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

For the opening of the 2008-2009 season, the next MobileMobile Madrid on September 29th, will address the topic of Mobile Internet Platforms with three major players: Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft to know their plans for the mobile business.

José Antonio Martínez Aguilar (Director of the Telecom and Media Division at Google), Alex Romero (Director for Strategic Partnerships for Portugal, Spain and France at Yahoo Europe) and Iván Lozano (Mobile Manager at Microsoft Spain) will share their view about the industry.

In addition, there’s also four Spanish start-ups that will present their elevator-pitch and will get feedback in return from the GYM.

As usual, attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaymadrid.com/subscribe/ and reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

Announcements, google, innovation, instituto de empresa, madrid, microsoft, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, mobile internet platforms, Mobile Monday, Mobile OS, mobile web, mobilemonday, mobileweb, mobility, spanish startups, yahoo!

MOBILE MUSIC

On the Mobile Music front 3GSM started already one week before the actual event with Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music meaning Digital Rights Management (DRM); DRM is a trigger for the Record Labels to control the sales of digital music. A great and surprising Open Letter by Steve, certainly with a strategy behind, I was thinking a week before the event, too busy preparing the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards (I want to come back on the Steve Jobs letter later here).

Surprise, surprise, on Day one of the event, Microsoft anounced the launch of its own Mobile DRM system ‘PlayReady‘ (!) that will allow the use of commercial content on multiple different devices for a single fee. Is this what the consumer is waiting for?

Two days later, at the opening session on Wednesday, the chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group Corp, Edgar Bronfman Jr. said “that buying digital music from a mobile phone is too difficult and the music and mobile phone industries need to improve the process to meet demand (…)”

A study last year found that only 8.5 percent of people who own a phone that can be used to download and purchase music actually did so. “Why? It’s expensive, it’s complicated and it’s slow,” he said. “It’s amazing that we’ve generated as much revenue as we have given how cumbersome the experience can be.”

For your info, personally I haven’t bought one single tune on my mobile phone(s), though I consider myself one of the 3% online (legal) PC music buyers Steve is mentioning in his open letter:

“Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats.”

The 3% I bought on iTunes of course, so where do the other songs come from? Older Cd’s (of LP’s I bought already once before…) copied to my iTunes and to my phone.

I wonder if the US companies heard about OMA DRM from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)? Its mission is to provide interoperable service enablers working across countries, operators and mobile terminals. Since its inception in June 2002, the Open Mobile Alliance has grown to more than 300 companies representing mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies, and content providers Members include traditional wireless industry players such as equipment and mobile systems manufacturers (Ericsson, Siemens, Nokia, Openwave, Sony Ericsson, Philips, Motorola,Samsung…) and mobile operators (Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile…), but also software vendors (Microsoft - hello?, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle Corporation, Symbian, Celltick…)

I don’t get it everyone was thinking Apple would show it’s iPhone at 3GSM. Why smart Steve would do such thing now when he announced previously the iPhone launch for Europe around Christmas 2007? Who else can say he has a product with 50,400,000 Google entries before it’s actual launch I haven’t seen any other phone brand model beat that! Oviously no big players are scared about the iPhone…

One thing gets clearer everyday, the iPhone has one big advantage: it’s Mac OS X and iTunes seamless integration; why would the iPhone need 3G? Everyone will buy its tunes on iTunes and beam or synchronize them to his iPhone, easily, with one-click buy activated… I dig.

Still, when I wanted to make a personalized mix for the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards networking party (no selling or re-distributing of the music I bought!) iTunes told me “You cannot copy 16 of the choosen songs to your CD”… come one guys, GET REAL! Next time I think I’m going to invite a band and offer their songs directly through a Futurlink-a-like interface…

More M-Trends thoughts on 3GSM here soon including mobile trend stuff such as IMS, IPTV, the mobilisation of Web 2.0, mobile search, the awards and the networking parties of course!

You can view my 3GSM Flickr Photoset here.

3G, 3GSM, Analysis, apple, communicator, digital rights management, drm, e90, ethnographics, f700, global peer awards, innovation, iphone, lg, microsoft, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, mobile music, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile web, MOTORIZR Z8, motorola, n95, nokia, oma, open mobile alliance, Operators, Peer Awards 2007, phone, prada, samsung, shine, social media, sony ericsson, startups, steve jobs, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, usability, user experience, w880, walkman, warner music, we media, zune

Derek Torres and Stuart Mudie are co-authors of The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista, a book that takes an in-depth look at the highs and the lows of the latest version of the Microsoft operating system and is due to be published by Wiley in February. I’ve known Stuart online for a long time now, and we finally met back in February of this year when I helped him organize the Mobile Sunday gathering of mobile bloggers prior to the 3GSM World Congress. When Stuart asked me if he could visit m-trends as part of the “virtual blog tour” he and Derek are organizing to promote their book, I agreed on the condition that he would write about something of relevance to the readers of this blog. I thought that would be enough to put him off, but he’s done it! Well, nearly…

If you’re trying to get your head around Microsoft’s mobile music strategy, you could be forgiven for being a little confused.

Do they want you to use Windows Media Player 11 and sync your music library to one of their authorized PlaysForSure portable music players? Or do they now want you to buy a Zune and use the specific software that comes with the device?

And where do they expect you to purchase your digital music? From URGE, the digital music store owned by MTV Networks that was launched in close cooperation with Microsoft as recently as May of this year? Or should the Zune Marketplace now be your one-stop-shop for all your digital music needs? (One thing’s for sure, it’s not MSN Music.)

Om Malik has a good prediction about what the result of providing so many alternatives will be: “What happens to consumers when faced with the choice of Zune or Urge!!! Answer - iPod!“

* While researching this post, I discovered that there’s even talk of the Zune adding phone functionality at some unspecified time in the future. How would that work? Would Microsoft force you to change your carrier every six months? Or - even worse - would you be obliged to sign up with the Microsoft MVNO?

Stuart Mudie, co-author of The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista

Announcements, blethers, Blog Tour, derek torres, Friends, ipod, media player, microsoft, mobile music, msn music, mtv, playforsure, strategy, stuart mudie, Unofficial Vista, urge, zune

“There are more mobile phones than PCs, there are more Net-connected phones than PCs, and the scale of mobile phones means that a few companies (maybe one or two) touch almost all of the mobile phone users in the world in a more personal way than Microsoft, Intel, or even Dell do.”

Charlie Schick in The magnitude of things: What it means to make things in the millions

“We need to come down to earth, most “normal” people have never heard of RSS. I did a few weeks ago a presentation in front of a hundred heads of marketing of large corporations, very few of them just new what RSS was. And it’s absolutely normal, they don’t have to, they just have to understand what it brings them and their customers. We should make it obvious and not talk about technical stuff.”

and

“Blogs are taking off because they can be read (and commented) by people that know nothing about them. Podcasts will really take-off when they can more easily by listened to and viewed on TV sets. A few startups are working on it.”

Loic Le Meur in Introducing European startups at Innovate! europe’06

“In the mobile setting the user is frequently motivated by an intent to find something out fast because they want to do something else there and then, like make a phone call, book a flight, catch a train etc. This “saving time” objective is distinct from the “killing time” one. In the “saving time” frame of mind, there’s almost zero tolerance to anything remotely like surfing (i.e. faffing) around. In that setting, the whole web paradigm falls apart very quickly, especially if it’s actually the standard mega-screen web experience shoe-horned into a mobile nano-screen.”

Paul Golding in A Useful Mobile Web (idea #90)

“This leads to the big questions when working with the mobile web:

* Should I just wait for mobile phones and networks to catch up so they can grok my normal web app?
* Do I just need to bite the bullet and create a mobile version of my application (e.g. BBC.co.uk/mobile). If so, can I get away with a handheld stylesheet to do the job, or do I truly need a full application (the handheld css still requires downloading the full html body for example, and can only do SO much with the app.)”

Dion Almaer in Mobile Ajax: Safari Browser

“Nothing like downloading a nice big fat deck to get the 50,000 foot view–it’s all about talent, globalization, monetization and next generation product strategy (damn right on that one!)”

Susan Mernit in Yahoo! Analyst’s’ Day preso

dell, intel, marketing, microsoft, mobile ajax, mobile web, nokia, podcasts, Quotes of the Week, rss, safari browser, tv, usability, web 2.0, yahoo