Interesting news from the world of mobile phones

Yesterday, I was going through the RSS feeds I’ve subscribed to and I found some of the news items very interesting. Check it out.

GPS enabled mobile phones have a ton of useful features. You can get traffic updates, get roadmaps, convert currency and other measurements, store photos, and even find where your friends and family are through a color-coded map in your mobile phone screen.

American Airlines (AA), like I’ve already mentioned in this blog, has a simpler, scaled down version of its website for mobile users. You can check out your itinerary, check flight status and luggage status, view vacation deals available, book flights, and request for upgrades. The pages in this site are available both in English and Spanish.

Hugely popular website hotels.com has developed a web application for Apple iPhone and iPod touch users. Using this application, you can access a wide range of information like photos of hotel rooms, their descriptions, amenities, and the number of rooms available and book your room then and there.

Blyk, the UK based company I’ve talked so much about, has reached the milestone of 100,000 subscribers in the UK alone. The interesting point is that they set a deadline of one year to get 100K subscribers and launched the program last year. However, they’ve reached the milestone six months ahead of their deadline.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Cellphone novels in Japan - Can you believe it?

Well; as usual, I was going through my RSS feeds and this one caught my attention. Wait; I’ll come up with the right term - It almost freaked me out.

One of the reasons why a lot of people are a little skeptical mobile advertising and mobile internet is that they feel that using the small keypad in the mobile phone will not be as comfortable as using the PC keyboard for people. Well; while we were pondering about that issue, a silent revolution has happened in Japan. People are actually writing novels on their mobile phones.

No, it wasn’t a typo. Out of the ten best selling novels in Japan last year, five were written, or rather texted, on mobile phones. As carriers in Japan offer people with unlimited packet data transmission like text messaging for a flat fee every month, people, particularly youngsters are going crazy with text messages and some of them have typed an entire novel right on their mobile phones. These novels were then made into hardcover copies and sold in the market.

Now; I’m just thinking, how successful will a text message based mobile advertising campaign be in Japan?

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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Mobile advertising - Some facts and truths

So much has been said against mobile advertising that I sometimes browse through my mail archives and RSS feeds to find out a news item that actually had something positive to say about mobile advertising. Today, while doing so, I came across this news.

Needless to say, it brought a smile on my face. You should note two important points in this news.

“Regarding mobile advertising, Starcom’s study found that among light and heavy mobile media users, consumers are OK with advertising as long as it carries some relevance.”

This debunks the myth that all mobile users are averse to mobile advertising, which is obviously not the case. So, like I’ve always said, people who are open to mobile ads can get them, and there is no need for the experts or privacy advocates to worry about that.

“Similarly, with mobile commerce, Starcom found that the issue holding back consumers from buying things with their mobile devices isn’t privacy concerns, but rather frustration with the mobile shopping experience.”

Again, privacy advocates and experts need to get their glasses and go through this passage twenty times over.

I’ve done the good deed for the day. I feel very pious.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Rant.

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