Mobile pizza

10 minutes in Victoria

One advantage of having 20 mins to wait for your train is that you can pop into the nearby Vodafone shop and see what's happening on the front line.

So, what would a Vodafone assistant recommend if you were - say - a Nokia 5800 customer looking to upgrade?

• Nokia has new phones (points at the N8) but they are more or less the same as before
• Windows7 is not a good idea - too complicated (that was surprising)
• Blackberry is good for email but not much more
• iPhone and Android are pretty much the same, but his recommended droid (Galaxy) is free with a £30 contract while an iPhone4 would cost £150

It's not the most reppresentative sample, but one that sounds like a true reflection of what's happening on the ground right now.

Apple and apples

On Monday evening I took part in a panel discussion about mobile Java, hosted by Sun and organised by Momo London.

We covered several topics around the present and future of Java ME as a platform for deploying applications to mobile devices. My key points were that it is still extremely popular - despite its low profile - and is getting easier.

The topic that left me thinking after the panel was the discussion over App Stores: where is Java's version of the App Store or Google Marketplace? The fact that mobile operators and device manufacturers are launching app stores at the rate of knots didn't feel like a strong enough answer.

Having slept over it, I now realise that we were comparing apples and oranges. People do not care for a 'Java store'. If they see an 'App Store' icon on their home screen, they will however have a pretty good idea of what they can get out of it.

As a Nokia user, for example, I would look at an iPhone TV ad and think "I wander if my brand new gadget can do the same...".  I wouldn't care to know that I'm actually looking for Java applications (or Flash Lite, Symbian and widgets for that matter).

Comparing Apple and apples would therefore involve looking at how Ovi and other app stores match the iPhone experience in terms of:
 * awareness of the store
 * how easy it is to find (homescreen or top-menu access)
 * navigation and search to find what I want
 * convenience of payment mechanics
 * simplicity of the installation process

Brands, publishers and developers would probably like to see few rather than many marketplaces, but if Vodafone, Nokia, Orange, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry can give us easy access to several millions of users each, then I suspect we won't complain too much.
 

Mobile Internet 09, Vienna

A quick summary of the Mobile Internet 2009 conference last week. I went there to speak on the final day and ended up also taking part in a panel discussion.

It was a relatively small confrence, but with highly qualified attendees. Here are a few general themes:

iPhone

I missed the beginning of the conference, but the iPhone effect was still clear to see on day 3. Everyone in the industry accepts it as the standard everyone has to aim for. The problem is that it is different in so many ways that people end up cherry picking from it to support their own causes/interests.

Platforms

What are going to be the dominant platforms in the next few years?
There was consensus over the fact that only 3-4 will survive. With Limo and Symbian reppresented, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they felt that mobile OS's are going open. iPhone is however the notable exception.

Bondi amongst others also suggested that whatever happens in mobile OS, the browser is going to be the most viable runtime platform, with more standardised support and additional (and hopefully also standardised) APIs plugging into device functionality.

Mobile Operators

Mobile Interet 2009 saw a heavy reppresentation of mobile operators and releated service providers, so most of the discussions about revenue were focused on that part of the value chain.

The long term picture isn't so rosy. In several countries, flat data tariffs are expected to become the norm and have been pushed to fairly low levels due to competition within the industry and with fixed line providers (with the broadband dongles). The operator's concern is getting to the situation where 4% of users consume 75% of the network traffic and where they many not ultimately benefit from the expected growth in data traffic.

On reflection, flat tariffs may have a wider implication for the whole industry: operators have so far encouraged mobile internet development with the expectation of increasing revenues. Flat rate will put a cap on those expected revenues and will actually introduce an incentive to reducing/optimising network utilisation. That's unless network operators find alternative ways of generating revenue from the mobile internet. A few thoughts/models:
+ charge for different bandwidth levels (the problem being that people won't necessarily appreciate how high the limit is and may therefore limit their behaviour)
+ charge for service packages, similar to digital TV broadcasters, where higher bandwidth services like video streaming are charged at a higher rate
+ control the advertising (more below)
+ establish themselves as the payment method of choice
+ sell value-added content and services

Advertising

The general feeling is that mobile advertising is still in its infancy, but that it is bound to grow and become a significant source of revenue for the industry. Mobile web advertising spend in the UK last year was less than £10M. Brands and agencies want to spend, but they need the right data to support mobile as the channel of choice (although they seem to have little need for that when commissioning iPhone apps).

TeliaSonera are experiementing with content transcoding as a way of adding advertising to off-portal sites. The PR spin on that is that it enhances the user experience by allowing access to sites that would otherwise be inaccessible and providing a control bar (true in many cases). The real reason is that off-portal content transcoding promises 5-6 times more inventory than on-portal. 

Lift09 highlights

It's now been over a week since Lift, but a few of the thoughts and impressions from the conference are still in my head, at least in distilled format. So here is a 5 min keypoints report from the conference.

Talking about The Future.

"If the story is the laboratory [for design], then writing is your experiment." [when you read a story - even science fiction, you know when it feels right and human]
--- Matt Webb

Investigating new territories (concept development) is about looking 15-20 years ahead. Philips look for future Crisis and imagine what will happen after them.
--- Clive Van Heerden

Augmented reality

"Phisical and virtual are coming together, rather than one cancelling the other." [great visualisation of Rome with overlaied mobile traffic during and after the 2006 Italy-France world cup final.]
---  Carlo Ratti

...but also 'The world of MARIKA' for MVT in Sweden
20,000 Sweeds have vanished. Based on a true story? Created a conflict between TV station and individual blogger, but it was all put up. "
--- Nicoletta Iacobacci

"Work used to be very visible, how can we make invisible work visible?"
Why? Because visualising the result of activity can feed back into the activity
--- Dan Hill

The weather forecasting umbrella and the importance of periferal vision [we pull stuff, we get pushed stuff, but we also glance].
--- David Rose

"He owned their arse"
--- Lee Bryant  about the story of retired Marine Gen. Paul Van Riper winning a tactical exercise against the USA navy using low tech tactics.

Paraphrasing "Design has been taken over by usability but people take technologies and shape them to their own use"
--- Ramesh Srinivasan

"Make sure you leave a legacy"
--- Heartfelt appeal by Chris Hofmann  - Netscape developer and then at the heart of the Mozilla project

"There are 3.5B mobiles and 1B PCs"
"For many people in the world their 1st experience of the internet is through the mobile"
--- Vinton Cerf - the father of the Internet [it means a lot more if HE says it]

If you want to read more, I'd recommend Dan Hill's post on the conference.

Lift09 - Clive Van Heerden from Philips - "Design Provocation"

Innovation strategy:
1. Investigate territories (concepts)
2. Find applications (less money than previous step)
3. Exploit and defend markets

.1 is looking 20-30 years ahead.

You have to look for Crisis. Eg:
- saw an article following Catrina mentioning remaining grain reserves in days
- add to that oil consumption
- then pandemics

Design probes (provocations):

 Electronic Tatoo
 - accepted as inevitable (a good sign of hitting on a future trend)
 - main feedback was question over control

4 questions for their latest probes:
- future food creation: the food printer
- the future kitchen
- the senses in food consumption
- food production: biosphere home farming. A home unit that creates an interconnected ecosystem to feed the home, just based on light.

Roght notes from Lift - Thu 27th

Patrick Gyger - "Memories of the future"

A look thorugh the visual styles and content of science fiction. His main point seemed to be that hystorically, science fiction has become more and more about private consumption rather than mass utopias.

Nicolas Nova from Lift - "The recurring failure of Holy Grails"

A few examples:
- the video phone
- the intelligent fridge
- Location based services (theyt have been the next thing for 15 years)

Why?

Looking at how products are designed:
- trapped in the zeitgeist? The dominating phenomena of the time (space exploration, web 2.0)
- time is not stable? Intended as the fact that there will be disruptions
- short term vs long term? Things don't happen fast
- bad understanding of "users"? There is no average human
- Automating rituals (important details may get lost in translation)
- What is natural shifts over time. (Possibly loosing the thread of the presentation a bit here)

(just noticed that Nicolas' presentation style is very similar to Mr Hume's)

Design should learn from previous mistakes. Did Apple learn from the Newton?

Adam Rose - Change

Importance of knowing how close to the device someone is. Sensors can now provide that and allow the designer to switch modes.

Defining ambient:

push (mobile) > ambient (the clock) > pull (laptop)

Ambient ideas:
- unbrella who knows when rain is coming
- connected medicine packaging to remind and track
- tiles that can weigh you
- digital brush that scans pics/vids and uses them as colours on a digital canvas

Lee Bryant - "Where did the 20th Century go wrong?"

- Extremes (came up in the previous presentation by Soh Yeoung as the pre-condition for change)

- live expectancy went up
- lots of 'isms'
- treated people as 'mass'

+ worst: treating people as mass objects (nazis, Bosnians)

+ Corporations were based on the worst organisational structures of the 20th century
+ There were better models before then - guilds etc.

+ "Owned their arse" = best soundbite of the conference?

Ramesh Srinivasan

Design has been taken over by usability but people take technologies and shape them to their own use.

Project with Zuni community in the US. Taggin museum objects not only with archeologist categories, but also with cultural categories (e.g. stories, cerminonial uses related to a vase)

Power of authorship in India. Video cameras given to people. Especially non-literate people tend to be fatalistic. Observing themselves makes them realise about choice, allows them to form ambitions. They ended up recording videos of things they are not happy with and sending it to their government.

Working on the seams

As soon as one delves into the world of mobile a little deeper than national press articles, one word will soon start creeping in: fragmentation.  It speaks of the complexities in getting a mobile service to market, including dealing with different screen sizes, multiple operating systems and device capabilities.

That can however mislead one to believe that mobile just needs a little more time to mature.

In reality, mobile is made up of several layers:

·      Voice works for everyone

·      SMS is pretty much understood by everyone and every device

·      Most mobile devices have a WAP or Html browser – fragmentation here becomes more relevant, but can be handled

·      For some devices, the browser can also access device functionality – so more fragmentation here

·      Applications are more device specific – again, a good Java developer can now handle most of the fragmentation issues, but then you have iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile

 

 

 

What I find really interesting and exciting is the idea of working around the seams between those different layers. They can all be stitched together: and SMS can link to a mobile site, a mobile site can trigger the download of an application, an application can send an SMS.  We combined SMS and WAP very elegantly for Glasses. One could also rethink applications to be largely browser-based, with small downloadable apps getting triggered when necessary (e.g. to extract data from the phonebook).

Lift

I'll be at Lift for the rest of this week.  I haven't had a chance to write here for a couple of months, so I'm hoping that the next few days will give me a chance to catch up. Thoughts over that time: commercials in Agile, seamless interfaces, working for Microsoft, the iPhone, web runtime and apps, mobile distribution models...

Future of Mobile - about advertising

It's already been almost a week since Future of Mobile and I haven't had a chance to write about it. Tom has already covered it very well, but he forgot to mention Jonathan MacDonald's presentation. Perhaps that's evidence of one of the gaps Helen Keagan mentioned in her 6 minutes talk - the one between the mobile industry and advertising.

Jonathan's presentation was full of passion but felt to me as the right message to the wrong audience. The right message because advertising clearly needs to change and is changing. I remember several year's ago JWT's statement that they were from then on in the business of attracting and retaining people's attenion.

The wrong audience because the mobile industry - unlike web - has grown and developed with little exposure to the world of brand advertising. Most of the presentation was referring to the mistakes, history and future of that world. I've been replaying the presentation in my head over the week, thinking about how Jonathan's key points apply to mobile.  All I can think of takes me back to Tomy Ahonen's writings - the importance of communites and conversations for brands.

Channel 4's Mobile Game Pitch

I spent last Monday at Channel 4's offices, taking part in the Mobile Game Pitch organised by Channel4, EA and Nokia. For once, I wasn't the one doing the pitching: I went along as a mentor, helping 4Talent's young producers prepare for their presentations.

It ended up being a long and intense day, but there were plenty of positives.

One was meeting Scott Foe - considering that he is recognised as the highest profile game producer in the mobile industry, I should have know of him before. Still, he turned out to be a great character, had some nice American sigarettes and gave an insightful presentation about the mobile games industry:

• The importance of creating trans-media characters
• The significant difference in the marketing of console games (shock & awe) v.s. mobile games (sustained trickle)
• The importance of word of mouth
• The significant value associated to game concept creation - i.e. pre-production
• The 2.5 yrs he and Nokia have invested in the development of Reset Generation (I now have to play it)

It was great to listen to the 8 game concepts selected for the final, mostly because they game for people wihout mobile background. They were ideas in their infancy, a few of them with some potential, but they show a growing understanding and interest in mobile and its potential.