Mobility

Mobile Developer Live: Silicon Valley February 26, 2009

I just got off  the phone with an event rep and it didn't take long to sense the pain he must be going through as company after company seem to be pulling out of events in this challenging economic environment.  It must be tough to sell a minor sponsorship at a rate of $66 per attendee. Two days ago there was another rep pushing a $15k sponsorship for a spot with a t.b.d. agenda-- they only had the venue and a techy name. Earlier in the month a mere $60k promised good food, golf, and sunshine.     (Lotsa money = ouch)

We keep hearing about economic bubbles bursting, from tulips to housing. Is it possible that we'll see the proliferation of events come back down to earth as well? Let's face it, the events industry learned that mobile is hot and we saw a flurry of them come out in the last couple of years. 

Now however, rumors are circulating about big names pulling out of some of the larger shows. It's a difficult cost to absorb at a time when many companies are cutting back and even laying off employees. Recently CTIA stated they expect 2009 attendance to even with last year. Whether they meet that goal remains to be seen.

 

Economic downturn felt by trade shows

Fewer, but higher-quality attendees expected January 21 2009 - 5:59 am ET | Gary E. Salazar | RCR Wireless News

The sad news is that these events are great places to network and learn. The mobile community isn't overwhelmingly large and many of us share the same challenges within the common ecosystem.  Usually if you can walk away with a few nuggets of good information or meet someone who can answer your question-- your time is well spent.  

Keynote recognizes the value of bringing the mobile community together and wants to make sure that all ships continue to rise, even when the seas are a bit rough.  Therefore we've put together a free event for mobile developers to come and discuss common challenges and techniques for overcoming them.  On February 26th in San Mateo we're hosting Mobile Developer Live: Silicon Valley beginng at 2pm PST.  The event will also be broadcast via the web if your not in town, but let's face it, getting out of the office and networking is half of the fun.

To attend in person: http://offers.keynote.com/go/keynote/MDL_inperson

To attend live online: http://offers.keynote.com/go/keynote/MDL_remote 

Sign up today and we'll save a seat for you.  I can't promise a round of golf or 85°F, but you will get good content at a price your boss won't mind.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela

In the clouds

At a recent round table I attended in Vancouver on the topic of mobile convergence, we were appropriately situated to tackle the topic at hand.  We were hosted by the Northwest Pacific Wireless Summit some 30 floors up in the gleaming Bell building. Well above the winter fog and clouds that had gathered on this day the view took our breath away. Being so high up we could take in the majesty of the beautiful environs which includes water on all sides and snow capped mountains as far as the eye can see. The site of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver is a city that is situated amongst such beauty, you have to fly in and see it for yourself to believe it.

I say we were well situated because when using the term "convergence" in a mobile context the issue you are really talking about is cloud computing. And while Amazon and even Salesforce maybe doing interesting things to define cloud computing for hosting services and CRM, cloud computing is what mobility and mobile computing is all about.  Historically "OTA" is the term mobile developers have used but as it started to become synonymous with over-the-air-synchronization, the term started to become limiting rather than being suggestive of the power of mobile computing.

Let's take the much vaunted applications for the iPhone available in the iTunes store. Most of the applications are casual games or utlities that don't need to access anything beyond the phone. The 2 applications Apple itself promotes are eBay and Loopt which show off the capabilities of mobile cloud computing - though not self-described as such. 

Loopt is a case study on the power of mobile cloud computing and provides a recipe of sorts for what successful mobile applications will look like over the next decade.  These applications will all have 3 things that drive their success: Texting, the killer mobile app without which there is no mobile explosion, gives the application differentiation (vs say a PC) and relevancy (because of immediacy) for a new generation.  Second, a customized app experience separate from a Web or WAP page.  No matter how good mobile pages and browsers get, they don't stand a chance against apps built for the device in hand. (For more on this see Keynote's iPhone study comparing Yahoo vs. Fox.) And third a service that accesses cloud computing to deliver information and ultimately unique value to the phone or if you'd rather, to the mobile device.

It's an exciting time to be in the clouds.

[Image courtesy of Apple.]

What would you pay to protect $2000 of income per day?

Business is Business

No doubt all of us will agree that internet technologies and wireless communications will continue to be a big deal as the years click by. But with all new things consumers need to be aware of what they are getting themselves into when jumping on the bandwagon of online technologies.

One of my fellow Twitter users @jerell wrote an article on http://www.twittertruth.com regarding a spam promotion making its way around Twitter. He was the recipient of solicitations being pushed to many Twitter users. He documented the whole incident and with his permission I have used a few images from his article.

Many Twitter users received a message with a link that would take them to a screen like this:

There was a "Terms and Conditions" screen with the following information:

 

If you look closely, you see that by giving your mobile number, you are actually signing up for a monthly subscription service that will be billed to your account. The charge to your bill is $9.99 per month for most carriers.

The promotion is sponsored by an organization called "toolazy.net".

Part of the fine print also says that you can send the the keyword "STOP" to the SMS short code 47941, also the "HELP" keyword is supported. At least this appears to be consistent with industry standards on how short codes should work. On my iPhone I sent "HELP" to 47941 and I received a text message response within a few seconds. Even though I did not subscribe to their promotion, I also sent the keyword "STOP" just to see what I would get. I waited over an hour, but no SMS reply was returned.

Whether or not you consider this a legitimate offer, is something I'll leave up to you. They do post the term-and-conditions of the promotion, yet it is in the dreaded "fine print". On top of that, the original solicitation was part of a "Twitter-Spam" incident that was distributed to many users. Another part of the spam incident included a URL where you are asked to enter your Twitter login credentials in what looked like a screen generated by the Twitter application, but in reality it was a third party.

Technologies like powerful mobile devices, and social networking sites are new and exciting but still carry risks. Technology continues to advance at a staggering pace, and with it the burden on consumers to understand how these new offerings can be used both in honorable and less than honorable ways.

Palm vs. iPalm

At CES today a smartphone pioneer had an announcement: the "Palm Pre"  a successor to the much heralded and adopted Treo is coming.  Some predictably are writing about it has an iPhone competitor. Maybe it's biggest competitor is Palm itself.

Palm at one time knew how to build great products and market itself. Judging from the ease with which its Palm OS still delivers a highly satisfying experience to Treo users around the world, it at least still knows how to do the former.

It's no secret that Palm figured out how to do things on the mobile phone that others still haven't. Case in point is text messaging.  Colleagues that use BlackBerry grouse that their texts go into their email queue.  They look upon the IM-like Treo texting application with envy.

Did Palm know way back when that texting would be the killer app on mobile phones? They sure designed a texting application that years later still leads the pack and still enjoys a loyal following.   If that product know-how shows up in the Palm Pre, the only thing standing in its way to success is the faded prowess of Palm marketing know-how.

And while texting is not perfect, with performance varying across the board as Keynote data has shown, it  certainly seems to be a way to the hearts and minds of mobile subscribers.

[Images courtesy of Palm.]

What are mobile subscribers up to with their phones?

My colleague recently poked some good natured fun at the generational divide when it comes to using mobile phones for something more than just calling.  Well it turns out he was on to something.

The results of a new survey by the NPD group show that over half of mobile subscribers use their phone for just making phone calls.  Not much mobile razmataz happening with these folks.  But that's not a surprise given the short history of smart devices and the lack of marketing emphasis by carriers on showing off smart features, functionality and applications for mobile phones.

But to understand the direction of mobility in the U.S. perhaps another statistic by the same research firm is more telling: of the customers who do want more features than just simple telephony, the most requested option is a cameraphone, followed by text messaging.

In other words the 2 easiest things to do on your phone after receiving a call are also the 2 most popular.

If you look at all of the different kinds of applications and business models being created in the mobile space, there's a reason so many companies have come to the same realization:  while the overall mobile experience may need work, consumers are becoming proficient with the textual communications and photo sharing functionality of their phones.

One company, GOGII, even boasts "no web required".

The phone, untethered, is still about reaching out and touching someone.