Why the iPhone will never be the biggest money generating platform

The iPhone will not generate significant mobile revenues

Tomi Ahonen has written a very long post about the history of mobile phone development  in Europe and the United States. Tomi is a well known authority in the Mobile space and is the author of the well known Communities dominate brand book.

His post contains a number of provocative and thoughtful observations. The post itself is as long as an e-book, but I urge you to read it all the way. It’s excellent.

In his post Tomi argues that even though the iPhone has brought a revolution in smart phones it will not dominate mobile revenues with its current offering. the bulk of mobile revenues are not in App stores or the real Internet. Apple’s iPhone represents less than 1% of the mobile market, and it’s revenue generation is infinitely small compared to current real mobile Internet revenues. A quote from Tomi’s post:

So we come down to the applications. Tomi, its a smartphone. By definition, a phone that can accept applications? Why aren’t you talking about the Apple iPhone Apps Store. Yeah, sure, its important for us nerds and geeks, the early adopters of new technology, who have been envisioning a pocketable PC that could be perfect for the gadget freak. Yes, the Apps store is wonderful. A billion downloads, yeah. Except that the mass market consumer, your mother, your father, your sister and your brother, are not like you and me at this blog. They will not madly download tons of apps to any smartphone. The theory of “Crossing the Chasm” has been explained by Geoffrey Moore a decade ago and is not disputed. Techie-geeky appeal of ultra high tech does not translate to the mass markets, in fact in most cases what geeks want and mass markets want are diametrically opposed.

No matter what stats you see for Apple iPhone Apps Store success, whatever the stats, the total market share of Apple is 1% of the phone market. It is exactly at the pointed end of that Crossing the Chasm theory that Moore talked about. This is NOT a mass market, and CANNOT BECOME one if the same model is repeated. Understand what I say. Even if you are able to make a success out of your app in the Apps Store today, it CANNOT translate to a mass market success, using that same model. its not my theory, Moore’s theory holds near unanimous agreement by all technology marketing gurus. Do not kid yourself.

The problem with the iPhone is that it has been developed with a pc in mind. It is a pc device that can also call. This is exactly why I wrote a post about a year ago explaining why the iPhone is probably one of the worst mobile phones I have ever used. It comes with downloadable applications that let the user customize his device. But that is exactly why it will not be adopted by the mass market.

Yes there is a big opportunity for apps to be sold to smartphones. Yes, it is a very significant market, when viewed from the angle of the software applications industry. But it will always be – always be – only a niche. Do not allow yourself to be delusional about this. We do not buy – and the mass market will not ever buy – smartphones so that they could install some apps to it. The vast majority of users will be contented with the apps that come pre-loaded, and then they go to web based services to get their additional benefits.

The real value (in terms of revenues) lies in the mobile web. This is not the real web displayed on a high end handheld like the iPhone. Instead it is the ‘walled-garden’ Internet that is build and maintained by the mobile carriers. Sounds totally unbelievable right? The facts and figures however are indisputable. Again, a quote from Tomi:

That is where the big opportunity is. Not apps that we install onto a smartphone, but the services that we deliver via the network. Mobile premium services, what could be called “mobile internet” and by this I mean a superior, better, money-making internet than the old legacy dumb internet we have on the PCs. So I explicitly do not mean “the real internet” onto the phones. That is as dumb as putting a real horse to power your car! We have a BETTER engine in the car. And now, yes, please understand, the “mobile internet” is the far better internet than that horrid old creaky stupid cheap “advertising-led” “get-me-more-eyeballs” internet which we all use today. The internet is for good reason called the 6th mass media channel and obviously mobile is the newer, 7th mass medium.

No, while that will be there, and yes, there will be millions and millions of users on “the real internet” on our smartphones, that is peanuts. PEANUTS. The far bigger opportunity in mobile is in the 7th mass media type of mobile internet, the better, smarter and richer money-making and magical mobile internet. That is where the opportunity is. To see how vibrant and lucrative it can be, one need not look further than this decade and Japan and South Korea, where the mobile internet really thrives already. Application developers have a hard time making money selling 1 dollar apps on the Apple iPhone Apps Store. You have to be very lucky to make the top 100 apps listing to have any chance of recovering your development costs. A very risky development path.

But in Japan, they offer the service on the mobile internet, take a subscription of one dollar per month (100 yen) and pay 10% to the carriers/operators and the service provider gets to keep 90%. Rather than one dollar from one customer once, the customer is charged 12 months, 12 times per year. 12 dollars, and the content owner gets to keep 10 dollars and 80 cents of it. Which is better? A dollar or ten? I rest my case, milad.

Worldwide the mobile data market is a much bigger opportunity than pc based Internet. There are more users, more devices, payment is integrated on every device (no need for credit cards). In another great and long post Tomi estimates these markets:

The total mobile premium content industry is worth 71 billion dollars and the mobile messaging industry adds another 130 billion, giving the total moblie phone based data services industry a size of 200 billion dollars for 2008. Now, consider the internet. Even as we add not only all content revenues, and all advertising revenues on the internet, but also the access revenues for broadband and dial-up narrowband internet access, the overall size of the internet business is about.. 200 billion dollars. In half the time, mobile has grown to same size.

Mobile is the bigger internet. Mobile is the stronger internet. Mobile is the money internet. Mobile is the faster-growing internet.

It sounds counter intuitive to us geeks, but the smart phone market is a niche market. No matter how sexy and cool we think it is. The SMS market alone is bigger than the current pc based Internet content market. Premium mobile data services add extra growth that can’t be matched by the web. On the web we are stuck with inefficient, crappy old-fashioned web 1.0 based business models. In the mobile data market every bit transferred represents real revenue. Twitter could have done it, but they didn’t pursue the biggest revenue generator.

Facebook missed that one too.In 2007 I wrote a post entitled “Mark Zuckerberg, when in doubt, follow the money”. I said then:

But there are 2 aspects to a mobile phone that are of huge importance when thinking about next generation web services:

1. The mobile phone platform has billing capabilities
2. The mobile phone user pays to interact with others

Think of the US on-line advertisement spent 2006 ($16 Bln) as a small hill,

think of the worldwide spent on SMS as the Mount Everest (btoh images taken from Wikipedia). It is estimated that the SMS market alone will be $ 67Bln in 2012 (or 3.7 trillion messages a year!) .That is excluding Mobile Internet services. In Japan alone more than $ 1 Bln revenues are generated from mobile data services. So stop thinking ads and start thinking payed services.

The mobile business model is the most User-Centric I can think of. It provides user value and the user pays directly for that value. There is nothing more powerful than that.

On competition, web 2.0 sarcasm and watching television on Friendfeed

A few things that caught my attention this morning. First, an excellent review by Walter Mossberg on the new Google phone called G1. He describes many of its new features, strengths and weaknesses.

My take on it? Competition is a good thing. It will raise the bar yet again and force Apple and others to build better mobile phones and especially better software on mobile phones. One thing that worries me is the lock-in Google has build into this phone. Google is everywhere, but where sites like Facebook are bounded by their own platform (you can stay out of it if you want), Google gets a grip on the entire online world (web and mobile). This would be ok if you weren’t forced to use Google accounts for it. It turns the entire online world into a Google garden. Scary and not the way to go forward. It’s a privacy’s nightmare, just like the stuff Facebook is doing on their platform.

Then a post that made me laugh out loud, a post by Silicon Alley Insider with a presentation from a “venture capitalist” that understands what is going on. It’s meant to be funny, but there is always some truth to be found in such ironic presentations. We all see the crazy web 2.0 fundings, advertisement models, a business plan that doesn;t create value and only aims for a “Google buy me”  scenario. It’s happening out there and if anythign this financial crisis should lead to rationalization and get rid of these destructive business models.

I’m sure the Friendfeed fan club will get all exited about it’s latest feature. Friendfeed  can now show shared items in real-time instead of a user having to hit the refresh button in his browser. Great feature, but as the underlying issue of irrelevant and unintentional content sharing isn’t really solved it will only provide us a real-time update of fairly useless stuff. No sense in trying to do that too often. If anything, the one strength Friendfeed had,  comments on entries, will be lost in this real-time update. Nothing to get exited about for me. It’s like watching tv, you sometimes enjoy staring at things without having to activate your brain. Useless but relaxing nevertheless

The incredible power of being able to think and act big

Possibly the most important characteristic of web giant Google is their ability to think and act big. Thinking big is really hard to do but has made them the most successful web company in history. Google, the name, refers to the word Googol meaning 10¹⁰⁰ which is a huge number. The name itself suggests that Google has the ambition to index the entire web. It certainly has made them the defacto Internet search standard.

This ability to think big isn’t that rare. Most web entrepreneurs that start a new venture think that they have fond the single idea to conquer all of the Internet, to become the next Google. Most fail too. It isn’t good enough to think big. You also need to be able to see the bigger picture, to understand it’s complex nature, to see what is needed. It is also important to understand the ecology of such matters, to understand that to have a big impact you need others to do that. And once you understand all of this you then need to execute big. And that is where the power of Google lies. It has become their second nature to think that way. And doing that they can amaze us all.

If you understand this about Google then it isn’t so hard to understand what they are up to now. Google is trying to become the social glue of the entire web. They are the first to acknowledge the power of socializing every application. Most web 2.0 companies have chosen a business model that forces them to become the number 1 destination site in order to be successful. Mark Zuckerberg runs one of the largest walled gardens in the world (if you exclude the mobile operators, they hold even larger walled gardens AND, unlike Facebook, make a whole lot of revenues on them). Almost every web 2.0 business model is based upon traffic and advertisement. That business model trap puts the entrepreneur in the destination mood. He’s got to build a large destination site to become successful.

Google has taken a different approach. Thinking bigger than the rest they leave the fight for social destinations to others (except for the search engine google.com, but they have won that battle long ago) and look at the bigger picture. Instead of having one destination to be a playground, they see the entire web as their playground. And if socialization is the trend, then Google will be the one that connects everything to everyone using their OpenSocial and FriendConnect projects.

And they are extending even beyond the web as we know it. The next addition to this playground will be the mobile device. Again, instead of building one super mobile application, Google simply builds a mobile operating system called Android. They create a whole new ecology, bypassing closed, walled garden. platform developments by the mobile hardware manufacturers. Who cares about Symbian, Windows mobile, or any of the other non-interacting mobile platforms. Google will try to open up these hopelessly closed ecologies and scattered mobile developments by setting a new open standard with Google’s Android. They are in the mobile game now, shaking up the industry as no one has been able to do (with the exception of Apple of course).

Just look at a few of the strengths Google has:

1. They run the largest Internet infrastructure in the world, which includes not only huge data centers but also dark fiber connections. I doubt there are many bits traveling the web that aren’t passing Google infrastructure at some point
2. They are the king of search, both on the web and mobile space. And accompanied by that they are the king of advertisement, taking some 75% of the entire revenue stream worldwide.
3. They have Orkut, Google Earth, Google Maps, Picasa, GMail, GCalendar, Google Docs, Google Gears. And on top of that they have OpenSocial and Friendconnect, API’s to potentially unlock any popular destination site on the web. Resistance is futile, but even the mighty Facebook can’t resist this force much longer. Their feeble attempt to block Google’s FirendConnect will backfire on them.
4. They are the king of RSS, with Google Reader and Feedburner, letting a lot of content flow through their network
5. They have bought one of the best mobile teams in the world. People are always wondering about Google’s move to by Jaiku and then let the service slowly bleed to death. Let’s not forget that the early adopter crowd loved Jaiku at it’s peak, even though Twitter was way more popular. Jaiku simply had better technology and an incredible development team. And these people are now working within Google on who knows what. Best buy they have aver made probably. Who cares about Jaiku, Google has the team!
6. They have created the Android mobile operating system. It isn’t there yet, but it will attempt to dominate mobile development due to its open nature. If all developers jump on Android and the iPhone, the rest of the mobile OS’es will be buried very soon.

Does that mean the competition might as well go home? Does it suggest that Google will take it all. No, of course it doesn’t. I even doubt there was a master strategy that has lead Google to all of this. But one thing is clear to me. All of this is due to their ability to think and act big. And it is really hard to compete with that. Google is getting ready to become the next “Operating system” on the web, including mobile. They have the infrastructure, technology, the capacity, the data, and people to do it. While this is good news for the web user, it is also scary to think that one company can have such a huge impact on our on-line life.

Is Mobile the next advertisement heaven?

I’m thinking about Erik Schmidt, CEO of Google, who says that mobile advertisement will be the next thing. Actually, he says it a little different:

First: There is still a lot of revenue in search – as we get the technology better or as we can do more targeted ads. There is no limit for search marketing. People assume that there is a limit, but we have many more ideas about technology. Second: The most obvious large space of advertising is the mobile internet. Every German has a mobile phone. Just take the success of the iPhone: It has the first really powerful web browser on a mobile device – and many more are still coming. Nokia has one coming, Blackberry has one and Motorola has one. They are all supposed to be released this year. By these products, the advertising gets more targeted because phones are personal. So targeted ads are possible. And that means the value of the ads will grow. The next big wave in advertising is the mobile internet.

It’s interesting to see the thinking pattern of Google on this. The first thing Erik says isn’t about the mobile phone being personal. He starts out by saying that there are so many of them (already 3.3 Bln according to this post). I like that. Google seems one of the few companies that never stops thinking in terms of huge. While most web 2.0 companies are trying to claim their own space on the web, Google just takes the entire space for granted (the web) and works on that as their walled garden. Right now, they are the only ones even remotely capable of managing such a large walled garden. Not only do they own important data centers all over the world, but they also own a large part of the infrastructure and data pipes the web runs on.

I’m pretty sure that it is precisely this thinking that has lead Google to start the Android initiative. They saw the impossible and futile platform wars on the mobile devices and realized there wouldn’t be a clear winner. These platform wars are a major cause of the lack of innovation in the field and penetration of mobile services. Google came with Android and they potentially have the power to open up this space filled with technologically disconnected devices. If Android can overtake these platforms and create a major open source platform for development then we will probably see an enormous speed of innovation arise in the mobile world.  It’s pretty smart too, because Google would then hold a similar position in the mobile domain as they do on the web. They are everywhere and it will allow them to continue to think huge and come with advertisement services that will be difficult to compete with.

He goes on by saying that since the mobile phone is personal, the advertisement can get more targeted. And targeted ads lead to more value. This sounds like the new Walhalla for advertisers. What if we could get our message across every mobile phone, the most personal device on the planet? But it always makes me think about the user. What about him. What is in it for him?

Advertisement on mobiles might work, but it is even more difficult to be successful than it is on the web. Remember, the mobile phone is a personal device. It is our remote control to my life. We use it for the most important things in life. Communication with family, friends, co-workers etc. Not only phone calls. According to Toni Ahonen, SMS is used often everywhere in the world with the exception of the USA, who are lagging behind. We use it to make pictures, or sometimes to record a video. We use it to listen to music. And slowly, we are also using it to browse the (mobile) web and for localization services.

Personally I think that before mobile advertisement has a chance of becoming successful we need to fix a few things that inhibit mass adoption of mobile browsing. I wrote a post on that a while back called “The mobile web experience needs fundamental rethinking” For the sake of the argument we will assume that developments such as Google’s Android and the iPhone will deal with most of these issues. We are then left with the mobile operators that run the largest walled gardens in the world!  With their access monopoly, simlock schemes to enforce which device can be used on their network, impossible to comprehend calling, roaming and data plans and worthless custom Mobile Web portals, the user is left with total confusion over the services and costs involved.

Most of these hurdles have inhibited the mass adoption of the mobile device as an Internet device. SMS rules (100 BLN in 2007!), and mobile data revenues are growing at a much slower rate. But the 3.3Bln devices out there form an incredible potential. Not just for advertisement, but for anyone that wants to set up a business  with healthy revenues. In my opinion advertisement on mobile will have to follow similar rules to the web to be successful:

1. Do not get in the way of my interactions with friends. I can’t stress that point enough. When I’m interacting with friends advertisement is trespassing.
2. Don’t even think you can be successful with bannering or display ads. Have you seen the size of a mobile device screen? There is no room for bannering on that. Sure, everyone tries it, but it’ll just be an annoying flashy little thing that clutters a space that is too small to begin with. If you want to get users annoyed, try using banners.
3. The advertisement in itself has to provide the user with value. To me that means the advertisement itself needs to be contextual, localised and personal Example. I’m in a bar with some friends and I’m showing them a picture I took earlier and posted on the web. Showing me an ad that tells me to drink Heineken beer will be more than annoying. Providing me with a bar code that lets me buy a next round of Heineken beer with a discount in this very same bar we are at is pretty cool.
4. The possibilities for advertisement are endless. But the point remains that advertisement works best when I’m either looking for something or planning to buy something (which is just another way of saying I’m looking for something). I might be using a mobile version of search, I might be looking at locations or maps, I might be on some e-commerce site like eBay, those are the moments when advertisement can provide both the user and the advertiser value. For the rest, just leave the user alone and let him interact. BTW I’m not discussing branded activities here, just advertisement.

Mobile advertisement may be the next big thing. But it is probably much harder than advertisement on the web. And we already suck at that (unless you are Google). It’s a pretty big gamble with high investments, high risks, and potentially high revenues. I’m sure there are lot’s of entrepreneurs out there working on it already. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen. What do you think?

Forget about mobile web browsing, think interaction!

I read a blog post by Russell Beattie this morning in which he announced the end of Mowser, a mobile web browser Russel has developed. He talks in a very personal way about his experiences witht he mobile web. According to Russell, the mobile web has never existed:

The argument up to now has been simply that there are roughly 3 billion phones out there, and that when these phones get on the Internet, their vast numbers will outweigh PCs and tilt the market towards mobile as the primary web device. The problem is that these billions of users *haven’t* gotten on the Internet, and they won’t until the experience is better and access to the web is barrier-free – and that means better devices and “full browsers”. Let’s face it, you really aren’t going to spend any real time or effort browsing the web on your mobile phone unless you’re using Opera Mini, or have a smart phone with a decent browser – as any other option is a waste of time, effort and money. Users recognize this, and have made it very clear they won’t be using the “Mobile Web” as a substitute for better browsers, rather they’ll just stay away completely.

And to top that off he says:

Let me say that again clearly, the mobile traffic just isn’t there. It’s not there now, and it won’t be.

In his opinion services need a web presence in order to become succesful on mobile. You need better devices and full browsers. Read the article, Russell has taken the time to write a personal story, it’s good reading.

Russell isn’t the first one that had to stop efforts to become successful in the mobile web. I wrote a post a while back, called “The Mobile Web Experience needs fundamental rethinking”. The trigger of that post was an article by a mobile expert Michael Mace, who declared mobile web applications dead.

I have never really believed in a mobile web. But I also believe that current mobile thinking is often dominated by two things, technical capabilities and bringing web services to the mobile. But these things aren’t of any value to me. I currently use a Nokia N95 as my mobile phone. It has tremendous technical capabilities, Wifi, GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA (unlike the iPhone). So it has the speed to surf comfortably and it also allows full web browsing. But I don’t use it for web browsing that often. the reason for that is simple. When it comes to using a mobile phone I have different needs. Needs that aren’t exactly the same as I have on the web, sitting behind a computer.

The mobile phone is by all means my remote control of life. It is primarily an interaction device. I call and SMS with it. I also take pictures, upload them, and sometimes I use it for e-mail. The only time I use it for web browsing is when I need to pass some time, waiting for a meeting, doctors appointment, at the airport, whatever. The experience always sucks. Sites load to slow, full site browsing is cumbersome, inputting information is a hell of an experience. And lets not discuss the cost of browsing. Mobile operators run the most successful walled garden services worldwide. They make a great living out of it and because of the walls being so high it costs us users a fortune to fire up that HSDPA connection and start surfing.

Now you could argue that the iPhone has changed all of that. I have a few doubts about that. the iPhone has done a great job in setting new standards for usability. Studies show that iPhone users are web browsing more often than other mobile users. While that is true the iPhone’s major improvement is the touch screen and some really cool UI inventions. But the iPhone isn’t fundamentally changing the mobile web experience. It’s a cool device with a great UI. It has been designed to provide us with a web experience that might become close to the experience we have sitting behind a laptop.

But I don’t want that experience. If I do, I’ll fire up my laptop. I want to be able to get the maximum out of my mobile as an interaction device. That the thing that needs fundamental rethinking. People don’t want to sur f the web, they want to interact. Just count the number of calls and SMS’s from mobile phones. There is no web surfing traffic that could ever match that in terms of revenues, minutes of use, or nr of messages.

In a previous article I summed up my wishes:

But I do need every innovative service that allows me to interact with my family and friends. It contains my most important address book. It allows me to send and receive messages, I can call and talk to people, and in the future I can see other people on it too. I can capture images and video with it and I might want to share those immediately with my family and friends. I want to know what the people I follow closely are doing and I want to be able to reach one or many of them without any effort on my side. I want to see all messages addressed to me or messages the people I follow find important enough to share, no matter if it is SMS, e-mail, a Tweet, IM, whatever. Sure, I listen to music on it, I surf the web every once in a while, and I even sometimes watch some video or TV on it. But not nearly as often as I interact with others on it! Once we get the interaction right, we might start thinking about other services like identification or buying and selling of stuff. But interaction comes first, always.

In my opinion we need a revolution in mobile phone UI thinking. A revolution that puts the user and his intentions central in user interface development. We need to understand what users do with their mobile phones. We shouldn’t be thinking in terms of releasing technical functionalities with nice graphical interfaces. We need to think in terms of the remote control of life, supporting the user in his interaction needs. If we let go of the current UI and browsing paradigms who knows what becomes possible. Let’s not rebuild the entire web to make it mobile, let’s not even come up with even better alternatives for the iPhone touch screen. Let’s first think about what the user wants to do with his phone, and then come up with an interface and a mobile web concept that supports his actions, regardless of the technology.

One suggestion to start this rethinking. Please, please, get rid of the inbox, outbox principe on a mobile phone. It sucks. Ever tried to use Twitter by turning on it’s SMS interface. You know what I mean! Instead convert the entire paradigm into a life stream, similar to the way Twitter and Jaiku work. It fits human behavior much better. We don’t always want to look into or respond to every message we receive. Showing these messages as a constant stream allows me to look at it whenever I want to. It doesn’t call for my attention whenever a message arrives, but I get to decide when I wish to give the message my attention. It allows me to pick up things that are important, and it also provides me easy ways to respond to on ore more people. And it lets me ramble my thoughts to whoever is willing to listen to them. And the best thing about it. I don;t have to surf the web to find things. If I want to, I’ll just ask it to the folks I’m connected to.

Forget about the mobile web. Rethink fro a user perspective and someone is bound to build us the best interaction device in the world!

The mobile web experience needs fundamental rethinking

Michael Mace reports that mobile applications, or the development of software that runs on specific mobile platforms is dead. Michael Mace is an expert from the industry so he probably knows what he is talking about.  He writes:

We told ourselves that the fundamental rule of our business was: Mobile is different. But we lost sight of an even more fundamental law that applies to any computing platform:

A platform that is technically flawed but has a good business model will always beat a platform that is elegant but has a poor business model.

As it turns out developing software specific for mobile platforms developers encounter many difficulties. According to Michael Mace there are at least 10 different platforms software needs to be developed upon. The software needs certification, which costs a lot of money. But most important of all, the mobile operator has effectively taken over all distribution making it nearly impossible for a mobile software developer to distribute his software. The solution to this, Michal says, is the web:

Meanwhile, there is now an alternative platform for mobile developers. It’s horribly flawed technically, not at all optimized for mobile usage, and in fact was designed for a completely different form of computing. It would be hard to create a computing architecture more inappropriate for use over a cellular data network. But it has a business model that sweeps away all of the barriers in the mobile market. Mobile developers are starting to switch to it, a trickle that is soon going to grow. And this time I think the flash flood will last.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about the Web. I think Web applications are going to destroy most native app development for mobiles. Not because the Web is a better technology for mobile, but because it has a better business model.

His most important argument to support this is that on the web the domination of the mobile operators is broken. I agree with Michael on that. The mobile operators do not control development, distribution, marketing and sales on the web. For this reason Google and Yahoo have very effectively pushed the mobile operators back into their role as access provider. It is the mobile operators arrogance, coming from a world in which they had a monopoly, that has lead to failed attempts to move up the value chain. Experiments with content distribution and other innovative services have failed. Mostly because the mobile operator, unlike most web companies, never had to think about providing the user with value.

So where does that leave the user? He is stuck with the world wide web that really doesn’t fit very well onto his small mobile device.  Browsing the web using a mobile device leads to a number of problems:

1. Browsing is expensive. Current web pages aren’t optimized for mobile devices forcing the user to download a lot of redundant information. As mobile data rates are still expensive the user is left with high monthly bills.
2. Browsing is slow. I currently use a Nokia N95 with UMTS/HSDPA connection and still it takes ages to view pages on the web. Not nearly as fast as my laptop, making it a cumbersome experience
3. Inputting data is a pain. I don’t have a keyboard to type, so I’m stuck using the mobile phone buttons. The overhead is at least 50% forcing me to type way more than I want to. And I tried using the iPhone’s keyboard. It’s arguably better than using the mobile phone buttons, but I still mistype a lot, because of the small size of the keyboard.
4. The screen of the mobile phone is just too small to look at web pages. Apple has invented the touch screen and smart gesture UI allowing me to quickly zoom in/out ad move around on a page. But it really isn’t solving the problem, the UI is simply providing an optimized solution for a problem that isn’t fundamentally resolved.
5. My Nokia N95 has GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA/WiFi/BlueTooth and Infrared capabilities. While this is technically probably the best you can get right now, it isn’t simple to use. This makes (affordable) access for naive mobile users a difficult task.
6. A mobile phone isn’t a computer. It has all the technology inside that computers have too, but it is fundamentally different due to not only its size but also the way it is used. For me it isn’t a computer or a telephone. It is my remote control of life. Web developers often fail to understand the implications of this. We need fundamental rethinking of service development for mobile devices. Developers that translate web services onto mobile devices will not succeed in addressing these issues.

How can we get the mass to adopt the mobile web? In my opinion a few things need to be addressed first in order to make this happen:

1. Mobile operators need to lower their data rate plans and come with easy to understand flat rate rate plans that allow users to download and upload as much data as they want without having to pay too much for it. The operators won’t be doing that just to please us of course. But with the increased competition in mobile voice, and from access technologies such as WiFi and possibly WiMax leading to price erosion, the operators will have to rethink their mobile data strategy.
2. Hardware manufacturers need to rethink the software currently residing on mobile devices. It is too technical, too functionality oriented and is not fit to fill in my desire to make it my remote control of life. I’ve explained this earlier in a post called “We need a revolution in Mobile UI thinking”. Apple is doing a much better job than any of the hardware makers such as Nokia and Samsung and that should really make them think about what they have been producing so far.
3. Service developers need to really understand what I use my remote control of life for. It isn’t a very small computer that I use to do the same thing I can do much better on a full size laptop. My mobile device is an interaction device. I use it to interact with others. I do not (yet) use it as a TV screen. I don’t need to have all my web services on it. But I do need every innovative service that allows me to interact with my family and friends. It contains my most important address book. It allows me to send and receive messages, I can call and talk to people, and in the future I can see other people on it too. I can capture images and video with it and I might want to share those immediately with my family and friends. I want to know what the people I follow closely are doing and I want to be able to reach one or many of them without any effort on my side. I want to see all messages addressed to me or messages the people I follow find important enough to share, no matter if it is SMS, e-mail, a Tweet, IM, whatever. Sure, I listen to music on it, I surf the web every once in a while, and I even sometimes watch some video or TV on it. But not nearly as often as I interact with others on it! Once we get the interaction right, we might start thinking about other services like identification or buying and selling of stuff. But interaction comes first, always.

The desire of humans to interact and use their personal remote control for it will be large enough to ensure that mobile Internet will become successful in the end. Since the (technical, cost) barriers are still quite large I think the mass will not adopt it yet.  2008 might be the year in which a number of the issues will be addressed. We might see further improvements in usability, platform standardization with Google’s Android, improved mobile search, the breakthrough of Twitter like services to the mass, and even a few optimized mobile web based services. We will see a few (ad-based) experiments to offer free or low cost mobile services. But my guess is that mass adoption of Mobile Internet will take a bit longer. First we need people to rethink the fundamentals so that the mobile device can support the interaction between the user and his contacts better than it does now. It’s usability could be so much better!

Solving the mobile equation (yet again)

The past few days I have watched a lot of people writing about Mobile Internet.  Not surprising as one of the most important mobile conferences is taking place in Barcelona right now and a lot of companies are using that conference to launch their mobile initiatives. I am a bit disappointed to hear what seems to be happening there right now. What strikes me most is that mobile operators simply do not have a clue how to position themselves in the mobile Internet arena. They have taken a great beating from non-mobile companies like Yahoo and Google and still really don’t know what hit them exactly. According to a post in Ars Technica even the top executive Mr Sarin of the largest mobile operator worldwide, Vodafone, doesn’t know what to do.

Mobile carriers need to step up their game and make mobile services easier to use, says Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, lest they willingly hand over business to media giants like Google. Sarin made the comments when speaking to the press during this week’s Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, admitting that his industry has not traditionally done a good job in making new mobile services appealing to users. Not doing anything to fix that, will be the industry’s biggest mistake, he said.

And another quote from that article:

Mobile carriers have the experience and opportunity to keep these customers from slipping away. But in order to do so, they have to offer something up besides a means for other companies to transport data. “Customers want social networking, email, SMS, instant messaging, voice—you name it,” Sarin said. “Communication is our core business. We have to be in all of these spaces.”

Oh boy is he in trouble. Let’s see where he is coming from. Traditionally, Mobile operators have one advantage that other companies don’t have. They offer access to the mobile network. Mobile operators have the monopoly on that. They own the network and monetize users accessing it. There was never a need for the operators to even think about user experience or user services. No need to compete over services, just deliver access and use clever marketing techniques to make your mobile brand more interesting than the other mobile brands. And that is fine in a world where access and the ability to communicate anywhere is the most important user value.

The same thing happened when the Internet grew big in the 90’s. People all went to Internet access providers because they needed access. That was fine for a while, but then other companies realised that once people were on-line there was a much bigger revenue stream available to those that provided the user value in services. There isn’t a single Internet access company that has successfully made the switch from access to user value services.You still get charged for access, but you probably don’t use their e-mail service or spam filters or whatever service any more. E-mail is free and with more storage you can imagine. Other companies filled the gap with anti-virus, spam, and content services. And the Internet access companies are stuck to do what they do best, provide access. They have all tried to create their own content services and failed. They have tried to build advertisement platforms but others moved much faster. It is the penalty for a company that provides nothing more than a pretty expensive plumbing system underlying our on-line experiences.

So Mr Sarin and all other mobile operator executives can try to become user value service providers but they will fail at it. Google, Yahoo, and many other companies have already taken up that part of the revenue stream. They couldn’t be bothered by mobile networks, access technology and the like. They concentrate on what matters in the end. The user experience. Marginalising the role of the Mobile operator to what it does best, providing access.

And then I read this article which talks about a panel discussion between user experience and technology experts during the Mobile World congress. A quote from the article:

The panel, whose title was It’s the User Experience, Stupid agreed that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but they reached little agreement on how to follow.

One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is to manipulate users by identifying their “need states” — including such compulsions as “killing time,” and “making the most of it” — and fulfilling them subliminally.

Adobe’s Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through better interface design. Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into users’ “neural networks” to navigate a mobile phone interface “using touch and pre-touch input.”

Never, never trust an International Marketing and Communications director that wants to “manipulate” users. Or someone that wants to “tap into users neural networks”. These people do not have a clue. If this is the innovating power from the mobile industry we will remain in a mobile stone age for a bit longer.

Apple understood that usability, status, and the ability to show of yet another cool device where the first step into improving the mobile experience with their launch of the iPhone. Before the iPhone usability sucks on almost any mobile device. And I’m not the only one that feels that way. It turns out that Apple iPhone users perform 50 times more search requests than other mobile phone users. What is interesting to me, which isn’t mentioned in the source, is whether the searches are performed using the mobile network or a WiFi network. Big difference in my opinion, as the first one costs the uer money, while the second option simply turns the iPhone into a small handheld computer.

In another article it is even suggested that within a few years the number of mobile search requests will overtake fixed Internet searches. Which is true, but sort of obvious. Already here are more mobile devices on the planet than there are fixed Internet computers. If we marginally decrease the complexity to be able to access the web mobile, then people are bound to start using search engines. Good news for Google? They think so.

I do not necessarily agree with that. While more search suggest more advertisement revenues I can’t help but think that we don’t need more search. We need an entire different information access paradigm that is build upon the foundation of a small mobile device. Instead of the current “let’s copy our laptop web experience and cram it on a device with a screen no larger than a few inches and pretty unusable input interfaces”. We definitely need to improve the usability of mobile devices, but before that we need a revolution in mobile UI thinking.

Is Yahoo’s announcement of their new mobile service OneConnect the answer to this? Not sure about that. I saw a demo video of the new service that is to launch in the third quarter of this year and although it combines all kinds of social networks into a single portal, it seems rather complex and technical to me.  Sure, it’s cool they can connect all major social networks and track people on them, but in itself that is a technical solution to a problem I haven’t experienced yet.  What underlying user value has lead to this service other than “lets make sure we can connect to all these cool services so that we can get lots of users and a big market share. Can you imagine trying to set up that service on your mobile phone and actually make it work with a single button press? Now that would be a cool trick. Honestly, I did ask for such a service last year already, I still wonder if Yahoo has been reading up on my blog. They got me one thing I asked for, but forgot the other great ideas I mentioned in that post

Mobile is considered the most important growth market. Forget the Internet, mobile is where the action will be the coming years. Maybe that’s why Microsoft has replaced its entire management team on Mobile. With massive markets waiting to be unlocked in India, China, Africa, there is more money to be made on the mobile web than the fixed web. But if we have to wait for these 10 most important trends from the Mobile World congress I would say dream on. There are lots of little, currently unknown companies out there that understand human behaviour, mobile technology and user needs on the move. These companies will come with services not thought of before. And some of them will become as big as Google and Yahoo now are on the Web.

Freedom to the people

We are nearing the end of 2007 so human nature forces me to look back and forth, thinking about things that happened and things to come. I am by no means a good trend or technology predictor, but here’s my take on it.

Looking back the most talked and blogged about subject is probably Facebook and it’s plans with monetization of their build up social graph. The story remains a top item on TechMeme, and it is a controversy as most either love or hate their Beacon attempt. Now that we are slowly recuperating from the privacy backlash they received, the next thing already being discussed is the possible inflation of visitor numbers or even the stealing of people from other companies. Facebook is now getting payback for the hype that was created around it. This almost seems Dutch behavior. In Holland we tend to talk anyone down sticking his head above the play field. Facebook is in that league now and I predict for 2008 that they will get into more trouble than they are already in right now. Not because they might be doing things wrong, but more likely because they are becoming too popular and the blogging community seems to be smelling blood. And that isn’t good. Fear isn’t what Facebook needs now. It needs leadership and making the right choices together with its users.

Looking forward towards 2008 I feel that the time is there to make some major changes in the current web. We need technological barriers to be taken down by developments such as Android, openSocial, OAuth, and OpenID.  It will take time, but in the end the user wins. I’m not going to worry too much about the technology needed, it always finds a way. More interesting is to think about human nature and the needs that we might need fulfilling in 2008.

More than 2006, when Time Magazine unfortunately called YOU the most important person of the year, I think and hope 2008 will be the year where the user gets his long-wanted freedom back. 2008 will be a year in which  we will see the first brand/portal/network/social graph/device- agnostic  services pop up. What does all of that mean? It means that the portal or network concept we are so used to is slowly replaced by initiatives where the user isn’t locked in, but viewed as a traveler reaching a place where service is required.

If you think about  the user becoming a traveler instead of a profile in a network or social graph then you quickly realise that current service isn’t all that fit to service the traveler. We have walled gardens, locked data, privacy issues, spam, free but ad-based web business models, crappy mobile to Internet solutions, locked mobile phones and networks, a total lack of standards, competition on the network and profile layer instead of on the application service layer, customer “lock-in”, advertisers “lock-in”, iPhone wannahaves, Beacon, DRM, etc. Essentially things that are meant to keep you locked into a specific place, instead of letting you move around wherever you want to go.

But a traveler really doesn’t need all that. What would you take with you when you go on a trip? Basic needs probably include:

A passport that identifies you at all destinations, a traveling bag where you can keep your personal belongings, money, food, drink, a good map for the area you travel to, a language guide, and easy ways for you to: obtain relevant information/keep track of/meet/interact with friends and strangers.

It is a very basic and simple list of needs. Translate these needs onto the (mobile) web and we can easily come up with services that address these needs. Entrepreneurs need to think more in terms of running a gas station on a freeway waiting for a car to arrive and servicing the traveler, instead of becoming an amusement park owner, letting children drive a Donald duck car, but only if you visit Disneyland. This sounds easy enough, but with it comes a radical change in business models. Not based upon page views or clicks, as these are easily inflated, but based upon user value.

As Rolf Skyberg puts it, the network should become the commodity. The question is, who’s going to do the plumbing?

My hopes for now lie with new initiatives like OpenSocial, and Android,  because they do the open “talk”. Let’s see if they can do the “walk” too. Let it be noted that I could care less about the Social Graph, web 3.0, or whatever you want to call it. It is time to free the people, who will take the first step in 2008?

We need a revolution in Mobile UI thinking

A few days ago I was fiddling around with my mobile phone (a Nokia N95) and it occurred to me (yet again) that the current mobile phone user interface just doesn’t work for me. Yes, the screens have become much bigger, it has impressive functionalities, a camera which is almost as good as a regular digital camera, it has HSDPA, WiFi you name it. But it just doesn’t work. The mobile phone interface is a phone interface with some application extra’s. It isn’t really a USER centric interface.

Just take the most basic mobile functionality you can think of (no it is not calling), messaging. I have several (technical) options to send a message to another person. But the phone forces me to resolve the technical details. I have to think about whether I want to send an SMS, e-mail or MMS (yes, I am one of those users that actually use MMS). People will obviously SMS most of the time, but with our physical and Internet world becoming connected in so many ways this will not remain to be the obvious choice. Once I have made a choice I need to wade through several menu’s in order to enter the message content, select the receiver and finally send the message away. It gets worse when I receive messages. Not only do I have several different types of inboxes (SMS, e-mail, MMS), but the notification mechanisms really suck. An SMS or MMS alert draws all my attention away from the thing I was doing. E-mail isn’t noted at all. If you don’t think this is a problem I recommend you try out Twitter and get it to send your tweets to your mobile phone for an hour or so. You see instantly why this messaging mechanisms doesn’t work. It floods my inbox and it distracts me constantly. I have to perform too many actions to read all the messages and then delete them again.

Nokia and other manufacturers are constantly working on their user interface. But they are simply improving on an old concept. Wiht the increased graphics and computing power I hoped they would not improve, but thoroughly redesign the user interface. It isn’t a phone anymore. It is my remote control of life. It needs a user centric interface where not the mobile phone functionality takes the central place in design, but the way I want to use that functionality! I want freedom, instead of being trapped into a user interface that limits my options. But they haven’t. And that is one of the main reasons I think mobile Internet will not break through to the masses yet.

I haven’t mentioned the iPhone up to this point. I don’t own one and only played with it a few times so it wouldn’t be fair to draw conclusions about it based upon a few observations. I can say that based upon first impressions Apple has done a great job in providing us with a totally new UI element when they introduced the touch screen. They have put great effort into usability. But I can’t help but think that even on the iPhone, the UI paradigms haven’t been as disruptive as I would have liked them to be, even if it stimulates mobile internet usage.

Readwrite web reports today that the mobile phone penetration worldwide increases even more than predicted, with currently over 3.3 Bln mobile phone subscriptions. I’m not surprised at that. With more and more strong developing countries now being covered by mobile networks, people in China, India, Africa and South America people fall for the very same being connected trap we all fell for. The mobile phone makes it possible to connect and be connected whenever and where ever we want.

In the article Richard McManus points us to a recent study by Nielsen that reveals that 35% of US teens (8-12 yr) now own a mobile phone and that 5% sometimes uses it for Internet. Richard feels that this is enough evidence to show that the mobile Internet is finally ready to take off.

I’m not so sure about it. The breakthrough of mobile Internet has been predicted many times. But it isn’t there yet. The most important indicator to me that it isn’t there yet is the ever increasing SMS traffic. Why use such an outdated and cumbersome messaging protocol instead of using the possibilities the web has to offer? It isn’t just price, although that is a major barrier to be resolved. I think a lot has to do with usability. Sending an SMS has become easy for people to use (even with the flaws mentioned above). Firing up the Internet anywhere (and I don’t mean just in places near a WiFi point) isn’t simple. And once on-line we are limited within the technical barriers of the mobile phone. Browsing the web doesn’t work on such a small screen.

And instead of thinking about entirely new metaphores for mobile Internet we start moving around this issue and develop solutions that aren’t really solving the problem. One way is to redefine the ENTIRE web (yeah right), by creating special mobile pages. These pages are smaller, need less data transfer and are basically optimised for the mobile phone browser. While this might sound like a good solution it really doesn’t work. First of all, it would take an impossible effort to rebuild the entire web to make it usable for the mobile phone, and secondly, it leaves the user with the task of solving complexity. Do I go to www.flickr.com (which I can remember), or do I need to try m.flickr.com. And how do I upload my picture there?

Another option is to develop a touch screen and really cool zooming and moving around functionality to handle these big pages. Apple did just that with their iPhone. They are providing us with a intuitive solution to handle big amounts of data, but they aren’t fundamentally solving the problem.

In my opinion we need a revolution in mobile phone UI thinking. A revolution that puts the user and his intentions central in user interface development. We need to understand what users do with their mobile phones. We shouldn’t be thinking in terms of releasing technical functionalities with nice graphical interfaces. We need to think in terms of the remote control of life, supporting the user in his interaction needs. If we let go of the current UI and browsing paradigms who knows what becomes possible. Let’s not rebuild the entire web to make it mobile, let’s not even come up with even better alternatives for the iPhone touch screen. Let’s first think about what the user wants to do with his phone, and then come up with an interface and a mobile web concept that supports his actions, regardless of the technology.

I’ll give away one idea for making things better. Why not get rid of the whole inbox-outbox messaging paradigm. It sucks on a mobile phone. Instead convert the entire paradigm into a life stream, similar to the way Twitter and Jaiku work. It fits human behavior much better. We don’t always want to look into or respond to every message we receive. Showing these messages as a constant stream allows me to look at it whenever I want to. It doesn’t call for my attention whenever a message arrives, but I get to decide when I wish to give the message my attention. It allows me to pick up things that are important, and it also provides me easy ways to respond to on ore more people. And it lets me ramble my thoughts to whoever is willing to listen to them. Maybe I’ll ask Chris Messina to create some designs for this particular idea. He does a pretty cool job designing nice interfaces.

We need to let go of current paradigms, and ask ourselves, what is a user going to do with his phone in this social networking age?  It opens a new world of possibilites, a world without mobile web browsing, a world of freedom for the user. So who is going to free me from the limitations of the mobile phone and give me my remote control of life? Or maybe I should start something myself, anyone interested to join?

Who will free the iPhone customer?

What is the deal with Steve Jobs, who is protecting his iPhone from being used the way users really like it, their own way? Apple not only launches it exclusively with certain partners, telling all you morons that don’t happen to have a mobile subscription there to hop over, but it also doesn’t like it when people try to open it up themselves.

Hacks are reported on a daily basis for the iPhone. I wonder how long it will take Apple to understand that these hacks aren’t just a protest against our savior Steve.

The hacks are coming from two emotions: the techies that just love to prove that “it can’t be hacked!” isn’t true, and the  user that disagrees with the “you have no choice” mantra.  If someone tells you that you only have one choice (his), what do you do? Well, I remember getting these sort of speeches at home when I was a child. Didn’t like it then, don’t like them now.

The iPhone may just be the invention of the year. Apple, just may have proved that mobile communications can be redesigned and evolved into a new user experience. But, having said that, they also ignore a basic need of their customers called “freedom”.  Making it an exclusive phone that is only within reach of a few proves to be an excellent short term revenue strategy. It is already the most talked about market entry strategy in the mobile world. But I cannot help but think it is also a very arrogant strategy towards the customer. If we are to make mobile Internet successful, and let the iPhone be one of its drivers, then  Apple better start thinking about opening up their platform.

If not, then Apple will definitely have a great niche on its hands and make a great living on it. But the mass will most likely choose something that works on all carriers and handsets.

And the mobile operators better rethink their strategy as well. As long as they determine who can get on their network and who cannot, they will remain hijacked to the Apple mantra. Forcing them to pay loads of money to Apple for every iPhone they sell.

It is freedom that sells in the end. Freedom will help customers (re-) discover the Internet on their mobile phones. Freedom is the ticket to increase in ARPU, the thing Mobile carriers need so desperately. Google is trying to jump on the bandwagon of freedom with their recent Android announcements. We will have to wait and see if that will be taking of. In the meantime the question remains. Who will free the customer?

Interview with German Public Radio on Google Android announcements

Yesterday I was contacted by Marcus Schuler from the ARD, German Public Radio. They were going to broadcast a technology item about the recent Google Android announcements on a show called DeutschlandFunk, Computers und Kommunikation.

Marcus had found my weblog via TechMeme where my user perspective analysis on the Google Android announcement was posted. He asked me if I would contribute to this broadcast. We did an interview in the evening by phone, and today the show was broadcasted. The show itself is in German, although the interview with me was in English. Turns out Om Malik was interviewed as well.

Sorry for this shameless plug. If interested, the interview is available here. The show lasts for about 4 minutes and starting at 1 minute 46 seconds they have taken 2 soundbites from me.

It was fun to do, thanks Marcus.

Who is going to add value to my remote control of life?

Today is another day after, this time the day after Google announced its Android Mobile OS initiative. Incredible amounts of posts have already been written about it, many of them talking about the breaking news, a lot of them analysing what it means (for example here and here), and very few talking about what it means for the mobile user (actually, I tried searching for it in Google reader and couldn’t come up with a search term that showed me more about the user perspective). Look at techmeme for the tech bloggers bandwagon overview.

So let’s take a look at the user’s perspective. In a previous post I stated that Mobile Internet will eventually break through to the mass but that there are still a number of hurdles to be taken.

The question is now, does the Android initiative provide possibilities to take on any of these hurdles? The most important aspect of the Android Mobile OS, in my opinion, is that it will be open source. What I hope will happen is that it will trigger many developers to start developing new software for mobile users that will work on all kinds of handsets, and will integrate much better with existing mobile phone functionalities. Off course there are already mobile OS platforms available, Windows mobile and Symbian probably being the most important competitors. But, Android, by its open nature, will bring mobile application development into a new ball game, forcing the other platforms to open up as well.

Besides the smart things other people wrote on the subject I named 5 reasons why mass adoption is not there yet:

1. There aren’t that many really useful services that really enforce mobile Internet into the lives of mobile users. Releasing an open source Mobile OS platform is smart. It will trigger developments, not only by mobile carriers, but by people that understand the mobile being your remote control to life. People that will develop user centric services on your mobile.
2. Mobile devices don’t deliver technically yet what is needed. The main question is always, can a non-tech family member or friend start up your phone and connect it to the Internet. Without you helping out? I think not. But the open source character of the Android platform will force developers to concentrate on UI and user value! It is the only way to differentiate themselves from competitors.
3. The mobile Internet interface is not nearly as flexible, intuitive and usable as the Internet browser and a mouse is on a PC. This is a difficult barrier to take. It not only involves clever UI design and new paradigms to let your mobile phone become the remote control of applications, but there is also a hardware component involved. Phone manufacturers will need to develop better phones with faster CPUs, increased graphics performance, touch screens and new interface paradigms to compensate for the fact that this remote control is rather small when you try to use it in life.
4. The cost is high for a large adoption in the market. You need high end (expensive) handsets like the Nokia N95 or Apple iPhone and transferring data is still pretty expensive.This is an issue that can’t really be solved by the Android OS. We need high end hardware terminals and fast Internet access to make the mobile Internet experience useful to the user. But the mobile terminal manufacturers and mobile carriers need to reconsider pricing of the goodies. Especially data rates are an issue. If I am being punished with high bills for connecting and transerring data between my mobile and the Internet, then I won’t be using it very often.
5. There might be a psychological barrier for users to download new applications onto their mobile phone. It is your most personal device and you won’t put any software on it unless the source is trusted. Trust is an issue. People download ringtones, wallpapers and games to their mobile phones. But will they download social applications which tentacle their way into their address books, pictures, video’s as easily? Tech people will. Business people will, but will the man on the street do it as well? Only if the source is trusted and privacy is a key element in development.

Having said all this, let me state my 5 wishes for functionalities that would really help me as a mobile user:

1. I want to be able to save, reply to and forward voice messages. Sometimes you get a personal message that is important to you. But the message can’t be saved, replied to, or forwarded, and the mobile carrier deletes it after a few days.
2. I want to be able to sent pictures and video messages to my friends phones as well as to the Internet. While applications like Shozu take care of the Internet part. It seems impossible to send a taken picture to a friend, regardless of the handset he uses. Not only does it not arrive half of the time, but I also need to think abut the protocol I use to send it, or look in different inboxes when it arrives. And make sure it is so simple to do that anyone non TECH can actually use it without understanding anything about protocols, message formats, Internet connection parameters, installation etc. An application I will be looking into is Radar. Seems very nice for mobile image and conversation sharing, so I’ll give it a go.
3. I want a integrated graphics enabled inbox for all messages, regardless if they are SMS, MMS or e-mail. Who cares about the different types, the distinction is purely technical. I get all these ugly text based headlines when someone sends me a picture. Show me the thumbnail of the picture and text together so I know what it is about before I actually open the message.
4. I would like much better group features allowing me to call, SMS, send voice messages, pictures, video, or microblog with my friends in the mobile space and Internet space. So if I’m on-line the messages go on-line, and if I’m on the move they go to my mobile. But I hate it the way Twitter clutters my SMS inbox. Having me to look at each message separately and deleting them after I read them. Too much work, and each beep when a new message arrives is annoying (yes I can turn of sound, but that is not the point). We need live feeds, allowing me to follow the flow and only act upon it if I want to.
5. I would like someone to start implementing the best possible distribution platform for downloading cool new applications. How am I supposed to know what software is available for me? I only found out about Shozu after another tech blogger pointed me to it, but my mom will never find it?

I could go on for quite a while, haven’t even said anything about location based services, streaming video, music, applications that have nothing to do with the phone itself (like identification, buying , selling, maps, etc). I am really curious about mobile developments. They can have a huge impact if executed the right way. Who is going to add value to my remote control of life?

16 Bln reasons to get out of the web 2.0 advertisement trap

I am not a big fan of the mainstream web 2.0 business model, providing services for free and create revenues via ads. I realise that is not a popular position, especially since this model gets some companies to become valued at a ridiculous  $ 15 Bln in some cases (I will try to avoid the FB word this time).

Advertisement spend is very high. PWC reported a record of $16 Bln in on-line advertisement spend in 2006 in the USA (hey, wait a minute, did I just mention that a certain company was valued at uhhh $15 Bln, wow that’s the entire on-line advertising market).

Search takes care of 41% of that spend, which seems logical to me. Display advertisements are 32%, classifieds 18% and referrals 8% (with thanks to Marketingfacts  pointing me to this).

The problem in this market is that both investors, startups, and advertisers are all looking for ways to create platforms in which they can display their ads to the user.  It seems the easiest way to monetize a service given the potential ad spent on-line. But from the user perspective, ads will really only make sense when searching. In most other activities ads are the annoying little flashy items on your web page or mobile phone screen that you tend to ignore to the best you can.

We now have a perfect deadlock situation where on one hand we have the force of $16Bln on-line advertisement spend, and on the other hand we have the user ignoring most of this $16 Bln user value reduction but severely spoiled by getting all these services for free. We need to get out of this advertisement trap!

Rolf Skyberg predicted earlier that people will be willing to pay for networking services. I think he may be right, but I have responded earlier that we need to come up with clever ways of migrating away form this business model into new business models. So, what are our options?

1. Getting the user to pay for an on-line service. Would you be willing to pay, say the amount any startup is using for their “ad revenue per user per year” in their business model. The thing is, if you average the advertisement income over all users in your service, we are probably talking about a few bucks per year (if the service does really well!).  So how about it, all your social networking needs for only $5 a year and no more ad harassment? Of course, we ALL pay for on-line services already. It is called Internet Access and you wouldn’t dream of cutting yourself of from that. So why not chip in a little and help the service creators to earn a honest living! The real problem everyone seems to walk around of course is that no user is willing to pay for most social network right now is simply because they get NO real value from it.
2. Getting the user to perform financial transactions on your service.  This might not work for every service, but eBay and other market places are making a fortune out of it. I wouldn’t dismiss this as an option as long as you think user value here. Depending on what the user is doing on your service providing him something he can buy that actually benefits him is a good business model. Look at the success of World of Warcraft  and other online games. And Skype does a good job at selling conversation time to its users.
3. Create a free, limited, and a professional version of your service. There are a lot of examples in the market of that use this model. Flickr offers professional accounts for less than $25 a year (unlimited storage and upload capacity). The gaming industry is doing well on this (the golden member account).
4. Asymmetric business models. The mobile phone space is the most successful example of this. Sending an SMS or calling somebody will cost you something, receiving an SMS or call is free. This is actually a very clever business model. Psychologically it stimulated interaction as everyone likes to receive messages and calls, but can’t stand the temptation of reaching out to someone as well. I am a big fan of interaction, it drives all value between people. And while Rolf Skyberg predicts people will pay to network, I would refine that and say people will pay to interact.
5. Search is a good business model. People are always searching for something. Google has mastered this business model into perfection. Allowing people to find what they are in need of through your service provides real value, and that value can be monetized via the user.
6. Getting people to pay for content. This is the downfall for the old-fashioned music industry as so adequately commented on by Ian Rogers of Yahoo entertainment. But then again, musicians themselves are showing that if you combine emotions to a strong community there is still a lot of money earned in content.

Personally I believe that options 2, 4 and 5 provide by far the best business model drivers wit option 6 a very good (niche) community model.

But the question remains, which entrepreneur has the guts to break out of “old fashioned” web 2.0 thinking and is willing to invest in business models that focus on user value instead of advertisement value. Who is willing to ignore the $16 Bln trap and do something completely different?

What are your thoughts on this? Do you see alternative business models that might work? Are there market examples where users pay for on-line value? Am I all wrong and should we focus on increasing ad spent to $32 Bln instead?

Solving the Mobile Internet equation

There is a lot of talk going on about mobile services. Especially Location Based Services (LBS) get a lot of attention. A few posts that drew my attention:

Om Malik wrote a short overview article of the deals that have been made in this business, showing that big investments are being made now.  There is an overview of different Location Based services here.

The NY Times gave a warning in several posts about the privacy concerns in their articles “Google’s Purchase of Jaiku Raises New Privacy Issues”and “Privacy Lost: these phones can find you”.

Steve Ballmer who used the same metaphor I used in earlier articles calls the mobile phone a universal remote control for your life (I like that metaphor, obviously).

Different announcements on new services, for example, Whrrl is Yelp plus Twitter (who comes up with these names?), and BluePulse shows you how to compete with Facebook and MySpace by offering social network capabilities only for mobile.

And finally Walt Mossberg started a lively discussion in  his post “Free my phone” which he makes the following comparison:

That’s why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the “Soviet ministries.” Like the old bureaucracies of communism, they sit athwart the market, breaking the link between the producers of goods and services and the people who use them.

On a more personal experience, I watched a short live streaming show yesterday when a friend of mine send out a Twitter message in which he invited anyone to look at his live streaming conversation he had at that precise moment in a cafe in Amsterdam.

So what can we make of all this? Well, for starters, bloggers and investors like mobile. At the same time I think it will take some time for the mobile internet to become a hit. There are still many problems to be solved for mass adoption.

Why do you think SMS is THE killer data application for mobile? It is simple to use and supports a need for instant interaction to its users. All reasonable successful mobile services use SMS as their main interaction interface. And this is not just because it is simple. A major barrier for service creators to solve is the habits mobile users have. SMS has become such a major usage driver in mobile that it will be very hard to replace that with, for example, a graphical UI. In order to replace SMS as the main interface from Mobile to Internet (and any cell phone company will want that to increase ARPU=usages=$) you need interfaces that are as easy and quick to use as SMS is currently. Asking the user to change habit is very hard to do.

In that sense I am a bit skeptical about all these social network services that pop up, especially the location based services. I am not claiming they won’t become the next hit, but I do feel there is a lot of opportunism and technological innovation taking place that doesn’t really answer the “what is in it for the user’ question.

Just look at the examples that are provided to show the “convenience”of Location Based Services. The NY Times article quotes a user that when seeing her friends were too far away to make it on time to a meeting, she decided to leave later as to arrive at the same time. And she didn’t have to call her friends to tell them.

Pleazzzzzze, who came up with that being a killer app for LBS? This will never do, it totally bypasses the NEED of people to interact. How often do you find yourself in a conversation with someone on a mobile asking him where is and when he will arrive? It is the most important question being asked by voice and SMS? And now we don’t need that anymore?

Or the “if I walk around in a shopping mall I get harassed by all these great promotions of stores nearby” example. I don’t have a NEED for that. The whole reason I am shopping is that I want to take time to explore and buy things I am looking for. Without everyone screaming at me to come to their store. Imagine people physically standing in front of stores trying to pull you in as soon as you walk by (ever been in Egypt on a market?). It sucks, and I doubt many users would like it.

The problem with most startups that are in the mobile services business is that they tend to take cool technology and build all these services around them without really thinking about human behavior or needs. Forcing their high tech services onto the mass will not lead to the main stream adoption they are all looking for. And the fact that important tech bloggers like to use them is only a very small and perhaps insignificant indicator for success.

In my opinion (for what it is worth) the same thing holds for the development of mobile services as for any other. Keep it simple, hide all technological features and focus on human needs.

The need to interact with friends is BY FAR the most important one to focus on. And I don’t mean interaction in social networks perse. A simple example, I am using Twitter now and although it is meant to work as a microblogging tool, it is most fun when it becomes an interaction tool. If there is no interaction, Twitter makes me a groupie instead of a friend, and that just doesn’t work for me.

Start building open and simple to use interaction building blocks before we start focusing on browser-based mobile services. Solve the “getting my message to my friends and back” problem first, allowing not only text but also pictures and perhaps video to be send and received. MMS is not an option for this as it doesn’t work across all phones. If the problem can be solved across main stream cell phones and using open and standardised modules, then mass adoption becomes reachable.

From that, connecting the mobile phone to Internet based services, using these open and standardised modules will be the next important step. Forget about ads, or too much promotions,  as they will not work on mobile phones. Too much of an invasion of my private space as a user. Instead, think about the business models that actually work on mobile phones, that is payed services! Rolf Skyberg predicts that “free services” in the end are doomed to fail and I agree with him, although I am not sure yet how we can migrate successfully from free (ad based) services to payed services.

I do believe that privacy might become an issue with all the new capabilities. Here lies a great response for the user, but also for the service creator to protect the naive user! Revealing locations might sound like a lot of fun, but if it is not controlled by the user in a simple and effective way, the results might be disastrous (without him realising it).

So how about it? What do you think of these developments? What are the needs of mobile users and how can we support those needs in a simple and effective way?

Free (ad-based) Social Networks versus payed Social Networks

Rolf Skyberg posted his prediction that users will eventually pay to network, as free social networks tend to provide “value”a user is not really looking for.

I have been thinking a lot about that since I started writing on my blog. I agree with Rolf, simply because I feel that “free”never comes for free. There is always a catch. In this case, the service provider who has to monetize the network the users build up (that’s really weird isn’t it?). And this catch has way too many unwanted effects for me that need fixing. For example, I can’t even export my friends and re-use them in other networks. Or, have you ever tried burning a CD with the best content you have ever received in your network of choice?

But the problem always lies in the transition of going from “free”services to payed services. How do we do that. What transition will work? That is the real question. Because of the fact that a user cannot export his self build Facebook network of friends, he will be reluctant to start using a (probably much better) payed service. He would have to rebuild the network, and how would he be sure that his friends would join him on this payed service?

I currently see 3 ways of creating this transition:

1. The transition starts from mobile. Why? because there, we are already used to paying for services. Ad supported mobile phones will never work, but I think that social networks that originate from the mobile, instead of the web will emerge
2. The transition starts from e-mail (Rolf also suggests we might bundle a payed networking service with e-mail). I like it. Why, well for starters E-mail isn’t free! You pay for it, as soon as you subscribe to an Internet access service. But more important, e-mail does provide the import and export of contacts and provides support for the basic need of interaction. All we need now is to upgrade the concept of e-mail to a sharing/interacting/social networking tool instead of a spamming or “I still have 1000 unread messages left” tool.
3. No transition, but user controlled ads. Well, this is a weird suggestion, but what if we could have free services, no walled gardens, ads to monetize it (well, someone has to pay for the services and bandwidth right), BUT the user decides what ads show, when  and how (heck, there are probably users enough that would be willing to create ads for the advertiser if you ask them nicely). Most people think were too lazy to do this, but if I could have very simple ways of tuning ads to my preferences at any point (turn them off for a while  would also be an option) I might just do that. Saves me a lot of time looking for stuff when I really need it.

Interesting discussion. I’m going to put my money on 1 and 2 for now, but who knows where this will go. I am curious if there are already payed services that are successful? Anyone have an idea how to make the transition without asking the user to put too much effort into converting his friends into a payed service?

Sending my mobile pictures to the Internet is easy (yeah right!)

I have always considered myself reasonably capable of trying out new technologies. I usually can set up devices without reading the manuals (not cool, right?), have a reasonable intuition to follow the manufacturers weird UI thinking in getting things working.

So, first I tried using MMS to send pictures of to my Facebook account. While the messages clearly reach my GMAIL, Facebook shows no sign of life. After a number of frustrating attempts I gave up and decided to twitter for help. Nearly killed myself while Twittering and driving into a traffic jam at 120 km an hour, but luckily I got good advice from Reihmo (thanks!), and decided to go for Shozu.

So setting up my Nokia N95 mobile to upload pictures to the Internet using a well known software tool like Shozu should be a breeze right?

Well, uhm, not quite. I connected my Mobile to the Internet (using GPRS, wasn’t anywhere near a HDSPA network). Browsed to Shozu and pressed the download button. The N95 froze on me. Hmm, probably a glitch. Let’s do that again. Halfway through the download process the N95 freezes yet again, but now it also lights up every led making it a very cool but seriously worthless flash light in the dark.

It took me 4 attempts to get the application. Installation went fine. So now I can upload my pictures to m Flickr account right? Well, first I need to get Flickr and Shozu to talk to each other. Just a simple “press the button here” on Shozu and it takes me to Flickr which asks me if it is alright if Shozu has access to my Flickr page. Sure, no problem. I’m all set now. Turns out I missed a crucial ok button back on the Shozu page. And, did I mention I had to use my computer instead of my mobile to perform all these tasks? Just didn’t get it on the smaller device.

Well I’m finally of to sent pictures to the Internet. I watched my 7 yr old son play a soccer match this Saturday. Took some  live action shots. Shozu kicks in nicely and asks me after every picture if I want to upload it to Flickr (why yes of course!). Exited I come home and immediately looked at my Flickr page using the computer. When pressing “My Photo’s” Flickr tells me “You have no uploaded photo’s”. What do you mean? Just uploaded a bunch of them from the soccer field.

Double-checked on my N95, Shozu tells me they have been uploaded. If I sent one again, Shozu tells me if I am sure I want to resend this picture. It still won’t show on my Flickr account.

After looking at help files, looking at settings on Flickr and Shozu and my N95, it turns out Shozu only sents things when connected to my home Wifi network. Changed the setting to include any Mobile network.

Phew, the pictures taken with my N95 in a zoo this weekend made it to Flickr. The battery of the N95 drained to death really fast though taking 5Mpix pictures and sending them off over the UMTS network.

So what is the moral of this story?

1. I suck at understanding new (mobile) technology. I am a technology wimp (hate to admit it)
2. The N95 is a great device but lacks battery power like any other great mobile device
3. Once installed Shozu works like a breeze, but setting it up to actually work is NOT easy
4. Spending more than 4 hours on installing and making things work is NOT COOL
5. Although companies like Shozu, Flickr and Nokia are already taking away a lot of complexity from the mobile user (thumbs up), there is still a LONG way to go to make things simple.

See my other post on why Mobile Internet is not going to break through for the masses (yet).

DO you have similar experiences? Anything better out there that is simple in installation and usage?

Toni Ahonen:Mobile the 7th Mass Media

Marketingfacts pointed me to a video + presentation of Tomi Ahonen in Amsterdam, called “Mobile the 7th Mass Media”.

In his presentation he talks about Mobile being the next Mass Medium and provides many examples of successful mobile stories, most of them in Japan and Korea.

He start with stating the 8 needs Mobile fulfils:

Communication, Consume, Charging (Money), Commercials (Advertising), Create, Community (Social Networking), Cool (Fashion), and (Remote) Control.

He then proceeds in showing how the Mobile phone is the next (7th) Mass Medium with 6 characteristics that are preferable over the six other Mass Media (Print, Mass Media recording, Mass Media cinema, Mass Media Radio, Mass Media TV, Mass Media Internet). It is Personal, Always On, with Build in Payment system, is always available during a creative impulse, and provides the most accurate audience info.

While he is an authority on the subject, and he brings his presentation well and with many live examples in the market, I cannot help but feel that he is sometimes a bit too fast in projecting the success of some of those market examples to the rest of the world. There are also (technical, UI, service) hurdles still to be taken, but he dismisses them for now as “don’t focus on the limitations”. Instead, concentrate on the possibilities. In itself a wise saying, but I would add that the limitations should still be solved in the end.

Most of his market examples are taken from the Japanese and Korean market. There are two concerns there for me.

1. These markets are years ahead in terms of technology, mass adoption and maturity (actually, he often uses Finland as example as well, and that market is also ahead of the rest of Europe as the homeland of Nokia)
2. The cultural differences between Asian and for example European countries are very large. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions on market results in Asia and project these directly to the European or American market. I’m sure Toni understands this, but it is not covered in too much depth in his presentations.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a strong believer of mobile community development and the value they can have for both the user, the community, the service creator and the advertiser/brand owner. I think that mobile phones are by far the best mass media devices, and even better, they have payment systems in place and users that are already used to paying for services and content (major barrier on the Internet). And yes, there are also European successes, but there are less (in numbers and volume).

Making mobile services successful isn’t a fairy tail with a happy end in all cases. There are may startups trying and failing. We need more time to experiment, improve and enrich the technology, but even more important the overall experience before it will truly become a mass adopted success worldwide.

I believe the mobile phone is becoming our remote control to life, but if this extension of our personality and life is pressured by too much unwanted ads or commercial activity we might see that the momentum that is being created now will be slowed down instead of moving faster.

And I feel there are still a few threads out there that might slow down the fascinating growth at the moment:

1. Premium SMS services work really well right now, but would the same apply for data services later? And with more successful services on the way there is always the danger of price erosion. If I only pay for the Carrier fee to send a Twitter to the rest of the world, I will probably not like it much if I have to keep paying for premium SMS services when interacting with a brand. Arguably, Twitter is probably more something for middle aged men and woman now, but similar services will be discovered and used by teenagers.
2. Don’t forget the power of the Mobile Phone carriers that still make loads of money on traffic and data bundles. They still control perhaps the most important aspect of the value chain (access). Unless they are willing to drop prices here, mobile Internet (unlike mobile messaging) will still have to overcome the barrier of high subscriptions fees. Same thing goes for the Phone manufacturers. We need open standards, open platforms, payment systems across carriers and phone types, and not walled gardens. If these walls can be broken down, I am convinced that innovation will lead to a much better user experience which will in turn speed up adoption.
3. The influence Internet will have on Mobile users. On the Internet everything is free. The user experience is becoming richer and richer. Internet services will extend to mobile services and there lies a danger in the value model. Unlike going from Mobile to the Internet, it won’t be easy for Internet service creators to extend a free service to a payed mobile service, especially since many are already making mobile access to the Internet service free.

Having said all this, I am still inspired by the examples of Toni and would definitely enter this exciting market and start experimenting with mobile services. The endless possibilities, the always on, the presence information, the easiness to quickly send messages to the world, the always hungering for message by its user (how often do you check your mobile for new messages?), what better test ground could you have for new services!

Design of an Open Social Interaction Network: Human needs

After I posted some of my observations about flaws in web 2.0, I received a lot of positive and smart reactions. Becoming a bit overconfident I suggested that we might be able to aid future service design by exploring with more people how to move on to the next level of social interaction. I called them Open Social Interaction Networks (for lack of a better name, any takers?) where the value for the user is central in design, not the value of the network which has been the most important monetizing scheme in almost all current social networks such as Facebook or MySpace.

Since I asked for it I might as well start up the discussion by looking at perhaps the most important aspect of such services, the needs of the people using them. Rolf Skyberg wrote a really excellent presentation on this and took Maslov’s Hierarchy of needs as the basis to explain, that the market puts safety, prosperity and socialisation first.

I would like to look at it from another perspective and see what we can distill when we look at the behavior now on the Internet. It occured to me that there are many opposing beliefs. Some feels the social network is defined by the value and size of the network, while others looks more at quality. Some want their interaction to be public and stretched to the limit of what a human could possibly cope with (See Robert Scoble wanting to handle more than 5000 Twitter and 5000 Facebook relations. That is pretty amazing to me), while others will only be interested in a few qualitative friends. Some feel the network is the value, but it lacks ways to leverage it, others think that separating content form people will do the trick. There are people out there creating content like crazy, while others only consume it. Some want to gain celebrity status while others like being anonymous.

Lets see where this gets us. If I would draw two axes with a few of these parameters and look at what seems to be important to the user, I get:

I’m not in any way pretending to be complete, but it does provide some insight in that people will act differently under different circumstances and in different communities. We might aim to support just one type of interaction in a specific community, and design the possible interactions only for that specific community. But, as we are looking at an improvement for web 2.0, we would also need to look at the boundaries and unification of these interactions. It would need open networks and possibilities to use them privately as well as public.

For me, the following items might be important to a user (not complete I am sure!):

1. The user would need excellent and easy to use controls to set privacy in a contextual manner. In one occasion he might not want anyone else to know about his interaction with another person, in another he might want to let the whole world know about it. Same thing goes for a user profile. I don’t just mean the Facebook profile we have carefully constructed to be better than reality, but instead a user profile is defined by his interaction with others. Being able to switch between private and public interaction, thus forming both a private and public profile would be a powerful tool.
2. In some occasions the user might find simple interaction forms sufficient enough, while in others he might want to use more complex forms of interaction. Two things seem important here. The user can have access to all forms of communication without a “Geekness”factor. So Mobile Internet as an example will only do, if the user experience and handling are simple and intuitive enough to match some of the on-line interfaces available to me. And second, communication and interaction are basic services for all. So no forced Twitter account on the Twitter network, but a Twitter-like service across any network I chose to use.
3. There would be a need to be able to organise my friends and family, and distant or unknown relations into different categories. Again, simplicity is the key here. Allowing smart categorization of the people in my network will help me focus my energy on the type of interaction I want. I personally would like to get rid of the current practice of “asking permission to be your friend” It is awkward and defaults to limit my possibilities to interact. I’d trade it with better blocking options for abuse.
4. We would also need new ways to connect, explore and find information and people across many different networks. this calls for OpenID being implemented across the networks. While we might use conventional browsing and searching techniques for that, I am personally intrigued by the work of Jonathan Harris, who has done some amazing projects which allow total new ways of organising and exploring people and information on the Internet.
5. We need some sort of decentralization of services and social networks in order to be able to leverage them all as a user. this will also ensure the value is user centric, not network centric. One way of dealing with that might be to integrate services into our web browser. This immediately makes the Internet evolve around me, instead of me having to go to all these different portal destinations. DISCLAIMER HERE: I am involved in a (currently stealth) project that integrates cool interaction services into your web browser (more on that some other time) so I am positively biased to such solutions. Current integration on the web (take NetVibes or Facebook as examples) is not sufficient yet as they are essentially destination based making the destination more important than myself.
6. If my profile is created by interaction with others, then using it contextually during my explorations could be a powerful functionality. User controlled of course, but I might be interested in locating people, content or even advertisements while exploring the world based upon my current actions and previous interactions. It seems to me this would be a better matching factor than for example tagging or previous surfing behavior only.

Got to stop here as the story is becoming too long already. Let’s hear what you have to say on this. More to come in the next weeks on supporting such needs with tools and technology, and possible monetizing schemes.

Social Networks from the service creators point of view

There was a panel discussion organised at Picnic 2007. With Jyri Enstrom of Jaiku, Matt Biddulph of Dopplr, Felix Petersen of Plazes, Biz Stone of Twitter, and Raymond Spanjar of Hyves as panel members I was waiting for an interesting discussion on social networks.  I’m sorry to say I found it quite disappointing. For more info see the Picnic blog here. No real insights into the success of social networking or ways in which they will eventually evolve into. The most valuable thing noted by most of the panel members was that the social network helps you find things when you need them, the information coming from “friends” in the network.  Everyone seems to think mobile social networks will be the next thing. Personally I feel there is still a long way to go and many hurdles to be taken. No real discussion on business models either, although Biz Stone from Twitter made a good point in saying that he wants the Twitter API be the interface through which applications and services will integrate SMS and the Internet (base upon the fact that Twitter does 20x more traffic through their API than through their home page). Ties in nicely with some of the clever things Rolf Skyberg said on his post on the social client. Someone has to do the plumbing, right? Well, Twitter is working on part of that.

Ad supported mobile phones will never work!

Just saw an announcement that MySpace will launch an ad supported mobile phone here and here. Other initiatives are rising from Fox (Foxsport), Photobucket etc.

Forget about it. I personally don’t think it will work anytime soon. Why? Because the mobile phone has become a lifestyle object. It represents our personal individuality. It is used as a personal remote control to our lives. I doubt that there would be many people letting their private space be invaded by ads in that manner. Sure, there will be more ads when mobile Internet is introduced. But I’m not showing of my free MySpace mobile to my friends (loser!). And lets face it. Competition is so high now that the mobile phone rates are dropping fast. I don’t need or want the add scheme to get a free mobile.