Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

Here are a few business ideas that I'm sure would fly, but I'm too lazy to get going myself. If you find anything interesting and you want me on the advisory board (for something in return), just let me know. I'm not mentioning business ideas I'm currently involved in.

An online-only music company, that would only release music for on-line purchase and download. Would maybe fit e.g. my favorite distributor InsideOut Music, that currently releases also CDs and DVDs. The targeted audience tends to be a bit audiophilic, so it's critical that CD/DVD quality music can be downloaded as well, but much more compact file formats would be needed for e.g. mobile use. At least this kind of music is still very much album focused, so it's important that whole albums can be purchased and downloaded. It would certainly fit smaller niched music companies. The running cost for distribution is amazingly low and not scaling up with increased sales and revenue.

A free SMS service. This is nothing new of course, but despite years of such services there still seems to be potential for more players. Of course "SMSs" would be sent over the data link, cutting the per-message cost substantially. It should also have chat features, so that many could receive the same message simultaneously and there should be a message log, buddy list etc. It could also emulate MMS for sending photos, videos and audio. The question is how to get revenue from it, but maybe a small monthly fee would work, or other means for revenue, like ringtones sales, advertizing etc. An obvious function is a gateway to real SMS and MMS, but with local rate, overcoming the high roaming costs, but that would also add revenue.

An invitation-only messaging service that would always transfer e-mails in encrypted form, and one would grant people right to send e-mails, similar to chat services. That way there would be no possibility for spam, and we would get back e-mail as a practical form of communication. Of course mobile access would have to be there from day one. Normal Internet e-mail addresses would be used for compatibility with lesser messaging services.

Mobile stock service, that would provide stock information for all the world's public companies via agreements with all relevant stock info providers, and that would allow e.g. setting up portfolio lists, see stock charts graphically and zoomable, support triggers for alerts, e.g. level limit up or down, speed limit up or down, TA factors etc.