- Vodafone 2.0 (Chaotica)

- Google declines to rule out wireless airwave bid (Reuters)

- ‘Free’ txts a go go (El Reg)

- Nokia, MIT Open Joint Research Lab (TechWeb)

The analyst firm that put out the silly report that the Apple iPhone was “imminent” and would launch on the Helio MVNO in the US is back with their full report on “Apple in Wireless”, and their press release really makes it sound like it’s worth the £1300 pounds they want for it.

Where to begin? How about with this paragraph:

However, Apple will embrace mobile more fully and pose a greater threat to the mobile phone industry itself - as an MVNO challenging carriers and a cellphone brand challenging handset makers. Upcoming US MVNO Helio presents a good entry strategy for Apple’s iPhone, an own-brand Apple mobile phone that is likely to be launched by the company. Indeed, the release of which is both logical and inevitable, argues visiongain.

So Apple is going to become an MVNO… by launching its phone on the network of another MVNO? As I said before, the Helio connection is a joke. One big reason — Helio’s devices feature its own UI that’s consistent across its portfolio. Would Apple, with its expertise in UI, accept that? It’s doubtful, given that the analyst behind the report calls the iPod UI “Apple’s greatest gift to the computing masses”.

I also like the two statements “visiongain estimates total shipments of over 40 million iPods” and “In 2006, visiongain expects over 40% of all cars sold in the US in 2006 to offer iPod connectivity”. It makes it sound like they’ve done some real research, rather than just find a round up of Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call, where the company helpfully disclosed both of those figures.

One final gem: “It also discusses the possibility of the iPod getting VoIP functionality and what the implications would be.” Yeow. Really, though, if the the iPhone is such a certainty and is “imminent”, why bother putting VoIP in the iPod? Seems pretty counter-intuitive. Or even more so than having VoIP in an iPod at all.

My original offer still stands — if you were thinking of dropping the $2300 or so on this report, get in touch with me first and I’ll compile all the net speculation and photoshopped images for you at a weekend sale price of $1000, and it will be about as accurate as this report.

Seriously, is this what passes for analysis these days?

[tags]mobile, apple, iphone[/tags]

Feet up! hosts this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists. Head on over for the very best writing about mobile in the last week.

We forgot to enter. D’oh!

Imagine Mickey Mouse is running for a bus. It’s just pulled up at a bus stop 100 metres away and people are getting on. Mickey is running frantically down the street, dodging people, street furniture and rain puddles. Everyone is on the bus and the driver starts to indicate and pull out. Mickey is still 20 metres away, just as the bus drives off. Mickey has missed the bus.

Now replace the idea of Mickey Mouse with the The Walt Disney Company. And the bus with “the point” and you’ll see that Disney have really missed it with their new advertising idea, outlined over at The Big Picture.

Their idea is to put programmes on the web for free download, the day after they first get broadcast. So shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives will be available for the first time and they are to be applauded for this part of their vision. No longer will people have to rely on BitTorrent and the questionable legality of using this channel.

The programmes will contain embedded ads, which is also fair enough and a proven model - subsidised content. But they have made the ads impossible to fast forward or skip in any way. You HAVE to watch the ads, whether you like it or not or whether they are any good or not.

Surely, the way to approach this is to work with advertisers to make sure that the ads embedded in these programmes are compelling enough in their own right to engage the viewer and make them WANT to see them? I don’t suggest that this is easy, but it is possible to produce great advertising and heaven knows people in ad agencies are paid enough to demand that they produce great work for every client, every time.

And with a new channel like this, Disney could vet the ads themselves and only allow ads that really sing to make the cut. That would also be interesting from a sales perspective, as agencies would have to beg to be allowed to buy ads in the programmes or admit to their clents that their work just isn’t good enough.

The final factor is that someone, somewhere is working on a hack to delete or fast forward these ads, so Disney could save themselves a great deal of hassle by abandoning this weird idea now. What will their next move be? Kidnapping people and forcing them to watch endless loops of crappy advertising? Mugging people with branded knives and coshes?

Come on people, do the right thing.

It’s important for readers of blogs to know if a writer has an agenda. So I thought you’d be interested to know that I’m doing a fair bit of consulting right now for AdMob, which I hope will deepen in due course.

You can see my original take on AdMob here, if you’re curious. And by the way, I wrote that BEFORE starting any discussions with them, as far as a professional relationship is concerned.

I’ve been involved with mobile marketing for nearly six years now, both as an observer and a participant, which by any standards makes me a veteran. And Admob is the nearest thing I’ve seen yet to a great solution.

It helps mobile website publishers monetise their sites by serving up unobtrusive text-based ads as people are browsing on their mobiles.

Advertisers claim that they get 4 times the effectiveness over the web. This is not surprising as the ads are so pre-qualified. The user must have the right phone settings to be able to click through or download content. And the targeting means that ads are only served on handsets that are compatible with the content that’s being sold.

Users are also clicking through like crazy, demonstrating that many of us find advertising acceptable if it’s useful and relevant.

So far, the main advertisers are content owners, as it’s the first time the mobile channel can be used to actually market mobile products. Historically this has been done via other media, especially offline, funnily enough. So for these types of company, it’s a bit of a no brainer.

But the interesting factors for me are twofold:

1. AdMob enables targeting by handset type. This presents a fascinating opportunity if you’re a handset manufacturer as you can both reward loyal customers and precision target competitors’ handsets with different messages. How powerful is that?

2. Web based ads aren’t used exclusively to sell computer related products and services. So will the mobile channel emerge as a medium in its own right and attract advertising dollars from brands outside mobile content? I think the answer is yes, but maybe this will take time to develop.

As far as MobHappy is concerned, it’s going to be business as usual. Both Carlo and I will continue to contribute, although we’re always on the look out for new talent to join us. I may naturally write a little more about mobile marketing, but I certainly don’t intend to focus on that exclusively. And if I think it’s important to the story, I will post a little reminder of my possible vested interest.

One opportunity that might be created for MobHappy though, is that I’ll be focusing a lot on getting to know emerging players in mobile content, games and applications. This is an area that we like covering here and hopefully you like reading about too. So this will mean we can expect more of this type of coverage too.

I hope you found this interesting and not too self-promotional. My intent is merely to keep you informed of possible bias creeping in to my writing and analysis - and to ask you to let me know if you spot anything! But I don’t think I’ll have a problem remaining disinterested in my writing and I hope you’ll carry on reading.

- Vodafone Lured To Silicon Valley To Energize VC Arm (cellular-news)

- Nokia examining AJAX (Reg Developer, via Tom Hume)

- Qualcomm’s profits up 11 percent (RCR News)

- French test phone payment system (CNet)

- Once and for all, you don’t need a firewall! (All About Symbian)

Motorola’s latest quarterly results give some indication into what the RAZR’s doing for them… and it’s not all good news, says one Wall Street analyst. After I said that Moto was beating a dead horse, Russell Beattie wondered why they should mess with something that works. It’s a fair point — but the results go to show that sometimes there’s more to “healthy” sales than raw unit numbers.

Merrill Lynch analysts took a look at two key metrics for any handset vendor — profit margins and average selling prices. ASPs are under pressure across the board, but particularly at a company like Motorola that’s making a big push into emerging markets, where obviously handsets need to carry lower prices. These prices also affect margins, the measure of how profitable the company’s products are. Motorola’s ASPs in the quarter declined from $146 to $139, while margins edged up only slightly, leading the firm to conclude:

Despite substantial growth in shipments of thin phones, ASPs declined from $146 to $139 and operating margins only grew marginally. Merrill Lynch noted this leading them to make three conclusions: 1) RAZR is cannibalizing mid-range phones and/or 2) RAZR is heavily discounted, and 3) Investment in emerging market channels hurts margins.

They go on to say they’re concerned about further margin deterioration once the RAZR goes out of style — a feeling that’s probably exacerbated by the absence of any ready replacement for it.

[tags]mobile, motorola, razr, mobile phones[/tags]

- Amdocs Buys Qpass (cellular-news)

- 3 launches mobile TV show (The Guardian)

- Opera Mini 2.0 coming later this month! (Opera Mobile blog)

- Verizon Wireless Faces the Music (JupiterResearch)

Dan Hoyt, the pervert that got busted by cameraphone for masturbating on the NYC subway got off in a different way this week — receiving just two years’ probation for the crime. Unsurprisingly, he confirms an earlier profile by again proving he’s a complete jackass:

Has he really changed?

I asked Hoyt an aching question. One that no amount of public humiliation or court-ordered therapy seems to have wrested from his mind: Did your victim secretly want it?

“She may hate me. She may like me and want to go home with me,” Hoyt said, to my amazement.

This comes despite his lawyer insisting that “therapy is removing these kinds of thoughts from Hoyt’s mind,” and Hoyt helpfully pointing out to the judge in the case that it’s illegal to take pictures in the subway. Yeah, because that’s so much more offensive than what you like to do, buddy.

[tags]mobile, sousveillance, dan hoyt[/tags]

Treo sites are abuzz this morning with blurry images of the Treo “Hollywood”, the next rumored device from Palm. I slated Motorola a bit during CTIA playing out the RAZR trend, and I think Palm faces a similar issue.

They’ve been talking for a few years about how smartphones are their core business, and that they’d release a range of Treos, which really have failed to materialize. The Treo 650 was an incremental upgrade to the 600 model — which was developed by Handspring before PalmOne bought them — while the Treo 700w featured a change of OS, but little in the way of hardware or form-factor innovation. The Hollywood really doesn’t either, though Palm appears to have finally caught on that maybe people really don’t like stubby external antennas after all.

The Treo hasn’t made a dent outside the US, and Palm on one hand seems content to maintain its fanboy customer base (though it’s alienated some of them by adopting Windows Mobile) and not make a serious effort to grow its business beyond these enthusiasts. Will the Hollywood do that? Probably not — it looks like little more than an incremental upgrade to the 700w.