Between Brackets

Here’s an interesting (albeit a couple of months old) youtube short about VISA’s mobile banking work in progress.

Nothing revolutionary if you’re used to the Korean way of living I guess But VISA is a big player, with the capability of rolling such solution out worldwide. So it’s good to see.

The people at Nokia must have read the WWGD book not so long ago, since this is exactly what Google would do (or did some weeks ago): offer free turn-by-turn navigation.

I must say that this was also the biggest disappointment when I first used my N900 (in fact it forced me to use my old phone again).

And now my next wish is for Nokia to make it possible to sync my N900 with OVI. But that won’t keep me from using my N900. What now still keeps me from using it is that I can’t make a Wi-Fi access point of it, but once Joiku solves this I’m back to using it again.

Actually it’s pretty amazing how these days I tend to find it normal that software updates can be easily installed on mobile phones, and how they -more often than not- really improve the device’s capabilities.

While Apple tries to make its Developers more happy with their reviewing processes by providing the current approval status, there are people that see (expect?) the move by app developers from Apple towards Android to really start now.

Meanwhile, Nokia has introduced its new N900 with yet another mobile OS called Maemo, and now Samsung joins the crowd with again another mobile OS called Bada.

Although this clearly shows manufacturers think there is a lot of business to be done in the app space, developers increasingly find themselves in a situation that is even worse than that of developing mobile web applications: please create separate app for every popular device.

There’s a lot going on in the app space at the moment.

As previously posted, I’m very fond of my Kindle 2. I also enjoy reading The Economist. And curiosity is my middle name, so I decided to buy the latest kindle issue, which -incidentally- covers a story on mobile money.

The digital version is not bad at all.

• There is an extra navigational bar at the bottom of the screen which makes it very easy to jump from one article to the next.
• There is an index for easy access to all covered topics
• You can search the issue for words in it

Here are some screenshots:

Unfortunately the digital version lacks the cartoons which make the print version all a bit livelier.
But once my print subscription ends, I’ll be going digital

To increase the safety for pedestrians and cyclists, carmakers like Nissan are going to let their hybrid and electrical cars make more noise.

They are thinking about beautiful and futuristic sounds. Why, I see a market for ‘car tones’ in the make! Connect your iPod/iPhone to the car and upload a new sound to it and … voila, pedestrians and cyclists are safe again

Christen Krogh, Opera’s Chief Development Officer, doesn’t believe in apps.

The basic idea is simple: there’s only one internet (no wired, no mobile, just one) and you can live on it as a company, without the need for building apps. Just reuse whatever you already have lying in the closet and you’re good to go. If you wait a couple of months, that is. Because now things are not yet perfect, but in a couple of months it will be better.

To be frank, the idea is interesting, but today this is not yet a reality. There’s only one internet, agreed, but the wired and mobile experience and needs are completely different. The iPhone proved us that when you offer value-added apps (that may or may not use the internet) you can earn money now. You can of course do nothing and wait a couple of months as the gentlemen suggested, and hope that the web browser really becomes the mobile internet experience they all hope for at Opera. But then again, maybe you shouldn’t wait for your competitors to get a head start…

One of their arguments is that the jump from off-line to online was enormous in the late 19 hundreds, and that the jump from internet media to mobile media is not that big at all. So you won’t enjoy being first for a long time.
I’m not really sure this is true. Once people get used to you application and you keep providing them the service they need they will keep you on their phone.

So I’d say: start playing with getting your services on the mobile devices any way you can. This way you can stay ahead of the competition and you will be prepared for when the real mobile wave comes (be it in the form of an app or a browser).

Good news!

Shortly it will be Mobile Monday Brussels time again.

On April 20th, you can hear about mobile mash-ups, and have a chat with friends and colleagues about the mobile landscape.

For registration, program and event details, please go here

Recent research by Comscore confirms once more that interest in using social networks on your mobile phone is growing (via Mobile Marketing Watch). Earlier itsmy.com published a survey that illustrates people want to do their social networking on their phones.

Nokia is said to leave the chip R&D market. But since they will still need the chips they’ll need to partner with companies to provide them, big winners are Broadcomm and ST.

While it is true that everyone needs to focus on their core business, it is also a danger to become an integrator of others’ technology. IBM once was the market-leader of the PC industry, but once they had become just another integrator of other companies’ components (CPUs, graphics chips etc) they lost the market to other companies that could integrate better or cheaper (you can read all about this in the marvelous book "The innovator’s solution" from Clayton M. Christenen).

The modularization and componentization in the mobile industry is now fully happening. The iPhone is a perfect example of a product that is assembled from components found in the market. Let’s see what happens with Nokia.

The race has begun, mobile advertisement is expected to be 3 billion US$ by the end of 2007.

As the stakes increase, the reliability of the figures posted becomes increasingly important in order to avoid questionable reporting practices. Admob, one of the big ones, started a discussion on metrics: what metrics can be used?

When you take into account a different study that says 79% of mobile users are annoyed by mobile advertisement, it is clear that volume-based metrics cannot work.

A more long-term useful metric should be: how many ads did you serve to users that where happy to receive that particular ad? Probably not easy to measure, but if not taken into account, mobile ad blocking software wil be the next successful product category.