Following Russell’s earlier post about stats on mobile web usage, this story caught my eye yesterday:

AFP - Text messaging still king in mobile phone world

Text messaging remains the most dominant mode of mobile data communication, as high costs and cumbersome procedures keep customers from fully embracing fancier applications, industry players say.

As revenue from voice service narrows, mobile operators are hard pressed to find a key new application that will continue generating cash like the simple yet still popular short messaging system (SMS), also known as text messaging.

There’s not much else in the story, really, which focuses on efforts to add features to SMS like sound effects — an attempt to ride a popular service as far as possible by adding superfluous extras to it, instead of removing the roadblocks to innovation elsewhere in the ecosystem. Check out that first sentence again:

“Text messaging remains the most dominant mode of mobile data communication, as high costs and cumbersome procedures keep customers from fully embracing fancier applications, industry players say. ”

There’s a lesson in there, somewhere. If only we could find it…

There’s a real dearth of good data about the mobile web. If I want to find out the top websites in any country in the world, region or even globally, there’s any number of free and paid-for stats I could access.

The same isn’t true of the mobile web at all, as it seems to be off the radar for many analysts and marketers alike. I’m involved in the mobile web on a day-to-day basis through AdMob and via our partnerships with mobile websites and via talks with actual and potential advertisers throughout the world. But I’m constantly surprised at how vibrant the mobile web ecosystem actually is and how relatively low awareness is among decision makers and the people who influence them.

To put this in perspective in 1996 (if you can remember that far back) you couldn’t open a newspaper or business magazine without talk of this Internet thing and how it was going to change our lives. But at that time only 19% of US adults used it and the stats would have been even lower in Europe.

However, results of a tracking survey by ComScore Networks released yesterday showed that 19% of US adults use the mobile Internet today and yet the mobile web scarcely gets a mention in the press. Furthermore, Europe is even higher, with Germany and Italy leading the way with 34% each, then France (28%), Spain (26%) and the Uk at 24% - though stats I’ve seen from M:Metrics puts the UK at 29%.

I also know that these probably aren’t the biggest markets from AdMob stats - I’m sure that S Africa and India would be even higher than that.

So why is the world ignoring this - which is every bit as revolutionary as the PC-web before? After all, if you believe some pundits (well, OK, me) the mobile will become the single most important device for accessing the web, even in developed markets within a 5 year time frame.

I don’t have an answer, but I can speculate.

Since most usage is probably led by early adopting youth markets, older people - the decision makers and influencers - just aren’t aware of what’s going on around them. If 25% of the population started wearing berets and stripey T-shirts, it would be blindingly obvious that something was happening. Well, OK maybe not in France, but you get the picture. Whereas what you do on your mobile is essentially a private thing and it’s not getting seen.

So, do the industry a favour and point out to a few people and the mobile web is here and it’s being used by a big enough percentage of the population to be called mainstream - and it’s happening right under our noses.

Maybe we should have a Mobile Web Day and spread the good news - any takers?

From The Register - Vodafone outage caused by robbery:

Cable stealing thieves were responsible for a network outage that left some Vodafone UK customers without service for most of yesterday.

A spokeswoman was unable to explain what the cables were for, but confirmed that the theft in north Wales caused the network downtime for most of Sunday.

She said: “There was a robbery of some cabling in north Wales and that caused parts of the network to go down. The Midlands, parts of the north-west and south-east, and north Wales were affected.”

I posted about some of the findings of mobileYouth a few months back. The report is now out and the team behind it are having a virtual networking event at Habbo Hotel.

So head on over there and pick the analyst’s brains and hang out with other cool and froody mobile people. Shame that the drinks aren’t quite the same in Habbo land.

I also heard about someone this week who conducted a whole bunch of job interviews in Second Life.

Welcome back to MobHappy for the jubilee 50th edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists. It was a year and a week or so ago that Russell kicked off the first Carnival, and it’s good to see things still going strong — so many thanks are in order to all the hosts of the past year, and of course all the contributors. Without you, the Carnival is nothing. And of course Russell deserves some kudos for keeping the whole thing together.

People lately have been keen on giving the Carnival a theme each week. This week, I’m hard pressed to come up with anything other than the flu, since that’s what I’ve got, but somehow that doesn’t seem too appealing. So I think I’ll leave the theme out this time and just get on with things, and without further ado…

One of the things I’ve grown to love best about the Carnival is how it pulls together people talking about the same issues or stories, but looking at them from completely different angles. A great example of that this week is Michael Mace and Stephanie Rieger talking about the rise of the smartphone at the expense of the PC and the PDA, respectively. Michael says that comments coming out of the Smartphone Show from Symbian management about the strength of smartphones remind him of people saying the PDA would kill the PC several years ago. But like PDAs, smartphones aren’t optimized for the creation of information and content, and he says this means the PC is safe for some time yet. Stephanie says that despite flatlining sales, there’s some life left in the PDA market, since they still fit a number of market niches, notably the educational market.

Anders Borg takes a look at the effort required to create mobile apps and services, and says that despite its shortcomings, Java ME remains about the best choice for application development. One of those shortcomings is fragmentation caused by the different implementations of Java by different handset manufacturers. Jason at Paxmodept chimed in this week with a look at the recently announced third-quarter handset figures, but from a developer’s perspective, noting how manufacturers’ market share translates in development environments. And while we’re talking about fragmentation, Thomas Landspurg wonders if widgets will present the next interoperability nightmare.

Justin at Mopocket details an email he received from Citibank about an upcoming test of a mobile payment system with Mastercard and Cingular. Mobile payments are an application that’s proven popular in Japan and South Korea, the two most advanced mobile markets in the world, but have struggled to gain a foothold elsewhere, for a variety of reasons. This fits in with Ajit Jaokar’s contribution this week, wondering if mobile innovations from those countries are destined to stay there, with their success in other places limited.

Elsewhere, Wap Review gives mobile UGC site Treemo the once-over, Martin Sauter this week looked into how 3G license pricing affects deployment of 3G services, while Matt Miller, aka The Mobile Gadgeteer, reviews a 3G device, the Nokia N91. Rudy de Waele has a comprehensive overview of proximity marketing, which dovetails nicely with my own experience with a Bluetooth-enabled ad poster. Finally, looking at the business of the business, Chetan Sharma has a thorough report on the future of mobile advertising, while Tomi Ahonen takes The Economist to task for overlooking mobile in its recent telecoms survey.

All in all, another week packed with great reading, and after some consideration (and cold medicine), I’ve settled on Michael Mace’s post on smartphones as PCs as my pick for best of the week. Thanks again to all the contributors, and see you all next week at Tarek Speaks Mobile.

So, sometimes I’m wrong (not very wrong actually) and sometimes stuff I’ve been saying for ages (long before anyone else) seems to be coming true.

A couple of themes I’ve been writing about over the years is that Location Based Services, if done right, are a winner and that mobile TV is a bit of a dog - certainly in the short term. Sure, I think video clips will be big, especially User Generated, but TV on the mobile doesn’t yet have mass appeal.

And then along comes a survey from In-Stat that says pretty much the same thing.

1,000 early adopters and business people were interviewed and while 15% expressed strong interest in Mobile TV, 53% wanted their phone to help them find their way around and find local services, like restaurants.

Now the caveat here is that business people aren’t going to be Digital Natives, using Rupert Murdoch’s expression, but Digital Immigrants. So what they say they want, might be very different from a 20 year old who was practically born with a mobile in their hand and who can use one in pitch black with her hand behind her back.

Having said that, I think these Digital Natives will still prefer LBS over Mobile TV, albeit on the basis of using LBS in different ways. Services like Loopt are clear winners to this new generation, provided they can overcome the challenge of working with operators/carriers.

Obviously, for this type of navigation to work usefully, it has to be superfast, which is a technical challenge. But I’m still holding out that LBS will be up there with voice, messaging, audio/video player, video/camera and web browsing in the suite of most frequently used tools in the mobile phone of tomorrow.

Anyone think I’ve missed anything in that list?

Steve Jobs was recently quoted as saying

“That’s like saying you don’t want to kiss your lover’s lips because everyone has lips,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.” 

In relation to a question about the danger of the iPod declining in popularity because of its very ubiquity.

What Steve failed to say was that the iPod will decline because of the rise of the mobile phone MP3 player.

Apple will release its third quarter earnings in a few hours. My call is that it’ll show the third consecutive quarterly fall in iPod sales. And furthermore, the decline won’t be because of a fall in iPod’s market share of stand alone MP3 players, but due to the overall decline in the market AKA the rise in sales of MP3 phones.

Sorry, you Mac Fan Boys, but the iPod is a terminal patient in any mass market sense.

Informa are currently running a survey for UK residents only, with cash prizes and Orange PAYG phones to be won.

Head on over here and take part.

Back in August, I wrote a post about Hypertag setting up a network of net-connected Bluetooth units around London for marketers to use. I thought it was an interesting idea, but some other people, like Tom Hume, didn’t really agree (though I take some pride in being able to get coffee to shoot out his nose).

The crux of Tom’s argument was basically that usability and user experience was really poor, for a variety of reasons. And, I’ve got to admit — he’s right. I ran into a Bluetooth-equipped poster in the subway here in London and tried it out. I had to add “Whistler” (the name of the resort being promoted) to the Bluetooth name of my device to opt in, and as soon as I did, I got a Bluetooth message. It was an animated GIF telling me I hadn’t won a free trip, but to visit their web site or something.

Obviously changing the Bluetooth name acts as an opt-in mechanism. That’s great, better than bluespamming everybody on the platform. Making the change wasn’t too difficult, but then again, I’m used to doing this sort of thing. As Tom suggests, asking average users to do this is a stretch. Never fear, though — the poster provides helpful instructions:

Do they really expect people to do all that? Somebody must be having a laugh with the “(Yes, it’s that easy.)” bit just above it, because that really isn’t easy at all. It’s stupidly difficult, as Tom pointed out.

[tags] mobile, mobile marketing, bluetooth[/tags]

Stefan Eriksson turned down a plea deal Monday, rejecting prosecutors’ offer that would have sent him to prison for two years and four months — “I cannot agree that I stole the car because I didn’t,” he said through an interpreter. If he’s convicted on all the charges facing him, he’ll go to jail for 11 years. Guess he’s going to go down fighting. That, or he’ll point at Dietrich again.

And if you haven’t checked out Wired’s comprehensive overview of the rise and fall of Gizmondo, Eriksson and the rest of the Uppsala Mafia, it’s a good read.

[tags]gizmondo, stefan eriksson[/tags]