I’m here in San Francisco today for the UIQ Fast Track developer event (give me a shout if you’re here too), and a Moto VP is giving a talk right now. He’s talking up the Z8, the company’s UIQ handset which was announced at 3GSM a few months back — and looks pretty fantastic. Now, with an eye on tomorrow’s product announcements that MOTOCEO Ed ZNDR mentioned last week, a couple more points on the Z8. First, it will apparently begin shipping mid-June, but more interestingly, the exec says the Z8 isn’t a “one-off” device, and that Motorola has invested too much in the platform to simply create a single product with it.
I’m still cautious ahead of Moto’s announcement tomorrow — but if the company can build on the promise of the Z8 and deliver a raft of similarly powerful, attractive and ultimately cool devices, perhaps they can turn things around. I’m expecting to see some devices that build on the RAZR by getting thinner and thinner, but I’m hoping to see some devices that build on the Z8’s heavy feature set.
Telephia and comScore announced today what many of us have long suspected - that the mobile web is growing like Topsy. In fact, 5.7 million people in the UK use the mobile web, as opposed to 30 million who access the web by PC. This means that the mobile web is already nearly one fifth the size of the PC web.
In the US, the stat is 17% (30 million of 176 million), which is pretty impressive considering that the US often lags behind a little in mobile. It’s also worth combining these two pieces of the jigsaw and saying that there are as many mobile web users in the US as there are PC web users in the UK.
In the UK, 67% of mobile web users are under 35, with the equivalent figure for PC web being 39%. Clearly then, the mobile web is a young man’s game - not a sexist statement, ladies, as 63% of mobile users are male. A similar situation, though not as pronounced, exists in the US, with 46% of users being under 35 (v’s 36% on the PC web) and 60% male (v’s 49% on the PC).
Accessing the web via the mobile, as any sane, thinking person must acknowledge is going to dwarf PC access. And indeed, I would argue that it’ll replace it altogether within the next 5 years - PC style functionality (keyboard and large screens) will be available via a docking station when you need it. So this is just the start of things and as fixed price data packages become available, handsets get better, speeds get faster and mobile sites are better designed and optimised, the pace of growth is simply going to explode.
It’s 5:30 on a Friday, and I’m not feeling the blogging rush of energy that I did last week, but I gotta share this gem from the ever-entertaining Ewan’s SMS Text News site. If you ever have the pleasure of meeting Ewan, be sure to ask him for one of his fantastic business cards.
Anything, anything, so long as it increases the cash, that feeds that sacred turnover. Why they do this with phones but not with other products, other industries, is beyond me. How long before your builder gets infected? “Would you like a shed with that?”. Or your local vicar; “How about we sign you up for Buddhism, too? Just in case you roam in a country with patchy Christian coverage”.
Motorola’s CEO Ed Zander’s been busy fending off the advances of activist investor Carl Icahn, who was looking to make Zander and the company’s management accountable for its missteps. It’s been quite obvious for a long time that the company didn’t have anything to build on the success of the RAZR, and now it’s feeling it. But the MOTOCEO has been trying to deflect some of the criticism by saying the company will announce some new 3G devices next week.
Apparently at an event in California this morning, ZNDR said that one of the devices will play 30 fps video, with the ability to watch high-quality movies from an SD card. That’s great; can’t wait to see it. But it sounds like another sign that the company is fundamentally lost.
When the rest of the mobile industry is focused on giving people better mobile tools to create and share media, Zander and Motorola are apparently more concerned with giving them tools to just consume it. Mobile users aren’t consumers anymore, they’re creators. If Motorola can’t grasp that, its future is bleak.
Update: I should have made it clearer that the ability to play 30 fps video isn’t particularly groundbreaking, as several handsets can already do it — including, as has been pointed out to me, the Motorola Z8, which was announced back at 3GSM in February. So is Zander going to re-announce the Z8 like it’s new, or is he just out of the loop with what the company’s doing?
Last week, Nokia announced several new handsets for emerging markets. At first glance, they look like what you’d expect: basic devices without the flashy features of the company’s high-end handsets. However, a couple of the most basic-looking, the 1200 and the 1208, have some cool features of their own that should give them a boost in emerging markets.
First, they support multiple phonebooks — a nod to the fact that in many developing nations, a single handset is shared among several family members or friends. The handsets allow for up to five separate phonebooks that can be managed individually, letting users have their own list of contacts, if not their own phone. Second, they have a call-tracking feature, which lets users set the maximum cost of a call before dialing. This lets users control their spending, but it also helps empower the entrepreneurs in these markets that buy a phone and airtime credit, then resell calls. Two small and superfluous features to those of us in developed markets, but two simple innovations that highlight how creative thinking can triumph even in the most basic of mobile environments.
Neither of these devices are going to have the likes of gadget-site writers writhing in the throes of lust, but these sorts of small innovations will make a big difference in their intended markets, and show the continuous improvement that’s possible on the most basic level of this industry.
The time has come for mobile widgets, so if you need to educate yourself or promote your company’s offerings, head over to London for Mobile Widget Week from 14th May to 22nd May. And yes, they realise that 9 days is a poetic interpretation of a week.
Here’s the agenda for the extravaganza, all of which can be accessed for the ridiculously paltry sum of £43.50 ($86.81 if you’re an American pondering a special visit).
It’s a shame I can’t make them, but I would be interested in any feedback form any of the gigs if you’re planning to go.
And while we’re talking about events and stuff, I’m planning to be at Informa’s Mobile Locations Services in Amsterdam, where I’m speaking on Mobile Advertising on May 15th. This is followed by a panel at Ad:Tech in Hamburg on 23rd May, after which I hotfoot it down to Madrid for the MMA’s EMEA Board Meeting - I have some time for meetings and stuff on Friday 25th May in Madrid if anyone fancies a coffee and a chat.
Is the post-voice mobile era upon us? Stats out of the UK show a significant drop in the number of voice calls both pre- and postpaid users are making each week. Last year, prepay users made an average of 14 calls per week; this year, it’s down to 10. Postpaid users similarly fell, from 35 to 27. Prepay users’ texting levels held steady, but postpaid users are now sending almost 50% more texts each week.
What’s interesting is this is happening as voice prices are falling, too — resulting in significantly lower spending, according to the survey. It says prepaid spending is down from £19.29 per month to £12.35 per month, while postpaid is off 20 percent. I’m not sure just how much I buy into the spending figures, though, as looking over the ARPU stats for Vodafone and T-Mobile for the last couple of years don’t show a similar level of disruption (and their subscriber growth doesn’t make me think people are flocking to cut-rate providers).
Anyhow, it’s worth noting the apparent drop in call volume. People are talking less, texting more — and, hopefully, using more data services in spite of the tariffs. To our readers in the UK: are you talking less, or have you noticed any change in people’s behavior? Perhaps we’re running out of things to say, or are even more fully embracing the brevity and non-verbal communication offered by SMS, email or IM. Maybe people are figuring out that they want to talk less on their mobiles, and do more with them.
“Use it or lose it” is one of the fundamental precepts of evolutionary biology and it seems that mobiles are having an affect on our short term memory. Mobile Marketing Magazine writes that a survey undertaken my mobile phone back up company, ZYB says that 69% of people can’t even remember 5 numbers stored on their phones.
While such a survey is obviously a little self-serving, as they’re trying to get people to use their free back-up service (59% of people don’t currently use any form of back-up), it does sound about right. Ever since our phones started to store numbers (and this applies to landlines as much as mobiles), we just don’t need to remember numbers any more. I couldn’t tell you my wife’s or my childrens’ mobile numbers, even though I use them practically everyday.
Psychologist, David Moxon is reported as saying
“One of the problems with living in such a ‘high-tech’ society is that our brains become lazy. Cognitive functions such as mathematical and memory processing are frequent casualties in the over-reliant world of calculators, computers and mobile phones.”
A few weeks back I wrote about a similar phenomenon of GPS resulting in the rapid loss of map-reading and navigation skills. I wonder what other skills we’re losing, almost without noticing, as a result of relying on technology.
I was reminded of this quite forcefully, when I was watching a DVD of the classic 1970’s BBC programme “The Survivors”, which I just about remember being broadcast originally, but has remained fixed in my memory ever since. Despite the dodgy fashions, the core theme is remarkably contemporary and is in many ways even more relevant today.
The big idea is that a virus wipes out 99% of the world population, causing a collapse in civilisation, meaning that the survivors have to start all over again. While they can survive in the short term by scavenging, it slowly dawns on them that modern society has basically robbed ordinary people of the skills they need to recreate a primitive form of society. I mean, could you shoe a horse, make a fire without matches, construct a basic dwelling, survive on foraged and hunted food or even grow enough food to feed yourself and your dependents?
It’s a great concept, dreamed up by Terry Nation (who also wrote for Dr Who and created Blake’s 7) and one that echoes today’s issues with threats like Avian Flu, Sars and bio warfare and terrorism on the one hand and an even more heavy reliance on technology on the other. I mean, imagine no Internet as a source of information to recreate all the skills we need to start society again. Sure, we still have books, but as we rely more and more on technology, ironically we’ll become less and less able to find a way back if this kind of disaster did ever happen.
This isn’t really a cheerful subject to be writing about early on a Monday morning and I’m clearly not anti-technology in any way. But I wonder if, like ZYB does for mobile phones, mankind itself needs some kind of back-up strategy just in case the unthinkable did ever happen.
Through Michael Mace’s ever-entertaining site, I found another blog I’ve been enjoying recently, Open IT Strategies by James West. He recently did a post on marketing guru-type-person Seth Godin’s challenge to pundits and analysts to predict just how well the iPhone’s going to sell. West says 1.5 million in 2007, and I thought it might be interesting to gather some more predictions here, so I’ll do mine, then leave yours in the comments.
Apple’s publicly stated goal is to sell 10 million iPhones before December 2008. I’m not convinced they’re going to make that, and I think sales are going to start very slowly and will see them sell 1 million devices before the end of 2007. Their distribution is going to be constrained thanks to the Cingular exclusive; outside fanboys and early adopters, the number of people willing to drop $500 on a phone is pretty small; and the iPhone is going to have all sorts of Apple version-1 problems. Things like manufacturing defects, complaints about scratches, durability problems and so on. These are going to cause Apple some real problems, because people will already be reluctant to spend the money for the iPhone, and poor early reviews saying stuff like how the screen gets badly scratched in your pocket, or cracks easily (you know, the sort of stuff Apple’s dealt with a lot) will be quite damaging.
So what do you think? Leave your prediction in the comments, or trackback from your own site.
One more post for Friday… I’ve been playing with a Samsung SYNC handset that Cingular sent me a couple of weeks ago, ostensibly to check out their mobile music offerings. I say ostensibly because I’m having a hell of a time getting the thing to work inside my house, since it seems to get really poor reception and jumps back and forth between the 2G and 3G networks quite a bit, then doesn’t work for some other unknown reason half the time.
Anyhow, Cingular touts the SYNC as a music phone, I guess because it has external keys for music playback. Of course, like so many other “music” phones, it uses a stupid proprietary jack for its headset that forces you to use the sucky Samsung headphones. I’m still waiting for some progress on this personal pet peeve of mine.
But this handset comes with a bonus second personal pet peeve: progress bars that aren’t really progress bars. As the video below illustrates, the “progress bar” in the SYNC’s browser (upper left, it’s a little hard to make out) doesn’t really indicate much progress, since it just resets itself after it finishes up. Perhaps the intention isn’t to show progress, just that the browser is doing something but if that’s the case, perhaps there’s a better way it can be illustrated.
Last week, Nokia announced 
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