Thoughts @

carnival of the mobilists XVI (sweet sixteen)

Spending time in Barcelona post 3GSM feels comparable to being in New Orleans after an annual Mardi Gras party (which, BTW they went ahead with this year as their first sign of normality post Katrina last week). Kind of the quiet calm after a storm. The perfect moment to announce this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists XVI, and I have to admit I’m honored to host such an array of interesting mobile insights and reports.

gotomobile carnival of the mobilists

For easy scanning:

Carlo from Mobhappy on smartphones and services
Justin from Mopocket on MobiTV and clickable ads
Rudy from M-trends on wrapping up 3GSM
Troy on traditional approaches to mobile marketing
Fabien from 7.5 floor on planned disconnect and connections
Nicolas from Pasta and Vinegar on Location Matters
Martin from Mobile Society on different flavors of Mobile VOIP
Dan from Mobile Enterprise on Skype’s value proposition
Dennis from Wap Review on real-time mobile transit tools
Ajit from Open Gardens on information technology and transformation culture
Emily from Textually.org on the authenticity of picturephone blogging
Jim from Smartmobs on free wireless networks in helsinki

Despite few blockbuster announcements, most felt 3GSM was a success. A friend from Apple stated “3GSM was awesome – I was commiserating with a Motorola exec about why bother with CTIA since everything happens at this show in the EU.” Smartphones and applications dominated much of the demos and discussions at the event. We start with what I felt was a very strong statement about consumer perception and revenue reality. Carlo makes another clear and powerful statement about the influx of mass market smartphones and shifting the perception from “apps” to “services” to coax ongoing revenue.

The switch to thinking in terms of services rather than applications might be daunting for some developers and content providers, but there is a payoff: recurring subscriptions. Provide someone an application, and they’ll pay you once. Provide someone a service, and they’ll keep on paying.

Justin from Mopocket met with MobiTV and gained insight into their current and future offerings. As one of the exciting consumer offerings, MobiTV is the major mobile television service in the Americas and building traction in the EU. He brings up the topic of truly interactive viewing. As a media ex-patriot who has been playing ‘hit and miss’ with interactive TV — waiting for broadband for more years than I care to mention — this concept is especially interesting. Justin states, “With more relevant Mobile TV commercials, MobiTV is aiming to take full advantage of their unicast technology by making these commercials “clickable” for the ultimate interactive Mobile TV commerce solution.” The question is, will they click?

In a great 3GSM wrap up M-trend spotter Rudy notes very few women in mobile (an interesting topic for another post!) as well as no American carriers or European operators. Carriers and operators seem to be concentrating on their primary revenue model of calls and plans, and this year seemed to migrate away from content and services. Rudy’s unofficial ‘showstopper’ was Plazes on Mobile (introduced by Marcus Angermeier) that is the beginning of the transfer of so-called 2.0 web apps migrating to mobile. This topic, along with mobile AJAX is going to be the next blogging topic of choice, I am sure.

Moving past 3GSM, many topics surface. In his usual no-nonsense approach, Troy (the man who hates Spam) writes about Mobile Marketing — a 1-legged stool?. In this article he reiterates the importance of traditional marketing practices merged with a mobile-call-to-action in a channel-based environment. He states:

Each of these companies are good solid companies with unique technology but they are only as good as the traditional marketing that is used to reach the consumer and to make the consumer aware that these unique mobile services exist… every single piece of traditional marketing must include a “mobile- call-to-action.” (MCA) – No MCA – No mobile.

Carnival newcomer Fabien discusses the seamless integration and ubiquitous computing which is a fancy way for describing our notions of intermittent and planned connectivity while traveling. Also welcome to Pasta and Vinegar researcher Nicolas who discusses notions of location and connectivity in his post, Location Matters.

Martin Sauter demystifies VOIP in his article on the different flavors of Mobile Voice over IP implementations
and Dan Taylor discusses Skype’s value proposition along with issues regarding enterprise-level implementation. Wap Review editor Dennis goes in-depth to review several real-time transportation tracking systems from my home town of San Francisco. In a unique stretch of abstract thinking, Ajit takes us back to ancient Sumerian cryptology and a brief history of technology and civilization to make a point regarding how information technology leads to the transformation of cultures. A bit of a reach, but some interesting parallels are drawn.

The ever-insightful Emily of Textually.org highlights the power (and pitfalls) of blogging and picturephoning when reviewing two opposing views of the reliability of citizen reporters/bloggers. In this report from Korea (reported through ohmynews), a story on a fake ‘spontaneous’ wedding was captured by cameraphones while on a train and quickly distributed itself on blogs around the Korean cyberspace as a true story. Combined with the power of the Dog Poop Girl incident in Korea, it is clear that cameraphones and mainstream reporting are merging.

In the end, the buzz grew so loud that even the mainstream media could not ignore it anymore. Only this time the wedding episode made people feel happier and warmed their hearts — albeit on a false pretense — whereas the dog-poop girl was condemned a millions times over on the web.

However my post of the week goes to Jim Downing from Smartmobs. It is a very exciting time for the mobile web, as convergence of networks and wifi aid in maintaining our connected lifestyle. The mobile internet is still an unknown factor in the US however the patterns and practices in the EU (even more so than closed markets is S. Korea and Japan) set the pace for our mobile internet future. Jim gives us a report from the centre of Helsinki regarding wireless quilts and free wireless local area networks.

This eFinland post says “Kalle Isokallio (former Nokia director) will open a free wireless local area network in Esplanadi,in the centre of Helsinki on 23 February 2006.OpenEspa is a wireless local network that is open for all users.The network offers a new marketing channel for shops,cafes and restaurants in the area.For consumers, OpenEspa offers free access to the Internet. According to Isokallio, consumers will also be able to make free Internet calls.Free Internet calls can be made with the models that Nokia will launch during spring 2006.The phones feature WLAN connection.Isokallio says that his target is to show operators that a local area network can be built just by cooperating”.

Wow! A lot of great entries, thanks to everyone for their submissions and sorry to any who were not mentioned in this round! Due to the amount of great articles and my tendency towards a more effective usability, I unfortunately need to cut this posting short so it will actually be read! However here are a few noteable and relevant postings to add to your week’s education:

Tomi from Communities Dominate Brands on mobile music
Xen from Xellular Identity on express yourself
Leonid from Wireless Data Newsblog on news report from 3GSM
Ian from Digital Evangelist on rethinking the mobile device
Thomas from TomSoft on mobile synchronization and browsing

And thank you to everyone who attended the Gathering of the Mobilists event so graciously hosted and organized by Rudy De Waele in his hometown. I am sorry to have missed you this time around, but I am sure we will have a chance in the near future. I will be on a panel trying to demystify the mobile web at SXSW in a few weeks – so if any of you are there, let’s meet up!

Next week the Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Emily at textually.org so don’t forget to send your entries in this week (by Weds, 9.00 PM PST), by sending your entry to mobilists(at)gmail(dot)com.

Posted on February 24th, 2006 in Thoughts
Tagged as , , ,
Written by Kelly Goto

8 Responses to “carnival of the mobilists XVI (sweet sixteen)”

Comments

  1. Ian Wood says:
    February 24th, 2006

    Great job in pulling this together. As always some great posts. Think that I need to slow down the work flow and increase the education if I am to keep pace with the way that the mobile ecosystem is growing.

  2. Deirdre Molloy says:
    February 24th, 2006

    Thanks for a great round up. See you in Austin at SXSW!

    Deirdre

  3. Kelly says:
    February 24th, 2006

    Deirdre, hope to see you at SXSW - make sure we connect via SMS if possible (email me to get the # at kelly(at)gotomedia(dot)com. There were a LOT of submissions this time around and I wanted to mention everyone - I think we´re going to have to start editing a bit more or streamlining somehow!

  1. Pingback February 24th, 2006 by TomSoft » Carnival of the Mobilits

  2. Pingback February 24th, 2006 by Golden Swamp » Blog Archive » Sweet Sixteen Carnival of the Mobilists

  3. Pingback February 24th, 2006 by Carnival of the Mobilists at gotomobile at MobHappy

  4. Trackback February 24th, 2006 by Blog Carnival

  5. Pingback February 24th, 2006 by M-Trends » Blog Archive » carnival of the mobilists #16 at gotomobile

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