Mobile Web More Like TV?

WhatsOpen.com offers a Web application that shows users nearby stores and operating hours. That's the sort of thing that a mobile advertising strategy can build off of. It also suggests something else about the nature of mobile Web services optimized for handhelds.

To wit, given the greater difficulty of interacting with the device, compared to a PC, maybe large portions of the experience need to be more like linear TV, as heretical as that may seem. Push useful data to me. Not all the time because that kills battery performance. But sense when it is likely I am looking at the screen. Show me something interesting.

Combine Real Simple Syndication with streaming. Maybe not streaming video, maybe streaming text. Adjust the feed based on my location. People talk about the difference between a lean-back experience and a lean-forward experience. Maybe we need to work on a stand-up experience: screen-based information and entertainment adapted for a user that is standing up and moving.

What Android Must Do

"I think for the Google platform to really be a game-changer it's going to have to offer more than just an open-source operating system for a mobile phone," says Kay Johansson, MobiTV CEO. "It will have to create mobile Internet devices that happen to make phone calls."

If Google ever does decide to bid for 700 MHz spectrum, with or without other partners, the network will be shaped by that same requirement. In fact, Google might have an opportunity to consider a different approach to what a mobile network looks like. Such a network theoretically might provide broadband coverage anyplace people are walking, spottier coverage in other places. That was the original thinking behind the "Personal Communications Service" (PCS) spectrum that instead wound up being deployed as 2-GHz cellular instead.

That might wind up being what happens again. Today, it is the troubled muni Wi-Fi approach that most resembles the old PCS idea. The Fon, T-Mobile Hotspot or Boingo hotspot approach offers less coverage than the original PCS concept called for.

In fact, the only reason one would logically want to build a new network on anything other than macrocells, incorporating Wi-Fi in some way, is that it might be possible to get a network up and running faster than if a traditional macrocell approach is used. One already would begin with fairly ubiquitous coverage in homes and offices and a reasonable hotspot overlay. Macrocell coverage probably still would be needed for outdoor coverage.

Still, an ad-driven business model ultimately could be quite do-able if one generally assumed in-home and at-office coverage, with fairly dense coverage in downtown cores and shopping malls, augmented by lighter coverage other places. There are some drawbacks, especially when the device is used in phone mode, since coverage would tend to be the reverse of what they now encounter. That is to say, indoor coverage would be better than outdoor coverage.

The point is that if the exercise is to build an optimal mobile Web network, one might have different choices. One of the bigger advantages would come from crafting a network that could be built at far-less capital intensity than a typical 3G mobile network. That would fit with the general theme of creating less-expensive handsets and service as well, so ads would produce a healthy revenue model. It's just a thought.

Jajah Launches Ad-Supported Calling

Jajah is launching an in-call advertising platform that turns the inventory of the world's telephone calls into an advertising market place. The idea is to insert messages into the "ringing" stream, which is user dead time, rather than into the conversation stream, which most people will find is intrusive, even if a user is interested in defraying the cost of a call.

"We spend more time on the phone than consuming all other types of media, TV, reading papers and radio included," says Roman Scharf, Jajah co-founder. "Phones haven't been considered as a viable channel yet. We are going to change that."

"In tests over the past months we have identified a method to overlay advertising content on phone calls in a way that users find acceptable," he says.

Whereas in-call advertising would normally interrupt a call and disturb the caller, Jajah simply overlays the messages above the ring tone right before the call starts. "Businesses get guaranteed caller attention, whilst at the same time not alienating the consumer with intrusive messages that break the rhythm of a telephone call," says Scharf.

Think of it as the phone inventory equivalent of Google AdWords, says Daniel Mattes, Jahah co-founder.

The opt-in solution, available soon, will give users who agree to hear ads monthly credit to their accounts.

"In a next step we will allow telecommunications partners to use our platform to monetize their inventory as well", says Trevor Healy, Jajah's CEO.

Small, local companies can target their messages to the local Jajah users.

Jajah also has partnered with Oridian Online Media Solutions, Ltd., the largest privately-owned advertising network, to gain access to a base of business advertisers.

HP Enables Web Services for Mobile Carriers

Illustrating the future direction of mobile and some wired services as well, Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a Service Delivery Platform (SDP) 2.0 to help wireless service providers take advantage of third party applications. SDP 2.0 allows multiple services to communicate with underlying wireless or wired networks, third-party applications, and Web 2.0-based mashups.

Operators can offer converged services that blend telecom, Web, and IT resources, such as music, video, and business services that personalize content delivery.

"The business problem for operators is that many of the services they deliver today come from third parties," says Peter Dragunas, HP Communications, Media and Entertainment group VP.

Basically, SDP 2.0 takes telecommunications assets and turns them into Web services.

If you think carriers won't be developing most of the revenue-generating new services that are coming, then it is imperative that carrier platforms easily integrate Web services. HP's platform helps them do that. What's important here is the signal about direction.

Symbian Disses Google

Google faces challenges in the mobile device business to be sure. Microsoft and Symbian have made abundantly clear their views on how tough it is to break into the market and how far Google is behind. But perhaps the dismissals are a sign of how great the concern is?

Google's attempt to create a widely-used Linux-based mobile phone operating system is "a bit like the common cold," says John Forsyth, Symbian VP, in an interview with the BBC. "It keeps coming round and then we go back to business."

"About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched," he says.

Symbian's recent financial results show it sold 20.4 million smartphone software licenses in the last quarter of 2007 and since the company was launched nine years ago more than 165 million phones have been shipped using its platform."Search and a mobile phone platform are completely different things," Forsyth argues.
"It's costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones."

Forsyth also questioned whether developers would flock to the system. "You have to have a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed," he argues. A phone that can't be sold until next year "is not one that is going to ignite developers," he says.

Nokia, a major driver of Symbian device sales, is more circumspect. "We are always open to discussion and debate on that. We were not ready to make any commitment to it or discuss it at the time," says Simon Ainslie, Nokia UK managing director. "We are having ongoing discussions with Google."

Android Creates Instant Developer Community

One of the big problems a communications service provider faces is how to leverage the creativity of the Web and apps community to drive service innovation which carriers frankly are ill equipped to undertake. Android basically solves that problem. Developers respond to big opportunities and that is what Android now represents: a chance to develop apps for mobile operators representing 40-some-odd percent of the U.S. mobile population, virtually all of China, one of the fastest-growing global markets, plus the two dominant providers in the trendy Japanese market plus Spain, Germany and Italy, just for starters.

That's an instant and massive developer community at a time when every major communications service provider needs such a developer community allied to it. Google may well disrupt. It also is going to help carriers move ahead on the innovation front in a way impossible on their own.

To the extent that most innovations and applications are going to come from the independent developer community--not from the carriers--this is a very big deal indeed.

That isn't to underplay the role played by developers working for Microsoft or Symbian, either. It's just that leveraging the Linux community adds even more intellectual capital, and capital that heretofore hadn't been deployed to enrich mobile Web apps.

Will Android Disrupt PCs?

Though most of the speculation about Android's impact concerns what might happen with mobile apps on mobile devices, mobile Web, mobile carriers and device manufacturers, there are other angles. Let's assume lots of apps start to get developed around Android. Then assume people really do start spending lots more time with Web apps of various types on their hand held devices, even if today that does not seem to be common.

Once those apps are written, will they start to port to PCs? After all, any app well-enough written to run on a mobile with severe display and input capabilities, compared to a PC, might be fun to use even on a PC that suffers from none of those limitations. Basically, anything Android runs can appear as a widget on a desktop or laptop. Widgets are fun. They are personal. They are customized. They are easy to add and delete. They don't require lots of thinking, processing or storage.

Of course, that might have really serious implications for PC operating systems. In a new way, we might see yet another iteration of the thin client approach to applications. In essence, that is what software as a service is all about. Android just might change the paradigm for PCs, since it essentially will assume services are in the cloud. It will take a while before we can determine whether this is realistic or not.

Google has argued Android and its ecosystem might lead to ad-supported devices. Might it also someday lead to a resurgence of interest in thin client PCs? Microsoft will hope not. But network-centric participants in the communications and entertainment industries might see new possibilities.

Photo by Andy Voss at the BroadSoft Connections conference. Can you figure out why I think thin client and mobile Web access seems promising, even when multiple mobile smart and feature phones are in the quiver? I have an office and a desk. I just don't use them, even when able to use the "office." A nice view of the animals and the vegetation is much better, so long as I have power and wireless access of one sort or another.