I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago, for which I was gleefully called out on by some Apple fan boys. Basically, I predicted that the iPod quarterly sales would decline again due to strong growth in phone-based MP3 players - a triumph for the Conversionists over their gang rivals, the Separatistas.

In the event, I was wrong. The iPod did show a small growth after two quarters of decline. But never one to stop banging my drum until proved conclusively wrong, I still think the days are very numbered for the stand-alone MP3. In fact, sales of the converged MP3 mobile are so rampant that they already considerably out-number pure plays.

According to the latest from Nokia, they already sell more phones with MP3’s that iPod’s annualised sales. iPod sold 8.7 million last quarter, which gives them an annualised sale of 32.8 million - OK, let’s be generous and say 40 million, to take into account Christmas and other seasonal fluctuations.

Last year, Nokia sold 46.5 million and expect to sell 100 million this year.

Now the last refuge for the Separatistas will be “Yeah, but just coz people can use their phone’s MP3 players doesnt mean that they will. I mean, like, I never use my phone’s calculator.”

Well, according to Nokia 2 out of 3 people already use this part of the phone’s facilities, so that doesn’t really wash either. In fact, doing the maths for you, more than 20 million more people will use Nokia MP3 players this year than buy iPods.

Now, I’m sure we’ll get some usual suspects saying “but, but, but..” and yes, I appreciate that some people will always prefer to use a stand-alone device for the foreseeable future - myself included, by the way. But, let’s face it, the battle for the mainstream has already been fought and won. The Conversionists have taken this field and are already setting their sites on video cameras.

[tags] ipod, separatista, convergionist, nokia, mp3 [/tags]

I’m not going to rehash my point of view on .mobi; I’ve done so plenty before, and plenty of holes have been poked in their plans on other sites as well. Needless to say, I’m not a big fan. And I find their plans to auction off so-called premium domains nothing short of ridiculous. The justification is that the process keeps the domain names out of the hands of “parties who would only sell them on the aftermarket”. These auctions do nothing nothing of the sort; they simply take money that would otherwise be spent in the secondary market and put it in mTLD’s pockets, furthering the opinion that .mobi is little more than a massive moneygrab.

It’s a cunning plan, and one that’s worked like a charm:

The first set of nine dotMobi Premium Domain Names were auctioned via
Moniker.com during the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East domain conference on October 27,
2006, and achieved record results for a new TLD (top level domain). Selling
for $200,000 and $100,000, flowers.mobi and fun.mobi respectively, are
among the top 20 domain sales for 2006 - unprecedented for a newly
introduced TLD (top level domain).

They’ve even got a nice quote from the guy that bought flowers.mobi, saying his company “looks forward to launching the world’s first mobile site for flowers and becoming a dominant force in this new space.” His name? Rick Schwartz.

I’m sure this is just a coincidence, but “Rick Schwartz” also happens to be the name of a guy who anointed himself the “Domain King” several years ago, and made $20 million reselling domain names, including $1.32 million on men.com. This appears to the same guy who claimed in a 2005 Business 2.0 article that he makes $2 million a year from domain parking, and who also sits on the board of the World Association of Domain Name Developers — the very group that puts on the domainer trade show T.R.A.F.F.I.C East at which .mobi held its auctions.

Like I said, I’m sure this is just a coincidence and these two people just happen to share the same name. But if not, and the buyer of flowers.mobi does turn out to be the same Rick Schwartz that a simple Google search shows is a well-known and experienced domainer, it would seem to completely undermine mTLD’s claims that their motives are so pure, that they’re not interested in the money, and are holding these auctions as a means to equitably distribute .mobi domains. These claims weren’t convincing before; with each press release mTLD sends out, they get less and less credible.

[tags]mobile, mtld, .mobi, dotmobi, tld, domains[/tags]

I was flipping through radio stations last night in the car, and managed to catch some of a BBC World Service show called Culture Shock. I tuned in at the end of a report on augmented cognition, which sounds a little freaky. Anyhow, they had on a “trendwatcher” to discuss it and a few other things, and he somehow worked BlackBerrys into the conversation. The devices used to carry a certain cachet — as in, “Ooh, look, I have a BlackBerry, because I’m a big shot” — but this guy said that people are increasingly shunning them, because they think carrying one now is a sign that you’re low enough on the totem pole that you have to be a slave to your email and constantly reachable by your superiors.

It sounds like the corporate world’s iteration of “that place isn’t cool, everybody goes there”, and if things are really playing out this way, it’s a bad sign for operators, RIM, device manufacturers and push email companies counting on the market to keep growing. On the other hand, there are lots more peons than upper management in the world. It’s sort of the opposite of what’s happened with mobile phones in genera. First they were generally status symbols for the wealthy and used by business big shots, and eventually they made their way into mainstream ubiquity — but those original adopters haven’t given them up.

Anyhow, my question is this — is anybody actually seeing this trend play out? I feel like I’m seeing more and more people using email devices all the time, so I think this guy’s prognostication is a bit premature. Equally possible is that he was just talking a load of BS, since he also said that mobile phones look like Star Trek communicators because all mobile phone designers watch Star Trek.

[tags]mobile, blackberry, push email[/tags]

Tarek Abu-Esber has the latest installment of The Carnival of the Mobilists at his site, where he’s done a great job recapping the week’s best writing on the Web about mobile. Be sure to check it out.

I’ve been messing around with Net News Wire and its ability to sync up to NewsGator Online, thinking that might be a nice way to read RSS feeds on my mobile device (something I don’t really do anyway, but still). So I get everything synced with a minimum of fuss, eventually located the page where I could set up the mobile version (which is here, if anybody is looking for it) and got it going. Then, it gives me this URL to hit from my mobile browser to access my feeds:

(The blurred out bit is part of a number that changes for each subscriber). Like the person who put the “It’s that easy” line on the stupidly difficult Bluetooth poster, NewsGator must be having a laugh. It makes you wonder if the person that thought that sort of URL was a good idea ever tried, you know, entering it on a mobile device. While I guess the effort here was to keep people from having to log in to a site each time, the decision to make that usability step results in this heinous URL. “But you’ll only ever have to enter it once…” I bet they think. I’m hard pressed to want to enter it at all.

Idea a Day does what it says on the tin. You sign up and they send you an idea every day by email. Ideas are on all subjects, come from the readers and some of them are very good indeed.

Day 2261

“Equip cell phones to allow personalised vibration sequences so that the user can identify who is calling when the phone is in a pocket.”

Rather obvious when you think about it. Or maybe some phones have it already?

I’ll be in New York from 5th November for a few days, at Ad:Tech if anyone fancies meeting up.

Perhaps get together at a local watering hole to chat about all things mobile and anything else that springs to mind at the time. Sunday night would be good.

Much as I hate all this 2.0 and 3.0 business, it does seem to have entered the popular vernacular, so what can you do? Just as every scandal has “-gate” rudely appended, we’re obviously stuck with these and can’t do much bur grin and bear it.

That aside, I was listening to Cameron Reilly’s G’Day World podcast - actually a personal favourite of mine. Cam also runs the TPN Network, which has some great podcasts and he has recently made the decision to leave Australia and move to California in search of funds. So good luck Cam and if you’re a VC, I’m sure I can make an intro for you. Any entrepreneur who has enough faith in his abilities to move his family to another continent is going to succeed - or die doing it - and that’s the kind of guy you want to have running one of your portfolio companies. Shame about the sunnies.

Anyway, Cam was talking about the Digital Hollywood conference in LA at the moment and made some interesting points, that are worth debating a little. Cam was reporting what others were saying, so these aren’t necessarily his opinions.

Firstly, what would Web 3.0 look like? Well, it seems to be the opinion of the great and the good that it would involve integration between the mobile web and the PC web. Hurray - at last mobile seems have reached the conscious of the West Coast techie, or some of them at least.

I certainly believe that we’re going to see some very exciting developments in the next two years as companies get with the programme and start building out mobile websites. If this is your business, or could be your business, start evangelising and selling your mobile web building prowess now.

Cam seemed to be under the impression that not many people were using the mobile web currently. Hmmm, it might be an age thing - as I wrote yesterday this is a mainstream phenomenon and I know it’s big in Australia too from AdMob stats.

The other consensus that seems to be emerging is that while people expect the web to deliver everything for free, when people access it on their phones they’ll expect to pay for the same thing. Maybe, this would allow web companies like You Tube to monetise the mobile channel, the thinking goes.

Heavens knows where this thinking started. Sure, people pay for mobile handsets and a package for voice and sms and maybe even some data costs. But that’s like buying a PC and paying for Internet access. Now, historically, some people have also paid for ringtones, though that market seems to be shrinking. And they pay for games, just like on the PC. But thereafter, I see little evidence that people will start saying “Well, of course, if I do something on my mobile, I’ll happily pay through the nose, even though I’ve grown used to it being completely free elsewhere”.

This isn’t going to work, particularly in the youth markets who are the early adopters here. Kids don’t see any different between using their phone and the PC and woe betide you if your business model makes this unfounded and unproven assumption. They’re going to expect it for free and if you don’t it to them on this basis, someone else will.

You have been warned.

In my post yesterday about mobile web usage, I concluded with a rather throw-away remark about having a Mobile Web Day - partly a celebration of where we are already and partly to evangelize to non-users and the press that it’s big, useful and mainstream, already.

I reposted this over at the Oxford Forum and so far a few pretty high profile people (Tomi Ahonen and Flirtomatic’s Mark Curtis) have expressed some interest in the idea. The Oxford Forum is a free to join discussion forum about mobile, so sign up if you haven’t already or leave your thoughts in a comment below.

What I was thinking about was a spontaneous, decentralised grass-roots movement where people pledge some action on the day (yet to be decided). That might be committing to support it in their blog. Telling a friendly journalist. Giving a demo of a favourite service to a couple of people. Or give away their paid-for service free for a day. Every little bit helps and maybe some of us can do some big things too.

I also don’t want to own this - so I set it free into the community. Leave a comment and tell us what you think. Good idea or not? If we do it, how could you help?

Guy Kewney first reported the rumors last week, and now eWeek’s running a story saying that SavaJe, the developer of a Java mobile phone OS, is about to go under. This is hardly surprising, really — about this time last year I was surprised to find that the company was still in business, and I’ve always thought the company was little more than a ruse by operators, despite the other huge investments they’d managed to attract.