Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

Mobilerated, a provider of free mobile games, publishes 30 Day Download Statistics on from where and to what their games are downloaded.

The spread over countries and brands is as it should be, but I noted two things:

• The dominance of newer phones used for downloading the games
• The clear dominance of MIDP 2.0, which is in line with the above

If this is the same pattern at GetJar etc, then game and application developers could soon skip compatibility with MIDP 1.0.

Juniper Research estimates Mobile entertainment market to reach $76bn by 2011.

What is forgotten (as always) is that what makes multimedia through broadband so appealing is very high performance and very low cost, both in terms of content/service cost and flat rate on the connection. Then I of couse also include the illegal downloading of music and movies. That's part of the reason why people justify having broadband in the first place, however illegal it might be. Also note that news services nowadays provide news via video for free. I doubt it can be charged for, just because it's transferred over a wireless network.

3G with current "per megabyte" rates will simply kill this market. For the estimate to come true:

• cap-less flat rate data subscriptions will be required
• aggregate performance needs to be higher than today; note that very few are actively using 3G data now, but when more people do, performance will go down
• independent service providers must have free access to offer such services; this can't be a playing field for only operators

Update: This info is also available on a web page.


JSR 248 Mobile Service Architecture can be seen as an evolutionary step from JSR 185 Java Technology for the Wireless Industry, further stretching the lowest common functionality denominator for mobile phones, with the intention to firm up the core feature set of mobile phones, and not the least making mobile application development a bit more predictable.

JTWI requires:

• JSR 30 Connected Limited Device Configuration 1.0
• JSR 118 Mobile Information Device Profile 2.0
• JSR 120 Wireless Messaging 1.1 (SMS)
• JSR 135 Mobile Media 1.1 (at least audio)

MSA adds a number of important features on top of that:

MSA Subset:

• JSR 139 CLDC 1.1 (adds floating point etc)
• JSR 118 MIDP 2.0
• JSR 75 File & PIM
• JSR 82 Bluetooth
• JSR 135 Mobile Media
• JSR 184 3D Graphics
• JSR 205 Messaging 2.0 (SMS and MMS)
• JSR 226 Vector Graphics (SVG)

Additionally in fully featured MSA:

• JSR 172 Web Services
• JSR 177 Security & Trust
• JSR 179 Location
• JSR 180 SIP (for VoIP, IMS etc)
• JSR 211 Content Handler
• JSR 229 Payment
• JSR 234 Multimedia Supplements
• JSR 238 Internationalization

Note the distinction between MSA and MSA Subset, as there's expected to be phones that won't support the full MSA feature set. I'd argue that 3D Graphics is a big leap in itself, much more so than Location and Web Services, but the specifiers might have realized that games contribute to almost all mobile phone application revenue.

Already MSA Subset is a big leap from JTWI, but as mobile phone technology evolves very fast , it's critical to push the envelope. Many phones already have at least what's in MSA Subset.

European consortium formed for development of NFC applications describes the new 'Store Logistics and Payment with NFC' consortium. The name alone indicates this is a consortium with clear and serious goals to improve the handling of goods by the help of NFC.

Near Field Communication has many uses despite seeming technical shortcomings: NFC devices are often completely passive until they receive a radio beam, and then radiates at such a low effect that the receiving device has to be very close. The point is that NFC devices should not have to be powered through battery or other means, but rather use the effect of the received radio beam to power its own radio. They should also be very inexpensive to produce, as potentially every goods item might get an NFC tag. Also, the proximity "feature" makes it very hard to eavesdrop on an NFC communication.

Due to this, NFC can substitute barcodes, as well as provide means to handle identification of persons and goods in a secure way. The security bit is of course very important when NFC is used for payments, and I haven't yet seen that solved.

Quote: the 'Store Logistics and Payment with NFC' (StoLPaN) project aims to define open commercial and technical frameworks for NFC-enabled services on mobile devices.

Quote: expects to issue its first version of the business rules and technical requirements by the summer of 2007.

Wikipedia refrains from making any connections between NFC and RFID at all, which is weird.

MEX, that tends to be very thorough about things, so also in this case, has a piece on Can mobile advertising evolve beyond the mission?, and I found two interesting points, one mentioned and one forgotten:

Mentioned: Location/positioning as a way to provide context-based ads. E.g. if you are in town in the evening you might be more interested in entertainment in the vicinity than an ad about toothpaste or the latest BMW that you can't afford anyway. If you are at home, the neareast restaurant could lure you with fattening pizzas. As long as we don't have GPS, precision is not that great, but could still be enough as an ad filter. Currently companies can't access your position info without permission (at least not in Europe), and who would opt in to context-based ads?

Forgotten: A very important role of mobile advertizing and in my opinion the most important, at least right now and on mobile sites rather than unsolicited via SMS/MMS, is to make new mobile services known.

Carnival of the Mobilists is this week hosted by mobbu, that's into developing services (mobile or otherwise) for businesses. Must check these guys out a bit more. Lots of interesting articles this week, as always.

In the area of Java for mobiles the article about signing MIDlets is quite interesting. Signing is "slightly magical", so if you don't know how that's done, read this.

I checked the schedule at mobili.st and there are no more CotM hosts listed. Does that mean this is the end of CotM? I defintely hope not.

My thought after reading China launches 4G before 3G off the ground is, at least for the Chinese market: Skip 3G altogether and go directly for high-speed wireless broadband. 3G is "so traditional telecom" anyway and the future is very data-intensive information services (streaming audio and video, multiplayer gaming etc). Sure, we need voice too, but that can ride over wireless broadband (as VoIP) or existing 2G infrastructure, unless overcrowded.

Update 20070131: JSR 248 MSA and Development Tools as per below.


I've made several updates to the site lately, both on the professional and personal pages. Some you've probably already noticed, but to sum it all up:

Mobilizer

Mobilizer is a new business model that Abiro is attempting in collaboration with other companies in the vicinity.

Mobile Developer

Added an analysis of the upcoming MIDP 3.0 specification, that's been covered in Mobile News before.

Also added a page about JSR 248 MSA.

Development Tools are now on a dedicated page.

Wrote a tutorial about the first steps in using NetBeans and Mobility Pack for development of mobile applications for CLDC/MIDP.

Provided a user's guide for Abiro EasyPhone, that's an application that turns a mobile phone into a security/convenience device. Due to this the Projects page was also updated.

About

Has been updated with a lot more affiliations and personal information.

Personal Pages

Has nothing to do with Abiro, obviously, but might still be interesting to some.

The Oblivion page has been updated since I played through the Knights of the Nine extension. This page takes a while to load due to all the screenshots.

I've added a fan page of sorts for a local band that's just on the brink of getting world wide recognition: A.C.T.

There are now many more photos from trips I've made in the past.

GTX Corporation provides a small GPS module with satellite radio, so that the position of a person or a thing can easily be determined.

GTX seems to be mainly offering different sport shoes with this module integrated (and has even patented the concept), but the technology as such is obviously generic. I wonder what kind of battery life you would get, but the position needs only be checked maybe each hour or so.

GTX provides a service behind this, for people to check on the wearer's position, and also to set up boundaries, and get an alert if moving outside of that boundary.

(via Mobility Weblog)

Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity has an interesting piece on The shape of the smartphone and mobile data markets, hinting that it's not feasible to make a phone that fits all types of users, and that the concept of a smartphone is not for the masses. Lots of interesting comments too.

That's in a way also a "slap in the face" for my 15 year prediction I made earlier, as even in 15 years time people are probably still using mobile phones mainly as "cans-on-a-string" (read: for voice calls), yet the information capabilities of future phones will of course be way more advanced, useful and transparent, if even the notion of a phone exists at that time. Hopefully also matter transfer works then.

Just a headsup that I recently wrote comments to two of Barbara Ballard's blog entries, possibly interesting to others:

Application management
about the distinction between user interface and user experience

Measuring the mobile user experience
about UI/UE issues with MIDlets using high-level widgets etc

It will be called LiMo (Linux Mobile, I guess) Foundation, and the venture is founded by Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone, so we are talking players that already have a big stake in using Linux (at least on the phone provider side), but that probably have realized that for mobile Linux to get popular there needs to be application compatibility. At least that's my main concern about Linux. Right now such is non-existing between brands due to different application platforms and UIs.

If you want to be a member you need to shelf out $40k as an individual and $800k as a company, annually! That obviously filters out all small development companies, and most other companies as well.

LiMO Foundation

InfoWorld: Cellphone Linux group launched

Yahoo: Linux Mobile Foundation Created To Promote Open Source Software For Mobile Devices

DMEurope: Mobile players launch LiMo Foundation

MobileBurn: Mobile Leaders Around the World Launch LiMo Foundation

That's ... at least a truck load. Up 22.5% since 2005.

Relative market share:

1. Nokia: 35.8%, up
2. Motorola: 22.3%, up
3. Samsung: 11%, same
4. Sony Ericsson: 8.8%, up
5. LG: 5.8%, down

Quote: Emerging markets became a bigger factor in the industry's growth in 2006, accounting for more than half of all shipments.

2006 cell phone shipments top 1 billion

Cellphone shipments top one billion for first time in 2006, led by Nokia, Motorola

Nokia is also reported to have issues with selling ultra low-cost phones (not surprisingly), but Nokia seems to have been quicker in adapting its production costs to the new demands.

Nokia has record phone sales in Q4, prices fall

Nokia net profits up 19 percent in 4Q

Nokia profits rise in 2006 despite intense price pressure

This includes ringtones/ringbacks as well as full track music. It's clear from the text that Gartner's intended audience for this information is telecom operators.

Quote: Mobile carriers have a strategic advantage when it comes to delivering ringtones, as they already know the end-user's network settings, handset and personal preferences.
Sure, but operators have a tendency to completely misinterpret consumer interests and needs. Independent service providers, like Apple, have a much better understanding of demographics.

There's of course the issue of using an independent service via a running rate data subscription. Not until flat rate is commonplace will music and video downloads fully bloom. Operators might even be reluctant to deploy it because of that, as flat rate will open a Pandora's Box of independent services, with no way of closing it, except by a low cap on flat rate subscriptions. Of course similar services provided by operators could then be cap-less.

My Broadband - Consumer spending on mobile music will surpass $32bn by 2010 - Gartner

ITWire - Appetite for mobile music growing to $US32b says Gartner

MoneyWeb - Gartner Says Consumer Spending on Mobile Music Will Surpass US$32 billion by 2010

Update 20070125: I got some feedback from Jesse Adkins, product manager for the mobile application used in Tellme:
Thanks for the interest in Tellme. We currently run on these Cingular & Sprint phones. We are adding support for new phones every week.
We do use the Java application to handle the recording and sending of audio. We use the media.record control in JSR 135.
Currently the service only does local search queries for the US. You can use the service anywhere.


Tellme offers a service that enables users to call in, say a search phrase, and get search hits spoken back. This is of course all centralized, so the heavy lifting done for the speech recognition and synthesis doesn't burden the phone.

What they've now released in beta version is a solution that combines saying the search criteria and getting textual feedback. I'm guessing it's done via a small Java application that records and sends what you say, but I have sent a question to Tellme about this. The application can also show a map of the location.

Tellme also offers simple text queries via SMS, where of course the search hits are returned in an SMS.

20070127: Now updated with more arguments. You might not agree, so I'd be interested in hearing from people in the business that have either succeeded or failed with different setups.


Here are some criteria I thought up for the ideal mobile service, provided you are an independent service provider. The criteria for an operator would be slightly different.

•Completely operator independent
–As a service provider you don't care what operator is involved; rather you want to reach all people that might be interested in your service; the mobile network is just a pipe between you and the user
–The critical thing is then of course that you need to build a brand that reaches the users; if that's not on your agenda, partnering with operators makes sense, but locks out users
•Not relying on operator and device dependent functionality
–Same as above: Maximum reach; for e.g. a photo-blogging service obviously the phone needs to have a camera, but don't rely on seldom-implemented features (like GPS or network-dependent location methods), unless you address business users and can charge an arm and a leg per user
–To be an innovator you might have to rely on seldom-implemented features, provided there's a chance most phones will get those features within a reasonable time (within your survival time); that way getting ahead of future competition
•Revenue from a business-to-business setup, even if it's a consumer offering in the end
–The customer companies take the risk
–You get revenue from many customer companies, acting a not easily replaceable aggregator of a service they have hard to provide themselves, whether it's a backend or complete service
–Consumers normally don’t want to pay anything anyway
•Very broad appeal (ideally worldwide)
–Capacity scaling (when revenue is already pouring in from regional use) is less risky than developing the service in the first place; of course time is of the essence here; as the first comment says: if you provide a me-too service, then you better stay regional
•Central handling
–All done centrally, equipment- and personnel-wise
–All customer access is via remote means (Web, e-mail, phone)

The criteria for revenue might not apply if you, by Web 2.0 tradition/hype/lore, intend to lift a lot of money from investors and then exit through acquisition. As the market matures, less and less companies can rely on being acquired and instead need to build their own capital through a service that people want to pay for. Of course you could rely on advertizing if your volume is large enough, but I sense service providers underestimate the amount of visitors required to survive through advertizing alone.

Most mobile service providers go consumer, but I sense there's also a good deal of business to be done to corporate. At least they are more willing to pay for the services provided.

ABI Research addresses Ultra-Low Cost Handset Sales to Explode in Emerging Markets in a new report.

Ultra low-cost phone sales is already straining Nokia and Motorola economically. How will other providers fare in these markets? Better to stay away despite the volumes?

It's not just India and China: Over 50% of these 330 million units will be shipped to the emerging markets of the Asia Pacific region, with the remainder spread amongst markets like Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

Quote: other manufacturers like LG, Samsung, Philips, Haier, and Kyocera have also started to introduce handsets for this segment.
Not Sony Ericsson?

Maybe not as a cure-all, but Threaded SMS ... why doesn't it exist on S60? is a valid question if you do a lot of SMSing, and possibly with maybe several people at the same time.

Darla Mack provides a few more comments in Thumbs Up On The Threaded SMS Idea.

My Jiminy! SMS application might be a viable solution. It's a MIDlet, but all Series 60 phones support MIDlets as well. Actually it runs on almost any newer phone. And yes, it's my hand in the picture.

More information is available at ClickApps. You can try before you buy, or just try.

You might find it strange that the chat log is scrolling downwards, but I had to do it that way to be able to support phones with inline text editing, so you see both the text input field and the log at the same time, and still have access to T9/eZiText, and even handwriting, if available. Of course not all phones support inline editing, but more and more do, as display sizes and resolutions go up.

Note also that Jiminy! can't access the normal SMS Inbox, as that's not allowed from Java, so instead all parties in a conversation need to run Jiminy!. I wish that limitation could have been stepped over, but not even if the application had been certified is this possible.

This week hosted by Xen Mendelsohn at Xellular Identity.

I provided the easy-to-read and generally interesting (slight irony) analysis of the so far specified functionality in MIDP 3.0.

Check it out for interesting blog posts about mobile use and technologies.

In 2006 Java Technology Winners and Losers Steve Anglin at O'Reilly lists both the good and the bad from 2006.

Focusing on tools for mobile application development:

Quote: NetBeans wins over Eclipse this year, because NetBeans has made significant progress and growth relative to Eclipse. A year or so ago, NetBeans seemed dead and buried. Eclipse is still the market share leader, but has lost momentum to NetBeans and perhaps other IDEs out there, imo.
What more can I say :)...

J2ME Polish is mentioned as an innovative/interesting product. I'm eagerly awaiting version 2.0. The beta version is not entirely trustworthy.

More about what people think of NetBeans 5.5:

NetBeans Takes The Gold

17th Annual Jolt Product Excellence Awards Finalists
* Best Development Environments: NetBeans IDE 5.5
* Best Collaboration Tools: NetBeans IDE 5.5
* Best Mobile Development: NetBeans Mobility Pack 5.5 and Sun Java Wireless Tookit 2.2
* Best Web Development: NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5

Cellular Handset Market Continues Double Digit Annual Growth summarizes a new report from In-Stat that indicates mobile phones sales has increased by 20% worldwide since last year, and it looks like sales will continue to be strong the coming years. 20% worldwide means emerging markets must have increased much more, not the least in India.

Quote: This growth occurred because of growing penetration within developing countries, the popularity of prepaid service plans, and the continued rollout of higher speed data networks.

(via Textually)

The NetBeans site provides a learning trail for would-be and existing mobile application developers, in this context meaning Java ME (CLDC or CDC) developers.

And, of course, the intention is that you should use NetBeans as the development environment. It's a really good IDE, so you could be worse off.

There are now Mobility Packs for both CLDC/MIDP and CDC/PP (using AWT).

See also my NetBeans page for more info.

Labels: javame, midp, netbeans

ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog - Voice Revenues in the Telecommunications reports on the status of telecom voice use.

Voice is still going strong and so ubiquitous that I sense service providers somehow have "leaped it over" and seemingly forgotten that a voice-based service might be much more interesting and accessible to consumers than data-based such. Sure, there are lots of voice-based services around, but not much innovation as far as I can see. Silly/simple things like "Today's Dilbert played by famous actors" might become a hit among geeks (do you read my blog, Scott?). Or today's weather perhaps?

Quote: Voice revenue as a percentage of the total remains stable, while the traffic generated by users has doubled.

Check out the PowerPoint too ("complete presentation").

(via Mobility Weblog)

It's tough being one of the biggest players in the market. Also Nokia has been hit by less than good results. In part because the major phone providers must play in the ultra low-cost market, and that causes a margin drain that "underdog" players like Sony Ericsson doesn't have to deal with, at least yet.

Motorola profits moderate sharply, announces job cuts reports that profits nearly halved and they'll sack around 3500 people.

Quote: Despite the profit slowdown, Zander stressed that quarterly sales rocketed by 17 percent to a record 11.8 billion dollars.

Quote: The firm estimated it had a 23 percent share of the global cellphone market, behind Finland's Nokia.

Quote: Zander said Motorola hoped to save around 400 million dollars over two years following the job cuts.
400M / 3500 / 2 = $570k per employee per year !?!? What did I do wrong? Will many more be sacked?

I've always wanted the idle screen (proper name for what it's normally used for: nothing) of the phone to be an information portal instead of just showing a wallpaper and some phone statistics and the time.

BREW uiOne from Qualcomm provides the means to hook in applications to the idle screen and other parts of the UI, and also allows for advanced customisation of the UI look-n-feel.

AllTel's Celltop is based on uiOne, and has the following UI functionality (called cells) pre-installed: call log, weather, news, baseball, basketball, football, stocks, text messaging inbox, ringtones, and even rodeo.

Review: Find info on your mobile phone fast using Celltop shows how it looks and behaves in practical use.

Sun has enhanced its Java ME Device Table, and added filtering on API. For instance I spotted that there's a healthy, yet not very long, list of phones that support the Location API, including ones without GPS, which is a good sign.

The Abiro Mobilizer concept involves enabling existing and new services for access from mobile phones.

The information has been up for a while, but I made a revision of the pictures today to better show what the concept is all about.

Check it out, and let me know if you're interested in more information and/or a business discussion.

It's no doubt happening. MySpace Mobile Users' Favorite Social Network in U.K., U.S. lists the different social network services that are popular for mobile access, and not the least for uploading content from phones.

Service popularity:
US: MySpace, Facebook, Windows Live Space
UK: MySpace, Windows Live Spaces, YouTube and Bebo

Mobivity is a new service for the US that claims to be an inexpensive means for marketing via SMS. It uses an opt-in approach, where the user needs to agree to signing up via contests etc. It's of course a question how well hidden this acceptance could be, but at least it's not outright spamming, and the source of the messages can likely be traced.

Companies send and receive messages via HTTP (send and receive) or RSS (receive only).

Press Release: Mobivity Brings Big Brand Interactive Mobile Marketing to Small Business

Sony Ericsson Q4 profit more than triples on sales of music, camera handsets presents Sony Ericsson's results from Q4 2006.

Quote: The report beat nearly all analysts' expectations, and shares of parent LM Ericsson were up 0.7 per cent to 29.55 kronor ($4.22) in Stockholm trading.
It's interesting how such a positive result only increases the share by 0.7%. Sounds like analysts had completely unrealistic expectations on Sony Ericsson.

Quote: That goes against the current industry trend of cheaper phones that has caused problems for many of Sony Ericsson's main competitors, including Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp.
This is interesting, as Sony Ericsson never has cared much about very low cost phones. Of course, Sony Ericsson doesn't have a market share similar to Motorola and Nokia either, and if they had they probably would have needed to go after those low-cost markets to at all keep its market share. In their underdog position (relatively speaking) maybe they have easier to focus on markets that provide value.

Location/positioning is critical for future mobile services, whether done via coarse means like E-OTD and similar, or much more precise methods like GPS and A-GPS. Hence, any news on evolution in this field, e.g. in terms of precision, cost and power drain, are important.

The benefit of A-GPS is that the position is calculated much quicker, which is important for mobile use.

U-blox extends its Assist Now A-GPS service to support offline instant positioning

CSR to deliver sub $1 GPS, acquires NordNav Technologies AB and Cambridge Positioning Systems Ltd

EasyReach provides a new service with the main features Mobile Remote Access and Mobile Commerce.

The priority of mobile service providers is obviously the service and its availability to as many users as possible, which also goes for EasyReach, that will make clients for all popular mobile application platforms. Right now the service only support BlackBerry.

EasyReach

DMN Newswire: Mobile Commerce, Mobile Desktop Search and Mobile Remote Access Converge in New Free EasyReach(TM) Service

Quote: provides a first-of-its-kind combination of mobile commerce, mobile desktop search and mobile remote access

Quote: Available today for the Blackberry, the EasyReach service will support Palm Treo, Windows Mobile, Nokia Series 60 Symbian, J2ME/Java and all other mobile phones and Wireless PDAs in the coming months.

All eyes are on China and India as the near term most interesting mobile phone and infrastructure markets. India nearly doubles mobile phone use in 2006 describes the outlook for India, that looks very promising for anyone involved in that market.

At the end of 2006 there were 149.5M subscribers, and the Indian government estimates there will be 500M mobile and fixed line subscribers by 2010.

Fixed line subscribers are decreasing, and note that they are already way below mobile subscribers: 40M. Might they be close to 0 by 2010?

Infoworld has also posted a comment on this topic: India nearly doubles mobile phone use in 2006 - India adds 74 million new mobile telephone subscribers

For those of you looking for database engines for your mobile applications I've added those I believe are the most popular ones on the Java ME - Applications page.

MIDP 3.0 is the new, yet unfinished, version of MIDP. CLDC/MIDP is the most popular mobile phone application platform, and is at least a magnitude more deployed than Symbian OS, that's in second place. Hence, getting everything right in 3.0 is essential for future mobile application development. Standing still is not an option, as the phone capabilities and developer and user requirements are increasing fast.

Complementing Enrique's Important Java ME Milestones: MIDP3 Early Draft Review, MSA Final Release I've written a more detailed analysis of the enhancements and changes in MIDP 3.0 based on the early draft specification. It can be seen as a summary of the specification, provided you already know what's in the previous versions of MIDP.

The analysis is still being revised in details, but I should already have covered all bigger changes. Feel free to point out omissions and misunderstandings. I can take it :).

It's no question they will fight it out during 2007. There's a huge mobile advertizing potential they need to grab, and there are also other possible revenue streams they need to cover before the other party does, like music sales etc.

I wonder where Microsoft will be in all of this, with it's MSN service etc. They will surely try to fight, but looks like an underdog in comparison.

Yahoo Tells Road Rogues To Go (an easily misunderstood title) outlines Yahoo!'s known intentions, which includes broader support for handsets and more mobile-enabling of existing PC-accessed services, as well as new services.

Note also that these players need to either compete with or acquire other companies in not the least the Web 2.0 field, so likely there will be more acquisitions happening this year. E.g. Digg looks like an interesting acquisition object. As you already know, News Corp owns MySpace, Google acquired YouTube for an insane amount of money, and there have been talks about Yahoo! or News Corp acquiring Digg, etc.

It's also clear many others (big and small) will jump on the Web 2.0 and mobile bandwagon and introduce both copycat and unique services. As there are not that many companies that can acquire such services, they need to stand out somehow and be first (easy to say, hard to achieve). Except for advertizing and possibly online music sales, there are yet few other clear revenue streams from such services, as most of them are completely free for users, so an exit through acquisition will be critical, and if you are one of the late-arrival copycats you can kiss that possibility goodbye.

As in the measuring the user experience of mobile phones. I have a more application and service focused angle below, that also relates to the design of mobile phones.

The article starts out by saying that it's very complex to measure and long term achieve good usability, as it involves so many things, but that's an arguable statement. There are ways and methods to measure usability for other types of products, and why should mobile phones be considered so much different?

The key here is to focus the usability testing on what the user sees and affects and adapt the device, application or service based on that. Also, it's important to involve usability experts already at the design stage, and of course also later. I doubt that happens very often in the mobile field, as e.g. the mechanical design of phones seems to be more controlled by hardware designers and tradition than looking at contemporary uses of phones and design based on that.

Of course, as an application developer you don't have any say about the design of the phone, so the more the application developer can control the look and behavior of the UI through software, the better. That's why the "clean slate" approach of Apple iPhone seems so refreshing. Pity though it doesn't suppport any popular application platform.

Examples of things to contemplate:
* most music/media-adapted phones still don't have dedicated controls for that
* most phones are still using the same old crappy 0-9*# design that only works well for phone calls (again, see iPhone for a different approach)
* displays are still in portrait format, despite photos and videos being in landscape format
* messaging is done better with an alphanumeric keypad
* the future of mobile applications is downloading, not embedding. The industry needs to take the consequences of that and do more to make the UI adapted for such applications: easier to download applications, easier to find and launch them, more UI functionality/flexibility, etc.

Developers Speak Out About PalmOS indicates many are starting to give up on any real evolution of Palm OS. I'm not sure I understand the fascination for specifically Linux as the future, as there are still way too many flavors of application platforms for Linux, and there is no clear dominating player in sight. I found it interesting to read that Windows Mobile is seen as taking quick strides in increasing its market share. In Europe we still don't see much of that, where Nokia's Series 60 gets all the attention when it comes to more advanced mobile platforms.

Another thing that can be read out from this note, and that I've covered before, is that in a mobile service setting the real value and cost is in the mobile service, not the mobile application (the latter is just an enabler): To achieve the maximum coverage for a mobile service the provider is agnostic to the after-market application platforms in the phones and builds solutions for all popular platforms. It's just business, and the work involved in making and running the service is probably anyway way beyond the cost of developing a few mobile applications. If they go for a browser- or messaging-based approach, they don't even have to build any mobile applications, but many services can't be properly enabled using that approach.

Of course stand-alone mobile games will still mainly be made for Java ME / MIDP and BREW (even in the foreseeable future).

Russell Buckley (UK) and Carlo Longino (USA) at MobHappy have published their thoughts about what they think will happen during 2007. I mention where they are located, as some predictions might be colored by the situation in that specific market (the European and US mobile markets are still quite different). There are really no big surprises, but definitely an interesting read, especially the arguments for why these things should happen.

If anything, I believe in 2007 as the year for mobile social network services. Young people use their phones more actively than their PCs, and the phones have more capabilities suitable for such services too, so it seems inevitable. I'll eat my spinach if that doesn't happen.

Russell Buckley:
1, 2
3, 4
5, 6, 7
8, 9

Carlo Longino:
1 to 10

The problem with wireless devices is that if they should run for a longer time they either need to be connected to a wall socket, which kind of takes away the main benefit of the device being wireless in the first place, or you have to charge a battery in the device.

As Nancy Gohring experiences in 'Wireless power' could save the day, if also power could be transferred wirelessly you at least would not have to bring along device-specific power supplies to all the different devices you have. Charging from a distance is still a pipe dream.

Of course there could have been strict regulations for how mobile devices should be charged via a cable (one connector type, one voltage etc), e.g. by always using USB, and that would not involve any patent issues, but an alternative is to adopt Fulton's wireless/magnetic transfer of energy, so that any kind of mobile device could be easily charged by just bringing along one type of charger. Also, hotels etc could place such chargers in the rooms.

I mentioned patents before, and I guess that's the issue with Fulton's approach: The plethora of patents probably makes this into a "either accept using Fulton's technology only, or probably not wireless power at all" scenario. Pick your poison. I'm amazed such a core technology can be protected by close to 200 patents.

Visa and Nokia are collaborating to offer the possibility to pay via mobile phones on a broad basis.

It's been tried since the early days of WAP and programmable SIM cards with arguable success so far, except in Japan and Korea, and then only for very small sums (commute tickets etc).

The method deployed here uses Near Field Communication (NFC) for over-the-counter payments, and users will also be able to check their accounts etc.

As Visa and Nokia are the largest players in their respective fields, this looks like a real and serious attempt to get things going.

Shozu, known for its mobile photo gateway service, now moves into mobile advertizing, competing with the likes of AdMob, AdModa/Mobvision etc.

It seems Shozu's approach is more media intensive than AdMod's (text only) and AdModa's (text and small pictures): Advertisements and sponsorship material can be interwoven with ZuCast-based videos, photos, music, games, ringtones, wallpaper, news feeds and more.

What I don't like very much is that the consumer gets to pay for the traffic generated by downloading more complex ads. AdMob is the most efficient in that ads are just embedded text on a page. That's neglibly more data. Even small pictures add more data and also a new request, slowing down the downloading of the actual information page. Don't get me started on animations and videos.

It should be noted though that mobile advertizing is an important way to present a new mobile service, especially if you can't afford magazine and TV advertizing. Also, a benefit of mobile advertizing is that the user can directly go to that service instead of having to enter a more or less complex URL via the phone keypad, which is still a clear show-stopper.

Update 2007011:

Cade Metz at PC Magazine has tested the iPhone and was very impressed, especially of the touchscreen.

It's sad it doesn't support MIDlets, but I think they will instead focus on establishing Apple's own application platform, and provide those games and applications via iTunes. That could become a killer, as many will want to develop for that platform provided the phone(s) themselves sell well, but it simply can't push away MIDP from the throne. In the extension to providing an application platform would be to collaborate with major service providers like Google, Yahoo, MySpace etc to provide consumer services and applications with a much better user interface than e.g. MIDlets can provide. That's definitely an Achilles heel of MIDP, as well as the lack of native access to functionality.

I read somewhere that it doesn't provide audio feedback on key presses. I hope that's not true, as a touch screen is not tactile, but in any case it would be a simple software upgrade.

Update 20070110:

Apple iPhone hits handset makers' shares is a sign of a slightly irrational stock market

QuicklyBored has made its own iPhone news roundup

News is still coming in on the iPhone, and I added some more commentary today, but I'll stop here.



If you've followed all that's been written about this to-be phone, you might have thought Apple created the hype, but actually media and users did.

Steve Jobs announced the upcoming Apple iPhone at CES. It runs a mobile-adapted version of OS X, and is optimized for multimedia viewing/playing and also looks very much like a portable media player (see photos at the listed sites). As Apple iTunes offers both music and videos, this is logical. It's more focused on PC-like applications (full web browser, HTML-capable e-mail client) than mobile ditto. There's supposedly no support for Java applications.

Release is said to be in June.

OS News: An Initial Analysis on the Apple iPhone

MEX: Apple’s new mobile experience

Yahoo!: Apple shares up after Jobs introduces mobile phone

Yahoo!: Apple rolls out much-anticipated iPhone

Yahoo!: Apple unveils new iPhone

Yahoo!: Apple renames itself, unveils iPhone

MobileBurn: Apple iPhone Finally Announced, Release With Cingular in June

QuicklyBored: Apple announces the iPhone

MobileTracker: Apple iPhone officially introduced

Mobile Opportunity: Apple's iPhone: That isn't a phone, it's a PDA done right

Engadget Mobile: The Apple iPhone runs OS X

Vox provides a blogging service for mobile phones and supports Nokia Series 60 phones via a special settings file. The new Nokia N93i has these settings pre-installed. You can write text as well as upload photos, videos and audio clips.

The Yahoo! note mentions "download the file settings", so rather than installing an application you download a configuration file (unless the phone already has it) that I saw includes an SVG file (for an animated logo?) and some file type associations. I haven't yet tested this on a real phone. If you know how it works, feel free to write a comment. Using the Nokia Nseries device for online sharing provides some hints though.

Finger Touching Wearable Mobile Device is a design study by Yanko Design that uses the palm of the hand as a surface for showing the standard phone keypad layout, as well as act keypad.

It doesn't say how the keys are supposed to be read, but that could be done by an optical sensor in the device (likely) or by measuring an electrical current through the fingers (less likely).

It's clear this hasn't been tested in any way. For one, it doesn't look like the device can stay in the position it's in.

I'm probably old-fashioned, but I'd prefer a real alphanumeric keypad instead of this any day.