Reports from mblox, one of the premium sms providers, was that off portal transactions were 1.4 billion last year. Off portal means downloads and premium SMS that were not through the networks (Vodafone Live! T-Zones etc).
This is significant because both my prediction and the evidence is that mobile phone users do not trust the content or service provided by the network portals.
Looks out for an increase in non-networked sanctioned transactions over the next year.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Chiltern Railways has become the first train company in the UK to sell mobile phone tickets to their passengers.
Passengers can buy Chiltern’s £5 online Eday ticket for journeys between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street or Stratford –upon-Avon via the website www.chilternrailways.co.uk. The Eday ticket is available only on certain off peak trains.
Passengers receive their ticket in the form of a barcode sent directly to their mobile phone by an MMS. Staff on board the train and at the station will be able to check the ‘mobile ticket’ with barcode scanners. If the phone can't display the barcode then the journey details can still be read in text only format.
Commercial Director for Chiltern Railways, Neil Micklethwaite said: “We are happy to be leading the industry as the first train company in the United Kingdom to sell this new format of mobile phone ticketing to our passengers. We have listened to our passengers and what they want is a simpler and easier way to purchase tickets for their travel. "
“The next step is to install new scanning gate technology at Marylebone station which will allow passengers with mobile phone tickets to scan their own ‘mobile tickets’ as they walk through the ticket gates,” Mr Micklethwaite said. Cubic Transportation Systems is supplying Chiltern Railways with the new gate technology, due for installation next month.
Mobile phone ticketing is now available for Chiltern passengers for the next three months with the aim of develop this as a service permanent. Ticket purchases on the move from mobile phones will be possible at a later stage, as well as through the internet .
For more mobile ticketing see txt4ever
Mobile Content Revenues on the Increase (again!)
SMS and multimedia messaging services will account for more than half of total revenues for worldwide mobile operators in 2011, a research firm has forecast.
Based on the latest research, SMS and MMS will represent more than 50% of the total revenues for operators from 2010.
Mobile access to the Internet will be the driver for the explosive growth expected in this market. The research company Informa Telecoms & Media, has predicted the market for content will be $150 billion by 2011.
In 2006 revenues for SMS etc was $60 and $67.4 in 2007.
Content management systems, such as Ping Corp's immedia24 will help drive the increase.
In particular, revenues from music, TV, games, gambling, adult content, together, would more than double - from $18.8 billion made in 2006 to $38 billion over the next five years.
The returns from this huge growth would be shared by new players – content providers, publishers and associated technology and service providers, which would become part of the industry over time. User-generated content and user communities, expected to eventually become common features on the mobile space, would also account for $13.2 billion over the period, the report said.
Music would continue to be a major revenue earner in the mobile entertainment market but its role would be diminished by growing demand for mobile TV and video services. Informa estimates music, which last year enjoyed a 40 percent share of this market, would decline to 36 percent in 2011.
A large part of this growth can be credited to the arrival of broadband mobile services and technologies like the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) which allow users to enjoy surfing and watching online videos while on the move. The download speed and streaming experience made possible by these technologies are comparable to those seen on desktop PCs and notebooks.
Based on the latest research, SMS and MMS will represent more than 50% of the total revenues for operators from 2010.
Mobile access to the Internet will be the driver for the explosive growth expected in this market. The research company Informa Telecoms & Media, has predicted the market for content will be $150 billion by 2011.
In 2006 revenues for SMS etc was $60 and $67.4 in 2007.
Content management systems, such as Ping Corp's immedia24 will help drive the increase.
In particular, revenues from music, TV, games, gambling, adult content, together, would more than double - from $18.8 billion made in 2006 to $38 billion over the next five years.
The returns from this huge growth would be shared by new players – content providers, publishers and associated technology and service providers, which would become part of the industry over time. User-generated content and user communities, expected to eventually become common features on the mobile space, would also account for $13.2 billion over the period, the report said.
Music would continue to be a major revenue earner in the mobile entertainment market but its role would be diminished by growing demand for mobile TV and video services. Informa estimates music, which last year enjoyed a 40 percent share of this market, would decline to 36 percent in 2011.
A large part of this growth can be credited to the arrival of broadband mobile services and technologies like the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) which allow users to enjoy surfing and watching online videos while on the move. The download speed and streaming experience made possible by these technologies are comparable to those seen on desktop PCs and notebooks.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Why I Hate Vodafone
A bit like banks, all mobile networks are rubbish. However I reserve my greatest distain for Vodafone.
I've had two contracts with them: one for voice and one for my Blackberry email.
Firstly with the voice, the tarriffs are very poor. Other networks such as T-Mobile, Orange and even 3 have far more generous offers.
Having called them (it took 3 frustrating calls to find someone who could help) I gave them the chance to match an offer that I found on T-Mobile. Most of these offers involved charging more than the other operator for LESS minutes etc. In the end they admitted that they couldn't get near the T-Mobile offer.
Then there was the issue of data. I was paying £15 per month for data only on my Blackberry. except that it is only email data. If I click on a link in an email I'm charged for it. How can anyone separate data? It's just bits flying about the internet. Whether it ends up in my browser or my email is irrelevant in terms of charging.
Vodfafone did offer an SMS/data package. In this they treated them as the same bundle and you could use x amount of data or x number of SMSs. The allowance was stingy but at least there was one.
Except they have now separated the two. You have to buy internet data on it's own. And the cost is £2.35 per megabyte. Totally outrageous. Even worse, try finding this information on their website. It's only after some considerable grilling that I found this out.
T-Mobile charge a more reasonable £7.50 for 1 gig of data. That's more like a fair price.
The bottom line is that Vodafone are restricting downloads, particularly third party downloads with their ridiculous policy. We have systems that can easily deliver full track audio - it's around 3 meg for a standard song using AAC encoding. So over £6 to download if you are on a vodafone tariff. with T-Mobile it's a more reasonable 75p per meg (not fantastic, but not outrageous).
With the advent of the Iphone, we need networks to allow mobile users to download data at a reasonable rate. The cost is probably less than a few pence per meg. So how about 10p per meg for a download? They're still making money and more people will use it.
Better still more people will go onto the 3g network and they can make even more out of premium billing.
My next campaign will be for Fair Data for mobile users!
I've had two contracts with them: one for voice and one for my Blackberry email.
Firstly with the voice, the tarriffs are very poor. Other networks such as T-Mobile, Orange and even 3 have far more generous offers.
Having called them (it took 3 frustrating calls to find someone who could help) I gave them the chance to match an offer that I found on T-Mobile. Most of these offers involved charging more than the other operator for LESS minutes etc. In the end they admitted that they couldn't get near the T-Mobile offer.
Then there was the issue of data. I was paying £15 per month for data only on my Blackberry. except that it is only email data. If I click on a link in an email I'm charged for it. How can anyone separate data? It's just bits flying about the internet. Whether it ends up in my browser or my email is irrelevant in terms of charging.
Vodfafone did offer an SMS/data package. In this they treated them as the same bundle and you could use x amount of data or x number of SMSs. The allowance was stingy but at least there was one.
Except they have now separated the two. You have to buy internet data on it's own. And the cost is £2.35 per megabyte. Totally outrageous. Even worse, try finding this information on their website. It's only after some considerable grilling that I found this out.
T-Mobile charge a more reasonable £7.50 for 1 gig of data. That's more like a fair price.
The bottom line is that Vodafone are restricting downloads, particularly third party downloads with their ridiculous policy. We have systems that can easily deliver full track audio - it's around 3 meg for a standard song using AAC encoding. So over £6 to download if you are on a vodafone tariff. with T-Mobile it's a more reasonable 75p per meg (not fantastic, but not outrageous).
With the advent of the Iphone, we need networks to allow mobile users to download data at a reasonable rate. The cost is probably less than a few pence per meg. So how about 10p per meg for a download? They're still making money and more people will use it.
Better still more people will go onto the 3g network and they can make even more out of premium billing.
My next campaign will be for Fair Data for mobile users!
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Mobile as Web content
This is an interesting article, which I have copied here. The full version can be found by following this link:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2007/01/as_web_content_.html
Mobile as Web contente-mail and mobile
Then consider the other big application currently on the internet: e-mail and thus person-to-person messaging. Here we have a legacy messaging system which is cumbersome, tedious and slow - e-mail. On the mobile phone we can have e-mail (such as on a Blackberry). Many smartphones from the Treos to the Nokia E-Series do e-mail. So again, while it won't kill e-mail, the mobile internet can readily replicate the e-mail experience. And if you've ever seen the addiction of a Blackberry user (who call it the Crackberry for crack cocaine the drug) - then they DEFINITELY prefer e-mail on their smartphone than on a PC.
But the mobile phone has its own messaging platform, SMS text messaging. This is now the first of the new applications, like talk shows, game shows, music videos and reality TV were to cinema. Something that does not work in the old format, but is very compelling on the new. We ALREADY have a bigger service - by users and by revenues - than anything on the fixed internet. There are 1.1 billion people who use the internet, but out of 2.7 billion mobile phone users, 1.8 billion people use SMS text messaging. We have our first new web content category, which has only emerged on the mobile internet, and cannot even be replicated on the traditional internet (yes yes I know we can do it, but practically, it is very rare to find people using SMS on a PC. If not e-mail, on the PC they then tend to use IM Instant Messaging, not SMS text messaging)
Music and mobile
Remember iTunes? So yes, we can buy music - MP3 songs - on the current lecacy internet. We already can buy MP3 songs directly to mobile phones. The IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry, the global umbrella organization for the music industry) - just released its music report in January and found that half of all digital music in 2006 was sold directly to mobile phones. So yes, we can consume the "identical" or very similar experience of MP3 song purchases and downloads on the legacy internet and the mobile internet.
But again, the mobile internet has already innovated in this music area. Ringing tones. They are worth over 6.5 billion dollars (already over six times larger than the size of digital music downloads such as iTunes). Please don't turn snobbish at me now, and claim ringing tones are not real music. Fifteen years ago when the internet came, a lot of old fogies suggested e-mail was not legitimate communincation because it did not transmit on paper and could not have a signature. All kinds of music innovations have been dismissed by older generations as "not being real music" such as rock n' roll which was supposedly not music, and rap which many said was not music, and the recent innovation of sampling and mashing existing music, etc. Ask the person forking over the money. If that teenager spends two dollars to put Shakira's music on the cellphone, who cares if it is of lousy sound quality, and extremely short duration. It is music.
And ringing tones were a content format invented for the mobile internet, not the legacy PC based internet. We have another of our new service categories, optimized for the mobile internet.
Social networking and mobile
Then look at MySpace, the massively successful social networking site online. With 90 million active users. 19% of Americans maintain a profile on MySpace. But look at Cyworld in South Korea. It offers similar profiles like MySpace (and much much more) - but offers access not only by broadband (South Korea is the world's most connected society, with highest penetration of broadband) but also access via 3G mobile phone (South Korea has highest penetration of 3G phones). On Cyworld today, 43% of all South Koreans maintain a personal profile. Can web content migrate to the mobile internet and if optimised, become a BIGGER success there? Of course it can.
YouTube? The massively successful video sharing site with 120 million users worldwide. Cyworld's 22 million 3G cameraphone users upload more videos daily than YouTube's users. The mobile internet is inherently superior, because we have the content creation device (cameraphone/videophone) in our hand - and in our pocket - all the time. AND it has permanent connectivity at high speed.
Oh, and let me show how the mobile internet is already influencing the fixed internet. We've written about SeeMeTV here at our blogsite. The 3G mobile video sharing service, where every time when someone looks at your video, YOU get paid a royalty. A radical innovation in user-generated content. Invented on mobile. Now consider yesterday's announcement by YouTube that they will start to pay the content producers of the most-viewed videos. This concept was invented on the advanced internet, the mobile internet, and now copied onto the legacy internet.
Friday, January 26, 2007
UK SMS Volumes still Rising
The UK text messaging total broke through the 4 billion barrier for the first time during December 2006.
December’s total of 4.3 billion takes the overall figure for 2006 to 41.8 billion (issued by the MDA), surpasses their prediction 40 billion text messages. Before to December 2006, the highest recorded SMS total was for 3.8 billion for October 2006
Person-to-person texts sent across the UK networks throughout December of the year show a growth of 38% on the 2005 figure of 3.1 billion, and represent an average of 138 million messages per day. On Christmas Day this leapt to 205 million texts, an average of 8 million per hour, with the figure for New Year’s Day 2007 even higher reaching a record breaking 214 million, the highest daily total ever recorded by the MDA.
When compared to the mere 42 million messages sent per day five years ago throughout December 2001, it becomes clear just how far the UK has come in embracing text messaging technology which has emerged from a popular craze to becoming an essential communication tool, inclusive to all age groups. The forecast is that figures will continue to rise this year to a total of 45 billion text messages for 2007, with an average of 3.75 billion messages being sent per month and 123 million messages per day.
The prediction is also for a similar growth in business text messaging. Although not measured in the same way, web-based text messaging systems such as txt4ever.com have shown a rise in volumes throughout the year.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Immedia 24
Our new site, Immedia 24 is up and running. The aim of this is to allow anyone to publish content to mobile phones, quickly and easily.
It's a web based system that manages keywords, shortcodes and the files themselves. It also creates web previews for users to browse.
It's a web based system that manages keywords, shortcodes and the files themselves. It also creates web previews for users to browse.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)