Rich Miner, Group Manager of mobile platforms at Google presented this morning. His presentation was titled, "Changing the mobile industry, one device at a time." The content of his presentation was largely focused on Android, and not the TMobile G1. Rich first set the stage of why an open platform, Android, was long overdue in the mobile market. Using a lot of his mobile related startup experience (prior to joining Google) to drive his argument, Rich argued that openness of mobile platforms is the primary catalyst for the tipping point of the mobile revolution. 5 years ago, it was nearly impossible for a startup developer to get their app onto a mobile phone. The operators were simply too monolithic and closeminded to streamline the process. Paraphrasing Rich with regard to mobile operators, it takes 100 people to agree on something, but only 1 to say no and slow the whole thing to a halt. Another anecdote he mentioned was related to a push to talk service he was trying to get off the ground. The service was being developed on the Windows Mobile platform. His team actually found a bug in the Windows Mobile code. Upon approaching Microsoft to fix the bug, Microsoft indicated it would take 18 months to complete. Wow that is a long time. They must not be using the agile development methodology.
After describing why closed platforms have stifled innovation in the mobile market (something I absolutely agree with), Rich continued on to give all the reasons why Android fixes these problems.
Couple other gems from the presentation:
"Google sees 50 times the searches on an iPhone than any other platform."
When the first versions of Google Maps Mobile (written in Java) were developed, and Google was trying to convince the operators to ship the app with the devices, Google experienced a lot of grief and resistance. The operators indicated that even if the users loved the app, they suspected there were unspoken motives for Google wanting to distribute the app. In some cases, operators disabled the underlying service for Google Maps Mobile, so even if the user was able to install it themselves, it was unusable.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Full featured browsers on mobile browers - end of .mobi?
An absolute them from Mobile Internet World is there will only continue to be a heavy market penetration of full featured browsers on mobile devices. Consumers know how powerful their desktop browsers are, and they want nothing less on their mobile device.
This presents the question, is it even worth pursuing development of .mobi sites now? How long will they continue to be around? I think the answer is yes, it is absolutely worthwhile to have a presence in the .mobi space. For the next couple years, the majority of mobile Internet users will be using these scaled down browsers. While users do want the full desktop experience from their mobile device, it won't be for a couple years until the desktop experience on mobile has a majority share in the market. Until then, people need a site that is usable on their Motorola RAZR.
When I refer to .mobi sites, I'm basically referring to websites that are designed specifically for the lightweight mobile browsers of today, like the one you'd find on a BlackBerry.
This presents the question, is it even worth pursuing development of .mobi sites now? How long will they continue to be around? I think the answer is yes, it is absolutely worthwhile to have a presence in the .mobi space. For the next couple years, the majority of mobile Internet users will be using these scaled down browsers. While users do want the full desktop experience from their mobile device, it won't be for a couple years until the desktop experience on mobile has a majority share in the market. Until then, people need a site that is usable on their Motorola RAZR.
When I refer to .mobi sites, I'm basically referring to websites that are designed specifically for the lightweight mobile browsers of today, like the one you'd find on a BlackBerry.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Mobile Internet World - Day 2 - Afternoon
Mobile Internet World day 2 is just about to wrap up. Regarding the second half of the day, I heard from a bunch of speakers. I'll only capture the highlights.
First, I heard from Erik de Kroon of Vodafone. Vodafone is another network operator prevalent outside the US. There were two important points that I took from Erik's presentation: The main differences between the PC and mobile device with regard to distributing mobile content are that the entry point is very important (users don't want to type long urls on their mobile device), the business models are different, and finally there is limited reach on the mobile platforms due to the large fragmentation in the market. The other important point from Erik's presentation, is the large amount of work that Vodafone is putting into developing a widget platform for their mobile devices. It didn't sound like this platform would be open to developers for third party apps, but merely an easy way for Vodafone to distribute apps.
Next, we heard from Tony Lewis, VP of Open Development at Verizon Wireless. Right off the bat, Tony's first slide was a "safe harbor" slide. I had never seen one of these, but he passed it off as something everyone in the audience had seen. There was a bunch of small font text on the slide, but I think the gist of it was, don't repeat what you're about to hear. I'll keep this part brief, and restricted to info that is already public. One cool thing Tony mentioned, is that Verizon has these mobile cell towers that they can drive to areas with poor coverage. Also, Verizon Wireless really does have people driving around testing service (can you hear me now?). Tony also described the Verizon Wireless Open Development program. I'll let you go to the site to read about it, but OMG YET ANOTHER OPERATOR COPYING APPLE'S IPHONE DEVELOPMENT SITE!!!! It's so funny how fast these companies mimic eachother. It's a site with documentation and a community for developers writing apps for Verizon devices. Ok, enough on Verizon.
Next up, Marcelo Vieira, General Manager of OMAP at Texas Instruments. The guys from the hardware companies (like Intel and TI) have the coolest toys. Similar to the Intel Atom processor, TI has release a processor for mobile devices. As an example of its power, he was demo'd a photo album app on a mobile device (using the processor) that was easily and very quickly flipping through 8 megapixel photos! It was definitely impressive. Here's an interesting stat Marcelo mentioned:
In 2004, 15% of the handsets shipped were smartphones
In 2012, 35% of handsets shipped will be smartphones
So what's a smartphone? This question has been posed to be many times, and I don't think I ever gave an answer as accurate or succinct as Marcelo's. A smartphone is a handset with a high-level operating system. This makes a lot of sense. Just think of the functionality offered on RAZRs, and then functionality on a phone with, say, Windows Mobile. There's a huge difference. It's not just the QUERTY keyboard, but the nature of the software. Smartphones weren't the only mobile device that Marcelo talked about. There's an exciting new class of devices coming onto the mobile market, mobile internet devices (MIDs). Characteristics of MIDs include: boots up in seconds (not minutes), can go a full day's charge with a full day's use, impressive service, and uncompromised browsing. These are like mini laptops, not quite a laptop, but certainly more functional than a smartphone (with regard to Internet browsing). Finally, the coolest device that Marcelo discussed (but no demo :() is called the DLP Pico. It's a tiny projector that may be integrated or included with smartphones! Google it to check out the product page.
Next, I heard an okay presentation on near field communication. The topic of the presentation was attractive, "Mobile Transactions." Instead of meaning software based transactions, like mobile banking, it was much more focused around near field communication as a technique to use your cell phone like a credit card. Interesting, but not really up my alley.
After the presentation on near field communication, I attended a presentation on securing SMS messaging. SMS messaging (or simply text messaging) is extremely unreliable and insecure. Additionally, unlike email, SMS messages that are sent and received cannot be monitored for compliance purposes. Even with these limitations, data indicates that there will be 2.3 trillion messages sent in 2008. Obviousily, these are at the consumer level, not enterprise. Regarding the enterprise, a company called CellTrust has come up with a solution to secure SMS. Besides needing to subscribe to their service, a thin client is required to be installed on the consumers phone! That seems like a huge barrier of entry to me. Maybe within the enterprise and its devices that are managed by the company, one could easily roll out the software to their phones. This seems to be way too much of an inconvenience for a company to expect their clients and consumers to install an app on their phone, merely to receieve secure messages. I certainly wouldn't. Messages just aren't that important to me.
Next I heard a panel discussion on WiFi in the enterprise. Couple of interesting points here. It was suggested that any new WiFi rollouts in the enterprise should, without a doubt, include hardware to support 802.11n. There was also some interesting discussion around fixed mobile convergence. I'm still a little unclear on what fixed mobile convergence is. At the highest level, it's basically a way to integrate your mobile device and your other communication devices, such as your desk phone, and work voice mail. Advancements in wifi and related software will eventually enable this. It was the common consensus on the panel that 4G/WiMax will not replace WiFi, but they will instead complement eachother. WiFi is so cheap these days that there's no reason every electronic chip should come with an integrated radio to allow for connectivity.
The last panel of the day discussed mobile enterprise applications. This was slightly a disappointment. The CIO of Providence (yes the town in Rhode Island) monopolized the time by telling the audience how he set up a complicated network for his police force. While interesting, not really the type of information I was looking for. There were a few worthwhile points that came out of the discussion. Drivers for enterprise mobile applications need to come from a balance of the business and IT, not solely from either. The panelist from Yankee Group confirmed some of my thoughts, that college grads entering the workforce will make choices of where to work based on the company's enterprise mobile direction. Meaning, companies without a strong mobile direction will lose the best job candidates.
There's the highlights from this afternoon. I've probably skimmed over some of the details, but I do have some notes that go a little further below the surface. I'm not trying to go that deep on this post.
First, I heard from Erik de Kroon of Vodafone. Vodafone is another network operator prevalent outside the US. There were two important points that I took from Erik's presentation: The main differences between the PC and mobile device with regard to distributing mobile content are that the entry point is very important (users don't want to type long urls on their mobile device), the business models are different, and finally there is limited reach on the mobile platforms due to the large fragmentation in the market. The other important point from Erik's presentation, is the large amount of work that Vodafone is putting into developing a widget platform for their mobile devices. It didn't sound like this platform would be open to developers for third party apps, but merely an easy way for Vodafone to distribute apps.
Next, we heard from Tony Lewis, VP of Open Development at Verizon Wireless. Right off the bat, Tony's first slide was a "safe harbor" slide. I had never seen one of these, but he passed it off as something everyone in the audience had seen. There was a bunch of small font text on the slide, but I think the gist of it was, don't repeat what you're about to hear. I'll keep this part brief, and restricted to info that is already public. One cool thing Tony mentioned, is that Verizon has these mobile cell towers that they can drive to areas with poor coverage. Also, Verizon Wireless really does have people driving around testing service (can you hear me now?). Tony also described the Verizon Wireless Open Development program. I'll let you go to the site to read about it, but OMG YET ANOTHER OPERATOR COPYING APPLE'S IPHONE DEVELOPMENT SITE!!!! It's so funny how fast these companies mimic eachother. It's a site with documentation and a community for developers writing apps for Verizon devices. Ok, enough on Verizon.
Next up, Marcelo Vieira, General Manager of OMAP at Texas Instruments. The guys from the hardware companies (like Intel and TI) have the coolest toys. Similar to the Intel Atom processor, TI has release a processor for mobile devices. As an example of its power, he was demo'd a photo album app on a mobile device (using the processor) that was easily and very quickly flipping through 8 megapixel photos! It was definitely impressive. Here's an interesting stat Marcelo mentioned:
In 2004, 15% of the handsets shipped were smartphones
In 2012, 35% of handsets shipped will be smartphones
So what's a smartphone? This question has been posed to be many times, and I don't think I ever gave an answer as accurate or succinct as Marcelo's. A smartphone is a handset with a high-level operating system. This makes a lot of sense. Just think of the functionality offered on RAZRs, and then functionality on a phone with, say, Windows Mobile. There's a huge difference. It's not just the QUERTY keyboard, but the nature of the software. Smartphones weren't the only mobile device that Marcelo talked about. There's an exciting new class of devices coming onto the mobile market, mobile internet devices (MIDs). Characteristics of MIDs include: boots up in seconds (not minutes), can go a full day's charge with a full day's use, impressive service, and uncompromised browsing. These are like mini laptops, not quite a laptop, but certainly more functional than a smartphone (with regard to Internet browsing). Finally, the coolest device that Marcelo discussed (but no demo :() is called the DLP Pico. It's a tiny projector that may be integrated or included with smartphones! Google it to check out the product page.
Next, I heard an okay presentation on near field communication. The topic of the presentation was attractive, "Mobile Transactions." Instead of meaning software based transactions, like mobile banking, it was much more focused around near field communication as a technique to use your cell phone like a credit card. Interesting, but not really up my alley.
After the presentation on near field communication, I attended a presentation on securing SMS messaging. SMS messaging (or simply text messaging) is extremely unreliable and insecure. Additionally, unlike email, SMS messages that are sent and received cannot be monitored for compliance purposes. Even with these limitations, data indicates that there will be 2.3 trillion messages sent in 2008. Obviousily, these are at the consumer level, not enterprise. Regarding the enterprise, a company called CellTrust has come up with a solution to secure SMS. Besides needing to subscribe to their service, a thin client is required to be installed on the consumers phone! That seems like a huge barrier of entry to me. Maybe within the enterprise and its devices that are managed by the company, one could easily roll out the software to their phones. This seems to be way too much of an inconvenience for a company to expect their clients and consumers to install an app on their phone, merely to receieve secure messages. I certainly wouldn't. Messages just aren't that important to me.
Next I heard a panel discussion on WiFi in the enterprise. Couple of interesting points here. It was suggested that any new WiFi rollouts in the enterprise should, without a doubt, include hardware to support 802.11n. There was also some interesting discussion around fixed mobile convergence. I'm still a little unclear on what fixed mobile convergence is. At the highest level, it's basically a way to integrate your mobile device and your other communication devices, such as your desk phone, and work voice mail. Advancements in wifi and related software will eventually enable this. It was the common consensus on the panel that 4G/WiMax will not replace WiFi, but they will instead complement eachother. WiFi is so cheap these days that there's no reason every electronic chip should come with an integrated radio to allow for connectivity.
The last panel of the day discussed mobile enterprise applications. This was slightly a disappointment. The CIO of Providence (yes the town in Rhode Island) monopolized the time by telling the audience how he set up a complicated network for his police force. While interesting, not really the type of information I was looking for. There were a few worthwhile points that came out of the discussion. Drivers for enterprise mobile applications need to come from a balance of the business and IT, not solely from either. The panelist from Yankee Group confirmed some of my thoughts, that college grads entering the workforce will make choices of where to work based on the company's enterprise mobile direction. Meaning, companies without a strong mobile direction will lose the best job candidates.
There's the highlights from this afternoon. I've probably skimmed over some of the details, but I do have some notes that go a little further below the surface. I'm not trying to go that deep on this post.
Mobile Internet World - Day 2 - Morning
The morning presentations just concluded. We heard from three people:
Emily Green, the CEO of Yankee Group
Russ McGuire, Vice President of Strategy at Sprint
Anand Chandrasekher, Senior Vice President of the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel
Emily's presentation was interesting, themed around what the Yankee Group calls Unleashing the Anywhere Network. The Anywhere Network is really a concept defined as a common platform, bandwidth, intelligence, seemlessness, and ubiquity. There are a few issues with mobility today that are holding us back from realizing this innovation, including: network limitations, device limitations, pricing problems, spectrum, and mobile operators. Even with these issues preventing huge jumps in mobile innovation, flat rate data plans have unleashed huge appetites for more mobile services! In contrast, despite these large increases in mobile demand, mobile revenues are in long term decline. Weird. Continuing on a theme started yesterday, Emily says that the mobile browser is the field to nourish to easily address the fragmented market. Mobile popularity is having a huge impact on the enterprise. Workers want connectivity. In fact, workers say that their personal technology experience is better than what they have at work. Additionally, 20% of employees say they would be more productive at work if their technology experience matched that of which they have at home!
Next up, Russ McGuire, Vice President of Strategy at Sprint. His presentation was a lot of marketing of why Sprint is so great. I'm not sure they're as good as he presented, but they do have two great innovations: dominating the click to talk market, and also the first wide spread wimax solutions in Baltimore (and Boston soon to come). It's funny to hear execs from non AT&T operators talk about the iPhone. I definitely feel a sense of jealousy that they missed the boat. He briefly talked about how successful the iPhone has been, and then mention some aspects of how Sprint has innovated to excel their products beyond the iPhone. Russ did mention an interesting point about a customer fear. Customers have a concern around unintentionally subscribing to a pay service when using advanced funcitonality on their mobile device. They are worried that clicking a link will accidently subscribe them to a service for which they'll be committed to paying for something, even though they were just "trying something out." I find this definitely to be true, especially when I had my Verizon Wireless RAZR. Maybe part of this was the poor interface. It was not clear at all when I'd be charged for clicking a VCast link, or testing out a game.
Finally, Anand Chandrasekher, Senior Vice President of the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel made a presentation. He called 2008, the year of mobility. According to Forrester Research, 1 out of 2 mobile internet users prefer full internet pages on their mobile device, not a mobile version. Consumers are aware of the experience they can get on their computer, and aren't happy that their handheld doesn't provide that. Anand introduced Intel's Atom processor, released earlier this year. It will continue to allow for next generation mobile devices. Atom powered devices will have computing power comparable to laptops circa 2004. He had some devices on hand, they were somewhere between smartphones and laptops. I think he called them, mobile internet devices (which he later clarified, not expected to cannibalize laptops or smartphones). He showed two Intel vision videos which I embedded from YouTube in earlier posts. Closing his presentation, he brought up a picture of the Carpentier vs Dempsey boxing match in 1921. Anand posed the question to the audience, "Does anyone know why this event was revolutionary?" Answer: it was the first sporting event to be broadcasted over live radio. This was really when radio transitioned from a medium for news and information, to a medium for entertainment. The following year, sales of radios doubled, and the year following that, they doubled again. Anand compared this with what he expects will happen with mobile behavior and usage.
Emily Green, the CEO of Yankee Group
Russ McGuire, Vice President of Strategy at Sprint
Anand Chandrasekher, Senior Vice President of the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel
Emily's presentation was interesting, themed around what the Yankee Group calls Unleashing the Anywhere Network. The Anywhere Network is really a concept defined as a common platform, bandwidth, intelligence, seemlessness, and ubiquity. There are a few issues with mobility today that are holding us back from realizing this innovation, including: network limitations, device limitations, pricing problems, spectrum, and mobile operators. Even with these issues preventing huge jumps in mobile innovation, flat rate data plans have unleashed huge appetites for more mobile services! In contrast, despite these large increases in mobile demand, mobile revenues are in long term decline. Weird. Continuing on a theme started yesterday, Emily says that the mobile browser is the field to nourish to easily address the fragmented market. Mobile popularity is having a huge impact on the enterprise. Workers want connectivity. In fact, workers say that their personal technology experience is better than what they have at work. Additionally, 20% of employees say they would be more productive at work if their technology experience matched that of which they have at home!
Next up, Russ McGuire, Vice President of Strategy at Sprint. His presentation was a lot of marketing of why Sprint is so great. I'm not sure they're as good as he presented, but they do have two great innovations: dominating the click to talk market, and also the first wide spread wimax solutions in Baltimore (and Boston soon to come). It's funny to hear execs from non AT&T operators talk about the iPhone. I definitely feel a sense of jealousy that they missed the boat. He briefly talked about how successful the iPhone has been, and then mention some aspects of how Sprint has innovated to excel their products beyond the iPhone. Russ did mention an interesting point about a customer fear. Customers have a concern around unintentionally subscribing to a pay service when using advanced funcitonality on their mobile device. They are worried that clicking a link will accidently subscribe them to a service for which they'll be committed to paying for something, even though they were just "trying something out." I find this definitely to be true, especially when I had my Verizon Wireless RAZR. Maybe part of this was the poor interface. It was not clear at all when I'd be charged for clicking a VCast link, or testing out a game.
Finally, Anand Chandrasekher, Senior Vice President of the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel made a presentation. He called 2008, the year of mobility. According to Forrester Research, 1 out of 2 mobile internet users prefer full internet pages on their mobile device, not a mobile version. Consumers are aware of the experience they can get on their computer, and aren't happy that their handheld doesn't provide that. Anand introduced Intel's Atom processor, released earlier this year. It will continue to allow for next generation mobile devices. Atom powered devices will have computing power comparable to laptops circa 2004. He had some devices on hand, they were somewhere between smartphones and laptops. I think he called them, mobile internet devices (which he later clarified, not expected to cannibalize laptops or smartphones). He showed two Intel vision videos which I embedded from YouTube in earlier posts. Closing his presentation, he brought up a picture of the Carpentier vs Dempsey boxing match in 1921. Anand posed the question to the audience, "Does anyone know why this event was revolutionary?" Answer: it was the first sporting event to be broadcasted over live radio. This was really when radio transitioned from a medium for news and information, to a medium for entertainment. The following year, sales of radios doubled, and the year following that, they doubled again. Anand compared this with what he expects will happen with mobile behavior and usage.
Another Intel Vision video showing off the potential power of the Atom processor
WOW, this is SO Enterprise 2.0!
Intel's Ultra Mobile Concept Video
Anand Chandrasekher of Intel just showed this vision video of their Ultra Mobile technology:
The Weather Channel's Mobile Site
Good morning, day 2 of Mobile Internet World is about to start. Have you seen The Weather Channel's mobile site? The Weather Channel owns www.weather.com and thus their mobile site is http://weather.mobi
I heard from one of their employees yesterday that they're mobile website actually gets more hits than their desktop website! The kicker was that many of these hits are actually coming from desktop browsers! They suspect that people are prefer the mobile site because there is so little fluff there. The users only want the weather forecast, and that's what the mobile site provides.
I heard from one of their employees yesterday that they're mobile website actually gets more hits than their desktop website! The kicker was that many of these hits are actually coming from desktop browsers! They suspect that people are prefer the mobile site because there is so little fluff there. The users only want the weather forecast, and that's what the mobile site provides.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Mobile Internet World - Day 1 - Afternoon
The afternoon at the Mobile Internet World was okay, not great. First I attended a panel discussion on the evolution of mobile devices. There were three panelists, an IBM employee, a Nuance employee, and a Qualcom employee, all of whom were very smart and well spoken. There were three insightful ideas mentioned in this presentation.
First, the idea that people want mobility in all devices, but don't really care about the underlying operators or networks. The simply want to be able to get pictures from their camera to their Facebook page, or get their most recently purchased book from Amazon onto their Kindle, or their most recently purchased iTunes song onto their iPhone. It seems that some devices do this better than others. The popularity of the devices that do it well should help competitors adopt the innovation.
Second, the advent of 4G networks will really push the idea of delivering services to users, independent of the device. Enterprises will cease to standardize certain desktop computers. Instead, it will entirely be up to the employees. Developers will get whatever high powered machine they want, and executives will get a highly mobile laptop. Regardless of the device, the same services will be delivered to each.
Finally, with regard to open versus closed mobile platforms, people (and open source software advocates) can argue all they want about how good open platforms are (such as Android or Symbian), but the fact is, the two most successful mobile platforms are produced by RIM and Apple, and subseqently the most closed and most expensive systems. Even though they are closed and costly, the users' love for these devices is still immensely high. (heck, I just switched off Verizon merely so I could own an iPhone :)
Next session was another panel entitled, "Device and Operating System Wars." On the panel was an employee of Limo, the Linux mobile foundation, and the director of marketing for deviceanywhere, a service that helps you test your mobile apps on many devices (more on this later). Probably the single biggest theme out of this discussion, was that operators (like TMobile and Verizon) are very hesitant to provide a device based on an open platform merely for fear that the user's experience will be negatively impacted. In my opinion, this is a very real fear. I think Android's success will help strengthen, or weaken, the fears of the operators.
In the last session of the day, I heard from Kate Walsh, an employee at the Yankee Group in charge of advertising for the Mobile Internet World conference. She described how the Yankee group leveraged an improved mobile website, as well as social networking platforms, to significantly increase the number of conference attendees from 2007 to 2008. Personally, I joined the Facebook group for the conference about a month ago. It was cool to see the other people going, but beyond that, I didn't really take advantage of it. She also placed presences on LinkedIn, Twitter, RSS enabled the website, and provided registration discounts to people who registered on the mobile version of the conference's website (darn, if I only knew). To me, these are obvious ways for cheap publicity, and nothing revolutionary. I'm glad the Yankee Group is eating their own dog food. It's no secret that these platforms are heavily used. Maybe it's just that enterprises are starting to understand that (and use them).
More to come tomorrow...
First, the idea that people want mobility in all devices, but don't really care about the underlying operators or networks. The simply want to be able to get pictures from their camera to their Facebook page, or get their most recently purchased book from Amazon onto their Kindle, or their most recently purchased iTunes song onto their iPhone. It seems that some devices do this better than others. The popularity of the devices that do it well should help competitors adopt the innovation.
Second, the advent of 4G networks will really push the idea of delivering services to users, independent of the device. Enterprises will cease to standardize certain desktop computers. Instead, it will entirely be up to the employees. Developers will get whatever high powered machine they want, and executives will get a highly mobile laptop. Regardless of the device, the same services will be delivered to each.
Finally, with regard to open versus closed mobile platforms, people (and open source software advocates) can argue all they want about how good open platforms are (such as Android or Symbian), but the fact is, the two most successful mobile platforms are produced by RIM and Apple, and subseqently the most closed and most expensive systems. Even though they are closed and costly, the users' love for these devices is still immensely high. (heck, I just switched off Verizon merely so I could own an iPhone :)
Next session was another panel entitled, "Device and Operating System Wars." On the panel was an employee of Limo, the Linux mobile foundation, and the director of marketing for deviceanywhere, a service that helps you test your mobile apps on many devices (more on this later). Probably the single biggest theme out of this discussion, was that operators (like TMobile and Verizon) are very hesitant to provide a device based on an open platform merely for fear that the user's experience will be negatively impacted. In my opinion, this is a very real fear. I think Android's success will help strengthen, or weaken, the fears of the operators.
In the last session of the day, I heard from Kate Walsh, an employee at the Yankee Group in charge of advertising for the Mobile Internet World conference. She described how the Yankee group leveraged an improved mobile website, as well as social networking platforms, to significantly increase the number of conference attendees from 2007 to 2008. Personally, I joined the Facebook group for the conference about a month ago. It was cool to see the other people going, but beyond that, I didn't really take advantage of it. She also placed presences on LinkedIn, Twitter, RSS enabled the website, and provided registration discounts to people who registered on the mobile version of the conference's website (darn, if I only knew). To me, these are obvious ways for cheap publicity, and nothing revolutionary. I'm glad the Yankee Group is eating their own dog food. It's no secret that these platforms are heavily used. Maybe it's just that enterprises are starting to understand that (and use them).
More to come tomorrow...
Mobile Internet World - Day 1 - Keynotes
There were two keynotes on day 1 of Mobile Internet World. First, Michael Bayle, Senior Director of Global Money Monetization at Yahoo spoke, and he was followed by Ian McKerlich, director of mobile web and content services at TMobile.
Michael's presentation was strongly focused on how to best advertise on mobile devices. It was certainly interesting, but I'm not really in the business of advertising. I did find that many of the topics he was talking about applied to general brand awareness on mobile devices, not just advertising. He first poses the rhetorical question, why aren't more brands on the go? Answers he posed are that the mobile landscape is too fragmented, the media is too small, and no clear definition of how start. On the otherhand, it's the perfect place to push your brand since it's hyper-personal. He cited that if you lose your wallet, it takes about 26 hours to completely report all stolen items. On the otherhand, lost cell phones are reported in an average of 68 minutes.
At this point, Michael made some joke about Sarah Palin's hacked Yahoo email. I think it was funnier that the Yahoo employee was joking about this, rather than the joke itself.
Other stats on the hyper-personal nature of cell phones are:
60% of married mobile owners won't share the device with their spouses
68% of teens won't allow their parents to see their phone contents
And finally 6 out of 10 people sleep with their cell phone (maybe because they use it as an alarm)
Next, Michael covers various examples of mobile advertising, and how they take advantage of this hyper-personal nature of the devices. Nothing too extraordinary. While he was wrapping up his presentation, he mentioned a unique anecdote: the hottest venture capital topic is that of mobile analytics.
After Michael concluded, Ian McKerlich, director of mobile web and content services at TMobile was introduced. This was probably one of the most interesting presentations of the day. Besides the hot news related to Google Android lately, he described some other innovations from TMobile. The first thing that jumped out at me, was that he mentioned that TMobile executives are required to serve a specified amount of time in the actual store fronts assisting customers (just like the people who help you when you walk into a TMobile store). I found this very innovative on behalf of TMobile. I think this would definitely help keep the executives grounded and focused that the ultimate goal of the company is providing the best experience to customers, on all fronts.
While overviewing TMobile's recent work, he mentioned two unique contrasts between mobile devices and laptops:
Mobile devices have the permission to interupt you in a meeting, laptops don't.
Mobile devices have the permission to know where you are, laptops don't.
Humorously stated, but pretty profound in my opinion.
Next, Ian introduced the TMobile devPartner community. To me, this looked IDENTICAL to Apple's iPhone developer community. Well, not "looked" from a visual sense, but provided with the same intentions. It's a place for developers to gather, find documentation, and provide apps they write for TMobile to distribute to consumers, JUST LIKE THE IPHONE APP STORE! I should clarify, these aren't just Android apps, these are apps that would work on all TMobile devices. There's a profit sharing structure also similar to iPhone App Store.
During the Q and A, I posed the question to him, is the TMobile devPartner community a rip off (phrased a little more politely) of Apple's App Store? And what lessons learned has TMobile observed from the launch of the iPhone?
While he was responding, I could detect the slightest annoyance about being asked about the iPhone, almost as if he was thinking, "do I really have to talk about the iPhone again???" He indicated that TMobile has been working on this community for about a year and a half, that they were disappointed that Apple beat them to the market with the App Store, but also encouraged since the App Store's success has validated their approach. During his response, he also said, "Grandma doesn't know what an application is." almost degrading Apple's terminology while describing why TMobile's approach will be better for consumers at large. One nice feature that he explained will be part of the TMobile's version of the AppStore would be that when searching for "NY Times." Users will not only get a search result for the TMobile native app, but also a search result that would direct them to the smartphone designed website for NY Times. I would find this very useful on my iPhone. I'd really like a way to be able to find websites that are designed for the iPhone, maybe Apple should consider integrating this with their App Store???
That's it for the keynotes.
Michael's presentation was strongly focused on how to best advertise on mobile devices. It was certainly interesting, but I'm not really in the business of advertising. I did find that many of the topics he was talking about applied to general brand awareness on mobile devices, not just advertising. He first poses the rhetorical question, why aren't more brands on the go? Answers he posed are that the mobile landscape is too fragmented, the media is too small, and no clear definition of how start. On the otherhand, it's the perfect place to push your brand since it's hyper-personal. He cited that if you lose your wallet, it takes about 26 hours to completely report all stolen items. On the otherhand, lost cell phones are reported in an average of 68 minutes.
At this point, Michael made some joke about Sarah Palin's hacked Yahoo email. I think it was funnier that the Yahoo employee was joking about this, rather than the joke itself.
Other stats on the hyper-personal nature of cell phones are:
60% of married mobile owners won't share the device with their spouses
68% of teens won't allow their parents to see their phone contents
And finally 6 out of 10 people sleep with their cell phone (maybe because they use it as an alarm)
Next, Michael covers various examples of mobile advertising, and how they take advantage of this hyper-personal nature of the devices. Nothing too extraordinary. While he was wrapping up his presentation, he mentioned a unique anecdote: the hottest venture capital topic is that of mobile analytics.
After Michael concluded, Ian McKerlich, director of mobile web and content services at TMobile was introduced. This was probably one of the most interesting presentations of the day. Besides the hot news related to Google Android lately, he described some other innovations from TMobile. The first thing that jumped out at me, was that he mentioned that TMobile executives are required to serve a specified amount of time in the actual store fronts assisting customers (just like the people who help you when you walk into a TMobile store). I found this very innovative on behalf of TMobile. I think this would definitely help keep the executives grounded and focused that the ultimate goal of the company is providing the best experience to customers, on all fronts.
While overviewing TMobile's recent work, he mentioned two unique contrasts between mobile devices and laptops:
Mobile devices have the permission to interupt you in a meeting, laptops don't.
Mobile devices have the permission to know where you are, laptops don't.
Humorously stated, but pretty profound in my opinion.
Next, Ian introduced the TMobile devPartner community. To me, this looked IDENTICAL to Apple's iPhone developer community. Well, not "looked" from a visual sense, but provided with the same intentions. It's a place for developers to gather, find documentation, and provide apps they write for TMobile to distribute to consumers, JUST LIKE THE IPHONE APP STORE! I should clarify, these aren't just Android apps, these are apps that would work on all TMobile devices. There's a profit sharing structure also similar to iPhone App Store.
During the Q and A, I posed the question to him, is the TMobile devPartner community a rip off (phrased a little more politely) of Apple's App Store? And what lessons learned has TMobile observed from the launch of the iPhone?
While he was responding, I could detect the slightest annoyance about being asked about the iPhone, almost as if he was thinking, "do I really have to talk about the iPhone again???" He indicated that TMobile has been working on this community for about a year and a half, that they were disappointed that Apple beat them to the market with the App Store, but also encouraged since the App Store's success has validated their approach. During his response, he also said, "Grandma doesn't know what an application is." almost degrading Apple's terminology while describing why TMobile's approach will be better for consumers at large. One nice feature that he explained will be part of the TMobile's version of the AppStore would be that when searching for "NY Times." Users will not only get a search result for the TMobile native app, but also a search result that would direct them to the smartphone designed website for NY Times. I would find this very useful on my iPhone. I'd really like a way to be able to find websites that are designed for the iPhone, maybe Apple should consider integrating this with their App Store???
That's it for the keynotes.
Mobile Internet World - Day 1 - Morning
I'm trying a new format for posts from conferences. Instead of writing for each session, I'm going to simply merge the writeups from one half of the day. For example, this post will cover information from the morning of Mobile Internet World day 1.
First, the conference is heavily sponsored by The Yankee Group. The name was always familiar to me, but I was never clear that they are a research firm, very similar to Gartner or Forrester. For the morning, I choose the Mobile Development track. I heard three presentations. First, Carl Howe of the Yankee Group, spoke about mobile technologies in general. Near the beginning of his presentation he mentioned that "people in living in huts in Africa are mobile addicts." What a coincidence, one of my colleagues loves to cite this example as well! Another very important point he made that I remember reading in a book on mobility (can't remember the title at the moment), is when planning your mobile strategy, remember to mobilize, not miniaturize your site. This is very important. There are plenty of bad examples where companies try to simply mimic all functionality on their PC web version of their site, on their mobile version of their site. Carl makes a weak argument against native applications for mobile devices in favor of the mobile web. While I agree with his point that there are far too many devices to try and write a native app for each, I think there are certainly applications in which native applications make sense. I recently purchased an iPhone. For whatever reason, I find myself using Facebook's native app 100% of the time, instead of accessing their iPhone website. I think it feels a little quicker, or for some reason, more convenient? After trying to convince the audience why the mobile web is the optimal platform for apps, he identifies the problem of finding a company's mobile website. Is the address xxx.mobi? Is it mobile.xxx.com? etc. There's also the problem of browser standards. His research indicates that Opera and WebKit will continue to gain market share.
Next, Carl discussed some work the Yankee Group did to score mobile websites against criteria his form defined. 32 mobile websites were picked in three categories, financial services, shopping, and airlines. He didn't really go into the actual criteria used for evaluation, this is actually contained in the formal Yankee Group written research (which I've requested). The most interesting point in this part of his discussion was that, out of the 32 sites they reviewed, not a single site scored higher than a 68 out of 100 points. Highest ranking mobile web sites included Bank of America's, Southwest, Fidelity, and Edmunds. Highlights include:
Southwest - incredibly minimalistic. No graphics or colors, just text. Users can do the few tasks that one would expect on an airline website from a mobile device (check in, get flight status).
Fidelity - Any brokerage activity that one can perform on Fidelity.com, one can perform on fi-w.com. Also of note, the separate domain for Fidelity's mobile site, less letters mean it's easier and quicker to type.
Carl also mentioned WURFL. WURFL is an online open source free xml database containing a list and description of nearly every mobile device on the market. A very valuable research tool.
Carl now gave the floor to Francesco Rovetta, director of ebay mobile commerce. Ebay has one of the most successful mobile websites. The goal of developing mobile ebay was to make using the site as easy as making a phone call. I'd say they achieved that goal. Their native app for the iPhone is also very successful, in fact it's top rated in the Lifestyle App Store category. How have they measured the success of their mobile website? Well, Francesco indicated that users who bid on an item from their mobile device are twice as likely to win the auction. He stressed that when designing for a mobile site, never lose site of user experience. Provide the fewest screens and clicks possible, reduce complexities and distractions for the user, and be sure to consider hardware and speed constraints.
Primary lesson learned from ebay's mobile forays:
Provide a consistent experience across different Internet touch points (whether desktop, mobile, or native apps)
Ebay has separate development teams for their desktop and mobile websites. Additionally, the use cases provided on the mobile site are a very small subset of that on the desktop version of the site. For instance, new users cannot register on ebay's mobile site.
Hardest problem for ebay (and probably many other companies): Determining the best desktop features to mobilize.
Unfortunately Francesco didn't suggest any techniques for answering this question.
Next, Michael Neidhofer, the CEO of Netbiscuits presented on ........... Netbiscuits! I'm going to keep this brief because I really hate when presenters use a conference as a channel for a product pitch. In fact, I see it as very similar to how presidential candidates use national debates to simply rant about their platforms on national TV rather than actually answer the posed questions. Enough of that, Netbiscuits is a platform for mobile development. It seems ok. I haven't developed on it, nor have I really used many websites that are built on it, so I won't pass too much judgement. Probably the most insightful thing Michael said was, when designing for mobile, focus explicitly on the use case you're addressing (meaning, pick the use cases! Don't just design a mobile version of your website!).
Overall, an impressive morning. I'm looking forward to the rest of the conference. Next, I'll discuss the two keynotes of the day.
First, the conference is heavily sponsored by The Yankee Group. The name was always familiar to me, but I was never clear that they are a research firm, very similar to Gartner or Forrester. For the morning, I choose the Mobile Development track. I heard three presentations. First, Carl Howe of the Yankee Group, spoke about mobile technologies in general. Near the beginning of his presentation he mentioned that "people in living in huts in Africa are mobile addicts." What a coincidence, one of my colleagues loves to cite this example as well! Another very important point he made that I remember reading in a book on mobility (can't remember the title at the moment), is when planning your mobile strategy, remember to mobilize, not miniaturize your site. This is very important. There are plenty of bad examples where companies try to simply mimic all functionality on their PC web version of their site, on their mobile version of their site. Carl makes a weak argument against native applications for mobile devices in favor of the mobile web. While I agree with his point that there are far too many devices to try and write a native app for each, I think there are certainly applications in which native applications make sense. I recently purchased an iPhone. For whatever reason, I find myself using Facebook's native app 100% of the time, instead of accessing their iPhone website. I think it feels a little quicker, or for some reason, more convenient? After trying to convince the audience why the mobile web is the optimal platform for apps, he identifies the problem of finding a company's mobile website. Is the address xxx.mobi? Is it mobile.xxx.com? etc. There's also the problem of browser standards. His research indicates that Opera and WebKit will continue to gain market share.
Next, Carl discussed some work the Yankee Group did to score mobile websites against criteria his form defined. 32 mobile websites were picked in three categories, financial services, shopping, and airlines. He didn't really go into the actual criteria used for evaluation, this is actually contained in the formal Yankee Group written research (which I've requested). The most interesting point in this part of his discussion was that, out of the 32 sites they reviewed, not a single site scored higher than a 68 out of 100 points. Highest ranking mobile web sites included Bank of America's, Southwest, Fidelity, and Edmunds. Highlights include:
Southwest - incredibly minimalistic. No graphics or colors, just text. Users can do the few tasks that one would expect on an airline website from a mobile device (check in, get flight status).
Fidelity - Any brokerage activity that one can perform on Fidelity.com, one can perform on fi-w.com. Also of note, the separate domain for Fidelity's mobile site, less letters mean it's easier and quicker to type.
Carl also mentioned WURFL. WURFL is an online open source free xml database containing a list and description of nearly every mobile device on the market. A very valuable research tool.
Carl now gave the floor to Francesco Rovetta, director of ebay mobile commerce. Ebay has one of the most successful mobile websites. The goal of developing mobile ebay was to make using the site as easy as making a phone call. I'd say they achieved that goal. Their native app for the iPhone is also very successful, in fact it's top rated in the Lifestyle App Store category. How have they measured the success of their mobile website? Well, Francesco indicated that users who bid on an item from their mobile device are twice as likely to win the auction. He stressed that when designing for a mobile site, never lose site of user experience. Provide the fewest screens and clicks possible, reduce complexities and distractions for the user, and be sure to consider hardware and speed constraints.
Primary lesson learned from ebay's mobile forays:
Provide a consistent experience across different Internet touch points (whether desktop, mobile, or native apps)
Ebay has separate development teams for their desktop and mobile websites. Additionally, the use cases provided on the mobile site are a very small subset of that on the desktop version of the site. For instance, new users cannot register on ebay's mobile site.
Hardest problem for ebay (and probably many other companies): Determining the best desktop features to mobilize.
Unfortunately Francesco didn't suggest any techniques for answering this question.
Next, Michael Neidhofer, the CEO of Netbiscuits presented on ........... Netbiscuits! I'm going to keep this brief because I really hate when presenters use a conference as a channel for a product pitch. In fact, I see it as very similar to how presidential candidates use national debates to simply rant about their platforms on national TV rather than actually answer the posed questions. Enough of that, Netbiscuits is a platform for mobile development. It seems ok. I haven't developed on it, nor have I really used many websites that are built on it, so I won't pass too much judgement. Probably the most insightful thing Michael said was, when designing for mobile, focus explicitly on the use case you're addressing (meaning, pick the use cases! Don't just design a mobile version of your website!).
Overall, an impressive morning. I'm looking forward to the rest of the conference. Next, I'll discuss the two keynotes of the day.
Most comfortable conference
The Mobile Internet World conference has done a great job with their seating in the sessions. The seats are not packed in, chairs are at tables, there is very fast wifi (probably provided by the Boston Convention Center, but reliable and fast none the less), and power strips for plugging in laptops. Way too many conferences lack these simple amenities.
Attending Mobile Internet World in Boston
I'm attending the Mobile Internet World conference in Boston, MA for the next three days. I'll blog extensively about the conference after each day. I find it's too time consuming to try and blog midsession during the conference.
Here's the conference's web page
http://www.mobilenetx.com/
Here's the conference's web page
http://www.mobilenetx.com/
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