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

Happy New Year to all my readers! 2007 starts with a link to another post I wrote for Read/WriteWeb. After the incredible repsonse and feedback on the “Understanding Mobile 2.0” post I wrote early in December, here’s another one in the series of mobile disruptive technologies.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my first Gizmo VoIP call I made from my computer to a mobile phone but now you can read about my latest experiences making international internet calls with a Nokia N80i to another one, perfect quality, for a couple of callout cents only. Can you dig?

Head over to read the complete story at Read/WriteWeb.

Having ‘mobile’ and ‘trends’ in my header asks for a yearly overview of mobile and wireless trends insights for the coming year. You can check here which trends I wrote about last year.

In a poll Richard Mac Manus held amongst Read/Write Web readers last week, on The Biggest Web Trend of 2007, the Mobile Web came out on the third place of coming web trends for 2007. Online Video / Internet TV was voted most popular (though the poll stays open until 31 December), the continued rise of browser-based apps (Ajax, Google, etc) as second. RSS and structured data - my personal favourite, and Rich Internet Apps (Apollo, WPF, etc), respectively on nr. 4 and 5.

Watch the online video trend going mobile in 2007, just check what teenagers do with a PSP these days and how easy it is to get YouTube on the device (see image below). Results 2, 4 and 5 are the logical evolution of web 2.0. Will the Mobile Web finally breakthrough to the masses next year? Having readers putting it upfront in a poll of a popular weblog such as Read/Write Web is a significant indication for more. How about you?

For Richard’s original “2007 Web Predictions” post - one of his most read posts of 2006 btw, he asked me for 10 Mobile Trends for 2007 you can read in that same post. I wrote down 10 mobile trends for 2007 very spontaneously, not having really thought about them before and without having the time to doublethink them through. Reading them over again now, I think it’s actually good to have written down 10 trends spontaneously - try it yourself… so, I invite you to check how good my gut feeling was next year

I’ll repeat them here again for my readers:

1. Flat fees will become more affordable bit by bit.
2. Thus, more user-generated content will become available to the phone; opening the way for mobile users to start using new web/mobile 2.0 services on their phones, such as podcasting, RSS feeds, more user-generated content to upload and use.
3. Big Media Youth Networks going mobile - MySpace, YouTube, MTV and many more players will resolutely go mobile; allowing users to upload pictures, videos and create/consumer content straight from their mobile phones. And to share with friends (including mobile forwarding functionality).
4. Mobile search - the big players will start positioning seriously in the mobile market (watch out for deals with carriers/operators and device manufacturers)
5. Mobile ads - the market is growing at a rapid pace (just watch AdMob’s ad views ticker box daily)
6. QR codes will start to enter retail markets.
7. Mobile image recognition will pop up in mixed marketing campaigns.
8. Cell Phone memory card swapping - to exchange music/video files.
9. Multiple network download hotspots become available in urban zones - enabling ‘on the spot’ mobile download and internet access possibilities via wi-fi/wimax/bluetooth/nfc/etc…. (all build in or available immediately)
10. Rise of ’smart client’ solutions, for convergence of content and application functionality on mobile devices in general.

I think 2006 was a very prosperous year for mobile in general. On a personal level, I got the chance to meet and work with some of the best people around in mobile in Europe and US, we’re just at the beginning of a new era and more prosperity in the mobility sector.

Special kudos to Kelly and Lisa at gotomedia, Russell and Carlo at MobHappy, Oliver at MobileCrunch, Caroline, Andy, Richard, Martin, Dave, Fabien, Stuart, Julia, Josep, Carles, Justin, Francesco and Gabriel, Jari and Micah, Ignacio, Debbie and her team, Peter and José, Markus, and last but not least Darla and all the women working in Mobile.

I wish all my readers and blogging friends an excellent and peaceful 2007!

Here some impressions from the excellent Under The Radar: Mobility Conference from November 16 in Mountain View, CA. Debbie Landa and her team are doing an incredible good job creating this type of events bringing together various types of quality (!) value chain players in mobility. Just seeing the number of VC’s around per square meter shows that mobility is definately on the radar in Silicon Valley. You can view some of my UTR pictures here as a Flickr set.

The number of company pitches one could view in a day was pretty impressive: 32 companies, divided in 8 tracks in 2 rooms; The 2-track system however made me skip some presentations I would have loved to see too. Anyway, on the overal side, this was a very smoothly organised event and a chance to meet loads of new people in the industry, mainly focused Silicon Valley. It was very interesting for me to get a better notice of the US mobile market and understand better between the differences US and European markets.

The overal tone of the conference was all about web 2.0 going mobile, there has been numerous blogposts and discussions lately on the topic… Daniel Appelquist has one of my preferred mobile 2.0 definitions so far:

Mobile 2.0 is not “the Future.” it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry.

I started with the first session on VIDEO with ComVu, Juice Wireless presenting JuiceCaster, Nexage and Veeker; a very potential set of companies. My favourites are ComVu because I can stream (imagine a good flat rate deal somewhere of course) and geotag automatically, and JuiceCaster has it’s community building stuff together. I can’t really remember about Nexage, neither can I found notes back and the Veek Video Peek from Veeker just doesn’t sound right.

Then I went off to the other room to see Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob (excerpt here below); everytime I hit their homepage, I’m always impressed by the number of incoming live ad requests coming in, and they are not fake - as some suggested inside the Microsoft building… Correct me if I’m wrong.

In this ADVERTISING/MARKETING track Greystripe won the audience award for it’s great presentation and idea - inserting ads into mobile game downloads, ok but that’s too American for me, I just don’t believe a cell phone is not a TV and in the long run kids will just skip the ad whenever avaiable or possible.

Meanwhile I missed the session on MEDIA SHARING and SharpCast who won the audience award here. SharpCast is doing what everybody else forgot to do well between the desktop and the mobile: it’s all about syncing your life! I also missed the transactions track but you can view winner Mobo’s pitch here below by CEO Noah Glass himself:

During lunch I catched up with Scott Rafer from MyBlogLog and Dave Harper. Dave (here below) presented in the next MOBILIZE session his WinkSite project. Moderator Rafe Needleman from CNET made a very true review of that session. You can read Dave’s presentation here, don’t forget to check their pitch!

Meanwhile in the other track Loopt was winning the overall audience choice. Loopt is doing what Plazes (and some others) are doing for a while now yet, somehow Loopt chooses resolutely mobile and seems to have spend a lot of time on usability and user experience, stuff not the least to be underestimated on the mobile phone. I’ll check the new stuff Felix will show us next monday for an definitive update on MoSoSo.

In the IMAGING track Daem Interactive was to me way ahead of the others but I may sound too subjective here The key in the image recognition technology sector will be how fast the companies presented can go to market with the right solution. Japan is leading innovation and ideas in this area but the companies in this track at UTR showed some very mature technology and solid business ideas behind.

In the Galileo room, TalkPlus was showing what voice 2.0 is all about and convinced judges and audience with it. Get a grimp of it yourself here in demo and interview I did the day after with TalkPlus CEO Jeffrey D. Black.

Jeffrey explains the voice 2.0 concept (left) and demonstrates a SIP Call

Jeffrey D. Black, CEO TalkPlus explains TalkPlus

My list of companies to watch has been growing quite fast now, here below the ones I recently added - check back in a year or so and let me know what happened with these companies

ComVu
JuiceCaster
Loopt
Plusmo
WinkSite
Mobo
Sharpcast
TalkPlus

You can view all the Under The Radar: Mobility judges and audience winners here.

Note: all video shooting done with a Nokia N93, thanks to vpod.tv for hosting - actually you should check their portal, Rodrigo is currently live reporting from Nokia World in Amsterdam.

And as an extra for the incrowd fans: hear Peter Vesterbacka (Some Bazaar) explain his “to found 100 companies in a year” pitch. Way to go, Peter!

I wrote an article on Connecting cultures through music for edition #16 of the Vodafone Receiver magazine. The main topic was ‘A Night Out’, interesting challenge and braintwister to write. This issue is covered with some excellent articles by authors like Charlie Schick, Mark Curtis, Lee Humphreys, Tim Cole, Karenza Moore, Frank Lantz, and Antony Bruno (sorry Bruno could not find your link). Definately worth a read, check out the Receiver archives too!

“This receiver issue wants to spark off some ideas about social networking the mobile way: clubbing, seeing your favourite band, sharing memories of a night out or playfully exploring the city, getting to know and experiencing, even creating, music – can mobile add to all these? And how does it affect how we get our friends together for joint action? Does it trigger emergent behaviour? Or is it the ideal means to pull it all together? What do *you* think?”

There is room for discussion on the website, needless to say it would be great to get some of your comments, thoughts and ideas on the evolution of music culture from our mobile lifestyle perspective.

The Artwork for receiver #16 is done by Zaza+Crusher, illustrations by students from the University of Duisburg-Essen (Essen, Germany).

Analysis, Announcements, Art Culture, ethnographics, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile music, Predictions, receiver, vodafone, vodafone receiver

As predicted and in a - everything sooner then expected - mood, Maloney last week disclosed for the first time details of the next–generation Intel® Centrino® mobile technology–based platform, as well as a single chip Wi–Fi/WiMAX radio and an Intel–branded mobile WiMAX PCMCIA card. He also provided details about the next generation dual–core mobile processor based on Intel’s Core™ microarchitecture and Intel’s next–generation applications processor for handheld devices. These innovations are designed help make the Internet a more personal and mobile experience for people worldwide.

“The Internet is increasingly the central medium in people’s lives, the place where we go for news, entertainment and education, and to extend our social lives,” said Maloney. “Emerging applications such as mashups, blogs, podcasts and RSS make the Internet an even more personal and interactive experience, and people want to carry those experiences with them. The next stage of Internet growth is to make this ‘real Internet’ mobile.”

WiMAX Industry reports “that most regulators have not kept pace with the progress of technology that makes fixed-mobile convergence a reality. Whether it is fixed applications with CDMA technology or mobile applications with WiMAX, the two fields are converging and will be competing for a shre of the one billion mobile subscribers market.”

You might have wondered where I left my mobile and wireless predictions for this year… well, actually I made a rough list a couple of weeks ago but couldn’t find the time yet to post them properly (shame on me). To be honest I’m probably not really the magician you might look for who can predict the future but people say I have a good feeling for trends, and ‘noblesse oblige’, so here we go.

© Intel

Meanwhile I read most other predictions by fellow mobile bloggers so my predictions became less fresh and lost their blogging power so I thought I could do something extra and offer you my personal best of round-up of collegue mobile bloggers predictions and must read articles that drew my attention during holidays.

Now we have just entered 2006 and the mobile news is already heating up… Vodafone teams up with Sony NetServices for their new Radio DJ service. Motorola Officially Launches iRadio and signed already with Warner Music Group. Motorola partners with Google… Wait a minute… must be something going on with mobile music search here? Yes, good guess, I wrote something on this before…

But why this buzz in my introduction here?

Well it brought me back to my first ‘public’ prediction on Mobcasting (= Podcasting to my Mobile Phone), an article I wrote end of 2004 at the Wireless World Forum in 2004. I was not the one who invented the term but I remember Google then had something like 38 entries with the term “mobcasting”. You have to check this term now!

Looking at what I was predicting then and what people are doing now, this looks like a pretty good prediction. Meanwhile I learned a lot more about the mobile business and it’s nuances to respect as a blog writer.

So, what will be the next trends in mobile this year?

Since Nokia anounced earlier this year that all future phones for enterprises from Nokia will also be wi-fi equipped, the first signs of the operator monopolies will start shifting towards a a different kind of mobility, one with more services available for everyone.

It’s going to be the year of some more great (and more hybrid) devices, some which I can start using to interact with other home electronic equipment. There are going to be more direct download bluetooth services and wi-fi hot spots appearing and people will also start mobsharing unprotected files.

Brands will seek real mobile presence and MVNO’s will create a new market place for mobile music, especially the ones who have been into music since years like radio’s and broadcasters since they can count on their own active communities. Themes will become a new playground for many to manipulate the look of their phones.

I just got back from my monthly Mac Donald’s user habits check, not that I’m a big fan of macdo but that’s where teenagers hang out during their lunch break from school. Well just check for yourself what they do during those breaks? They’re not leaving their mobile for a second; they show off to friends, play around with sms, send pics and jokes over bluetooth, etc.

User-generated mobile content will continue to grow now that more people have a camera phone and they learn how to use it. The media will pick up on this trend and produce new content with this user-generated content.

One of my favorites is the convergence of internet services towards mobile, also called the mobile internet, or mobile web or also mobile web 2.0. Well, this space is going to become more and more crowded too with an energy injection from US companies, thanks Google and Yahoo!

Mobile Search is so crucial in this but it’s not all: when I click a link in Google, the website connected to that link should be correctly displayed on the mobile. That’s why RSS to Mobile applications will be the first to spread; this combined with SMS alert service is a very powerfull tool for the ones who want to stay updated on their news or social network media impulses.

Some interesting quotes…

Paul Otellini, CEO Intel: “With our new platforms, we’re not only boosting wireless computing, but also advancing digital entertainment a few steps closer to effortless.”

Google’s Eric Schmidt stated a couple of days ago: “The future mobile devices will be where consumers access the Internet most often.”

Besides, if you hadn’t heard it yet, Yahoo went Mobile last week!

This brings me to the mobile web 2.0 discussion currently going on several blogs. Ajit Jaokar started the debate at Open Gardens here. A must read in this area is also C. Enrique Ortiz’ Will AJAX Save The Day (for Mobile Apps Development)?

Kelly Goto at gotomobile.com believes the focus for their business lies in “the mobile web, and the possibilities for ’smart client’ solutions for convergence of content and application functionality on mobile devices.”

Some essential stuff if you’re writing about mobile is to try out the stuff you’re writing on. Mobile technology can only evolve if the users will use the devices and the applications smoothly; for this a good user experience is important and the creation of real value for the end-user. Check the blogs of Debi and Darla, they are trying out loads of real stuff!

An article that took my attention too was the one from Helen Keegan on participation TV and Charlie Schick’s hopes and fears for the mobile future.

Last but not the least the predictions from Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino at Mobhappy, if you’re interested and/or working in mobile, an absolute must for your forthcoming mobile strategic plans to unfold. I can blindly back-up Russell and Carlo on predictions nrs. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 14 and 16.

And some comments on their predictions:

Prediction Nr. 1. - Apple launches the iPhone
> If Bang & Olufsen starts producing a mobile phone. called Serene, why Apple shouldn’t? To acces iTunes over 3G and splitting their 99 cents/tune revenue with the record companies and the operators? Then it’s easier to build a plugin into those Wi-Fi enabled phones and build-in Wi-Fi connectivity into iPods or other devices with direct links to the iTunes shop. My guess is that if Apple makes a move into mobile, they will come up with something more then just a mobile phone.

Prediction Nr. 3 - 3G won’t kill Wi-Fi, WiMAX won’t kill 3G.
> I love this one, it’s double-thinking

Prediction Nr. 4. - Operators will still struggle to find the key selling points of 3G.
> Obvious untill operators realise to stay in their business focusing on delivering communications and connectivity to the people, not services they can’t manage.

Prediction Nr. 5. - Ringtones implosion accelerates
> Depends where of course? Some countries and regions will continue their growth but on a general western market world level, I agree.

Prediction Nr. 7. MVNOs will gain in popularity
> The next breakthrough for users to acces services other then proposed by operators.

Prediction Nr. 13. Java Apps on the rise
> BTW: Opera mini is great!

Prediction Nr. 16. Mobile blogging and photoblogging will grow
> This one was definately on my list. Since camera phones becoming widespread, people just love to blog what they do, whenever, wherever they are.

My preferred prediction is Nr. 12 from Carlo: Myopic thinking, bad pricing and pointless services will continue keep mobile music from realizing its potential. A must read!

Other must read I discovered during holidays:

Interesting discussion form David Smith on What DRM argument? and have you heard about the Chinese Cyberwall?

As a finishing note, if you really want to know where the future of mobile technology is heading, check this demo of Intel… and watch what Intel and Apple are going to come up with this year together…

So this was a long, quite unusual post but it’s an overview and synthesis of my interesting points in mobile on which I will continue to focus and inform you on my blog from now on. Expect fewer but more in-depth and longer blogposts, I’ll post when I have something to say, there are loads of blogs out there with news and daily info and pressreleases on what’s happening in mobile, I will focus more on beyond the hype opinion.

I’m also very pleased that 3gsmworld is happening in Barcelona. I’m looking forward to get to know about new interesting projects and the people behind.

And btw: watch the Carnival of the Mobilists, this movement is gonna grow too in 2006. Hurray!

I wish you all a a great and healthy 2006 and I hope you’ll continue enjoying reading m-trends.org.

Read Charlie Shick’s hopes and fears on the future of mobile. I hope he’s right on point 1 and 2 but I fear he’s right about the rest, though 4 remains more something of a doubt to me of where this business will evolve…

Will we move to the light - increasing public domain content and consumer choice; or will we go to the dark - where carriers control everything and choice goes down…

Check out the inaugural Roundtable podcast with Graham Brown (CEO of Wireless World Forum), Vesa-Maati Paananen - the inventor of the ringtone (no kidding!), founder of Add2Phone, now CEO Aidacon, and myself, discussing mobile music. You can download the podcast here on Itunes under Wireless World Forum (Podcast).

(about the Fixed Mobile Internet Convergence really taken off )

I started reading Linksys just released a - you don’t have to sit in front of your computer to talk to your friends anymore - cordless handset supporting Skype. (thanks to John & Karel)

I noticed that Nokia Mobility Conference 2005 to be held in Barcelona on November 2-3 is all about convergence too…

I also read this cool interview with Russell Buckley who co-writes Mobhappy now with Carlo Longino.

Then I actually wandered what happened with The Mobile Technology Weblog that Russell initiated over a year ago - this blog has always been one of my favourites, and is now written by Oliver Starr. What can I say or add more? As he puts it so nicely “… this cat is getting out of the bag and I don’t think it’s going to go back in.”

Just read his three latest posts (1, 2, 3) and you’ll understand that the convergence is definitely being shaped.

tags: mobsharing flashmobsharing peer-to-peer p2p wi-fi fixed mobile internet convergence

Following the - iTunes for your Mobile Phone - craze from the last weeks/months/year, I found back a post on the W2Forum I wrote in December 2004 on - podcasting on a mobile phone.

I was not the one who invented the term but I remember Google then had something like 38 entries with the term “mobcasting”. You should check this term now!

Checking Wikipedia on mobcasting, I got this: “Mobcasting is a term coined by Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network in January 2005…”

Reading Andy’s original mobcasting post I understood he actually created the 1st mobcast somwhere in January 2005. But the term was coined before, that needs to be corrected one day (by the one who did so?) in Wikipedia. Meanwhile Andy created also http://mobcasting.blogspot.com to keep his experiments in mobile podcasting going.

I just like the idea of technology serving people… more ‘voices’ become now in reach of many; the more diversification, the better for democracy!

Technorati tags: mobcasting podcasting mobile podcasting Google Wikipedia W2Forum W2F Wireless World Forum