mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends - m-trends.org

2008 was another exciting year for anything mobile in general, it was especially the breakthrough of Mobile 2.0 - its meme has now over 1.000.000 entries in Google. Many industry players started using the mobile 2.0 term in their marketing strategy, the iPhone stayed untouchable as the perfect catalyst converging web and mobile applications and services (300 million apps downloaded in 21 weeks!). 2008 was also the year of the breakthrough of mobile social media (Facebook mobile services grew by + 300%) and the Mobile Internet skyrocketed in Emerging Markets. Despite the shaky economy, the mobile phone continues its path as the default remote control towards the Internet of Things, creating various opportunities for new application scenarios for entrepreneurs in an ever-evolving global mobile ecosystem.

Read my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008 and check for yourself what I predicted last year. It’s always a good personal exercise how close one is predicting mobile market trends and it’s also an indicator of what I think will matter in 2009. It seems very obvious and easy but predicting trends can be tricky, just try it for yourself! Check also my del.icio.us for some interesting predictions from other technology blogs I bookmarked during holidays. You can read about my professional activities in 2008 here.

Make sure you check out Carlo Longino’s and Russell Buckley’s yearly predictions at Mobhappy, their predictions are now becoming nearly classic and are always one of my favourite readings during holiday.

So, here below my 10 Mobile Trends for 2009:

1. 10 startups I know personally will go bankrupt

Let’s start with the bad one first. I’m going to be bolder than Carlo with this prediction. Not to discourage my entrepreneurial friends around but 2009 is going to be really bad for many startups in mobile that haven’t been able to raise funding in 2008 or before. Especially the ones that don’t have a business model to generate cash will have to rely on their own private funding to survive the downturn period ahead. On the other hand I see a lot of talent out there with great ideas and/or unique developing capacity. I believe there will be more mergers and acquisitions of companies to keep technology and knowledge on their end and create new interest of VC’s interested to invest in such new talent pools before year end. Don’t forget that a lot of internet services still need to develop that specific mobile functionality, so I see a lot of consolidation for both web and mobile industries to make more web and mobile convergence happening.

2. iPhone Nano

Following their iPod product strategy, Apple will launch an iPhone Nano type of iPhone targeted to the mobile youth and teenagers market. Bringing a slimmer device to the market for this market segment (the hottest in mobile!) will boost Apple sales once again and keep building its mobile device manufacturer market share easily towards 10 % the years to come. I don’t need a lot of analytical market research data for this as proof. Just run a local focus group as I did with my 16year old  daughters and their peers, and there’s no turning back, they all want an iPhone device!

I don’t see any competitor the coming 2 years coming up with a device that good as the iPhone. Nokia’s N97 is promising but Nokia has a problem with it’s OS. The company will need at least two years to move seamless to the new open-source OS after having acquired Symbian in 2008. Blackberry is staying strong in its segment for business users and travellers and it will stay there for a while since the iPhone is still lacking good & fast keypad input - the typical Blackberry need for business travellers hooked to responding emails 24/7. Blackberry has also a unique advantage to its competitors with its flat fees for global

Also, I agree with Stowe Boyd’s prediction, that Steve Jobs will step down as a CEO of Apple in 2009. AAPL lost + 50% in stock value in 2008 so it’s a good time for transition to rebuild company value from this point onwards, less depending on the health speculations of Steve Jobs.

3. Location becomes obsolete

Location - a specific position or point in physical space as used in technology, will become obsolete in 2009.  By many industry players pushed as the new hype, location is already becoming a commodity.What I mean with this is that the user will not have to worry anymore about finding their location on their device, a lot of services and applications will have it build in by default. There will not be such thing as location-based advertising, etc… However there will be opportunities for the companies that can intelligently build new services around locations. The game is not around the location itself but around the ‘discovery’ of services around a location. Think Around Me, UrbanSpoon or GoodRec apps on the iPhone, Skyhook’s location-enabled browser toolbar, Loki, and startups like Rummble to discover recommended places by your friends and Skout who recently switched its strategy towards dating services based on location.

More and more iPhone apps and nearly all of the applications in the Android Developer Challenge have location technology embedded. Nokia acquired Gate5 previously, then Navteq and Plazes to make Nokia Maps as an essential part of their services strategy. Brightkite just announced that it’s now officially integrated with Facebook Connect and soon most application and service will have location build in.

4. Mobile will boost Virtual Goods consumption

The Virtual Economy already worth $1.2 billion and estimated to reach $6bn by 2010 (notes from the Virtual Goods Summit). Virtual goods will survive the hype, moreover, triggered from the mobile phone in combination with social media sites such as Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, this will create new revenues other then advertising. Micro payments systems such as Spare Change (powered by PayPal) and Zong let users move cash into the system, and applications like Mob Wars have gathered as much as $1 million per month from micropayments.

With better usability and accessibility of mobile services and platforms coming to us, consumers will buy more songs, more games, more applications (apps are replacing premium goods such as wallpapers and ringtones), and will send more virtual gifts to their friends and peers.

Once setup an account with a credit card, as for example on iTunes, the consumption of virtual goods is a no brainer. Personally I spent more last year bying songs, applications and games on the iPhone then I ever did from any other  mobile phone. Better applications triggers more data consumption!

5. Mobile Cloud Computing

Today’s mobile applications need to be dynamic with ongoing content updates from users, many apps use cloud computing to store critical live data on servers on the web. On-the-go professionals and entreprises need to be able to interact with their employees and collegues from any Internet-connected computer or virtually any mobile handset. Documents as well as mail, address book, images, audio & video files, etc. need to be backed up continuously and securely to the cloud. Comcast acquired Plaxo, Vodafone acquired Zyb in 2008. Many companies need to implement mobile sales force automation solutions so I see services like SoonR for small and medium companies becoming more and more important. 2009 will be a breakthrough year for these kind of services.

6. Mobile SEO becoming increasingly important

With the fragmention of the device market not improving a lot, mobile SEO services and mobile search marketing will become as important for brands as their internet SEO. Finding products and services in the real world on the go will be key to many businesses. Local Search is rapidly becoming a million (probably billion) dollar industry - major players such as AOL, Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Microsoft have all jumped into this market.

Ever wondered how consumers will find your product/service on a mobile phone? It’s all about discovery, how users will detect the new and cool stuff. I believe a lot will be discovered through social media tools and friend recommendations but mobile SEO is of basic importance for any brand taking itself serious.

7. Mobile Browsers accessing device capabilities

In 2009, mobile browsers will become smarter - even on lower end phones, and will be able to access device capabilities such as camera, location and other mobile specific features. There are currently little hurdles left to browse Facebook from a mobile browser the same as you do from the Facebook App on the iPhone. Nearly the same functionality will be accessible through the browser, opening the gate for Nokia Series 40 phone users to have a better mobile web experience. Note that the Series 40 platform is the world’s most widely used mobile device platform, the Series 40 Browser is based on webkit technology.

Opera Mini users viewed more than 5.7 billion pages in November 2008 (!). Mozilla’s Fennec will be released this year, its difficult to see at this point what will be the impact of the browser on the mobile browser market but Mozilla will definately come up with some innovations on this end, note also a possible Google Chrome Mobile to be released this year too. All good news for the mobile web users!

8. Dense physical shopping area’s become a new potential for mobile data consumption

Many cities have hyper dense shopping area’s with millions of people passing by per year. Think about the potential these zones create for consumers to receive informations, vouchers, promotions, etc… on the mobile phone through short range technologies such as bluetooth or wi-fi. The cell phone can act as a new channel to trigger better recommendations for the consumer on what’s available in that area but also to stimulate digital goods consumption.

9. Mobile Collaboration Services on the rise

With the economic crisis hitting many travel expenses budgets the coming year, mobile video conferencing tools such as PhoneTopp will be booming this year. Due to downturn, people in general will travel less but the need to communicate, to learn and to stay informed with colleagues, friends and peers on what’s happening abroad stays. Applications and services in this area will grow. See also the potential of applications such as QIK and Seesmic and others have in this area. Just think for example about the potential of live video dating

10. Mobile phone used to trigger disease detection

A couple of weeks ago, by using only an LED, plastic light filter and some wires, scientists at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute modded a cellphone into a portable blood tester capable of monitoring HIV, malaria, leukemia and detecting diseases. The tone is set for researchers and entrepreneurs to focus on some innovations in this area. the mHealth area has great potential in both the Western world and emerging countries, the mobile device can be used as a key instrument to improve people’s lifes and health. Look at the numerous iPhone applications already available for tracking users’ health using location and accelerometer functionality. Other devices and software are specifically developed to help elder and sick people in urgent situations.

That’s it, I’ll stop here. 2009 is also the 10th year I’ll be working in mobile. As the web becomes now accessible from the mobile for many people, a lot of essential work has been done since I saw my first video demo on a  mobile phone back in 1999 in Finland. I can still see a lot of new opportunities in unexplored convergent area’s coming ahead such as in Health, Education, Assisted Living, Digital Home Solutions, Connected Cars, etc.

I’ll keep focusing on innovations happening in that area.

Wish you all the best for 2009!

With only a couple of hours to go in 2008, I’m writing this post to close a very good year and write down some stats for future  personal reference. Most of the year I did only those things that I do well and/or am passionate about and do them with people I love & respect, can’t ask for a lot more these days

Here’s a brief overview:

In 2008, with dotopen, I reviewed some 500 startups in mobile for event participation selections, as a jury member and for clients. We advised numerous startups helping them with strategic positioning within the global mobile ecosystem.

“Mobile 2.0″ passed a million entries in Google now and that means a lot to me.

Together with Deisi & Carles at dotopen, we organised 13 MobileMondays in Barcelona, Sevilla and Madrid. We also organised some bigger events such as the MobileMonday Peer Awards, Mobile Sunday Barcelona and the Mobile Jam Session (with Caroline Lewko) in February during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We contributed as well to the Mobile Jam Sessions in Las Vegas and San Francisco.

Some of the other highlights of the year were definately Mobile 2.0 Europe in June in Barcelona and in November in San Francisco. Furthermore in Silicon Valley I attended Seedcamp in the Valley and Mobile Tech for Social Change barcamp organised by Daniel Appelquist and Katrin Verclas at Google.org offices. Also attended - and still one of the best startup events around - Under The Radar - Mobility event in Mountain View I attended for a 3rd year in a row. Another highlight was definately the Vodafone Mobile Clicks for which I also participated as a jury member. It was very interesting evaluating the Dutch startups and it was great fun in Amsterdam with the other jury members and at PICNIC.

I presented at some really GREAT events, such as:

Plugg, Brussels - view my Mobile 2.0 presentation

Over The Air, London - view my Mobile 2.0 for developers presentation

MobileMonday Amsterdam (most probably the BEST MobileMonday around these days!) - view my 15 Tips to Create Value for Mobile presentation

Digital Leaders Forum in Seoul, Korea - view my Mobile Digital Storytelling presentation

PICNIC (Vodafone Mobile Clicks), Amsterdam - view my Mobile Startup Case Studies presentation

Future of Mobile, London - view my Future of Mobile presentation

Together these presentatons got + 55.000 views this year on Slideshare, you can view all my presentations here.

In 2008, I took 33 trips to 14 cities in 2008. You can view my 2008 trips here on Dopplr.

I created some 37 Flickr Sets of my travels around in 2008, I created one specially for you titled “Wonderful People in 2008” with most of all the nice people I met during 2008.

So that’s about it in a nutshell. What to expect for 2009? It’s going to be another interesting year for mobile for sure, shaky for some but determinent for others. I’ll write up my predictions for 2009 next week after a short break.

I wish a very happy new year to all my friends, collegues, twitter followers and blog readers. Looking forward to catch up with you all again in 2009!

Please mark already your calendar for new editions of our events (currently confirmed in 2009):

February 15 - Mobile Sunday Barcelona (venue to be confirmed soon)

February 16 - Mobile Peer Awards 09

June 17-18-19 - Mobile 2.0 Europe (a day for developers, a day for startups and a day for business)

The MobileMonday Mobile Peer Awards competition is bringing a virtual jury together to select the best startups to present at the exquisite Petit Palau at the Palau de la Musica on February 16, 2009. The Mobile Peer Awards Barcelona are amongst the most influential events in the mobile industry and the point of reference in startup innovation during the Mobile World Congress.

The idea is that each chapter of Mobile Monday, nominates their favourite local startup to go into the final. This year there are no less than a staggering 67 chapters entering. This means that there’s an (online) pre-judging round selecting 20 finalists to present their 3-minute pitch at the event in Barcelona.

To make the finalist selection as transparent and open to the industry as possible, the organizers are accepting applications to the finalist-selecting jury (individuals who will select the finalists among all the chapter nominees by online vote during mid January - and will not need to be in Barcelona). If you’re interested to become part of that jury or know someone who should be part of it, send an email to jury AT mobilepeerawards DOT com with a short bio, your LinkedIn profile, and personal blog and twitter name if you have it.

Confirmed members that will also judge at the event itself include Russell Buckley, James Whatley, Peggy Anne Salz and industry leaders from the mobile ecosystem. Last year’s jury included, amongst others, representatives from Telefónica, Vodafone, Google, Yahoo!, MobHappy, GoMoNews, Nexit Ventures, and Xtract.

For startups

Participation is free of charge and open to any startup willing to pay their way to the event. Innovative startups active in mobile technology or startups with a mobile product are invited to register to participate at mobilepeerawards.com before the December 31 deadline.

If you’re interested to become a partner or a sponsor to the Mobile Peer Awards during Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, you can download the latest sponsorpack, or contact info AT mobilemondaybarcelona DOT com.

The MobileMonday Peer Awards are organized by MobileMonday Barcelona in collaboration with the entire MobileMonday Community. Previous Peer Awards winners included Realeyes 3D, Mobile Complete (now Device Anywhere) and Plazes in 2007; Buzzd, Funambol, Taptu and Kimia in 2008. You can view the Winners’ Circle page here.

Following Nokia’s last weeks’ thrilling N97 launch, I’d like to share some of my thoughts on other - less mediatised - announcements, and some other insights I learned about during the Nokia World event.

Most attention went obviously to the Nokia N97 (read an overview of reactions at Nokia Conversations) and its positioning in the competitive smartphone market, that besides the iPhone include rivals such as Research in Motion’s just-introduced BlackBerry Storm, two Windows Mobile smartphones, the Sony Ericsson X1, the HTC Touch Pro and Samsung’s Touchscreen Series; the race towards the coming netbook trend has started, led by the Netbook Apple rumours.

In this post I want to focus on Nokia’s  ongoing effort to bridge the digital divide, introducing affordable mobile devices and innovative new services for people in emerging markets and the huge opportunity that includes for Nokia, hence the title of my post (read as in North-South Divide).

 © Image Wikipedia

Nokia 1202

I had the chance to play with Nokia’s lowest cost mobile device to date, the Nokia 1202, currently offered at only 25 Euro (!) Developed specifically for people in rural areas, the Nokia 1202 includes a large dust resistant keypad and standard features like a flashlight and loud ringtones. What really stands out is the battery life - it has a standby time of up to 26 days and talk time of up to 9 hours, which is extremely valuable to people living in areas where they have to travel a long way (an often into towns) to get their devices charged.

Equally as significant is that this is a phone designed to be shared, by up to five individuals or families - the 1202 has multiple phone books and time and pre-paid tracker, meaning that each user can separate and manage their individual usage.
In addition to Nokia’s lowest cost handset to date, as well as its first handset for emerging markets with an integrated digital music player - the Nokia 1661 (estimated retail price of 30 EUR), the mobile phone manufacturer unveiled a range of services that leverage the power of the Internet.

S40 web browser based on webkit

One of things that I believe really important is the now integrated web browser support to access most web content through the service provider’s XHTML/HTML gateway. The latest version of Series 40, called Series 40 6th Edition, introduced a new browser based on the WebKit open source components WebCore and JavaScriptCore. The new browser delivers support for HTML 4.01, CSS2, JavaScript 1.5, and Ajax.

The Series 40 software platform is the world’s most widely used mobile device platform and found in hundreds of millions of devices. It provides communication applications such as telephone, messaging, email client with POP3 and IMAP4 capabilities and Internet browser; media applications such as camera, video recorder, music/video player and FM radio; and phonebook and other personal information management (PIM) applications such as calendar and tasks. S40 also supports Flash Lite applications. Digg? Check here to learn more about Nokia Web Technologies projects.

Nokia Messaging

Nokia also announced the launch of Nokia Messaging, which mobilizes consumer email and consumer instant messaging (IM) solutions on Nokia devices. Nokia also introduced the online portal for Mail on Ovi, which will enable PC users to create and access Ovi email accounts as well as gain cross access to other Ovi services with just a single sign-on account.

Nokia Messaging will launch commercially in the first quarter of 2009 in Australia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela, and in select countries later in the year. Agreements with key operators will establish Nokia Messaging as an operator supported service so that users who purchase a data plan that includes Nokia Messaging will be able to take full access of the built-in push email and IM access without additional service charges.

Nokia has a big advantage to its competitors knowing that it can give millions of consumers access to email and IM accounts from Yahoo! Mail® and Yahoo! Messenger®, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail and Google Talk, and AOL Mail as well as email solutions from thousands of ISPs around the world on the majority of Nokia devices. This is a major strategic move from Nokia and starts the real ‘battle of the titans’ (read Russell Buckley’s post on this topic) with Nokia starting to challenge Google on some of its core products.

Will Google be faster getting its products on mobile phones or will Nokia be faster offering its new mobile & web connected products on the device? That is still the only real question of the game in mobile. To date, Nokia has shipped about 200 million devices that immediately enable the launch of its messaging solutions, including Nokia Messaging, Mail on Ovi and corporate mobile email.

Considering this, follow what this means for other startup IM client aggregators like Meebo, Nimbuzz, eBuddy… With Trutap, a leading UK mobile startup, to let go almost 80% of its staff last week after failing to hit its window for a second round of funding.

Mobile Innovation in Developing Countries

Needles to point out the number of opportunities that lie ahead for Nokia - and other players in the mobile ecosystem in developing countries and an emerging continent such as Africa. The last 2 years, some African countries have known a tremendous growth in mobile. Check the World Cellular Information Service for latest statistics.

Check also the W3C Mobile Web in Developing Countries Wiki if you’re planning projects in this area. This wiki gathers information about successful stories (or failures) about deployment of ICT in Developing Countries in general, and more specifically using mobile phones. Those stories and use cases are essential to understand what are the most useful (type of) applications and content for rural communities and under-privileged populations. Other sites like mobileactive.org and Now Public - crowd powered media - have a lot resources on development challenges and South-South solutions.

An example including GreenTech effort is the strong movement by groups such as Safaricom in Kenia to reduce diesel usage by integrating wind turbines or solar panels into the systems powering cellular sites. Check the Africa Cell Phone Provider’s Ingenuity Turns to Wind and Solar article written by Sam Aola Ooko:

(…) Currently, remote cell sites across Africa are typically powered by diesel generators with lead acid batteries providing back-up power should the diesel generators fail. With increasing costs of diesel fuel, concerns over diesel emissions and high maintenance requirements of the diesel generators and lead acid batteries, (…) Supplying fuel in areas where the roads are very poor and armed escorts are sometimes required is very expensive. Local technology firms have come to the rescue of these cell phone providers to design and supply pilot wind/diesel hybrid systems at very remote base stations, the systems consisting mainly of a turbine on a tower, sealed batteries, and an inverter, with remarkable results. (…) One such firm is Winafrique Technologies, an integrated renewable energy resource company in Nairobi whose directors believe Africa’s wind and solar potential is far from tapped. (…)

Read also Ericsson’s recent Wind-Powered Cell Tower announcement.

Knowing that Solar Powered Battery Charger technology is becoming mature and more widespread, this opens more possibilities for locals to start using mobile devices anywhere they go. Check the SOLIO Universal Portable Solar Charger (image right) that delivers currently one hour of sun = 15 mins talk time or 40 mins of MP3 music.

There is a real revenue generating strategy behind Nokia Maps, focused on service deployment on a global scale, including emerging markets - btw I saw a really great and interesting Location-Based session at Nokia World. A seperate blogpost is needed to explain my thoughts on this. But here’s a teaser…

Ever heard of integrating A-GPS receiver on regular SIM cards?

BlueSky Positioning is approaching the established mobile positioning market from a very different perspective: by addressing the key barriers of poor accuracy and high cost, the company is developing solutions to enable mobile operators to deliver both mandatory and commercial location-based services (LBS) applications. BlueSky Positioning is incorporating satellite positioning capability into the SIM card. Their goal is to be the catalyst for the mass market uptake of location-enabled mobile communications.

Open-Source
With the Symbian Foundation aquisition now completed and more announcements made regarding more use of open-source technology, shows that also Nokia is embracing ‘open’ as a keyword for more growth offering consumer Internet services, as well as enterprise solutions and software. “In the longer perspective, Linux will become a serious alternative for our high-end phones,” Ukko Lappalainen, vice president at Nokia’s markets unit, told Reuters in an interview. “I don’t see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo,” Lappalainen said.

Widgets vs. Apps?

Apple with its App Store has paved the way for the use of mobile applications, providing a truely great experience on the iPhone due to its ease-of-use and by creating a revenue model for iPhone application developers. Apple announced 300 million iPhone apps have been downloaded from its App Store since it opened in July. That is equal in 6 months what Getjar -  the world’s most popular mobile application distribution and developer community - needed in 2 years with Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm and Flash Lite mobile games and applications downloads.

Nokia is betting on the use of Personalized Web Widgets. Widgets are powered by Nokia’s Web runtime. Today, Web runtime is an integral component of Nokia’s S60 smartphone software platform. S60 enables developers to build widgets using its Web runtime application development framework allowing developers to access device services including contacts, calendar, GPS, and multimedia. To find out more about developing widgets on S60 visit Forum Nokia.

Read also Mobile 2.0 pal, Dan Appelquist’s interview on W3C, the Mobile Web, Widgets and Content Transformation here for further exploration.

Apple is focusing on delivering supreme user experience, gaining a considerable market share in the mobile high-end device market; Nokia forecasts the mobile phone market in 2009 to contract by 5 % compared to 2008, while increasing its market share… Nokia is, apart from battling on the high-end device market, also focusing on very different market opportunities, the emerging markets are definately a key area for Nokia’s development in the future… Nokia will stay market leader for a while still, for sure.

I am here at Nokia World, just witnessed a great Nokia N97 announcement. Lots of media and bloggers covering. You can watch the video trailer here. I’m uploading pictures of the event here on Flickr. And follow more bits & pieces on Twitter. Some first impressions by Scott Merriil at Crunchgear, Robert Scoble, Jonathan Greene, Rafe Blandford at All About Symbian Jason Harris, Ricky Cadden and Oliver Starr.