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.

Day Two @ MWC

Second day walking the halls, catching up with friends and being introduced to new ones.

Managed to gain more knowledge as to what the next generation of mobile might look like and what it may be used for. The battle for 4G has already started as people in committee rooms discus just what is possible and how it may be deployed. The new standard for wireless looks like it will be something that is used more in laptops than in phones to start with. This will be a battle between the mobile players and Intel as to what is used in laptops alongside WiFi. I still have to ask if the dash to a business model that becomes based on Data is something that the Networks will do? But the evidence that in 2009 Vodafone will have a commercial network that is faster than the fibre at a cost to build a lot less than the £50/metre that fibre will cost means that if the in-building coverage can be resolved then 4G might just have a business case.

Have managed to continue my discovery of just what might play out in Mobile Banking by talking to a number of players and the issue seems to be a lack of trust between the Banks and Networks. Stored Value services provided by trusted third parties offer solutions for the Pre-paid sector but this not exactly high value transactions! Perhaps as Banks release message based services that are two way rather than alerts then we can look at some of faster deployments of payment programs. Edgar Dunn have written a report for the GSMA that explains that the development of M-Banking is a headline strategic play for Mobile Networks. Are these the same networks that said that the do not need third parties as they hold the billing relationships? Whilst the developers continue to be small players rather than significant organisations such as HP, IBM and Accenture who work in both the Mobile and Banking space then the M-Wallet risks looking SubPrime for some time to come.

Rounded off the day with a relaxed dinner with a small bunch brought together by Simon Rockman. Good to catch up with a few old friends and make some new ones. One more day of meetings and then a late night flight back to the UK to digest and edit all the information gained into something that might be useful and see me gainfully employed for the coming months.