Apple to release its 3G iPhone on July 11

The long wait is over folks. The much-awaited 3G iPhone from Apple will be out on July 11. There is a hefty price cut as well, as the price has been slashed by $200. You can get the 8GB model for $199 and the 16GB model for $299. If you’re one of those early birds who paid $499 for your iPhone, well; I can understand your plight.

Before I get into the details, it’s worth remembering the ‘cause’ which triggered this effect. When Apple released its hugely anticipated iPhone, the response was overwhelming. However, soon there was a complaint that the iPhone was a tad too slow when it comes to browsing the internet. This was a major letdown and Apple had to do something about it. Out came the idea for a next generation iPhone which will offer superior mobile web experience. And now, here we have it.

Alright; back to the current scenario. Steve Jobs has promised that this 3G iPhone will certainly be ‘the phone’ which will stand out from the rest when it comes to mobile browsing and mobile web experience. He also promises that this phone will be more than 35% faster than its rival Nokia N95 when it comes to mobile web. This has made a lot of people sit back and take notice. Also, Apple thinks it can crack the working professionals/executives segment, which is a major market for Blackberry, with its 3G iPhone.

Another interesting thing about this 3G iPhone is the number of mobile apps it boasts of.

1. Mobile Me, which stores your emails, contacts, calendars, and other details in a server called ‘cloud’ and forwards your emails to your PC, Mac, iPod Touch, or iPhone. Whatever change you make in one device will get updated automatically in the other devices.

2. Cow Terry, a music making software, which lets you create songs on the go in your iPhone.

3. A mobile blogging software from TypePad

4. A social networking service from Loopt

5. An app from MLB.com which brings you live scorecard from major league games.

Overall, I would say the 3G iPhone is good. And it’s way better than the current version of iPhone that we’re using now. Most importantly, at $299, I think it’s quite a bargain. So, have you decided to buy it on July 11 or what?

Categories: Apple iPhone, All things mobile phones, Mobile Web.

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The story of the Dot Mobi extension

Ever since mobile advertising and mobile internet became a big deal, there is a lot of talk about the Dot Mobi extension. Some say it’s worth tens of thousands dollars, some say it’s overpriced, and some say it’s underestimated. However, one thing is for sure. People are curious to know about the Dot Mobi extension. Let’s take a detailed look now.

First of all, I’ve got to tell you one thing. The Dot Mobi extension, as of now, is more expensive than the Dot Com, Dot Org, and Dot Net extensions. Thus, it’s true that there is enough demand in the market for that extension. However, some argue that Dot Mobi doesn’t really have a future. And they have a reason for it too.

They argue that Dot Mobi is something which will become famous only if the number of mobile sites grows at a fast rate. They also argue that with high-end phones like the Apple iPhone and Nokia N95, people are comfortable browsing normal websites in their mobile browsers, so there is actually no need for mobile sites. I, however, don’t buy this.

No matter how sophisticated your mobile phone is, viewing a normal website has its own downsides. There can be some technical difficulties and certain sites might not load properly, as they are not optimized for mobile phones. According to web experts, for an optimal mobile browsing experience, the markup language for websites should be XML with Java. This may not be the case in some websites, which might make your mobile browsing experience slightly annoying.

On the other hand, a mobile site is optimized for mobile phones and it’s ideal for the tiny little screen of the mobile phone. So, I think mobile sites might be the best choice for mobile phones. Already, there are plenty of mobile sites and big companies have bought Dot Mobi domains to develop their own mobile sites.

So, I think the Dot Mobi extension will become very popular. Already, we’ve seen some precursors for that and it might as well be the case a few years from now.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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Mobile phone could decide the future of your website

For long, you’ve worried about traffic, pagerank, and all other stuff for your websites. You tried a thousand other things to drive traffic to your sites and unless you are Darren Rowse, you know it’s just damn difficult. But things are about to change just a little bit.

Guinness has an annual event, a very popular one, which takes place across the globe every year. It’s called Guinness Toast. It’s already a very popular one, but Guinness thought of trying mobile marketing to increase its popularity further. So, it told consumers all over the world that they can join the event through their mobile phone. On doing so, they will become a member of the program instantly and get a free Guinness ringtone. Needless to say, the news spread like wildfire. Most importantly, the traffic to the site thegreatguinnesstoast.com went up significantly.

Thanks to high-end mobile phones that offer good mobile browsing experience to people, the number of people who browse the internet through their mobile phone is increasing slowly and steadily. What this means to you is that if you have a mobile friendly version of your site, or, even better, a mobile site, your chances of connecting to your readers become significantly high.

In future, we might as well have blog gurus teaching us how to drive traffic to our mobile sites. Who knows? Even Google might come up with pagerank for mobile sites. Get ready.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile Web.

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Blyk to offer free mobile browsing?

Blyk is one of the few well known names in the world of mobile advertising. Especially, the way it has targeted the 16-24 age group for mobile ads is considered very good by a lot of people. In a recent insight discussion group with members, Blyk discussed a lot of issues. The most talked about issue, as you would have guessed from the title of this post, was free mobile browsing.

Blyk does this insight discussion group thing often enough to understand the needs of their core market and to adapt themselves to the evolving mobile advertising market.

In this recent discussion, one of the major gripes was the youth’s need for a shortcut to information. As of now, text messaging (SMS) and MMS are the most sought-after ways to reach out to teenagers. Young people are swift in responding to such ads and the success rate has been pretty good so far. But the catch is mobile internet / mobile browsing. If they click on a link which takes them to a mobile site, they have problems viewing it because of two reasons.

1) Mobile browsing costs are way too high and young people, at least most of them, don’t have a regular income, which makes them reluctant to click on the links sent by advertisers.

2) A lot of them don’t have high-end mobile phones which offer rich browsing experience. So, browsing in general becomes a little tougher.

Now, the second reason can somehow be overlooked. The reason being – if I got a link in a mobile ad which could take me to a site where I can download latest ringtones for free, I wouldn’t complain a lot about my poor browsing experience, as long as it is good enough to get the job done.

But the first point is very important. So, in the discussion group, one point which was often raised was about offering free browsing to customers. This, no doubt, would encourage a lot of people to click on the links and check out what the advertisers have on offer, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. The data charges for browsing are quite high and Blyk should think of a strategy to cover its costs if it were to provide its customers with free browsing. What could be the solution? We don’t know as of now. But, as I always say, stay tuned.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Blyk.

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Yahoo dominating mobile internet

If you’ve watched the journey of Yahoo ever since it started out, it has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. It was once in an enviable position as far as the internet was concerned, but now it is nowhere in the competition thanks to Google. While Yahoo has been constantly trying to regain its spot in the internet, Google still is way ahead of Yahoo. Also, the recent furor about Microsoft taking over Yahoo didn’t do any good for the company as well. So, Yahoo needed to do something to reassure its customers, stock holders, and most importantly, itself. This is where mobile internet comes into the picture.

Yahoo has been making great progress in the mobile phone market, especially the high end ones. There is a lot of need for mobile browsing among people, as they always want to check out something or the other via mobile internet. However, browsing in a mobile phone is not easy, unless you own an iPhone. With this being the case, Yahoo slowly started to work on improving mobile browser experience for people. The result was Yahoo Go.

Recently, it was announced that Yahoo Go 3.0 will be soon launched in Canada. Going by the positive reviews Yahoo Go got in the U.S., one can safely assume that it will have a similar reception in Canada.

Also, this seems to be a brilliant strategy by Yahoo, as there is not much competition here. Microsoft is busy with Windows Mobile Operating System and Google is busy with Google Android, another operating system, thereby leaving a gap for Yahoo to enter the market of mobile internet and mobile browsing.

With lots of acquisitions, partnerships, and deals, Yahoo is very busy strengthening its hold in the mobile phone market. As someone mentioned, forget about web 1.0, Yahoo is aiming to become the leader of mobile 1.0.

Categories: All things mobile phones, Yahoo, Mobile Web.

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