The Hindustani Times reports that Hutch TV has launched “a multi-channel, TV-on-Mobile service, accessible over its EDGE-enabled network”.

13 different channel are offered “ranging from news and current affairs to business, sports, fashion, travel and entertainment” and can be viewed on Hutchison and Orange networks.

Looks like we’re going to get some answers pretty soon to the question “Do people want TV on their mobile?”

Obviously, the answers won’t be definitive yet, as even if people don’t watch, it doesn’t mean it won’t succeed eventually. Price, quality and content are just some of the variables determining success.

I favour the “don’t want” camp unless the content is reformatted into sushi-TV or originated with mobile viewing in mind.

Meet Chibi Groomy cunningly disguised as a cute cuddly key ring.

But his little-wittle chamois tummy-wummy is designed to clean small screens like mobiles and PDA’s.

Spotted on Pop Gadget.

AOL is trying to get itself as the Instant Messenger programme of choice on the mobile phone.

CNet reports

The AOL Mobile Developer program, announced Monday, is meant to reduce the time manufacturers spend creating AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) software for their handsets, a spokeswoman said. Typically, handset makers and cell phone service providers must work one-on-one with AOL, which is a time-consuming process.

AOL says it also wants to ensure that AIM software on different manufacturers’ cell phones is compatible, the spokeswoman said. To do so, the company based its new developer program on a set of mobile messaging standards created by the Open Mobile Alliance, which promulgates interoperability specifications for mobile devices.

Apparently, Motorola, LG Electronics, Samsung Telecommunications America and Siemens have already made about 20 phones under the programme. And Nokia and SE “likely candidates” to sign up.

Two things puzzle:

1. Why isn’t the handset industry interested in creating its own platform?

Sure, it makes sense that IM on your phone can talk to IM on your PC. And AOL does still have an awful lot of subscribers that can be converted from PC to mobile.

But AOL is also the IM which refuses to be compatible with everyone else’s (Yahoo, Hotmail etc).

Why not partner with Yahoo - then everyone could talk to everyone else, apart from AOL users.

2. Why is Microsoft apparently letting this happen, without a fight?

Allowing AOL to dominate mobile IM is potentially very very damaging for Windows Messenger, especially if AOL won’t let people outside its own messaging app. It means that you’ll have to have an AOL account on your PC to use IM on your phone.

I appreciate that the handset guys wouldn’t want Microsoft to get their IM platform on the phone, by the way But I wonder how seriously they’re trying?

The piece ends with a few interesting stats:

U.S. cell phone carriers say a rather paltry 18 million instant messages are sent each day over their networks–on personal computers, more than 1 billion messages are sent daily via AIM alone.

There is plenty of room for growth. Just 20 percent of all instant-messaging users send a mobile message at least once a week.

18 million may be small in comparison with PC messaging or SMS. But it’s a significant slug of volume in these early days. And IM has that potential killer app for mobiles - presence. As any IM user knows, this allows you to tell people before they try to contact you (by IM or other means) what you’re doing and if you can be interrupted.

That’s going to take a hell of a lot of stress away from the mobile.

There’s an unfortunate side effect of mobile phones. And I don’t mean the “Yes, I’m on a train” conversations we overhear everyday.

Mobile phones mean that we need mobile phone masts.

These used to be ugly things that looked just like, well…mobile phone masts. But now they’re ugly things that look like, well…. mobile phone masts badly disguised as trees and stuff. It’s like an elephant hiding at the beach by wearing a pair of sunglasses.

And we go around pretending that they are actually trees.

And of course, we now have a web site entirely devoted to these bogus bushes (no political comment intended) at FraudFrond.com.

There are 130,000 cel towers in the USA alone. A whopping 25% of these are “stealth” towers — i.e. Lying Lumber — so that’s over 32,000 fake trees.

Send us a pic of your favorite tower, and we’ll send you a wooden nickel! (Get the pun? I love puns you have to point out.) (Ps: The above is a lie: we won’t actually send you a wooden nickel. They’re probably really expensive.) (But we would be excited to see pics of towers. We’ll post them on * FraudFrond Spotter’s page.) And please send us any RARE finds. (Fake weeping willow?)

First there was Spam, then Spim (unsolicited messages via Instant Messenger) and the next big thing is Spit - messages via Internet Telephony, so says SlashDot about this New Scientist article.

Qovia, based in Frederick, Maryland, have recently filed two patent applications for technology to thwart spit.

Winn Schwartau, an electronic security consultant for InterPact in Seminole, Florida, warns that our voice-mail boxes could become clogged with salacious and bogus advertising messages, just like our email inboxes are today. And distributed denial-of-service attacks launched by armies of automated ìspam-botsî could tie up targeted customersí phone lines constantly, he says.

And you thought that the odd call from a conservatory salesman was bad.

And that’s not the end of the matter. VOIP can also be used to spread viruses. O brave new world.

Russell

PS If you’re wondering why I’ve got an image of a scruffy dog to illustrate this, that is the legendary Spit the Dog. The puppet was the side kick of Bob Carolgees, star of UK kid’s TV back in the 70’s. The basic idea is that Bob would ask spit a question. Then Spit would err….spit. You had to have been there
The heartless bastard sold the little fella off earlier this year to publicise his new web site which sells candles. Well, I’m not giving you a link you dog seller, you.

Soon we’ll be able to forget fiddly mobile controls and tiny keyboards and control our phones by voice commands. Hurray and we all live happily ever after!

At least that’s the premise at the start of an article at Technology Review. But then as you read on, it’s full of caveats like “someday soon you may also find yourself dictating a text message into your phone” and “eventually mean the end of pecking at keyboards.”

And you realise we heard the same thing in the early 90’s about speech recognition with PC’s. I might be wrong, but it’s still only a tiny market.

I suspect that the same might be the case here. I think better mobile keyboards might be the answer in the shorter term like this.

Checking out Tom Hume’s blog I see he’s making much the same point, but from a slightly more informed technical stand point
Tom also asks “What would the ability to easily enter larger volumes of text add to our experience of using mobiles?…”

Well, if the market goes the way I think it will, this is actually very important. If we can find a way of inputting large amounts of our own data (call it “typing” for convenience) the mobile will be transformed into a kind of micro PC. It’ll do all the mobile stuff. And if you dock it into a keyboard/monitor combo you’ll be able to blog, create word processing, spreadsheets and presentations on it.

Most of this can be stored off-device and accessed anywhere. The real work will be done by huge central servers. Think BlogLines, Google and Flickr.

That’s the future I think.

There’s an amazing list of Locative Media initiatives at yproductions - so called after one of my favourite quotes. “When you come to a Y in the road, take it.” Yogi Berra. A great call for action, worthy of Tom Peters himself.

The list includes many old faves like Uncle Roy All Around You and PacManhattan. But also loads I’ve never come across.

Many are kooky art projects (which I love) and many are bids for more mainstream success.

There’s about a day’s worth of material here. Enjoy.

It’s difficult to get a true picture of the Japanese mobile market. It’s particularly important for mobile as it was the first to launch 3G and is still one of the only major 3G successes to date.

I’ve been reading a trial copy of “3G success in Japan: Waves of Disruptive Innovation” by Gerhard Fasol, PhD. You can download a copy yourself if you click here (click on the “Try” button).

One has to be careful translating the Japanese experience wholesale to other markets. It’s not the same at all (see pic of loo paper vending machines, by way of illustration) - but many of their experiences ring true from what’s happened so far in the UK.

We believe that one of the reasons for the success of 3G in Japan was, that 3G was not introduced as ìPremium Servicesî for VIP customers at high fee levels, but on the contrary, 3G services in Japan are introduced in many aspects as a discount service, bottom up. In our direct observation 3G achieved mainstream breakthrough from Spring 2003 onward: not with top paying business users, but with young people, high-school students at discount fees.

This is certainly true of 3’s experience - it’s only when they dropped the price that things started to take off. Having said that, this also coincided with service improvements and handsets that looked OK. There’s also a potential problem in that if you build your service on a price platform, others can undercut you and it’s going to bugger your ARPU projections.

One area 3 might have learned lessons from however is this:

You may find several surprising facts about 3Gís success in Japan. One of these facts is, that the arguable most rapid and successful introduction of 3G was and still is without video telephony services.

I’ve long argued that this is a service most consumers don’t want anyway, so I can’t say I’m remotely surprised. But in any event, it would make sense to delay launching this type of service until phase 2. You need a critical mass of people who are able to call each other for this kind of thing to work. Otherwise you’re gagging to video call someone (let’s assume) and you can’t.

Despite Vodafone’s dominance elsewhere, they have been singularly unsuccessful in Japan, accounting for less than 1% of total 3G subscribers. This has partly been their inability to get customers to trade up. But it could be yet another example of the Law of Leadership I wrote about earlier.

As far as the future is concerned, stand by for some huge disruption:

Second wave of disruptive innovation: some carriers are preparing now to introduce TD-SCDMA in Japan from 2005 which was developed in China. This could mean, that Chinese mobile phones can be used in Japan and vice-versa, creating a combined China+Japan market, which would be truly disruptive and could bring spectacular new developments.

It looks like a great report if you want more info on the Japanese 3G market and reasonably priced at Euro 412.

Mattel in India have launched a Barbie doll, impeccably dressed as always, but also with her own must-have accessory - a mobile phone.

But this is no toy - the mobile works. Barbie’s owners can Instant Message Barbie and friends who have a Barbie too. Plus the look of the phone can be changed to match her clothes. It’s priced at R 1199 (USD 26), according to The Statesman.

Whatever next - a phone for dogs? Ahh, we had that last week.

Caveat - I can’t find any corroboration of this, but if it isn’t true now, it will be shortly.

My best idea for Barbie was producing clothes for kids, so that they could dress like her. Mattel didn’t think kids would like this - they were joking, right? Now as a parent, I’m glad it never happened. Don’t tell her I wrote this, but Barbie is a bit errr…tarty in her dress sense and I wouldn’t like my kids copying her in quite that way.

Al Ries and Jack Trout’s seminal book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” is a great and very readable book - for marketers and non-marketers alike. It’s short and doesn’t fall too deeply into the “Who Moved my Cheese” trap of over-simplification.

Their first immutable law is best demonstrated by the question; Who was the first person to fly the Atlantic, solo?

Most of you probably know it was Lindbergh.

So, who was the second? A chap called Bert Hinkler….. apparently. Indeed, even detailed biographies of the man fail to recall this feat, focusing on his achievement of the first solo flight from Australia to Britain.

So their law is: The Law of Leadership “It’s better to be first than it is to be better”.

I was reminded of this with today’s announcement of O2’s 3G plans in the UK. Silicon.com reports

Dave McGlade, O2 UK CEO, said in a statement: “O2 understands that in mobile it’s not about being first to market but delivering on customer service promises… As an industry we have a track record of hyping technology before it is ready. Instead we should be launching it only when it has the right customer experience. At O2 we are committed to breaking this cycle.”

It seems that O2’s plans for now are restricted to a combined wireless offering called O2 Connection Manager. It brings together GPRS (sometimes called 2.5G), 3G and wireless LAN connectivity, through deals with The Cloud and BT Openzone.

No plans it seems to rival Vodafone’s 10 handset mega-launch in November.

Actually, this announcement smacks far more of face-saving post-rationalisation for being beaten off the blocks by the rampant Vodafone - again. I think they just haven’t got a product ready to launch.

Anyway, back to the guru’s: “in spite of the evident superiority of the Lindbergh approach, most companies go the Hinkler route. They wait until the market develops. Then they jump in with a better product…”

There are examples galore, from the world of technology and non-technology alike. The classic one is obviously Coke, who was first to launch and still brand leader, despite Pepsi being “better” (in taste tests anyway).

In fact, think any category and you’ll usually find this applies. Have a guess at the first college to be founded in America. The leading one - Harvard. The second? The College of William and Mary, an excellent institution, I’m sure, but not especially famous nor could it be described as “leading”.

Think Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile - who was the second person to run it?

Of course, there are other laws and I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule. But generally, you should rush your product to market, because being second or third is invariably the wrong approach. When it comes to launches, 80% of the way there is good enough. Hell, if it works for Microsoft…..:-)

In fact, there’s a much better example closer to home to illustrate this whole point. Guess who the leading brand in mobile is in the UK? It’s Vodafone, in case you don’t have the figures handy.

Guess who was first to launch a network in 1984? Yup - Vodafone again.