Sun CIO on the Secure Mobile Enterprise: start with the server.
The article may read as marketing material, but there is a solid thread running though: having security based on standards, and architecting software as services, does make application mobilization easier. Your opportunities open up when you're starting from a solid foundation.
Gartner reports mobile handset sales up 35% for Q2. Forecast: 620m handsets for the whole of 2004.
Bluetooth in "continued period of significant growth", reports
Computing.
Shipments are up from 3m units per week, compared to 2m units per week last quarter.
"Mobile phone networks are developing a portfolio of paid-for, value-added services for football fans", according to The Guardian.
"These range from standard downloads such as ringtones and wallpaper to text alerts and exclusive player or manager interviews. Some are only available to subscribers, others on a pay-as-you-go basis. And as more and more rival services launch, the emphasis now is on segmentation - offering different bundles of content to different fans."
The key is exclusive "fresh new content updated frequently". "[...] Customers don't want magazine-style mobile content but intensive content to fill small, compressed periods during the day".
Orange and Vodafone open portal, while The Sun avoids portals with Java version of newspaper.
NewMediaAge reports that UK newspaper The Sun is preparing a downloadable Java version of the paper. The point of this, we suspect, is not technological as such, but a mind share issue. "The publisher believes its brand is strong enough to compete head-on with mobile operator portals like Vodafone Live!". Why negotiate with an operator portal (e.g., for positioning) when you can have a brand icon on a phone?
Meanwhile, Orange (live Vodafone) are opening up a second tier on their portals, "offering far greater access for content providers".
Korea: 30% of phones will be MP3 players by end of year; Samsung preview first mobile with hard drive; Operators and labels complain.
The report in Digital Chosunilbo goes on to state that "the big three" of Samsung, LG and Pantech & Curitel are supplying 4-5 million MP3 handsets. Adding in other manufacturers brings the estimate to 30% of the 3 million units expected to be sold in South Korea this year.
The Feature report on Samsung's media phone with a 1.5G hard drive. The SPH-V5400, to go on sale at the end of the year, may not be a huge leap in storage, but "the fact that Samsung's engineers have shoehorned a hard drive in way ahead of anybody else reinforces the company's ambitions".
Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to sign handset manufacturers to support windows media format -- currently only used on Windows Smartphones.
With iTunes appearing on Motorola phones, it seems that "Apple will let cell phones become low end playback devices while the iPod will continue to appeal to high end users."
But NewMediaAge report: "Universal, BMG, Vodafone and Orange have warned that moves by handset manufacturers to let consumers put songs they've bought online onto MP3 phones will damage the development of a legitimate mobile music market". The worry is that allowing mobiles to accept content from a PC will increase the risk of piracy for the record labels, while reducing data revenues for operators. Further, there is the chance that users will be able to create their own ringtones from MP3s, resulting in a dent to Europe's €2bn a year ringtone market.
Schools update parents via text, reports the BBC.
The Economist on 3G: Vision, meet reality (4 Sep 2004, pp. 75-77).
History: In 2000, operators paid €109 billion (US$125b) for 3G licenses in order to gain higher performance and capacity and for the promise of new services, such as video. The same again is expected to be spent in building the networks between 2001 and 2007. "Why? Because with their 2G networks filling up, and with no additional 2G capacity on offer from regulators, operators felt compelled to buy 3G licenses to ensure scope for future growth" (p. 75).
Launch: Japan and South Korea launched 3G networks in 2001, and they were "plagued by teething troubles". Today there are 16 commercial 3G network; 60 by the end of 2004 (Deutsche Bank estimates). "Having swung too far towards pessimism, the industry is now becoming cautiously optimistic about 3G".
"But while video-telephony sounds cool, the evidence from early 3G launches [...] is that hardly anybody uses it" (p 76). "Such services [music, news, games, picture messaging] 'are still embryonic, but are going to be very important,' insists Mr Cole [of A. T. Kearney]". The phone is touching many industries simultaneously and the changes will take years to play out.
Data: accounts for 16.3% of Vodafone revenue. Expected to be 15% in one year. Music downloads expected to be popular (see, e.g., The Apple iTunes Music Store deal with Motorola).
Voice: 3G provides more voice capacity, and can offer voice more cheaply than 2G. Operators will therefore look to move customers off their fixed lines onto 3G networks. Three already offer voice calls at a fifth of the price of competitors.
Segmentation: "'Unlike traditional voice services, the adoption of 3G services is very much customer-segment specific,' says Su-Yen Wong of Mercer" (p. 77). The generic brands that currently exist are designed to appeal to many. Sub-brands or partnerships with media brands, via "mobile virtual network operators" (e.g., Virgin), will allow services to be targeted at particular market segments.
"In Europe, 3G's main impact may simply be cheaper calls; in America, 3G may have most appeal to road warriors who want broadband [...]; in the developing world, 3G could help to extend telephony and internet access in rural areas; and in South Korea and Japan 3G might even – shock, horror – live up to the original lofty vision for the technology" (p. 77).
Mobile phones as customer loyalty programmes?
TheFeature discuss one approach.
NewMediaAge:
TV brands launch Java mobile content. "We can aggregate all the points of interest like a branded application on a PC".
Fingerprint security on mobile phones. Japan now, Europe later this year, reports Computing.
Rather than a touch pad, the systems use a smaller sweep sensor: the user swipes their finger over the sensor to unlock the phone. The sensor can also be used as a games control and, it is hoped, to mechanism to authorize electronic payments and transactions.
Mobile marketing: don't force a message, get customers engaged.
TheFeature's write up gives some great examples:
Both are examples of a customer reward in exchange for customer attention.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the author, and neither Spiral Arm Ltd nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.