cost, low-risk way to begin using data services.

To that end, though, there isn't a direct correlation between high handset subsidies and high rates of replacement. For instance, in Italy (where there's little subsidizing) and Finland (where it's illegal), 61% of people replaced their handsets in the past year, compared to 56% in the heavily subsidized US and 69% in the UK.

Throw out your assumptions about where mobile data usage is highest. Well, most of them -- Japan still leads the way, by far, in terms of regions where people with multimedia phones access the net or e-mail at least once a month, at 92%. Eastern Europe and Russia was a surprising second, at 70 percent, followed by Latin America (64%) and North America (60%). Most surprising of all: Scandinavia was the lowest at 41%.

When it comes to usability, 58% of people don't think the new functions on their phone are hard to use, while just 22% say they're disappointed when they try new services. I'm not so sure about these numbers. Nobody seems to really have a handle on how people feel about usability of data services (an article I put on Techdirt yesterday highlighted three different surveys on the same day on the same site about it that all came to different conclusions), but from personal and anecdotal experience, I don't think things are good. Perhaps part of the issue is that when answering these surveys, people don't want to feel stupid, so they don't admit to having problems. The only device I can think of that "just works" seamlessly is the Danger Hiptop -- but that's a consequence, of course, of the degree to which it's locked down by the carrier. But in any case, the general usability of data services -- setup, navigation, support -- needs more work.

More than a third of users worldwide have cameraphones, up from 21% last year, and 59% have color screens, up from 44%. The cameraphone figures aren't surprising -- there was a research report out last Friday that said two-thirds of all phones sold this year would have cameras.

33% of people worldwide said they downloaded music at least once a month (I'm assuming that's ringtones, mostly), and 16% download games at least once a month.

Just 17% of people worldwide say they'd be willing to pay to get broadcast TV channels on their mobiles, with interest highest in Latin America, China and South Korea, and Eastern Europe and Russia. By far, the types of programming people are interested in are news and sports -- following what we've said before about live sports and breaking news being about the only thing we could see people paying for.

This is a lot to digest in one post, so I may come back and highlight some particular tidbits next week. In the meantime, though, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the implications of these numbers, or just on the numbers themselves. After all, so many of you are the people developing and rolling out these services.

ESPN Phone Really Is $500

(See update below.)

I alluded in my post yesterday about Sprint's EV-DO launch that there had been a brief article in the local paper yesterday about the launch of Mobile ESPN, since Austin was one of the 4 markets it soft launched in today. The only notable piece of information was the price of the phone -- put at $500. Like Rafat at MocoNews, I found it a little hard to believe, so I went to Best Buy and checked it out for myself today:

Yes, it is indeed $500 -- I'm hard pressed to think of any other phone sold by a US carrier that's aimed at the mass market, not the enterprise market, that costs so much. It's a lot to ask of potential customers, and I've got a feeling it's a deal-killer, despite the saleswoman's prediction that "everybody's going to want one for Christmas".

Update: A Mobile ESPN exec emailed Rafat to defend the price, basically saying "well, it's a nice phone" and that there's a $100 rebate on it. As I said in comments over there, it's still markedly more expensive than similarly equipped EV-DO phones from other carriers.

The Secret To Mobile TV? Bigger Bullet Holes.

A couple of posts over at MocoNews this week caught my eye and joined up in my head. The first mentions how a prominent media figure in the UK is starting a company to buy up rights to distribute TV and video to mobiles, even though he's got no idea what the business model will be -- which also seems a roundabout way of saying he's also got no idea if it's going to be successful. The second points to an NYT article that says content producers are equally clueless about what will work for mobile video, but that the producers of the "24" mobisodes found out that wide shots don't work and that they had to double the size of the bullet holes and use more fake blood.

Two different angles, but the same point: nobody's got any idea what's going to work. This shotgun approach, though, doesn't really seem to be the best way to figure it out, but it seems about on par with the creative thinking that comes out of the entertainment industry these days. There are a few problems here, all stemming from a lack of understanding of how the mobile device fits into people's personal media landscape.

People's media devices -- TV, computer, DVR, stereo, iPod, phone and so on -- all need to be a part of the same pool of content. I listen to music on my computer, stereo, MP3 player. I play DVDs on my TV or on my computer, and TV shows come from my DVR or BitTorrent. The idea that any one of those devices or any of that content are their own islands doesn't fly.

Modern media is about control. I control what I consume; I control where and when I consume it, and how. Mobile, especially mobile TV and video, has to fit in to this. Video content only accessible on a mobile phone is generally pretty pointless. I want access to my content, not just what somebody decides to give me. This doesn't give live TV broadcasts a free pass, either. If people are already looking to time- and place- shift "normal" TV, tying them to broadcasters' schedule on their mobile phone probably won't work either.

The idea that people will maintain different and separate sets of content for different devices is outdated and outmoded. Everything's got to work together. The sooner people pushing mobile video and TV realize this, the better off they'll be.

The Real Threat To BlackBerry

Nokia released its version of the BlackBerry-killer today -- three of them, in fact. It launched the "E Series" (presumably E for Enterprise) with three Series 60-based handsets, one fairly standard candybar setup, and 2 with full keyboards, one a flip model along the lines of the 6800 series, and another looking pretty much like a BlackBerry or Treo. Different form factors for different tastes -- something that took RIM a few years to figure out and something that goes along with what Sony Ericsson was telling me about the demand for Java productivity apps.

The form factors aren't what makes this a threat to BlackBerry, nor the Nokia badge. It's the platform agnosticism when it comes to push e-mail. The E Series devices support six push e-mail platforms (BlackBerry Connect, GoodLink, Nokia Business Center, Seven Mobile Mail, Seven Always-On Mail and Visto Mobile), and of course, anything else that comes along with a Series 60 client. This means users, or more importantly, their corporate IT departments, aren't tied into BlackBerry (or any other provider's) service. Having a large installed base of BlackBerry devices, compatible only with RIM's service, is a good lock-in. Should a company want to switch, they've got to replace a slew of devices -- but not so with the E series and other platform-agnostic devices.

Ah, but Windows Mobile can do this too, you say. That's true, but the success of BlackBerry and its much, much simpler OS versus Windows Mobile indicates that while people want powerful data capabilities on a BlackBerry-style device, they want something that works more like a phone -- meaning there's a big opportunity in the space for Series 60 devices.

It should also be pointed out that the E Series are compatible with Avaya and Cisco IP PBX systems by virtue of Wi-Fi connections. Of course, there's a BlackBerry that can connect to PBX systems and do email over Wi-Fi... but it doesn't have a cellular radio.

Creating A Mobile Music Ecosystem

I've still got some stuff from CTIA I haven't covered yet that will trickle out for a while. One such topic I've been meaning to write about was based on my meeting with some of Sony Ericsson's developer relations folks. One thing that struck me during the conversation was how they're trying to build an ecosystem for developers around mobile music, not just using it as a tool to sell phones. They've done something similar with 3D Java games -- making support for it standard across most of their line, then encouraging and supporting developers to use it.

To do the same thing with mobile music is a fairly novel approach and one that's unique as far as I can remember. Most manufacturers' support for mobile music thus far focuses on playing back sideloaded music, or more often, supporting a carrier's paid download service. But there's far more to mobile music than that, and getting developers on board to create some music-centric applications will give the mobile music market a boost overall, whether it's streaming radio, song recognition, or anything else.

Some other random bits and pieces from talking to Sony Ericsson:
- They're seeing non-gaming use of Java on the rise, particularly for productivity apps. It's trickle-down from smartphones, primarily as a lot of business users want smartphone-like capabilities in featurephones.
- On the company's Fun and Downloads site that has games and wallpapers and the like, they get far more visits to the WAP version than their web site, and the biggest increase in downloads in the first half of the year there was from China.

Sorry, But For iTunes Songs You're Stuck With The ROKR

A story's been making its way around the Web the last few weeks about a guy that's written some software to make some Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets "iTunes phones". Telecoms Korea says:

“Motorola ROKR is not the only iTunes phone.” , argued Tea Vui Huang, a software developer. He thinks that Samsung and LG handsets can be converted into iTunes phone.

Tea Vui Huang already revealed an add-on program that can make Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones use iTunes. “Not unlike the Motorola ROKR, this add-on enables phones to be a virtual iTunes Mobile.”, he said.

The thing is, the ROKR is the only iTunes phone, as it's the only phone capable of playing songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. This software merely allows users to copy songs to their phone from iTunes on their PC. I confirmed this in an email from the developer:

This is a useful application -- but to bill it as turning phones "into a virtual ROKR" or to say it gives other handsets the same functionality as one is a bit disingenuous.

Barcodes Need a Boost

I'm going to talk about one of Russell's favorite things -- barcodes as a way to link the virtual and physical worlds. We've seen several things like Semacode and Shotcodes -- I've really got no idea which (if either), or what, is technically best, but for the purposes of this discussion, it's not really important. What is important is jumpstarting the use of barcodes or QR codes (or something) in Europe and the US.

I saw a post over at RFID Blog about a baseball stadium in Japan that uses contactless IC in phones for tickets, but also has QR codes stuck to the back of every seat that links to the mobile baseball site of the stadium's owner -- Yahoo. The codes are there because of codereaders' ubiquity in Japanese handsets, because they know the vast majority of spectators will be able to use it.

While codereaders are available for a wide range of handsets, they're something that very much remain a niche, enthusiast application. Compare this to Japan, where essentially every phone now available can read QR codes. For codes to get any sort of momentum, they've got to get factory installed on more phones (a note to any readers from phone manufacturers -- I'm sure Simon from Semacode or his equivalent at ShotCode would love to talk to you about this, so give them a shout).

It seems such an obvious answer to the common and major usability complaints about the mobile Internet: "it's too hard to put in that address with those keys", "it's too many clicks", "the site doesn't work" and so on. Users don't have to enter an address, and are taken right to a specific site. While not every mobile Internet browsing session begins from some physical world activity (like looking at a printed ad or seeing something else that could be stamped with a QR code), getting QR codes going would give a boost to mobile data use -- get people attracted to and used to the simple things first, then turn them on to more involved undertakings. Sadly, it seems like we're taking the opposite approach all too often.

(Image from QR Code.com)

Still Waiting On The New Mobile RSS Paradigm

I posted several months ago on TheFeature some thoughts on how RSS could change the way information's distributed to mobile devices. There hasn't been a lot of action in the space, but I'm holding to my original idea. I should probably also reiterate at this point I'm not talking about using RSS on mobile phones just to read standard web feeds, as there are plenty of applications today that will let you do just that (check out the free reader Free News built for us featuring our 14 favorite mobile blogs for a start). I'm talking about using RSS to deliver all kinds of information and content to mobile devices.

Russell pointed out how Bloglines can deliver weather reports, which is a good basic example of how my idea could work: an application on a phone pings an RSS feed every so often, and downloads any updates to the device. That way, the most current information's sitting there on the device, and a user doesn't have to go surfing for it. Plenty of the things that are now delivered via SMS or basic WAP services -- sports scores, news, movie showtimes -- could be delivered in this way. Macromedia's Flashcast is built around a similar paradigm, based on Flash Lite.

In any case, I've been a little surprised not to see more happening in this area. If I thought of it, surely it couldn't be that hard (though perhaps it's just not a very good idea). But, I did see something this morning that might indicate things are starting to change: I was looking at Sony Ericsson's site about one of the forthcoming Walkman phones, the W550i, when I noticed under its entertainment features "RSS Feeds", saying "Use your phone to view up-to-the-minute news and other content from selected websites and blogs."

Ok, that sounds more like the RSS I wasn't talking about that the one that I was, but I still can't think of a phone that's got a pre-installed RSS reader, let alone a mass-market model. It opens up the possibility for carriers to embrace RSS for information delivery, but also for the same type of third parties that got into the SMS alerts game. The delivery mechanism seems pretty simple, now it's just a question of getting information available in feeds.

Cable Companies With The Right Idea For Mobile Video?

My skepticism of mobile TV is no secret. I'm pretty bullish on mobile video, though, when it's part of making personal media time-, place- and platform-independent. It's been disappointing to see carrier and device manufacturer's efforts thus far focus on broadcast-style content that's either live TV or "made for mobile" fluff. But noise coming out of the US cable industry's yearly confab says that -- in a real surprise -- it might be cable operators that have the best ideas about mobile video.

Cable companies have been going for some time about offering the "quadruple play: video, voice, data and mobile. The mobile aspect thus far has just been as MVNOs in a few occasions rather than anything interesting, but (buzzword-laden) quotes from some execs seem to indicate that they have a good basis of understanding of how mobile video comes into the picture, such as how users "want this phone to do everything that their TV does and everything that their PC does."

But it's one from a Verizon honcho that does it: ""It's really going to be on any device anywhere... we talk about time shifting. It's going to be place shifting."

That's what's going to make mobile video big: giving people mobile access to their personal media, in this case what they've got saved on their DVR, their movies or their favorite shows. It's not going to be live TV -- which will be used for news and sports events -- and it isn't going to be these stupid "mobisodes" that are just ads for real television shows. If I can watch TV on my mobile device on the way to work, I want to watch something I'm interested in, not whatever crappy breakfast talk shows I can get. Time- and place-shifting something my DVR grabbed last night, now that's something I'd pay for.

Of course, part of the problem is that technology like DVB-H is better for sending video to mobiles than as streams over the network. But that's not something end users will really care about. If there was a market demand for mobile live TV, people would buy those handheld sets that were the sign of cool people back in the mid-80s. Just because it's going to be on a mobile phone doesn't mean that people will automatically take to it any better. They'll still complain that the screen's too small and the reception's no good. But make the hook something a lot more enticing -- by making it better than live TV -- and people will eat it up.

Mobile Implications of Yahoo-Konfabulator

Yahoo has bought Konfabulator, which makes software that lets users run widgets -- generally single-task-focused mini-applications that do a wide variety of things like check the weather or stock quotes, control other applications like music players or check Web sites for updates. Whether for Konfabulator or Apple's Dashboard (which pretty much stole the Mac market out from underneath Konfabulator), developing widgets is based on common, open technologies and -- to these untrained eyes, anyway -- looks relatively easy. This makes it all very long tail, as there are widgets available for a number of esoteric things since anybody can make one.

The thing is, though, widgets, or something like them, are pretty perfect for mobile, too.

People use the net in a fundamentally different way on their mobile devices than when they're behind a computer. While browsing on the PC may typically be just that, browsing, use of the net on mobile devices is overwhelmingly task-based: I want to find the football score, or the movie time, the address of that shop, and so on. Yahoo's mobile services already reflect this, to some extent, its top menu organized around tasks like checking email, instant messaging, or getting directions. And so it's not so hard to see widgets jumping to mobile now, either.

One of the great things about widgets (in Dashboard for me) is that for common tasks, they're easily and essentially instantly available. I move my mouse to the bottom left corner, and my widgets pop up. Some simply push information to me: the weather, for instance, is always updated, so I can see the current information and forecast without having to go to a bookmarked Web page, and a package tracker keeps tabs on my latest Amazon purchase winging its way towards me. Others pull information from the Web, like the dictionary, Wikipedia or Google Maps widgets. Either way, they're all very task-specific, and tend to do that task pretty well.

That sounds pretty perfect to me for mobile devices. In addition to a standard browser, have widgets to handle common tasks, particularly pull ones: instead of loading up a browser, connecting, surfing to a page you might have bookmarked, then entering your query, you just pull up the relevant widget and run your search. But it would make pull better, too, just like RSS could, by letting users define information they want to always have updated and available on their devices.

This kind of stuff shouldn't replace a browser, but it should be offered in addition to it. Leave the browser and its open access intact for the times when it's right -- but make everyday task-based surfing simpler, faster and easier.

Never Mind The (Lack Of) Interest: Mobile TV Marches On

Announcements about mobile TV continue apace this week: Nokia announced another DVB-H trial, this one in Spain; Belgian operator Mobistar signed a deal with a broadcaster to start a pilot channel over its network later this year; and US wireless tower giant Crown Castle says it wants to use its holdings a nationwide DVB network akin to Qualcomm's MediaFLO plans.

So it looks like the industry is about to head into another mess -- just like 3G, just like WAP, just like MMS -- where technology outpaces thinking through service offerings or business models and results in a disappointingly slow uptake. Also this week, researchers Forrester released a report pointing out some of these pitfalls. The top takeaway being that it's found little consumer "enthusiasm or demand" for mobile TV, an unwillingness to pay for it and low desire to see mobile TV functionality in forthcoming devices. But that won't slow down companies pushing the technology to market -- never mind they don't have any real services beyond live TV on their minds yet.

Forrester says, "The unique attributes of the mobile environment will render decades of consumer TV viewing data irrelevant. While operators and content owners think snippets of regular TV's broadcasted news, sports and weather are necessary, they are far from sufficient - and no one knows what will be." The company's too keen on short clips as the answer for my taste, but the point remains: there's got to be something more than live simulcasts.

It's the same thing here as with mobile music. One main thrust is platform irrelevance: the idea that users can access their content (video and TV in this case) on any platform or device. But the second thrust is new services: how can mobile connectivity come into play to create more useful and compelling services?

Like I said above, the mobile industry's track record at this sort of thing doesn't instill much confidence. WAP was like the Web, only in your pocket. MMS was like SMS, but with pictures. 3G was like 2G, only faster. You'd think that vendors and operators would have learned by now that consumers don't buy into technology when it comes to mobiles. There's two fundamentally different questions on the table here. New services are too often based around the "what can it do?" question -- which is concerned with the functionality of the technology. But what consumers want to know is "what can I do?" -- that's about services.

iTunes Phone Surfaces -- For Real, Supposedly

Lifted from my Mobile Music Blog:

Engadget says it's got real photos of the elusive iTunes phone from Motorola, otherwise known as the E790.

And I've got to say it looks pretty disappointing. It's not much of a looker, and the iTunes software's been crammed in the same old crappy Moto UI -- begging the question of why, exactly, it's taken so long to get this thing out. Add to that the use of TransFlash memory cards, let alone having the card sit under the battery, precluding hot swapping. Ask Nokia how using an unpopular memory card format and not allowing hot swapping played out... 2+ years ago.

Perhaps this is part of a nefarious plan by Steve Jobs and co. to undermine the mobile phone as music platform. After all, people will have the expectation that an "iPod phone", as it will come to be known, will be the best music-playing mobile phone. If it sucks, they'll assume all the others will suck, too, thereby heading off the supposed killing of the iPod by mobile phones for a little while yet.

I'm not sure this really represents much of an improvement on previous prototypes...

Podcasting and Mobile

The introduction of podcasting functionality in iTunes has given an immediate boost to its penetration: Apple says that in the two days since the release of iTunes 4.9, there have been more than a million subscriptions added from its iTunes Podcast Directory. While it's unclear at this point just how many new podcast users this has brought, no doubt it's had a significant impact already.

But looking over Apple's directory and the shows on offer, as well as audio content in general generates some interesting ideas. The top 20 podcasts on iTunes are dominated by big name, commercial content providers like Disney, ESPN, the BBC and ABC News. Many of these podcasts are just recorded or repurposed versions of radio broadcasts, almost the antithesis of the DIY ethic many indie podcasters espouse. Like blogs before, podcasts promise to put individuals on the same publishing plane as commercial content providers. (Of course, like blogs, just having the technology doesn't guarantee all the user-created content on offer is particularly compelling, but that's another topic altogether.)

But while the ability for anybody to create and publish audio content is, by no means, an unimportant development, the real value of podcasting is in taking the delivery of updated audio content out of the realm of techie and making it a mainstream concept -- and that's where it gets interesting for mobile. What we're presented with now is a world of available audio content from a number of individual and big-name providers, and the breadth of what's on offer will only get bigger. We've also got, in RSS with enclosures, the delivery mechanism.

I've written quite a bit before about the potential value of RSS for delivering content to mobiles, though it all disappeared along with TheFeature. My basic idea is that RSS makes a lot of sense in the mobile space to deliver information to devices. My first idea was movie listings: a user could set up a profile with their 5 favorite theaters, and then the showtimes for those would be updated via RSS every night at 3am, transparently to the user. That way, the current information is always available on the handset, without having to fire up the browser and connect to the network. Other information could be delivered the same way, using RSS to replace SMS sports score alerts and so on.

So what happens when audio content (or even video, down the road) is thrown into the mix? Instead of just having static content regularly updated to a device, now you've got multimedia. It also solves one significant hiccup for podcasting: to take content mobile, you've got to sync your MP3 player with your computer. Using mobiles over the network takes that out of the equation, making podcasting a little bit more exciting. We're an awful long way from that reality, of course, given the usual roadblocks in rolling this sort of thing out for mobile (pricing, operators, etc.).

There's already companies like audible.com that have expanded out from audiobooks to providing audio versions of newspapers and magazines, as well as recordings of radio programs. Audible has already said it will begin distributing some of its content using RSS, which is a massive step in usability up from expecting subscribers to go download something on their own each day. They've still got to sync to their computers, though -- having the content sent directly to a mobile phone, automatically, would seem to be much more preferable. That way, a user's always got the latest content in a device that's always with them, and the only action required to get it is to subscribe. It becomes real radio on demand -- the shows you want to hear, anytime, anywhere, since they're delivered right to your mobile handset.

Bringing podcasting into iTunes and thereby increasing its exposure will be a boon to podcasting -- and the availability of popular commercial content in addition to niche, user-created shows will also help ensure its viability. And once podcasting gets big, evolving from a buzzword to a very widely adopted concept, it seems a natural question users will ask is "sure, this is great -- but wouldn't it be better if I didn't have to sync to my computer?" And that's one mobile technology can answer.

The decline of SMS

What is your connection to SMS? Why do you love it so?

I’ve been doing a little research lately; I’ve been bugging people all around me with the question: “why do you love SMS?”. The top responses I’ve been getting are:

- It’s instant (you immediately get updated when an SMS arrives)
- It’s private
- It’s easy (although I think that is a relative statement)
- It always works

Looking at these responses, something hit me: “SMS is nothing more then an outrageously expensive, very short, limited capability email!”

The big advantage is that every mobile phone in the market can handle SMS. Yet it won’t be long until the majority of mobile phones will be able to handle emails and instant messaging aswell.

Looking at the enormous success of the blackberry and at my own serious mobile email addiction, I don’t see any reason why SMS should survive. My emails are just as “easy” to type, can be delivered just as quickly, are just as private, they always work, can be received on my phone (plus a million other devices) and they’re loads cheaper…

As Russell wrote a couple of days ago (I’ve taken over this log for the coming time. I hope he’ll still speak to me when he gets back) some experts claimed MMS was launched too early. Too early I ask you? It shouldn’t have been launched at all!

This is exactly what happens when “brilliant minds” want to make a lucky fluke like SMS “better”. They shouldn’t. It’s a lot easier to make a picture using my mobile and sending it through email then trying to MMS it! Most MMS capable phones have email functionality anyway, why not make the email function a little easier to use? It’s a very well known standard and has got loads of extra benefits. My grandma knows how to read an email on her PC. It would be a lot easier to explain email on mobile phones to her then it would be to explain a whole new standard.

So here’s my opinion: SMS is doomed to die and MMS should’ve never been launched. Go on tell me I’m an idiot! ;o)

We thank Dennis Hettema for contributing this article.

I Wanna iPhone

David Galbraith (via Om Malik) wants an iPhone from Apple for these very good reasons:

1. All cellphone OS's suck.

2. Most non PDA cellphone hardware design seems to have stayed the same, apart from the addition of a camera lens, for the last 2 years.

3. Unlike computers, for most people, cellphones are a luxury device where good hardware design is a premium.

4. Apple proved that people would pay for their software and hardware design value-add, in a luxury market, with the iPod.

5. Cellphones & MP3 players make sense and may converge, making a hedge against this a good move for the iPod.

6. The market for cellphone hardware is big but the incumbents are stumbling.

7. Even buying ringtones on cellphones is a $3 billion market (much bigger than the current music download market).

8. The form factor of the iPod mini is the same as a phone, and Apple pretty well invented the PDA (but just got the form factor wrong with the Newton).

9. Apple is particularly good at media apps. Wireless cellular iTunes, iCal and iPhoto would be very nice, thank you.

I couldn't agree more and I've still had no takers for my $100 bet that we'll see one within 14 months now.

And in case you missed it first time, the www.iphone.org points to...... the Apple website.

If Apple were to go into mobiles, it could be a real chance for them to triumph over their old rivals, Microsoft, who are going a good impression of bumbling about in the mobile space right now.

Here's some prototype designs I can exclusively reveal:

Actually, I found these here :-)

TV --> Mobile

The Feature has a nice round up of things happening on the TV to Mobile front. O2 in the UK and Korea and Japan will probably be first to market.

TU Media in Korea will offer 14 video and 24 audio channels for about $10 a month, and MBCO in Japan will deliver 7 video and 30 audio channels for between $9 and $30 per month. TU also had handsets from Samsung and LG that can receive the broadcasts and will be available before the end of the year, while MBCO says phones for its service will be ready sometime in 2005.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the effort seems to be in the technology, rather than thinking through how people might want to interact with TV on their phone. The theory is that because people watch TV at home, they'll want to watch the same thing on their mobile, just because they can.

It doesn't necessarily work like that, as we've found for instance, with video calls. Just coz it's available, doesn't mean people want it. So the winners in the space need to figure our how to get TV on the mobile (sure) but also what customers want in programming terms.

Portable, hand-held TV has been with us for ever, it seems. But it's a very small market indeed. So why will people suddenly start watching it on their mobiles?

Admittedly, there's a theory that indicates if it's there, it's in danger of being used. Digital photography has exploded now that you've got a camera in your mobile. You don't need to remember to take your camera, because your mobile's always with you.

But, I also think that TV formatting is going to have to change from say, the 1/2 hour soaps that dominate the channels. A programming format needs to be developed for the short attention-span "killing time" viewing that will certainly be a major use.

This assumes that people do want a TV on their mobile in the first place. And are prepared to pay for that type of programming.

Mobile = Social Computer

Moco News features a nice article in PC World reporting from DemoMobile.

Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts and now Digital Chocolate, whose main claim to game at the moment is impeccably impressive investors. Still, give them a chance, they're building a portfolio.

Hawkins is explaining why Digital Chocolate isn't so much a mobile gaming company as an inventor of new types of highly personal applications. From what I can tell, it still sounds like a mobile gaming company to me--not that there's anything wrong with that--but I like his description of the modern cell phone as a "social computer." A phone with decent Internet access, a usable UI, and the power to run real applications is a remarkably personal thing, but it's focused around reaching out to the rest of the world in the way that traditional computers aren't. (A disconnected PC is still a PC; a disconnected phone isn't anything at all.)

.....Hawkins says that the breakthrough phone applications won't be things like mobile TV broadcasting or miniature versions of big-computer games, but tools that are truly new and truly designed to take advantage of the platform that a Net-connected mobile computing device provides...in the same way that Google and EBay don't have any direct counterparts in the analog world. It doesn't sound like he's figured out exactly what those applications are (or if he is, he isn't spilling the beans yet).

Trip Hawkins is obviously smart in that EA practically invented the modern computer game. Can he do it again for mobiles?

Certainly I completely agree with his theory, but putting it into practice ain't so easy.