Deloitte reports on M-Payments

First off an appology to those who do bother to read this blog, I have been busy with work and so not spent as much time writing as I would have liked.

One of the assignments that I have been working on is the possible future of the Handset business.  Very soon I think that we will be in a position where the incremental improvements become so small it will be difficult to sell them as the next great leap forward.  I think that Italy will be the first country that this happens as nearly 40% of the users have a 3G handset, France will be the last of the Big 5 to adopt such a model as it has the smallest number of 3G users.

I think that what users will adopt is a "Business Watch" play in that they will have a Work Phone, Dress Phone and Weekend Phone which they swap a single SIM between them.  The Network will provide its services on a SIM only contract and the user will buy handsets in something closer to the Apple store than CPW.

If we accept the premiss that this might happen, then the networks are going to look at services rather than products that will retain staff.  If that is true then M-Payment that is based on SIM NFC could be something that aids just such a retension.  Tarriffing will not be something that helps retain the users as regulation will lower prices, just look at what has happened with International Roaming.

What Deloitte does not address is the fact that at present the Networks strategy is to just rent space on the SIM to a Payment Processing Group rather than understand the customer segmentation.  But then my Network fails to understand that as well as a relationship with them, I also have relationships with tow of its rivals so how can it understand my Banking relationship?

 

Mobile Phone Firms rip you off....

Over the weekend Channel 4 have been trailing the Dispatches report due to be broadcast tonight.

In the show they will show that Phone Shops are paid commission to sell the phone + plan that the networks want rather than the consumer needs!

So next week are they going to tell me that the sun does not go out at night it just moves so I cannot see it until the following day!

The market is all about supply and demand.  How do you think that Charles Dunstone, Martin Dawes and John Caudwell all made it onto the Times Rich List?

I am going to watch the show and if the kids are luck they can expect a new TV as I will have broken the current one as I throw things at the screen.  From what they say on the C4 website I cannot see an invistigation from the OFT unlike some of the other practices of the Supermarkets.

Recent thoughts

Having spent a few days offline a few post on the internet recently have caught my attention.

Over at ReadWriteWeb they have two post that are worth reading. First we had a new study on iPhone users, that tells us they are far from usual phone owners. If this is the case it adds weight to my observation that what they are doing in terms of mobile data has to be discounted as the actions of early adopters. The Mobile Web needs alot of work done before it crosses the chasam one of the biggest is user education, to oftan those in the industry fail to realise that the key features for a normal user are phone + text + clock. This is something that has been emphasised to me in the last year as my twins have started to use mobile phones. What music they do do is side loaded, very little is peer to peer because it take to long to bluetooth.

The other is an updating of Mobile Web Trends and Products by Rudy De Waele. As someone who helps run one of the Mobile Monday chapters Rudy has an excellent understanding of the zeitgeist. Some of the Start Ups to watch are new to me, but others are businesses that have been trying for quite sometime to build a customer base.

Symbian/Nokia have a lot of work to do in America if this study is anything to go by. I know that the sample size is small, but it does help to explain all the America Investment Managers foolish questions on how Apple and RIM are fighting for the Enterprise space.

VisionMobile has an excellent post on User Interface technology which shows that it does not need to be only Apple that have all the bells and whistles!

Harris Interactive reports that America is ready for M-Banking, but are the Networks in synch with the Banks, Consumers and Payment Groups?

I have discovered MobileStance and his post on Anarchy in the UK is an excellent introduction into his blog.

Off message I was sent this by one of my contacts one LinkedIn it is something I believe in and so thought that I would ask those who read this to watch it.