The Mobi Blog.com

Emerging Mobile News

You can pretty much count on a new 3G iPhone come Monday. But redesigned MacBooks? Don't bet on it. Here's my take on what Steve Jobs will announce during his much-anticipated keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

New iPhone
I'm almost certain that we'll feast our eyes on a new iPhone on Monday-one with access to speedy 3G networks along with build-in GPS, both features that are sorely missing in the original iPhone.

Heck, after all the fevered speculation, Jobs could find himself dodging tomatoes if he doesn't unveil a new iPhone.

Beyond that, however, the picture gets fuzzier. Will the new iPhone be thicker than the original, or thinner? Will the brushed-metal backing be replaced with a glossy black (or white) finish? There seems to be consensus on the new, glossy backing (which might scratch more easily than the old brushed-metal finish), but that's about it.

And there's more: rumors that AT&T might subsidize new iPhones to the tune of $200, along with a just-unveiled patent application that reveals plans for video recording and conferencing, instant messaging, and a blogging application. The AT&T subsidy rumor (first reported by Fortune) has been persistent enough to be plausible, while the newly published patent application gives credence to (if not confirmation of) hotly anticipated features like two-way video calling.

Finally: Will we get just one new iPhone, or a series of new models (and not just different memory capacities, mind you)? And when will the new iPhone be available in stores? My feeling is that we'll get just one new model, and that it'll go on sale later this month-but that's just my gut talking.

Odds: 3G iPhone with GPS (bank on it), thinner than original (50-50), glossy backing (almost certain, although I hope not), video conferencing (3-1), AT&T subsidies (50-50), more than one model (7-1), on sale Monday (5-1).

iPhone App store, new iPhone firmware
More of a fact than a rumor-and potentially more exciting that the 3G iPhone itself. Steve Jobs teed up the App store-which will feature dozens, if not hundreds, of native iPhone applications written by third-party developers-back in March, and the possibilities are limitless.

Besides the standard communications (IM, anyone?), productivity (an office suite?), and business applications, we're also talking games-many observers think the iPhone could rival the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP as a mobile gaming device. I can't wait.

Jobs is also expected to unveil new iPhone firmware, which will include such goodies as full-on Microsoft Exchange support, enhanced IT and security features, and more, no doubt.

Odds: Already announced, so let's call this one fact.

Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard"
This one came out of nowhere just a few days ago-that Apple is set to release beta code for its next major OS release, just eight months after OS X "Leopard" hit shelves. Word is that "Snow Leopard" (that's the rumored code name, anyway) will be a "stability and performance" release for Intel-based Macs, and that it's geared toward optimizing mobile devices like the MacBook Air and the iPhone-and maybe even a new, tantalizing mystery device. It might seem a little early for 10.6 (which is supposedly slated to go on sale next January), but multiple blogs are claiming that it's a done deal.

Odds: 50-50 or better.

.Mac reborn as MobileMe
Apple's much-maligned, $99-a-year online service is about to get a makeover-or so says the rumor mill. New features will include over-the-air syncing of Address Book and iCal info between Macs and iPhones, as well as a new and improved Web interface that lets you browse your contacts and events from any Web browser (sounds pretty basic, but it'll be a big step forward for .Mac users, believe me).

Odds: Almost certain.

Redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros
Both the consumer and pro-level versions of Apple's iconic laptop lines are due for major design overhauls. Indeed, save a few tweaks here and there, today's MacBooks and MacBook Pros look pretty much like yesterday's iBooks and PowerBooks. But what little chatter there's been about redesigned MacBooks at WWDC has more or less died out in the past several days. I'm not feeling it.

Odds: 10-1

"One more thing ... "
It's the phrase Macheads live for-a final, hold-your-breath moment when Steve Jobs unveils some cool new device no one quite expected. Back in January 2007, "one more thing" turned out to be the original iPhone. Assuming the 3G iPhone isn't the "one more thing," what could it be?

Well, there was talk last month of a potential iPhone-like tablet device powered by Intel's new Atom processor, but Intel quickly downplayed the comments that sparked the rumor.

And another factor to consider: There was no "one more thing" at Macworld back in January, much to the disappointment of the Mac faithful.

Anyway, there's really not much to go on here. Maybe a 3G iPhone announcement is enough for WWDC. Then again, Jobs loves surprises.



TheMobiBlog.com for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News

Banks will become phone companies and telecom companies will become banks. Mobile payment systems, micropayments, mobile phone credit card transactions and loans. Economic impact of remittances from foreign workers using SMS credit to avoid foreign exchange transaction costs.



How biometrics fingerprint technology will allow large mobile phone payments. Commissions and interest charges on loans. Impact of revenues from American Express, Visa, Delta, Access, Mastercard moving to mobile phone transactions. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

Read About Mobile Barcodes and How There Changing The Future of Mobile



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News


With the proliferation of 3G networks globally, it’s possible now to take a video on your phone and send it to a social networking site like YouTube, Facebook or MySpace.



As video-capable phones increase in number and wireless broadband networks expand, analysts believe user-generated content also will expand.


In fact, within the next five years, nearly 1 billion people could be using their mobile phones to send and receive user-generated content to each other and social networking sites on the Internet, according to estimates by Pyramid Research.

The analyst firm estimates mobile social networking will start to take off in 2009, and by 2010 will reach 300 million users. By 2012, 18% of all mobile subscribers will be using phones to access a social network, or about 950 million people.

Social networking sites and user-generated content (UGC) are intrinsically tied together, with members of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and their brethren posting blogs, photos, videos and music clips.

“Video is where it’s at,” says Nick Desai, CEO of Juice Wireless, which is launching JuiceCaster 6.0 at the CTIA Wireless 2008 show.

JuiceCaster is a mobile social-networking application and service that allows phone users to share videos, images and messages between devices and to online social networking sites. The upgrade allows users to create content like videos on their phones and send it as a status update to their friends.

Desai says people who belong to social networks expect to be able to use their phones to access them. Since the mobile phone is becoming the primary communications device, he says, it only makes sense to use it and take advantage of its real-time, and location, capabilities.

Publishing Videos

One of the main reasons people sign up for JuiceCaster is because they want to be able to use their phones to capture video or photos and publish them instantly to their social networking site (SNS). “We make that an easy, 1-click process,” he says, because JuiceCaster works within the camera application on the phone.

JuiceCaster is offered through Cricket, Midwest Cellular, U.S. Cellular, T-Mobile USA and two Puerto Rican operators. Other deals with Tier 1 operators are expected to be announced soon. Desai says the service has 70,000 users, some of whom have a free WAP version and others who subscribe to be able to use the integrated camera feature.

Juice also has a mobile video search service which allows members to search the JuiceCaster network for videos by subject.

A California company named eMotive Communications also is eyeing the mobile UGC space. It already offers push services including songs, images and video through a deal with Skype, but CEO Anthony Stonefield says it will get into mobile uses soon.

eMotive is developing the ability to provide user-generated content as a kind of ringtone, which could include text that vibrates the phone, animation, video, a song clip or a voice recording. The service is most appropriate for 3G or 4G networks because of the bandwidth needed and because it works in an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.

“We have more carrier trials requested than we can keep up with,” says Stonefield, because ringtone sales revenue has flattened. Personalized, user-generated content can change that, he says.

User-generated tones

User-generated and commercial ringback tones are part of the portfolio of LiveWire Mobile, a division of NMS Communications. LiveWire’s service provides 10,000 songs as part of Virgin Mobile USA’s ringback service, which has 100,000 subscribers.


How to create and upload ringback tones using LiveWire’s service. (Click on image to view larger)

John Orlando, marketing vice president for LiveWire, says the next step for ringback tones will be to make it possible for users to create their own tones.

“We have operators asking for it, and we believe that we can deliver it by the end of the year or the first quarter of 2009,” he says.

Yospace, a British company, developed a user-generated content site called SeeMeTv which is available through the carrier 3 U.K. SeeMeTv lets users upload their own video clips and gain revenue when someone downloads it. Orlando says LiveWire is looking at doing much the same thing for user-created ringback tones.

All of the social networking sites have some ability to link to mobile phones. As an example, YouTube launched a mobile interface last June, although only a small portion of the YouTube videos were available on phones. YouTube also has made select videos available through Verizon Wireless’ V CAST service.

It recently opened its access even wider and now estimates more than 100 million mobile subscribers can access YouTube. Users also can upload videos from their phones but only through a 3G network.

“People want to participate in the YouTube community in a way that fits their individual lifestyles, so to that end, we’ve built a mobile service that will allow partners to seamlessly integrate YouTube videos into their offerings,” a spokesperson says.

“Our goal is to support users being able to access their media from wherever they are. We want to extend the social aspects of YouTube to mobile devices - sharing, rating and interacting with content.”

The YouTube spokesperson says most mobile phones, even those with video capabilities, still don’t provide an optimal experience because of latency issue. Consumers also often don’t realize their phone’s capabilities.

Ryan Burke, an analyst with Compete, says the Holy Grail for most social networking sites is the ability to use location information, so friends can share location-based content in real time. That’s the big attraction that mobile UGC can offer, he says, so he believes mobile social networking and UGC will take off when location is built into the content that is shared.

“User-generated content and social networking are proven models [on the Internet],” he says. “Consumers like to create their own content and share it with their friends. There’s no reason mobile user-generated content won’t take off. Read: The Ringtone Party is Over


The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News

A nationwide alert system will be put in place for mobile phones, enabling the Federal Communications Commission to send text messages in emergency situations to people’s cell phones as part of the plan approved by federal regulators on Wednesday.

The need of putting in place an emergency alert system by using text messages should prove useful considering the increasing popularity of text messaging, FCC said.

Chairman Kevin J. Martin said upon the announcement that the more the public relies on wireless communication, the more important it is to be able to share critical information in times of crisis.

A Commercial Mobile Alert System should prove effective for ensuring public safety and welfare throughout the US.

“The ability to deliver accurate and timely warnings and alerts through cell phones and other mobile devices is an important next step in our efforts to help ensure that the American public has the information they need to take action to protect themselves and their families prior to, and during, disasters and other emergencies,” said Martin in a prepared statement.

The plan was created in compliance with the Warning, Alert and Response Network Act (WARN Act) of 2006, and was based on the recommendations of the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee (CMSAAC) for the transmission of emergency messages to the public.

“By adopting technical requirements for the wireless alerting system today, we are enabling wireless providers that choose to participate in this system to begin designing their networks to deliver mobile alerts, said Martin, adding that “this system has the potential to significantly impact the way Americans receive critical warnings on the go, whether they are at home, work or vacationing.”

The text messages will include presidential alerts, imminent threat alerts and child abduction emergency/AMBER alerts, federal regulators said. Wireless carriers that choose to participate in the program will send text messages at first, but things might evolve and include video and audio services in case of emergency (that depends of course on the technological advance). Read About The FCC Open Mobile Intuitive.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News

Ringtones those clever little ditties that wireless subscribers are downloading to their mobile phones provide users an inexpensive way to personalize their devices and give carriers a highly lucrative revenue stream. But as ringtones have grown in popularity, so to have new internet scams on un-suspecting wireless customers

Attorney General Bill McCollum recently announced that AT&T Mobility will be the first wireless company in the nation to police representations made in internet advertising for cell phone content to ensure fair and full disclosure.

The company will also make full restitution to Florida consumers who were unknowingly billed for "free" cell phone content. The cooperative agreement reached by the Attorney General's CyberFraud Task Force with AT&T Mobility will establish a new model for the advertising and billing of cell phone content.

Additionally, AT&T Mobility will pay $2.5 million to the Attorney General's Office to fund the efforts of the task force as it continues to press for similar reform across the industry and will contribute an additional $500,000 toward consumer education on safe internet use.

"This settlement comes at a time when the digital consumer is faced with new deceptive internet scams on a daily basis," said Brad Ashwell, legislative advocate for the Florida Public Interest Research Group.

Complaints received by the Attorney General's CyberFraud Task Force led to an investigation which showed that thousands of Florida AT&T Mobility consumers had received charges on their cell phone bills for certain third party services that they did not authorize.

Often, these charges were for ringtones or other services which were advertised as "free," but resulted in customers unwittingly being signed up for costly monthly subscriptions for third-party content, including horoscopes, wallpaper and other cell phone-related content.


Examples of how the bill charges often appear under the following indiscernible names:

* Direct Bill Charges
* 3rd Party Downloadable Content
* Premium SMS Messages
* Premium Text Messages
* M-Qube
* M-blox

Investigators further determined that these third-party content offers often target teens who frequently respond to these advertisements because they think the services are "free," and download them to their cell phones, not knowing their parents will later be charged.

These misleading practices are common in the industry and wireless companies often receive a percentage of the charges paid by consumers.




How to Avoid Cell Phone Ringtone Scams & Cell Phone Viruses


Step 1:
Avoid free ringtone websites. When you grab a ringtone from these sites cyber-hackers can attach a mobile virus with them. These viruses can steal any personal information on your phone including contacts and pictures.

Step 2:
Stay away from peer-to-peer ringtone sharing sites. While free ringtones are offered here, you're again setting yourself up to get scammed. Many hackers target these types of websites to install viruses on your cell-phone.

Step 3:
Be wary of free ringtone commercials. According to these ads all you have to do is send a text to a certain number then you have unlimited free ringtones. What they don't mention is that sending that text usually signs you up for their subscription service which will cost you $8 to $10 per month.

Step 4:
Dodge the subscription service if given the option. As mentioned in Step 3 sometimes subscribing is automatic. If it isn't, stay away from anything where you have to enter your phone number or address.

Step 5:
Read the fine print. A deal too good to be true usually is. Don't be impulsive and sign up for anything before you've had a chance to review all the details. Know what you're getting and what you'll be paying for the service.

Step 6:
Know the privacy policy. Read it before you give out any personal information. Know what this company plans to do with that information and then decide if you want them to have it.

Attorney General McCollum also announced that he has directed the CyberFraud Task Force to initiate investigations into Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, Alltel and T-Mobile in an effort to ensure that all Floridians will be protected from being similarly charged without their knowledge.

Resource links for full press release & settlement details: http://myfloridalegal.com/newsrel.nsf/newsreleases/4641E1C60FB29763852573FE004E6338
http://myfloridalegal.com/webfiles.nsf/WF/MRAY-7CAJ86/$file/ATTAVC.pdf



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News

GetMobile.com is a completely Web-based, self-service mobile ad network that caters to publishers and advertisers of all shapes and sizes – we take all comers, with or without prior mobile web experience.

A good way to explain what Quattro and GetMobile.com is all about is by answering a question I have been getting from analysts these past few weeks: what’s the difference between GetMobile and Google Mobile AdSense.

It’s perhaps foolhardy to compare oneself to an industry titan, but, I think we present a clear contrast, so deep-breath and here goes: Google’s basic tenet is to Organize the World’s Information – they built an advertising business model based on ho w people search for and access the information.

Quattro’s basic tenet is to Mobilize the World’s Information – our advertising business model is based on both who is accessing the information (mobile audience) and the patterns evident in the ways they consume it (mobile behavior). The sites that we mobilize and the advertisers that target the resulting mobile audience comprise our network. GetMobile.com is the platform for you, the publisher or advertiser, to jump onto this network and to take advantage of its quality, reach and services.

Bringing Publishers and Advertisers to the Mobile Table

Google does not provide any tools and capabilities to help web business owners think through, build and deploy a mobile presence. With GetMobile.com, Quattro strongly believes that providing mobilization services is not just a utility but a fundamental, value building strategic differentiator likely to foster a long term network relationship – especially since we provide these services with a shared-risk/shared-revenue model.

Your Mobile Business is Our Mobile Business.

The mobilization tools and services at GetMobile.com are further differentiated in that we don’t just provide a set of mobile templates you need to force fit yourself into – our Juicing technology enables businesses of all shapes and sizes to build a mobile presence upon the platform of their existing web assets and web presence.

This has myriad benefits – no need to build a whole new set of mobile assets, lots of ‘fearless prototyping’ and testing opportunities to try out different mobile web offerings with little cost and probably most importantly, the ability to understand the similarities and differences between one’s wired web audience and behavior and the mobile web audience and behavior.

As an example, one of our clients hypothesized that their mobile audience would be keen on their Daily Horoscope content above all else – our Juicer enabled rapid mobilization of this content and they were able to test this hypothesis out immediately and quickly able to sell these page views and audience at a premium to advertisers.

Once at the Table, Capitalize On Our Network and Mobile Audience

Now that you have mobilized, what else does GetMobile.com give you?

First of all, you are in great company. Our network comprises perhaps the most exclusive inventory of publishers currently on the mobile web – great sites like NBA.com, Univision, NFL.com, CBS and Boston.com , among others.

If you are a GetMobile publisher, we are selling your pages and audience along with the pages and audience of these premiere sites – where else are you going to find this great combination of both transparency and scale? If you are a GetMobile advertiser, we provide you the opportunity to have your ad run on these great sites and across our entire network.

Second, we don’t insist that you stay just within our network. Go ahead; place your site on Google, Yahoo!, Admob et al. It’s your business; we’re here to do what we can to help – we will Juice your site content, deliver across mobile devices around the world and provide you full analytics in exactly the same way as we would as if you were serving within our network.

Finally, here’s what I think is the clincher – GetMobile.com is built upon a behavioral targeting engine that enables us together grow a truly mobile audience directed ad network.

Let’s use our Mountain View friends again to illustrate what I mean by ‘mobile audience directed ad network’. Google ad matching and targeting engine is without par in its ability to drive offers based on user’s search intent. They notice that a search for “Miami weather” typically indicates someone with travel on their mind, thereby driving travel offers via Adwords. A mobile web (or wired web) page who main theme is “Miami weather” also drives offers for travel products via Adsense. Their massive volume of traffic and click-thru behavior certainly justify their confidence in driving these specific offers in specific content scenarios.

At GetMobile.com, on the other hand, we have a different set of insights based on the fact that we are completely integrated with your mobile content and your mobile audience plus also the content and audience of other publishers and advertisers in our network. We know that User A who is looking at a “Miami weather” page, also frequently visits a Latino horoscopes page and also frequently visits a web site targeted at English-speaking teenagers – she’s a bilingual Latina who checks the Miami weather every morning – GetMobile advertising offers will not be for travel in this instance (she lives in Miami!) but rather an ad for the Latin Grammy’s or a performance ad for a Reggaeton ringtone download. User B, looking at the same Miami weather page may instead get an offer/ad from a Miami Lexus dealer because we see that he frequently checks Heat and Dolphins scores, checks on his stock portfolio and is browsing from an iPhone.

Going back to the original question I posed myself, GetMobile.com is differentiated from the Google Mobile Adsense platform because we enable you to mobilize, we serve and track your site content and behavior, we derive a high-value audience profile from successive visits and we are able to aggregate our content and audience intelligence across the network in order to provide a targetable, higher-margin mobile advertising audience. We’d love to have you try it yourself and get your feedback – we think you’ll find it a profitable experience!

Mobilize your website or blog now "Free"



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Mobile barcodes are on the verge of becoming a global phenomenon, but what exactly are they, what do they do, and for whom?

We became familiar with the original, linear barcodes (or 1D), from our supermarket shopping in the 1980’s (although the technology was patented in the 1950’s).

They comprise a series of vertical black lines and white spaces of variable width, representing numbers, which are read (or decoded) by a barcode reader to extract the information they bear.

However, as barcodes were used in an ever greater variety of environments beyond straightforward stock control, they became longer and longer as people tried to pack more information onto them. A new generation of barcodes was devised in the 1990’s, usually referred to as 2D or matrix codes. They are formed by patterns of black and white squares arranged on a (usually) square grid and can encode thousands of alphanumeric and other characters in virtually any language. Immediately the size and capacity problem was solved, opening the way for applications that had never been considered.

Another radical and exciting advancement in barcode reader technology allowed the camera in a mobile phone to act as a reader. Mobile phones can now be enabled to read a variety of 2D mobile barcodes. These include QR codes, Data Matrix, Cool-Data-Matrix, Aztec, Upcode, Trillcode, Quickmark, shotcode, mCode and Beetagg.

The vast majority of symbologies are in the public domain, which means they can be used by anyone without restriction and without payment of a fee or royalty. This public approach gives rise to internationally recognised standards, global interoperability, and creates an economy of scale.

This is a great boon for advertisers and consumers (both of whom are the mobile operators’ customers) because only one software client is required to read any code. For the operators, this translates to greater choice and more competitively priced equipment.

Unfortunately, some barcode developers have chosen the proprietary route, which means they keep control of their own codes, the information that is permitted to be encoded and charge a fee or royalty for their use. These issues and the lack of interoperability usually means that proprietary barcodes tend to be used in controlled, closed environments, rather than in open, public systems around the world.

The most common use of mobile barcodes is to request information or a service or content from a Web site. It might be details of a promotion, or a discount voucher via SMS or MMS, or to activate a download such as a ringtone, music track or game, or click to call an IVR or human agent, or buy a travel or concert ticket. The advertiser pays the set-up costs as well as its operator partner on a per-click, download, view, redeemed coupon, ticket sale or call, depending on the campaign.

The key is that mobile barcodes are a pull technology, a permission-based way for a consumer to engage with an advertiser or medium.

This is a very important attribute since there is a great deal of consumer angst and regulatory concern about intrusive mobile marketing: mobile barcodes are a world away from pushing unsolicited spam via SMS or MMS. Big brands are understandably wary of engaging in any advertising activity that compromises their reputation by alienating their customers and have stayed away from these kinds of push campaigns.

The pull of mobile barcodes overcome these issues and offer a direct, accountable way of connecting with consumers. However, if mobile barcodes are to succeed as an advertising medium, a high level of back-office integration is necessary, which reinforces the importance of open standards for processes and interfaces. Operators will need to demonstrate to the world’s biggest brands that the barcode scanning transactions are accurate, reliable and defendable because they are going to charge that brand for every click.

The precedent is there: Google has built a multi-billion dollar, online business on this per click or interaction model with its Google AdWord/AdSense, which provides advertisers with reliable, accountable records of their users’ transaction history and an accurate invoice, plus timely and granular revenue share payments to other parts of the ecosystem. In mobile, unlike online, there is the additional challenge that these mechanisms have to work across carriers, across countries and across currencies.

So the stage is set. With 2D barcode scanning, advertisers have a reliable, permission-based mobile channel open to them. Consumers love them as an easy way of using mobile technology to engage with services and media they are interested in, as has been demonstrated in spades in Japan, where mobile barcodes are part of everyday life.

This is because Japan is unusual in having a very dominant operator, NTT DoCoMo, which decided to endorse QR codes and ensured that all new handsets had QR code client software embedded in them. The rest is history, but this approach is not applicable to markets in most other countries, which typically have four or five operators competing against each other.

The challenge now is to ensure that any brand advertiser can run the same ad campaign in Singapore, London and Seattle instead of having to produce and run different campaigns in each country and for every operator. The inability to do this has been another big inhibitor to mobile advertising.

Mobile barcodes have the potential to overcome these issues and become the mainstream, global phenomenon that they could and should be. However to attain this goal, the various parties that make up the ecosystem and the various warring factions within the mobile barcode industry need to come together and work on common standards* that will be to everyone’s advantage.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Mention mobile commerce in North America, and the common response is a roll of the eyes. It’s not hard to guess why.

Back in the heady days of the Internet dot-com bubble, mobile commerce was one of the many buzz words connected with e-commerce whose promise failed to materialize because the hype was premature.

Today’s landscape is much different. Several trends are helping to drive momentum for consumer purchases over mobile phones. They include the growth in mobile data services, advances in handsets and operator networks, consumer acceptance of the Internet as a purchasing and payment vehicle, and growing consumer interest in mobile banking.

Discussions of mobile purchases often blur the lines between various types of mobile payment. It is important to take a step back and define mobile commerce if the discussion is to be valid. Experts view mobile commerce as spanning three distinct categories:

Handset-based mobile content purchases (e.g., ringtones, games, music for use on the handset itself).

Purchases of goods and services via the mobile phone browser (e.g., buying a book on Amazon.com).

Purchases completed by near field communication (e.g., micropayments for purchase of newspapers, gum, or other small items by swiping a phone over a point-of-sale terminal at a news kiosk or convenience store).

On-device purchase for on-device use

Content is king in the mobile commerce world and dominates the vast majority of spending via mobile phones. In 2008, 90% of purchases made on the handset will be for content and services to be utilized on the handset itself, and mobile experts believe the majority of spending will continue to be in this category in the coming years.

Handset-based mobile content purchasing is the only category within the mobile purchasing and commerce space that has successfully crossed the chasm of consumer adoption.

With mobile purchases still limited largely to content for the handset, it is therefore premature to say that mobile commerce is mainstream. Rather, it is still very much an emerging service.

Some early adopters are using their mobile devices to make purchases, but the volume of commerce is limited in terms of the number of users and in the number of transactions. Progress on the mobile commerce front is evident: Online merchants are working to create WAP versions of their Web sites so they can extend their online presence to the wireless world.

They are also working to make the purchasing process easier for consumers by allowing users to store payment information on their Web sites, and they are using mobile advertising to drive traffic.



One of the most exciting aspects of mobile commerce involves enabling consumers to use a handset to purchase goods at the physical point of sale. While commerce utilizing NFC in this manner holds great potential and trials continue globally, the underdeveloped ecosystem supporting NFC payments will prevent real uptake in this space in 2008 in the U.S. market.

Expansion of this market space will require proliferation of merchant points of sale equipped with NFC payment terminals, broad-based operator support, and widespread consumer adoption of NFC-equipped devices once the other prerequisites are in place.

The end goal of mobile commerce, regardless of stakeholder, is to drive revenue by increasing consumer convenience. In the case of mobile content downloads, the clear winners are operators and content developers.

For mobile commerce and point-of-sale transactions at merchant locations, the merchants will derive the benefits of increased sales and convenience resulting from consumers’ conversion from cash to electronic payments for small payments and micropayments (generally defined as $5.00 or less).

Credit card associations and electronic payments processors will also benefit from the increased transaction volume.

This year will no doubt bring continued growth in mobile content and services, an increase in purchases made via mobile devices, and further evolution of the mobile payments and purchasing ecosystem and value chain worldwide.

Furthermore, key players in the traditional payments and Internet payments space, as well as online retailers will invest in, initiate, and nurture mobile payments strategies.

Developments related to NFC are perhaps the murkiest and most difficult to foresee. Few, if any, NFC devices will be in the hands of U.S. consumers by year end, but trials and tests will continue throughout 2008 and into 2009. To be sure, we are only on the cusp of developing the full potential of mobile commerce.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

Emerging Mobile News

Security systems can now block the first computer viruses attack on cell phones, but the mobile industry sees new risks stemming from upcoming open software platforms such as Google's Android.

Since 2004, viruses have been able to disable phones or swell phone bills through pricey messages or unwanted calls, leading to a new security technology market.

"If Android becomes a fully open platform ... and when such a platform becomes more common, risks are greater than with the current platform kings such as Symbian.

Security specialists also pointed to potential risks arising from Apple's plans to open its software platform to third party developers this month.

"Apple has dealt very elegantly in the past with security issues. There will be issues. Apple will fix them," said a global marketing head at McAfee's mobile unit.

Roughly 65 percent of all smart phones sold in the fourth quarter used software from British supplier Symbian, according to research firms.

Apple was fourth largest vendor with 7 percent of the market, following Microsoft and RIM.

F-Secure and McAfee have been the leading security software vendors for mobiles, but many other anti-virus firms rolled out products for the mobile industry over the last few years.

While the risk of a cell phone getting infected is still relatively small, thousands of phones have seen problems.

"Although the first problems were already quite extensive and appeared all over the world, current smart phones from the largest device makers, particularly Nokia, have gotten rid of these problems.

Almost three out of four users were concerned about the safety of using new mobile services, showed a survey of 2,000 cell phone users, commissioned by McAfee, and unveiled this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"Concerns about specific mobile security risks or ... reliability of services is a crucial issue for operators, particularly in mature markets.

Mobile service providers are increasingly betting on new data services when looking for growth in mature markets where call prices are falling.

"Consumer fears are growing in tandem with increased mobile functionality; this puts at risk the potential revenue from new services.

One in seven global mobile users have already been exposed to mobile viruses, either directly or they know someone whose phone has been infected, McAfee's study showed.

Since the first mobile virus appeared in 2004 the number of different viruses, worms or other types of malware has reached 395, F-Secure said, adding that the number of malware has increased only slightly in the last 12 months.

History
The first instance of a mobile virus occurred in June 2004 when it was discovered that a company called Ojam had engineered an anti-piracy Trojan virus in older versions of their mobile phone game Mosquito.

This virus sent SMS text messages to the company without the user's knowledge. This virus was removed from more recent versions of the game; however it still exists on older, unlicensed versions. These older versions may still be distributed on file-sharing networks and free software download web sites.

In July 2004, computer hobbyists released a proof-of-concept mobile virus named Cabir. This virus replicates itself on Bluetooth wireless networks.

In March 2005 it was reported that a computer worm called Commwarrior-A has been infecting Symbian series 60 mobile phones. This worm replicates itself through the phone's Multimedia Messaging System (MMS). It sends copies of itself to other phone owners listed in the phone user's address book. Although the worm is not considered harmful, experts agree that it heralds a new age of electronic attacks on mobile phones.

Common mobile viruses

Cabir: Infects mobile phones running on Symbian OS. When a phone is infected, the message 'Caribe' is displayed on the phone's display and is displayed every time the phone is turned on.

The worm then attempts to spread to other phones in the area using wireless Bluetooth signals.
Duts: A parasitic file infector virus and is the first known virus for the Pocket PC platform. It attempts to infect all EXE files in the current directory (infects files that are bigger than 4096 bytes)

Skulls: A Trojan horse piece of code. Once downloaded, the virus, called Skulls, replaces all phone desktop icons with images of a skull. It also renders all phone applications, including SMSes and MMSes useless Commwarrior.

First worm to use MMS messages in order to spread to other devices. Can spread through Bluetooth too. It infects devices running under OS Symbian Series 60. The executable worm file once launched hunts for accessible Bluetooth devices and sends the infected files under a random name to various devices.

Help protect yourself against mobile viruses

Some mobile viruses -- that is, viruses that infect Smart phones, cell phones, and handheld PCs -- spread in the same way as traditional computer viruses, namely when you download programs or files that are already infected.

In the case of mobile phones, that might mean downloading photos, video clips, ring tones, cell phone themes, or other programs.

Important: Currently, we are not aware of any viruses that can be transferred from your laptop or your desktop to your Windows Mobile-based device.

Other mobile viruses can spread like human viruses do by close contact in the presence of the right host. Some cell phones are equipped with Bluetooth, a technology that allows you to transfer data between different devices, such as sending photos from your cell phone to your printer or transferring addresses stored on your Windows Mobile device to your laptop.

This handy technology comes with a few risks if you don't use it correctly. If you have Bluetooth enabled on your mobile device and in "discoverable mode" (see the manual that came with your device for more information), and you come within 30 feet of another infected device that also has Bluetooth enabled and is running the same operating system as your mobile device, then you might get infected.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News -Agreement Enables Cross Promotion of Zed and AOL Products Across Mobile and Internet Properties in Europe and the U.S.



AOL and Zed announced today that both companies will work together to promote their mobile products on their respective European and U.S. mobile and Internet sites.


Under the agreement, Zed’s products will be promoted within AOL’s WAP portal in the U.S. as well as within AOL’s desktop destinations in Europe. Zed will promote AOL’s mobile products through its marketing channels in Europe.

Zed, one of the leading mobile value-added players worldwide, develops and markets entertainment and community products and services for mobile and the Internet. AOL’s WAP portal and rich array of mobile products leverage many of AOL's strongest brands including AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Search, ICQ, MapQuest, Moviefone and Winamp.

“We’re excited to work with Zed to help expand the distribution of our mobile products in Europe. Our new partnership is also a great example of how AOL’s mobile properties are the ideal platform for Internet-style linking promotions,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL.

“We look forward to exploring more opportunities to broaden our partnership with Zed as we work together to help increase the awareness of our respective products.”

“This deal with Zed gives us a great pan-European partner,” said Chris Locke, Director of Mobile for AOL Europe. “2008 is going to be an exciting year for AOL Mobile in Europe, and we’re thrilled to have Zed working with us to distribute our products.”

Santiago Corredoira, Business Development Corporate Director of Zed, commented: “This agreement between the two pioneers of the Internet and mobile industries represents a significant step towards the future of mobile.

The alliance will significantly increase the value of the two brands on both sides of the Atlantic, making it a win-win situation for each party involved. We are working hard to make this the first milestone of a wider partnership with one of the online services global leaders.”

About Zed
Zed develops and markets entertainment and community products and services for mobile and the Internet.

The company is the leading mobile value-added services (MVAS) player in the world in terms of revenue and geographical footprint. Zed operates in more than 50 countries, including Europe's largest markets, USA and China and holds agreements with more than 100 wireless carriers’ operators all over the world.

About AOL
AOL is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions.

AOL also operates dedicated websites in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., AOL LLC and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

Emerging Mobile News

T-Mobile USA Inc. has been hit with a class action suit over alleged charges for text messages received by consumers who do not want the feature.

The suit, recently filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, claims T-Mobile USA charges for text messages regardless of whether customers want the missives.

“T-Mobile refuses to disable the texting messaging feature on its customers’ accounts, even when the customer has no interest in sending, or, more importantly, receiving text messages,” stated plaintiffs representing Maria Detwiler and others.

“Moreover, T-Mobile requires each of its customers who have not subscribed to one of T-Mobile’s Messaging Value Bundles to pay for each and every unsolicited text message they receive.

In sum, T-Mobile, the party with the superior bargaining power, has carried out a wrongful business scheme regarding text messaging to deliberately cheat a large number of consumers out of individually small sums of money.”

The plaintiffs allege T-Mobile USA’s texting policy violates federal telecom law and Washington state’s consumer protection-unfair business practices act. The suit did not contain a dollar figure for alleged damages. T-Mobile USA is based in Bellvue, Wash.

“T-Mobile does not comment on pending litigation,” said a spokesperson at public relations firm that represents T-Mobile.

Remedies

Charging subscribers for unwanted text messages does not appear particularly unusual in the wireless industry. Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp., however, said there are remedies they offer customers to disable texting capability altogether. AT&T Mobility did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

In the class action suit at issue, Detwiler asserts T-Mobile USA refused her request to turn off the text feature on her phone.

On a related front, South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long issued a warning to cellphone users to be on the watch for unsolicited charges on their monthly bills.

Long said the Consumer Protection Division has received complaints from consumers statewide who have received unwanted text messages for ringtones, images, joke-a-day services, horiscopes and more.

“These charges are showing up on monthly bills described as ‘download’ with no further explanation,” stated Long. “They often come with a recurring monthly fee and unless you are looking closely you might not notice these types of charges on your bill.

If you do not have text messaging as part of your monthly plan you will also receive an additional charge from your carrier for each text message received.”



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2008

Emerging Mobile News

Mobile social network Mig33 has pulled in a $13.5 million Series B round led by DCM with participation from existing Series A investors Accel, Redpoint and TVP. Mig33 will put the money toward expanding the company in the U.S. and internationally.

The company was founded in Perth, Australia, but moved to the valley after their Series A. They currently have over 9 million users (up from 7.5 million last October) in their global user base across more than 200 countries. .

Mig33 is a downloadable mobile social networking application with a bunch of utilities mixed in. Users can not only do the usual profiles and friending, but also includes VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, picture sharing.

Long distance calls can be made by using pre-paid Mig33 minutes. Users have been signing on for more than a total of 2 million sessions per day, sending more than 45 million messages each day, and share more than a million pictures a month.

Demo

While many of us with “valley blinders” on would look to out ultra-portable laptop or iPhone to carry out most of these tasks, the rest of the world’s 2.6 billion subscribers turn first to a basic cellphone that runs one program at a time. Mig33 wants to be that one program.

Their application will work on most phones, including a long list of Nokias, Sony Ericssons, Motorolas, Samsungs, and others. With their eyes on the U.S. market, Mig33plans on making smartphones fun and “dumb” phones smart by adding features like email and chat.

I’ll be interested to see what they come up with, considering I’ve owned both a Blackberry and iPhone which already deliver on a lot of the features Mig33 has to offer.

Company:

mig33 was released in December of 2005 as the first global mobile Internet community and has quickly spread around the world. With millions of customers in more than 200 countries, the service has taken the world by storm, spreading on the strength of user recommendations, bringing the power of Internet to anyone with a mobile phone.

The concept for mig33 originated in a library coffee shop, between founders Steven Goh and Mei Lin Ng. The two sat down with a blank piece of paper and a goal to figure out a way for teens to send text messages as much as they wanted, without breaking the bank. Ideas brewed on that paper which led to a business proposal and eventually to mig33.

The company was founded on the belief that the rise of VoIP and wireless technologies are redefining the way people connect and find community. mig33 takes advantage of the shift in the telecommunications industry from managing and tariffing the network, to delivering customer services and value. In this second age of the Internet, there are new opportunities to create value propositions that deliver customer and shareholder value.

Today, mig33 has opened the power of the Internet to the global mobile community. It's more than just surfing the Web - mig33 brings all the communications power of the PC right to the palm of the hand.

Product:

mig33 is an operator-agnostic global community that makes the most popular Internet applications accessible on any mobile phone.

That means consumers can take advantage of low-cost VoIP calls, SMS and IM communications tools, and participate in mobile chat rooms, profiles, and photo sharing, all directly from their mobile phone.

mig33 is already connecting millions of people to the global mobile Internet community on their phones, and will enable the first Internet experience for millions more who connect to the Internet for the first time from their mobile phones.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

Emerging Mobile News -The arrival of a truly mobile web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution"

"It's the re-creation of the internet, it's the re-creation of the PC story and it is before us — and it is very likely it will happen in the next year,

Google's CEO Schmidt, told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Current estimates for mobile advertising are cautious, with consultancy Forrester Revenues predicting revenues of under $1bn by 2012
But Schmidt said this figure was too low and failed to take into account the fact the mobile web was reaching a tipping point.

Google aims to be a prime mover by bidding for coveted airwaves to launch an open US wireless network, pitting it against established telecommunications players. The move will take the Silicon Valley-based company well beyond its core web-search and online-advertising franchises.

Some analysts are worried at the high costs involved but Schmidt said he was confident that location-based advertising which could, for example, direct hungry travelers to nearby restaurants — would be "a very, very good business".

The Gphone Trigger
Google said on Friday it would apply to bid in the US Federal Communications Commission's auction of 700MHz band wireless spectrum.

If it wins, it could build a wireless network for that spectrum on its own, or partner with others to build and operate such a network. Either way, Google could put its brand on millions of mobile devices that use the network. It would also be able to control the internet experience on the devices and how much people would pay — or not pay — for the services.

In essence, Google could control the direction of the next-generation wireless network.

"Imagine an iPhone where the whole thing is a screen and the bottom eighth is banner ads running across "Spectrum is king; you own everything."

The 700MHz spectrum, which has been used to provide analogue TV service, travels far and penetrates walls. As a result, it's considered the last remaining chunk of attractive wireless airwaves and is viewed as an opportunity to expand the internet to a new frontier. The spectrum auction has just started on the January 24th.

Google and other internet companies have been hampered in their ability to expand their markets into the wireless space because carriers have had such a tight hold on the cellular industry. Right now, US consumers are locked into the handset they use, the network it operates on, and the software it runs.

This situation has crippled consumers' ability to use the internet on their mobile devices, compared to how they use it on their PCs. Google executives say their aim is to bring the PC style of internet openness to the mobile world so users have more choice in mobile services and applications, as well as price.

Google was instrumental in getting the FCC to adopt so-called "open access rules" that would ensure consumers could use any mobile device they choose on a large chunk of the 700MHz spectrum.

Profit motivates
While Google's entrance is likely to turn the wireless world upside-down, market disruption is not its motivation. Google's priority as a public company is to make a profit; having a Google-branded wireless service would attract a good deal more eyeballs to its ad-based services.

And mobile, in some ways, will be particularly fruitful for advertising. Owning the spectrum would give Google an advantage in local advertising, which is tailor-made for mobile use as people look for nearby restaurants or petrol stations.
Conquering the mobile world would also give Google a boost in international markets, where people tend to be even more dependent on their mobile phones than they are in the US.

Google has managed to turn web search into an $11bn business on PCs by selling simple text ads that appear with search results. Imagine how lucrative that market will be when the ads, including local advertising, can get to the far reaches of the world where there aren't any PCs.

Right now the global PC search market generates about $20bn in revenue, assuming each PC owner conducts an estimated 35 searches a month, according to Citigroup research. If they do just one search per month on the four billion mobile phones expected to be in use in 2010, they could generate $2.3bn in revenue, assuming PC search advertising economics migrate as-is to the wireless world, Citigroup said in a report this week.

For Google, that could translate into $700m in incremental revenue in 2010, according to Citigroup. A new network on the spectrum isn't expected until 2010 at the earliest, analysts say.

"If you can get the most attractive demographic, the 18- to 30-year-olds (who have grown up on Google), then advertisers will be lining up at the door.

The wireless spectrum bid dovetails nicely with Google's moves to unify handset makers, software developers and carriers on Android, an open mobile platform.
Mobile isn't the only place Google is eyeing the wireless access business. The company is dabbling in Wi-Fi-based services for PCs, building its own free wireless network in its hometown of Mountain View, California.

It had also partnered with network provider EarthLink on a proposal for San Francisco. Despite initial support from city officials, the approval process stalled and EarthLink backed out in August amid a company restructuring and significant layoffs.

"Google is spending time and money paving this new superhighway,"Google is creating the world they want to compete in because it doesn't exist for them right now."
A Google representative said no executives were available to comment on their spectrum plans or motivation.

Even if Google doesn't win, its actions have already shaken up the stagnant mobile industry.

For Google, "there is a risk that they get in way over their heads in a field in which they are late to the party and in which they have no expertise.”But history suggests Google has made some very good strategic, operational and financial decisions and seems to have done as good or better a job at investing towards the future than many other similar companies."



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

A Suffolk man pleaded guilty yesterday to a series of offences relating to internet grooming of girls across the UK.

Police in Surrey said that Paul Etheridge, 24,had more than 200 pictures of girls aged 13 to 15 on his mobile phone after enticing them to send him indecent images of themselves, often in exchange for mobile vouchers. He was caught after a 13-year-old girl from Reigate, Surrey, told police that she had been propositioned online in July last year.

A pedophile investigation team was quickly able to trace Etheridge and he was arrested at his home on August 9. Analysis of his computers and mobile phone revealed that he had been in contact with hundreds of girls across the country, including Belfast, Lancashire, Norwich, London and Surrey. Thousands of indecent images were found on his computer.

He pleaded guilty to 26 offences, with a further seven remaining on file.
Detective Inspector Theresa Breen said: “Our specialist team unravelled a web of offending stretching right across the country. This case was very serious because the offender had escalated from obtaining images from the internet, to grooming girls to make their own photos and, in one case, actually meeting a girl and engaging in sexual activity.”

Etheridge will be sentenced at a later date.

In the United States

The iPhone is definitely a sexy phone. It's also the perfect vehicle for bringing mobile porn to Americans, according to adult content producers at the annual AVN convention in Las Vegas.

And 2008 could be the year that pornography finally breaks through to the mobile user, thanks to new deals and advanced devices like the iPhone, said Ali Joone, co-founder and director of adult content firm Digital Playground.
"Yes, it's happening," Joone said. Digital Playground already delivers its porn in customized form to the iPhone; their site even auto-detects whether iPhone users are on Wi-Fi or EDGE.

"The phones are changing," with real Web browsers, streaming video and high-quality graphics, said Kate Sylvan, marketing and PR coordinator for porn firm Pink Visual. That means phones are ready for porn – and she says the iPhone is the best platform out there so far.

This week, Pink Visual launched the first major U.S.-based porn site designed especially for iPhones. iPinkVisual.com caters to iPhone owners, with streaming video trailers and catalogs; it's more of a marketing tool than a direct content sales site, Sylvan said.

Lance Cassidy, director of marketing for user-generated porn site XTube.com, agrees that phone porn is coming soon. They're working on a mobile phone site right now, he says, and the iPhone is the ideal platform. Meanwhile, some other porn providers are rethinking their next-generation DVD stance following the decision of Warner Bros. to drop support for HD DVD.

"You have to adapt to the format [for phones], but if your standard is the Apple iPhone, no adaptation is necessary,he said.






Joone disagrees, somewhat. The cell phone's small screen means "we do a mobile edit where we use more close-ups and less wide-angle shots," he said.

Online video isn't the only way the iPhone is getting sexy. At the AVN show, OhMiBod announced a new version of their iPod-connected vibrator – this one specifically for the iPhone. The new OhMiBod "NaughtiNano" line connects to iPhones to vibrate not only to the rhythms of music playing, but to the cadences of speech on the other end of a phone call. The new models cost $69.

Apple "has made the iPhone so beautifully simple, that if the adult video world can harness that simplicity they too will prosper," said OhMiBod founder Suki Dunham, herself a former Apple employee.

But not everyone in the world of porn is convinced that phones are the next frontier.

"I just don't know how to make money" with porn on phones, said New York porn entrepreneur Joanna Angel. "Anyway, people don't watch porn in public. If you're going to be sitting by yourself, why don't you watch it on your laptop?"

"Why can't you sit by yourself and watch it on your phone?" Xtube's Cassidy shot back.

Porn producers aiming to fulfill their mobile desires must also risk the wrath of the moral majority, warned Garion Hall, chief executive of Australian porn site AbbyWinters.com. In the land down under, mobile porn had a brief heyday when wireless carriers sold it directly – until a massive public outcry shut everything down.

"Moms in the suburbs were like, 'little Johnny's getting porn on cell phones,'" and carriers removed the content, Hall said. Even in Australia, phone companies don't block porn outright– they just make it harder to get to. But that's enough to stop Hall, for now. "For us, it's only worthwhile if mobile phone providers push it to consumers," he said.

Joone, the American adult mogul, isn't as worried. He says that in the U.S., strict age verification systems could help salve carriers' concerns. And Pink Visual says they don't need any help from carriers at all to develop a market for iPhone porn.

"We're not going through AT&T. AT&T doesn't have to know anything about it," Sylvan said.

Apple had no comment on the iPhone's erotic allure



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

Web2Mobile Movers and Shakers-Quattro Wireless

In May Quattro Wireless launched its technology platform that automatically creates adaptive mobile websites for premier publishers with tightly integrated, mobile optimized advertising formats for major advertisers.

The Quattro Wireless platform is the first stage in the company's plan to establish the premier advertising marketplace for the mobile Web, while offering the tools required to easily translate any existing wired website into a dynamic, mobile website.

Formed in late 2006 and based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Quattro Wireless is led by co-founders Andrew Miller and Eswar Priyadarshan, who serve as Quattro Wireless' CEO and CTO, respectively. Both are former members of the leadership team for mobile media management company m-Qube, and led that organization through its successful acquisition by VeriSign in 2006.

The Quattro Wireless mobile web network delivers a next-generation framework for easily and quickly launching adaptive, mobile-optimized websites that are tightly integrated to a network of high-quality advertisers. In addition to enabling the world's most important brands to quickly bring best-in-class mobile web portals to the market, Quattro also links these publishers with targeted advertisers looking to reach the rapidly growing mobile audience.

Quattro’s technology platform is designed to enable publishers and advertisers of all shapes and sizes to leverage the unique characteristics, strengths and constraints of mobile devices, mobile user experience and mobile content.

Mobile content should not be treated as a static adjunct to the rest of a publishers’ dynamic Web presence, instead, it can and should extend the publishers brand presence into the mobile environment. Quattro’s Virtual Browser data connecting and proprietary real-time transcoding technology allows the publisher's existing Web site to serve as a dynamic data source for the mobile site.

Quattro’s server-side Widget architecture further enables publishers to integrate mobile-specific features and content objects into the overall user experience. The net result is a mobile web site that is a rich mix of existing Web feeds, content dynamically pulled from publisher pages plus mobile-only features and capabilities.

The Quattro platform then transcodes and delivers the resultant mix into the best possible rendition for the form factor, format support and browser behavior of hundreds of mobile devices around the world.

The process and tools required to create a rich, dynamic and integrated mobile experience should not require a dedicated mobile development and editorial team. Further, the challenges inherent in supporting hundreds of devices should not constrain publishers into a lowest common denominator look and feel.

The Web-based Quattro publishing tools enable a non-mobile savvy publisher or web site developer to create a portal launched specifically for mobile that truly reflects a publisher's brand with adaptive rich-media mobile content that is optimized for the individual device-rather than a least common denominator template or a stripped-down, text-only rendering.

Mobile is not an experimental, "revenue-some-years-down-the-road" environment. Existing large and mid-sized mobile publishers are experiencing hundreds of millions of page impressions with advertising click-through rates that rival the best of what the” rest of the Web” has to offer.

The Quattro advertising platform provides publishers access to a network of high-quality advertisers with inventory created specifically and targeted for their mobile site. The platform is optimized for advertising and revenue-generation through built-in ad serving and rotation, support for CPM, CPC and CPA models, and robust reporting and analytics.

The Publishing, Ad Serving and Content Delivery capabilities within the Quattro platform are integrated with a strong mobile data and analytics capability that enables both Publishers and Advertisers to fully capitalize on the unique targeting capabilities present within the mobile environment.

For Publishers, device targeting enables the creation of sites and pages that take full advantage of device capabilities from screen size to supported media types such as video.

For Advertisers, targeting manifests itself across the board, from the ability to target specific sites to the ability to target specific classes of devices (e.g. all Java devices) eventually to the ability to target specific classes of mobile users, based on Quattro’s unique ability to cluster like-users based on behavior over time.

Quattro Wireless will announce full details on the programs and solutions that will create the most comprehensive marketplace for publishers, advertisers and wireless operators to purchase and share advertising inventory, manage and analyze campaigns, and build, launch and manage dynamic, branded Web portals optimized for mobile.



The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

Today in Mobile News:

Intel Corp is betting on a big expansion of "ultra-mobile" computing, an idea that could hinge on how many gadgets people are willing to tote around.

In an interview on Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show CES, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said energy-efficient, Web-connected computers with full keyboards and screens in the 10cm (4-inch) neighborhood can give people more of what they want from the Internet than cellphones can.

To help stimulate the technology, Intel plans in the next few months to begin shipping processors and associated "chipsets" that demand relatively little power and are smaller than standard PC processors, allowing them to be crammed into tinier devices, which would be built by other companies.

Eyeing a similar market, wireless chip maker Qualcomm Inc also has built prototypes of little Web devices.

Its chief operating officer said he expects manufacturers to take up the blueprints and begin selling what he calls "portable computers" by the end of this year.
So far, so-called ultra-mobile computers, smaller than average laptops but bigger and more fully featured than most cellphones, have gotten a tepid response.

With the devices' prices often beyond US$1,000, many potential buyers have found little reason to scale down from their notebook computers or up from cellphones that have been improving their Web browsing experience.

"How do you make people realize that this is something advantageous to them and different from the notebook experience?"

"That's the trick. Nobody's been very good at that yet. ... It's not as widely compelling as it needs to be if they want it to compete on the level of a phone or a PC.

We feel distinctions will cease to matter, especially since small Web devices can incorporate cellphone functions, and Apple Inc's iPhone showed that combination devices can be elegant.

"You're projecting an end stage on an early technology," he said. "That's a risky thing to do."

To be sure, even with cellphones in nearly every pocket or purse, another gadget could be appealing if it does something particularly compelling. For example, more and more cellphones play music, but plenty of people also carry MP3 players that do the job better.

In a keynote speech on Monday at CES, Otellini tried to show that ultra-mobile PCs -- he prefers the name "mobile Internet devices" to better distinguish them from laptops -- offer a new kind of information-on-the-go bliss.

He demonstrated how a US traveler to Beijing might use a pocket computer to get real-time navigation tips and instant translations of signs, menus and conversation from Chinese.
Otellini acknowledged that this vision for ultra-mobile computing might not be fully realized for a few years.

For one thing, little PCs need longer battery lives so people can tote them around and use them all day.

Intel also expects wireless broadband networks based on the Wi-MAX standard will develop much further to enable connectivity on the devices. These computers could also make use of cellular networks.

Learn More about: Wi-Max

That is the connectivity route favored by Qualcomm, which is a major supplier to the wireless industry. Wireless carriers first will need to come up with more enticing data pricing plans.

Sony Mylo

Portable web device helps you stay in touch on the go.
Proof that wireless carriers will be crucial is in the weak reception for Sony Corp's Mylo Personal Communicator. Designed for people on the go, this device allows users to connect to the internet and interact with their favorite social networking (Facebook) and Flash-based video ( YouTube) sites.

The device, which comes in black and white and features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and boasts a 3.5" display. The keyboard is backlit for ease-of-use. In the presentation, it appeared to be similar to a Sidekick in design, without the phone functionality.

Recently added to its capabilities is the ability to use AIM, Facebook and YouTube. It also supports Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype, if you're into voice-to-voice communication. Users do not need a contract to use the device and can connect free using any Wayport hot spot locations, including over 9000 McDonalds.

The unit also boasts a 1.5 mega pixel camera and supports several helpful widgets. It can also play MP3s, AAC, ATRAC or WMA files and will offer free game downloads as well.

The unit comes in black or white and will be ava