Wireless Informatics Forum

WIF is currently attending Informa’s Mobile Web & Applications 2009 conference.

I was hoping to live blog, but (typically) there’s little-to-no mobile coverage so my mobile broadband dongle is useless and I refuse to pay the conference center’s ridiculous wifi charges.

So the following is an extract of my notes, summarizing some of the most interesting / pertinent / salient points made by the speakers.

THE COST OF MOBILE DATA – HEADING TO ZERO?

Chris Wade, Chairman and CEO, ShoZu

• The all-you-can-eat data plan is in jeopardy. Bandwidth on networks is already limited. Which carrier has the bravery to make the change?

Unknown Panel Participant

• Content providers want mobile data [transport] to be free to the consumer. That’s unrealistic, the carriers will respond stating that they subsidize the handset, they paid for the spectrum, they pay for customer support. But there must be a middle-ground.

Ray De Silva, Head of Enabler Commercial Partnerships, Vodafone Group

• There’s no expectation among our users that mobile will ever be free.

Nora Goodman, Executive VP, Finally! TV Studios

• We should be careful using the word ‘free’. The internet has done a disservice to an entire generation by making so much content free. Artists, developers, whomever, are creating all of this great content and not getting paid for it. Is that what our forefathers intended? “Work, work, work….and don’t get paid for it.” Thankfully the mobile application / content market is resisting this.

DISTRIBUTION OF CONTENT & APPS

Benjamin Mosse, Director AP Mobile, Associated Press

• The walled garden still exists, we see it every day. We can’t put our app on certain carrier portals because it’s free. This has to stop. Just because it’s free. it doesn’t mean you should say no to it. Just because it doesn’t earn you any money, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value to your end-users.
• Some carriers want to be media companies. Business success is all about core competency. It’s taken us 160 years to get it right. How successful will the carrier be as a media company?

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MOBILE WEB

Ray De Silva, Head of Enabler Commercial Partnerships, Vodafone Group

• Mobile Web 1.0 was defined by MO/MT SMS, PSMS, shortcodes etc. Mobile Web 2.0 is about delivering a more compelling user experience. For example, bearer detection, data bundle look-up, roaming check (both to prevent bill shock) and handset configuration checks.
• Delivering a convenient payment mechanism is key [to monetizing]. Conversion rates for big brands using mcommerce: Credit cards deliver 10-20% conversion. Single click billing delivers 30-70%.
• If a user wants to access data-heavy content (like BBC iPlayer), the network should be able to detect data tariff status to avoid bill shock and upsell where necessary. It should also know what bearer the user is connected via and dynamically change the file served accordingly [to improve delivery speed]. Finally it should know if the user is roaming [again to prevent bill shock].

Mark Kortekaas, controller for BBC Audio & Music Interactive and BBC Mobile.

• Your content history should move with you. If you access BBC iPlayer on the mobile device, it should know that you’ve already watched a programme on your PS3 interface or notebook.

Nicholas Heller, Strategic Partnerships, Media & Publishing, Google

• Google’s advertising model works equally well on the mobile; CPM on the mobile platform is comparable to fixed web. We are now looking to embed ads within apps, based on app-type. This will will include click-to-call / click-to-coupon and is very compelling to advertisers and our content partners.
• We are betting on Moore’s Law and the growth of feature-rich handsets. The mobile web benefits from the unique properties of the mobile device. For example a mic (voice search), GPS (location searches), camera (image overlays).

Ariel Seidman, Director Product Management, Yahoo! Search

• Voice search [on the mobile] doesn’t really solve a big problem. Two-word searches are very fast to type and the privacy issue [of reciting your search] is huge.

STATS

Ray De Silva, Head of Enabler Commercial Partnerships, Vodafone Group

• It’s hard to second-guess the end-user. We have Google search on most of our portals around the world, yet users still navigate to www.google.com because that’s why they are used to [on the PC platform].
• 1 in 5 under 35’s surf the mobile web daily in the UK.
• Smartphone ownership increases data usage x39.

Wandrille Pruvot, Regional Director, Europe, Buzzcity

• The opportunity for data in the emerging markets is huge. There are 400 million mobile users in India with 10 million new subscriptions every month.*

* On this last point I have to take issue. As great as these conferences are for harvesting stats, I grow increasingly angry at the recycling of stats and facts, flippantly included in presentations as a means of justifying a business case. I have no objection to the fact the emerging markets (based purely on their scale) represent enormous opportunity. However, take the above stats about India. Scratch through the veneer and what exactly is the immediate opportunity for data?

Consider that;

a) The majority of users in emerging markets, including India are using entry-level devices. The most populous handset in this market (indeed the world), is the Nokia 1100. That’s a six year old design, first launched in 2003. It has a monochrome display, has basic WAP connectivity but little else. An iPhone it is not.

b) The majority of the 10m new subscribers p/month are coming from rural areas of India. Users in metropolitan areas typically have better phones and more disposable income. In rural areas the reverse is true, they have very little money to spend on anything other than basic connectivity (voice).

Again, I agree that India represents opportunity. But let’s not start building business models on these very generic figures.  A little due diligence please. For the record, I certainly don’t intend this as a criticism of Buzzcity – their presentation was insightful and I’ve seen the ‘Indian growth’ stats a hundred times before!