IPhone, just around the corner.....

...but is happiness?

The Financial Times has been running a number of articles in the run up to the launch of the iPhone. Yesterday John Gapper wrote about how the iPhone might force the Mobile Networks might just have to fix the network as owners of demand data rates closer to DSL. Side loading of content shows that Apple do not trust the networks at present, I have to agree the last few weeks of rain has once again demonstrated that the Orange 3G network is far from built here in London.

Today Kevin Allison's analysis is about the risk Apple has taken in entering the Mobile phone sector. The Industry Insiders who have commented have all taken the opportunity to have a dig at the fact that technically the iPhone is not up to the technical standards of 3G handsets in terms of form and the only benefit is that it has a full operating system.

Whilst I agree that in terms of Form the iPhone is not a natural evolution of mobile phones the issue is that 3G may have passed. You only have to look at the fact that many consumers are just not interested, if they were then Motorola would not have managed to ship 100M V3 handsets over the last three years.

Whilst I await the launch of test devices in Europe I am prepared to hold fire on the iPhone, but I expect that the PR machine at Apple to continue to drive interest. Talking with others it seems that the strategy for Europe will differ rumour has it that Carphone Warehouse, Vodafone and T-Mobile will be the launch partners rather than an exclusive deal with a single network.

Some interesting data points

Technology Guardian has an opinion piece by Victor Keegan that highlights some interesting data about the Mobile Internet. He outlines that the reason that the mobile web is more important than the fixed one is that it comes with its own built in payment mechanism. It is this fact that means that the Crazy Frog made more money than all of iTunes in 2006.

The problem is that the cost of transit is a key element of the $31Bn revenues and just like the net did not take off until broadband and unlimited the lack of unlimited net access is holding back development. Whilst I agree that this may be true, I also contend just how many Mobile Users ask for a data package; if you get to see the internal numbers for some of the networks the fact that they have added millions of new accounts in the last year is not reflected in how many of those have taken a data account to go with it. I still contend that most people want a phone just to send texts and make calls. If it was a price issue then those in the mobile networks could fix it by opening the mobile web, know that unlikely the fixed operators they would still make money thanks to their control of the payments platform.

Today's Economist has a feature about the rise of the ebook on your mobile in Japan, the print edition shows a row of women reading the screens of their mobile phones. The market has sprung up over the last five years to the point that it is now worth $82m a year and is still growing fast. Whilst the use of Mobile Data in the Far East is important I have learnt that the fact that using your mobile to make a call on in public is not something that is seen as polite, a large number of the public commute for over three hours a day and that the housing situation means that denisity levels are close to a battery farm all mean that shaping a business on what happens in Japen or Korea is a very high risk.

Keith has what I consider to be the best comment on the populist nature of the EU war on Roaming Rip Offs. I guess as a Business User on a Contract the fact that most of my calls last over 2 minutes and that I travel alot mean that the EU think that I am using a service such as Awayphone!

Rememberance of things past

So following my lunch this week I set about trying to find the 2001 Keynote by Douglas Adams. I start off by using Google to seek out the GSMNewsReel video I remember watching on my return from Cannes six years ago - and get no joy. However I do get the opportunity to read a number of posts that talk about what the Mobile world will look like once we go 3G; also I get to see that Douglas Adams not only invented Babblefish but he could also have claimed to be a key driver in the development of User Generated Content and Wiki's thanks to H2G2.

The I use Ask and it does better than Google in that it locates a transcript of Douglas Adams address and a review from the GSMNewsReel of all those that spoke in 2001. Still no joy finding the video, have asked if a contact at the GSMA can find the footage in their archieve and send me a copy, if get lucky I will post it up so that you can all see what he is said at the time.

Looking back at the past I got a number of snipets which with hindsight can be seen with a different light. Branson spoke before Adams at Cannes and he "put forward a convincing argument in favour of MVNOs, explaining that they can enhance revenue streams, they're cheap to establish and that they offer solid risk diversification. In the never-ending search for the winning data strategy, an extra operator on your satisfactory discovery, he said. He called forth examples from the motor industry and the music industry where the virtual model has proven success. His words of advice in this area were clear. Shareholder buy-in from the host, decent distribution, a general rather than niche approach to the market and access to the meaningful content are all pivotal elements of success, he said."

I wonder if Virgin Media are following the same Strategy today as part of the Quad Play we see today, heck I wonder if they have a strategy that allows them to compete with Tesco Mobile. As an MVNO we see in Tesco an excellent example of Consumer choice, some 1.8M subscribers have opted to get their mobile with their milk. Not for them some fast moving world of Mobile Data, just basic voice and text thanks along side a value handset - all of which ties in with what Douglas Adams told those in Cannes back in 2001.

Interesting thought on Mobile

Today I had lunch with Christian Lindholm and Dan Applequist, the sun came back to town and so I decided to let the conversation flow rather than just clockwatch after having a meeting cancelled.

Christian has been working for Yahoo but before that he was the lead for the S60 at Nokia and is very much a UI guy. Dan is one of the founders of MobileMonday in London and thanks to his day job at Vodafone has a role on a numberof standards boards for Mobile Internet. I have over the past year had a number of chats in interesting places but this is the first time that we have spoken.

The two guys are a lot more technical than myself, and as such approach a situation from different levels. Both have a higher public profile thanks to the fact that they speak at a number of events and thus probably have a wider group of associates. They both see the Mobile Interne as something that is starting to take off and is important to the Mobile sector. Now that Christia is paying his own bills he has become interested in new tools that allow him to speak with his friends worldwide without being ripped off by his network.

Whilst we agreed that the Network and the Handset makers are important we also said that niether as yet own the customer. This fact offers a wide number an opportunity to succeed in the Mobile space. In putting the world to rights we thought that the key areas are PIM replication and the use of the SIM toolkit to allow improved security and payment of content.

One of the points that came out was the fact that services such as Cognima and Wildfire would today have a high take up, but the fact that they were killed by the networks sometime ago means that a relaunch would be difficult. The other issue is that any data service has to overcome the fact that SMS is such a cashcow for the networks anything that stops users send texts has a very high hurdle to clear.

The interesting point for me as I made my way home tonight is that a lot of what we are trying to do today on Mobile we have been trying for a very long time. The development is still a way off and the guys who might be the ones to achieve are goals are those who at first we did not trust rather than the network and the handset guys.

I still think that the mobile is a phone first and that voice needs to be at the centre of what we all do. Perhaps next time we need to light the bar-b-que and spend the time talking in detail now that we have started these thoughts, I guess I will find out if Christian and Dan follow up on today!

I am off to see if I can find Douglas Adams keynote at GSM World before Christian.

74th Carnival of the Mobilists

Martin was the editor and hoast of this weeks Carnival and he has included my post on Widgets. Go and have a look at what some of the best bloggers are saying about mobile this week, I am still reading what others thought were interesting. Am planning to post a responce on a few other blogs once I have slept on first impressions.

Image from Madeira Web of Carnival Weekend thanks to Google Image search :-)

Is it Widgets that are going to save Mobile Data?

Last night's Mobile Monday was focused on Widgets as part of a larger programme in London. Sitting and listening to the presentations, it was like a Digital People event in 2001 at times the difference being that the hype came from established companies.

Now the fact that Widgets are something that allows users to open windows to the web on non -web pages amongst other things is a tool that might just drive Mobile Data. However I have a problem in that whenever I look at an analysis of YouTube it shows that most of the visitors are passive rather than content generators, therefore Widgets need to be extremely simple to use and personalise if they are to go mass market.

If Widgets are to be something that is used more than the FM radio on a Phone they they need to replace the idle screen rather than be drilled down for on the handset. If they stay somewhere in the menu too many people will find it very difficult to frequently use. So in placing the Widget on the idle screen you have an issue with power management. I do not want something that will see my battery fade faster than if I was stuck on the tube for a morning!

The next problem I have with Widgets is that at times they fail because the Network is broken. Last night I decided to try Widgets on the two phones that I carry. The first is a Sony Ericsson P990i on Orange all the way home I could not get a data connection that was usable, this is not uncommon with the 3G network I usually find myself having to downshift to GPRS to check my email. How why would Orange want to upgrade its data network just so I can use them as a transit service? So far they have not shown any will to do so; in fact they are making it harder for customers to personalise handsets and services, the last two handsets they have sent me have been locked to an Orange profile which means a number of functions have been removed to force the user to use Orange alternatives.

My other handset is a Windows Mobile device with HSDPA on the T-Mobile network. Here the issue is far simpler the midlet manager just does not seem to be able to run the widgets that i downloaded. Maybe it will be better when I have upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.0 but I am not too sure.

Too many of the presentations last night used the same quotes on the future of Widgets. At present I fear that Widgets could end in the same group as Video Calling, MMS, Mobile TV and Mobile Gaming the great white hope for alternative services! Widgets need to be something that are easy to find and install, preferably they should be on the handset when you get it. That means they need to be supported by the Networks. Thus I fear that Widgets might be still born.

A Lost Opportunity...

..was able to catch up with a few friends this week and all of them spoke about Orange. The common theme being that five years ago they felt that the Network was capable of driving forward when it came to 3G and how they have dropped the ball.

On a simple level, the question for the French is would they rather have an excellent network or a pile of cash?

However it is not as simple as that. With more Intelligent Design they could have given users a mobile network that would have delivered the vision presented at the time of the 3G auctions. We looked at just what was possible, and soon became disappointed about just how Orange seem to have lost any focus. On a very simple level, when you visit the Orange website, just how hard is it to buy a phone?

Talking about the market outside of the UK and what you see is that Music is something that works in Europe and further, in Spain and Italy over 20% of digital Music is downloaded onto a mobile.

How that we have a system that means that Data services are able what was the reason for closing Wildfire? This was a service that was used by high spending Contract customers that allowed them to have an extended PIM service. Mobile Web 2.0 is about mash-ups and widgets, perhaps when I attend MoMo London next week I might see something that replaces Wildfire, will it be able to run on my Orange Sony Ericsson handset, I do not think so!

Someone from Orange told me that they were doing well in Prepaid with 18% of new customers being SIM only. My reply, what is there to be proud of the fact that most of your new customers feel that taking a contract over 18 months is not worth a free handset!

With a change of the guard at Orange would we be able to sit down in a few years and say that with a man who is focused on Customer Service they have once again got there MOJO back? The only way that we will know if things are changing is that the number of Advisors declines and products are killed off to allow them to focus on the basics.

Another missed opportunity for m-payment

Today's Guardian has a feature on new contactless payment cards for micropayments. The service is due to start in London this Autumn and the roll out nationally. The service is aimed at those looking to make payments of less than £10 and will need a pin number to validate on a random basis.

So once again we have the mobile networks missing out, if SIMPAY was still in operation then we might have seen this service miss out the Contactless Cards and move straight to mobile. This is something that I would have used for my Daughters when they start secondary school in September. We are about to open two bank accounts for them that will have SOLO cards that allow them to make micropayments. If Orange had woken up to the opportunities for M-Payment then they would have got a larger share of my Daughters pocket money.

I guess that the fact that the former head of M-Payment at Orange has left to joining Microsoft demonstrates the lack of commitment to the product!

Others in MoMo pointing fingers at Mobile Commerce

Thanks to Ged, I picked up on the MoMo Global post about Jupiter's report on too many initiatives in mobile payments are slowing development - will have to send this to GSMA and see if they agree that!

Yesterday the Sunday Times had a feature on how GSMA and Mastercard were going to bring credit cards to the phone by this time next year! As I said last week I don't think so. Catching up at the London MoMo event this month with some who have been working on mobile payments for the last few years they said that the depressing thing is that the US are driving a number of trials that failed in Europe FIVE years ago.

I believe that payment services are key to the mobile industries long term growth. In South Africa they launch of M-Cash on the MTN network has seen a shift socially with an underclass now able to access banking services as well as payment of welfare services. In Europe I see M-Payment as something that could move the customer base from prepaid to postpaid services. Such a transition would be allow the networks to control costs, in the UK £4Billion is sent each year by networks on SAC. It could also mean that if we are to progress down the NFC route are handset can become much more than phone. What about using the handset as a key for example, such a development could see me gain access to my house, start my car and enter offices.

Nokia and others try another M-Wallet push

Reuters reports that Nokia, Mastercard and GSMA have released a few more details on the trial that they plan for October!

The technology used is yet to be outlined in detail; as well as Nokia, Samsung and LG have signed up along with a number of tier two networks. No sign that this is something that as yet has the backing of those who failed with SIMPAY.

This looks like fluff to me! The mobile commerce trails that have become products are based on the replacement of paper money rather than the expansion of electronic cards. When I travel to mainland Europe the locals are still big users of Paper Money it is only here in the UK and in the US where you find people trying to pay for a coffee with a card!

Whilst I agree that some form of mobile payment system will evolve I think that it will be as a form of replacement to paper and coins and not an adjunct to cards. I would like to be able to ring fence a funds that I give my twins when they start traveling to school on their own so that it can only be used for transit systems, school food purchases and say WH Smiths as well as airtime on their phones. I do not want to discover that they have had the phone taken off them by someone on the bus who has then used the credit to buy Vodka and Fags!

Thus what I see as mass adoption of M-Payments will be for micro payments i.e. those of less than £10 and the fees for these need to be lower than the current charges made by Mastercard and Visa. Not sure if this is news, could just be a slow day for Reuters!

Telebusillis calls it like it is

Kieth has turned his analytical brain to the fallacy of mobile VoIP with the excellent post on now Truphone might be good a PR but they are not great at forming a business plan. As with my post yesterday about how the Dragon got it wrong Truphone does not compare like with like.

SKYPE no longer say that they are a VoIP play they say that they are a Messaging platform. Vonage have discovered that their business plan is flawed. Look at the number of me to services for VoIP that have closed the shop when it comes to consumer VoIP. Truphone should no better because of their history with Gosiptel.

The likes of Orange do not see VoIP as a threat, they look at the service and say at present it is not fit for purpose. They also like the fact that just such a service allows them to demonstrate where the value sits in the current customer proposition.

Before anyone moves toward a new service based on VoIP we first need to get the user based off prepaid and onto post paid. This is something that I just don't see happening too soon as it would result in the Networks having to reduce the current subscriber numbers to reflect the real numbers.

Dragon Flames the MNOs....

The Comment section of today's Financial Times carries a story by Doug Richards once of Dragons Den on the BBC in which he set about explaining that we will soon see the likes of Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile consigned to the History Books. Mr Richards explains that thanks to being overcharged we will soon dump these international networks and start using free VoIP.

Now rather than deconstruct Mr Richards opinion I have decided to take an approach similar to that used by the Dragons on the TV programme.

1. Mr Richards lets first look at the fact that the majority of the users on Mobile Networks in the UK are not price sensitive, if they were then they would have dumped Prepaid for one of the contract tariffs that give away so much value.
2. How technology savvy will my mother have to be to use such a service; having been a tester on the BT Bluephone project using a mobile that roams from hotspot to hotspot at present takes a fair degree of technical skills to maintain a database of profiles and switch to the right one?
3. As most users buy a handset on the basis of its features, how do you propose to overcome the issues of battery life when running WiFi?
4. How often have you dropped a call using SKYPE and do you think that it would be acceptable when you add the complexity of movement?

Look it is a nice idea but look inside the average persons wallet and you will see that they have more than one payment card. You do not need more than one credit card but you take as many as you are offered you do not dump the bank because it has ripped you off with its charges you keep using it. True some are starting to fight back and ask that the overcharging stop and the money that was taken be returned to them but very few are doing so. The retail banking industry is a lot older than the mobile phone business and it has taken a lot longer for the customers to start to complain, I can see Vodafone and Orange being around for a good few years. I for one would happily pay a fee for customer service and no adverts.

The nightmare that you paint could see my daughter having to watch an advert for McDonalds and Starbucks before having enough credit to phone NHS Direct for Obesity advice ;-).

I have heard enough and I am out!

3rd Party Marketing starts to get kicked in to touch.

Catching up on the Sunday Papers and I see that someone at the Sunday Times also hates the bombardment of "Update Calls" on their Mobile.

The Good News is that it seems that the Mobile Networks have woken up to the fact that such actions upset the Customers and have started to take action! The story explains that the big three networks have started to attack those agencies that have set up call centres that are aimed at getting customers to upgrade/churn.

I guess this is one good point, would also have been excellent to see that having done so the Networks then put out a Press Releas to the effect that Company X just got canned by us because they are scumbags and not only do we not want anything to do with them we are taking them to court for missrepresentation. That way I would not have so many friends and family complaining that they have been stung by such cowboys.

It seems that Orange have got a grip over the past few weeks as I have not had as many calls as I was getting at the start of the year. I just wish that they did some form of outbound marketing that said that it was a scam in the first place and we would not have seen the thing mushroom to the extent that at one stage I was getting over twenty calls a day offering me a new handset when I upgraded.

Did Orange just hit the panic button?

Today's Observer has a short articles on how the new two year contract is not a good deal.  They say that at the end of the term the consumer has a redundant handset!

Welcome to the Corporate World!


I am sure that by the end of the Summer all of the other networks will be pushing the same two year deals over the present eighteen month deals.  In such a move the Consumer will be educated as to the real costs of telecoms, if we are still to get £500 handset then we will have to used to paying £35 for a few more months than we are at present  or commit to a bigger monthly fee.  Along with the SIM only deals that will allow consumers to see where the costs sit at present for the Networks I think that by the end of this year we will see a change in the perceptions of the mobile consumer.

We are just going to have to get used to paying for our handset in some form! 

Others re picking up on the Voice thing!

Catching up after a busy few days and I find that Om has been having a rant about poor voice quality in mobile!

Loved the opening:

"In 2006, voice brought in about $110 billion, and that is such a large amount of money that the U.S. wireless providers should cringe at the fact that they have to use advertising tag lines such as “fewest dropped calls” or ask people to come and try their service for 30 days or switch back for free.

No self-respecting descendant of Ma Bell should be able to sleep at night till they fix the voice network. After all Europeans have managed to lick the dropped call problem, by putting decent enough quality in place. Even the Chinese and Indian carriers with their microscopic ARPU manage to complete calls pretty much everywhere."

Just hope that the guys at the top of the mobile networks are reading the same blogs as I am.

I think that we will see a change in behaviour over the coming months. Talking with contacts in the Network, Handset and Distribution businesses it does see that they have realised that the present business model is broken and it is time for a new one. Hopefully this will result in an increase in work for all at the Wireless Foundry!

Another demonstration why Convergence does not work

Last night the main BBC Consumer TV show, Watchdog, published the results of its viewers poll into Broadband. I know that it was not conducted in the most scientific manner, it was self selecting etc. etc. just glad that it was not a telephone poll and then we would know that it was fixed!

The Broadband provider that came bottom of the poll was Orange. The show had a number of Vox Pop interviews that demonstrated just how bad Orange's service had been. Once the viewers had been shown we then had Eric Abensur VP Orange Broadband given his opportunity to reply. The silver tonged Frenchman said that Orange was disappointed that it had not managed to achieve the Customer Service levels that its reputation in Mobile was built on and that he hoped that next time the survey was conducted he was no longer in the bottom place.

It was just a shame that his masters in France Telecom were not able to see the show. Perhaps then they might understand why such a large number of former Orange consumers are now moving networks after many years. What has to be remembered is that for most of Orange's customers it is still a Mobile Phone Company and the move into Broadband was as welcomed as a call from an STD clinic.

A number of those that I talk to tell me that they are no longer Orange customers because the company no longer empathises with them rather than the price is wrong. Remember that Orange is a Brand purchase rather than price choice for most. Thus trying to marry a trusted brand with something that was free a low rent (Freeserve) was never going to be easy. The result has been that the whole perception is now that of the low rent offering however it is at the high brand price. So now consumers have the perception that they are no longer valued and that they are overcharged for poor service.

Just yesterday I spoke to another unhappy customer who complained that Orange had failed him and when his contract was up he was off because he had had enough. The reason for his dissatisfaction was that he had been pressured into taking a Samsung handset and after just a day of use he had concluded that it was unsuitable, however as he had upgraded in the shop rather than over the air he did not have the right to return the handset and was thus stuck with it for the coming 12 months. Not a wise move because the individual travels a lot in his job and so is spending £500+ each month and so when he does go Orange will need to find more than one subscriber to replace the lost income.

More on M-Payments

Having just finished off my latest assignment I have at last had an opportunity to catch up on developments in M-Payments post 3GSM in Barcelona.

Last week in an article in Business Week, Nokia's R&D Lab were talking about how they are developing payment solutions following a field trip to Africa. Not too sure I like the fact that Nokia have decided to patent something that was happening naturally in Africa, but thats business.

Yesterday I missed a roundtable by CSFI on Mobile payments that could have been interesting. Would have been nice if one of the speakers had told me and then I could have joined in. Guess I will have to add Digital Money to my Blogroll so I can keep better informed.

Looks like Belgium could be the first Western European network to roll out a commercial M-Payment service with Banksys. Whilst in France on a Skiing holiday with the kids last month, the evening news carried an item on continued trials for M-Payments which showed the reporter using her phone to pay for coffee and bread in different shops. So it looks like the traditional cash based countries will be the first to adopt rather than us here in the UK who are leveraged when it comes to credit.

Is this a phone or a mini pc?

OK so Monday is Upgrade Day for my second handset which is on the T-Mobile network.

I have decided that rather than stick with my preference for Sony Ericsson handsets I will experiement with a Windows Mobile device, it has been sometime since I have Powered up my Clie and even longer since I stopped using my iPAQ.

I went into my local T-Mobile store with two of the girls in tow this week and whilst asking about another HTC device they played with the demo handsets. Today when I go online T-Mobile have added the above Ameo device. This has the benfit of me not having to carry around my Vaio laptop everytime I am out as it will allow me to run all my email accounts I can also sync the device with my Vista based laptop which is more than I can do at present with my SE P990i!

As is it my back up device it will not be used for that much voice traffic, just the three to four hours a day that Orange do not seem to be able to give me coverage when I am Home and not asleep and the trees that are between my home and the base station are in leaf and wet!

So do I swallow my pride and and go for this connected data device, having said that it is all about voice? Perhaps I should just stick with what I have for a few more weeks and wait for a Windows Mobile 6 device. Alternatively I could wait for the SE K810i but as this is T-Mobile it may be some time!

Photo from Trusted Reviews website

VoIP killing mobile market

Oracle has a reveiled the results of a servey of Industry Executives that says VoIP will kill the mobile industry in the next six years.

"The results from the global communications community clearly demonstrate how important it is for both fixed-line and wireless operators to act immediately," said Bhaskar Gorti, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Communications Global Business Unit. "With the rapid decline in voice revenues and the reality of an ever changing competitive set, customer service providers must accelerate their development of new revenue opportunities."

No whilst I love the odd survey for PR coverage, I would like to ask just how many of the respondents that Oracle spoke to worked for Mobile Networks. I have to say that its my view that the VoIP market will still be less than 5% of the total mobile voice market. The use of bundles which menas that most consumers now have a bucket of minutes too big to use.

The other problem is that another Survey says that most of us churn networks says that half of us move networks to get a better handset. So I guess the idea that we move on the basis of price whilst it has some currency but is not totally true.

To hell in a handset

Today's technology section of the Guardian, has a feature on how the Mobile phone has seen too many other devices converged into it. Stuart Jeffries writes that very soon he will be made to look a fool in front of his daughter thanks to all the functionality in his phone.

I enjoyed the rant about how convergence is not what we want it is what we get. I am sure it will be a line I use in the not to distant future!

I also enjoyed the end that outlines just what the benefits and disadvantages of convergence is. I have to say that I am becoming every frustrated by the fact that people now feel that timekeeping is optional on the basis that as they have a mobile when they are late you can find out just how long you are going to be left waiting and if you don't like it then you can cancel.