Techdirt and Textually and several other sites have posted this story, but I wanted to weigh in as well. A 16-year-old boy in South Korea killed himself after running up a $3800 bill for mobile data services. Then, in response, the country’s top two mobile carriers, SKT and KTF, said they’d begin offering flat-rate data plans for about $30 per month.
I’m not trying to make light of this tragedy, but is something on this scale really what it takes for operators to realize their data prices are often outrageous? Or are the operators simply seizing on the opportunity for some free publicity and to look like gracious corporate citizens?
[tags]skt, ktf, mobile data, mobile operators[/tags]
True to form, more details are emerging on the spectacular Ferrari crash last week involving former Gizmondo CEO Stefan Eriksson. Police now say the Ferrari was traveling in excess of 160 miles and hour when it crashed, but they’ve also released several more juicy details that — of course — don’t paint the best picture of Mr. Eriksson.
First, apparently the Bank of Scotland says the car belonged to them. Unsurprisingly, they say the car was obtained through some fraudulent financing, so they’d repossessed it. Second, the car wasn’t street-legal, Eriksson had cleared the Enzo, along with another Ferrari and a Mercedes SLR (perhaps the other car reported to be in the race that led to the crash?), through customs only as show cars. The SLR has also been reported as stolen by Scotland Yard, says the LA Times. The Times also reports a magazine from a gun was found near the crash scene, and authorities believe it’s somehow connected, while they also plan to interview somebody they think may have been in the car with Eriksson (could it be the mysterious Dietrich?).
The comments from one Sgt. Phil Brooks of the Malibu Sheriff’s Department are interesting, too, telling Spong that it looks like Eriksson shipped the cars to the US to avoid the Bank of Scotland repossessing them, while adding his take on the whole situation and Eriksson:
“I’ve gotten just about everything on him. The previous prison time, the $290,000,000 or maybe it’s a different figure, the Mafia ties – even on some of his colleagues. Believe me, I’ve been taking calls from London, Sweden, everywhere on this. From the Gizmondo Caper…” And how does this look to Brooks? “They duped them for all their money and walked out.”
Update: Wrecked Exotics has a slew of interesting coincidences involving the story of the crash, Eriksson and Gizmondo.
(Thanks to Jim Hughes for the link, photo from the LA Times)
[tags]gizmondo, stefan eriksson, ferrari, enzo[/tags]
I just came across the new Ping Rewards, which sends sms coupons from advertisers to its opted in database of mobile owners in the US.
Regular readers of MobHappy will know that I used to be Sales & Marketing Director of just such an outfit five long years ago - ZagMe. While we hard a fair share of success (85,000 users and 1500 campaigns), ZagMe failed to attract further investment in the new climate post 9-11.
But ZagMe wasn’t prefect by any means and with this in mind I wrote a pretty comprehensive White Paper on the experience and the lessons we learned. My objective in writing was to prevent a new generation of entrepreneurs rushing into the space and making the same mistakes.
Shame Ping Rewards don’t seem to have read it. I wish them well of course and they have a much better chance as I think they have the timing right. However, it’s not a journey I envy them.
In particular, their decision to launch nationally in the US will prove a very significant challenge. People who sign up for the service will expect to get their coupons, for which they need a raft of relevant advertisers. This will not be an easy task to cater for the whole of the country.
Anyone who wants a free copy of the White Paper, drop me an email using the link at the right and I’ll whizz you one over, including if you work for Ping Rewards themselves. Get it now while it’s still free.
Whenever we have the misfortune to eavesdrop on a mobile phone conversation, it always seems to begin with a mundanity like “I’m on the train”. What the mobile user is actually doing is stating their location to the caller, as it contextualises the call for both of them and could well be an important framework within the forthcoming conversation.
So I was very interested to read on Nicolas Nova’s Pasta & Vinegar about an academic study that examined this area and attempts to put some science behind my gutfeel. (It was great to finally meet Nicolas at 3GSM too).
In an admittedly small study (74 mobile-to-mobile, landline-to-mobile or mobile-to-landline conversations in Finland), in 84% of cases, the mobile party’s location was always stated.
Is this just habit or part of the way we’ve learned to use mobiles? The researchers thought not and identified 5 reasons for the location to be disclosed, which all seem to boil down to the fact that the people talking were trying to make a practical arrangement where the location of one of them was important. A perfect illustration of why I wouldn’t make an academic.
There was also an interesting thought that bears more investigation that location can be used as a sort of shorthand to suggest mood and tone of the conversation. In other words “at the beach” gives very different vibes to “at my desk”.
The research concludes that, given the relevance to most conversations, an automated location determining technological solution would be a good thing.
Nicolas himself disagrees on the basis on his own research and suggests that it would be hard to make the information relevant. I certainly see this, with the added complication of context. In other words, the important information I need to communicate if I’m on the train is the fact that I am on the train, not that I’m in the Paddington district of London.
That said, we’ll certainly start to see location identifiers becoming part of the presence information we expect to see when communicating with friends, colleagues and family. And it’s going to happen soon.
Like it or not.
US operators are squashing Sling Media’s plans to let people watch their own content on their mobile devices, presumably because if people could buy a Slingbox and watch the stuff they wanted, they’d no longer (or never start to) buy the overpriced, crappy video content operators are trying to sell.
This is so typical. Take a technology that’s going to thrive in the mobile space — give users access to their personal media — and instead of figuring out how to empower it, and even improve it, carriers just say “Oh hell no” and shut up shop. It’s funny, I thought they’d built these networks for people to use, and if people are going to use the networks for valuable services, they’ll pay for it. But apparently it’s one of those “you can do anything you want, as long as it’s something we sell” situations:
“We have no immediate plans to run that service,” says Jeffrey Nelson, spokesman for Verizon Wireless, the country’s second-largest carrier. “What runs on our network are our services.”
That’s the problem — a closed attitude that operators have to be at the center of everything, instead of empowering other content and service providers and working out an ecosystem through which everyone can profit. How many times will carriers’ closed systems have to fail before they learn this?
Some analyst firm says there will be 10 million 3g subscribers in China this year, representing 2.2 percent of a subs there. There’s nothing outstanding there, apart from the simple fact that the Chinese government still has given no indication when it will award 3G licenses, and when carriers there will begin selling 3G services. In fact, there are reports emerging now that the government could hold things up further to give a boost to the homegrown TD-SCDMA standard, which would hamper the immediate uptake of EV-DO and WCDMA services.
So, even with all that uncertainty, the experts over at Analysys International (which shouldn’t be confused with another analyst and consultancy firm called just Analysys) throw out that 10 million number, apparently without any sort of caveats. Which is helpful. There are plenty of good analysts out there — but there are plenty that just stick a hockey stick on a chart and send out a press release, too. I guess there will always be a market for wild predictions that may or may not be grounded in reality, particularly in mobile, as long as there’s the next big thing.
Update: This writeup is even better. “…China’s total 3G mobile communication subscribers will exceed 10 million by the end of this year and could climb as high as 100 million over the next five years.” Could hit 100 million, could hit 50 million, could hit 8 billion. It _could_ hit anything — I guess that’s how you’re never wrong.
[tags]analysts, china mobile, china 3g, 3g [/tags]
If you’re a big brand looking to get in to mobile content, the time is now. The opportunity really hasn’t changed much over the last year or two (even with the advent of 3G), but perceptions have. Just look at CBS and News Corp., which today announced some mobile-content initiatives. CBS, on the one hand, is developing some multimedia alert services that could be somewhat interesting. On the other, News Corp. is selling some wallpapers and ringtones and games, and gets heralded as some sort of revolutionary.
Just for the NYT’s benefit, there have been plenty of people that have been doing this stuff for quite some time, and doing it better than News Corp. ever will. But I digress. My point being that, especially in the US, if you’ve been thinking about getting into mobile content, or even if you just are renewing a push, do it now and strike while the iron’s hot. You can count on a lazy press to provide you with plenty of hype, even if you’ve got little substance.
I’ve got two related points. First, if you are one of those people that’s been doing mobile content for longer/better than these big new entrants, doubly so if you’re not a big brand but can enable them, this is a good time for you, too — better than ever. The money’s flowing, but clearly, when ringtones and graphics is the best a company the size of News Corp. can come up with, the ideas aren’t. So get in there.
Second, News’ new mobile unit is called “Mobizzo”. It’s strangely reminiscent of Vizzavi, which some readers will remember was the name of the spectactularly failed venture between Vodafone and Vivendi to take the former’s mobile expertise and apply it to the latter’s portfolio of media holdings. After checking out the Mobizzo site, I’m not sure I see why it should be much more successful than Vizzavi, so perhaps the name isn’t a coincidence.
[tags] mobile content, news corp, murdoch, mobizzo, vizzavi, cbs, viacom[/tags]
Back in January, I wrote about the controversial company, BzzAgent and how they’d managed to raise $13.75 million in VC funding.
One of my points that was that while word of mouth marketing was undoubtedly very, very powerful, paying people to spread the word defeated the whole point and undermined the credibility of the people passing the good word.
Joe Chernov, BzzAgent’s PR Director, was quick to point out in the comments that the company didn’t pay people at all. They merely gave them points that could be converted into prizes, which seems like pretty much the same thing to me.
Like their core concept - a good idea, which misses the point in its execution - they came up with another potentially winning concept. Why not get a blogger to document the next critical 90 days of the company, as the cash arrives and BzzAgent really starts to motor? Handled in the right way, this could be used as a great way to examine some of the controversy, discuss the arguments and humanise the company - to Scobilise it, as perhaps we should call this form of “marketing”, in the loosest possible definition.
Sadly, they didn’t take the idea to its potential. The blogger they appointed wasn’t an independent voice who would look dispassionately at the company, the model and some of the historical issues that have dogged - and continue to dog - the company. It was CEO, Dave Balter’s co-author of his recent book, Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
John Butman can certainly write, which is nice. But it seems to have turned a great potential way of answering critics into a pallid hagioblography - a blog that idealizes or idolizes the subject of the blog.
It’s entertaining enough, but what a missed opportunity.
[tags]bzzagent, scoble, blogging[/tags]
Gotomobile has Carnival of the Mobilists 16, full of impressions from 3GSM and plenty of other good stuff. Be sure to check it out.
[tags]carnivalofthemobilists, mobilists[/tags]
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