Is Mobile Web the Future?

Ever since I started focusing my attention on mobile advertising and mobile communication, I have been hearing a lot about mobile web. A lot has been said about mobile web - How big it is going to be, how big an impact it will have on mobile phone advertising, what kind of revenue it can bring in, and how it can simply change the way we perceive our mobile phones. In short – it is considered the future.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s latest survey says that the mobile phone will be the primary connecting tool for people all over the world by 2020. If you notice carefully, the role of the mobile phone has changed enormously in the past few years. A decade back, mobile phones were meant strictly for calls and text messages. Now, we can take photos, shoot videos, surf the web, send and receive emails, listen to music, watch TV, transfer data, and more. The mobile phone has become much more than a tool for communication. This gets reflected on the sales figures as well.

Over three billion mobile phones have been sold by mobile companies around the world so far. Interestingly, it took them over two decades to reach the one billion mark. The two billion mark was reached in the next four years and the three million mark was reached in the next two years. Can you imagine? The time taken to sell one billion phones has diminished rapidly – from 20 years to 4 years to just under 2 years. By the end of 2008, there will be 4 billion mobile phones in the world. In other words, over 60% of the population will use the mobile phone as their primary connecting tool.

An important thing you should know is that mobile web is not as prevalent as most people think. Of these 4 billion mobile phones, only 15% are internet enabled. So, an overwhelming number of mobile users still use their phones for calls and text messages only. The reasons are not hard to find.

1. Mobile web is still out of reach for most people thanks to its cost. The data plans cost a lot and it makes people think twice before surfing the net on their phones.

2. Unless you have a smart phone, surfing the web on the mobile phone can be quite cumbersome. The user interface is not good enough and the speed is very low in most cases.

Experts predict that these things will change rapidly. Already, a lot of mobile carriers around the world have come up with flat rates for data plans which make them a lot more affordable. Also, a lot of people tend to buy smart phones these days as they have become a lot more affordable than what they used to be a few years back. Most importantly, with the advent of 3G (high speed internet), surfing the web on the mobile phone could become a lot easier.

The biggest challenge for both carriers and mobile advertisers is advertising. Advertising will be the primary means of revenue support for mobile web and it needs to be done carefully. While the mobile web could open a lot of avenues for mobile advertisers to reach the end users, they need to do it in such a way that people do not find it irritating or intrusive. How well they adapt to this new medium is something we will have to wait and see. But, the signs are clear. Mobile web is the next big thing. What do you think?

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

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Mobile advertising in Vietnam

According to a recent report from VNPT (Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group), mobile marketing is slowly becoming popular in Vietnam.

Vietnam has over 30 million mobile users and ever since VNPT started to collaborate with a number of national level businesses to come up with mobile advertising services in 2006, the popularity of mobile marketing has gone up a quite a few notches.

Interestingly, a lot of Vietnamese say that mobile marketing gives them a sense of ‘democracy’ – something which they love. True to this fact, the most famous form of mobile marketing in Vietnam is the SMS poll in interactive shows where people can vote for something/someone through text messages.

But the important thing to be noted here is – though the number of mobile users is steadily increasing over the past few years, mobile advertisers say that Vietnam is not yet ready for a full fledged mobile advertising campaign. The reason is ignorance. A lot of mobile users are of the opinion that mobile advertising is all about sending spam messages to users. So, understandably, it will take some time to make them understand what mobile advertising actually is.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Mobile phone reaches the moon

I found this news interesting and weird at the same time. NASA has joined hands with the British National Space Centre to build a cell phone network on the moon. Yep; you heard me right. On the moon!!!

Already, as we all know, NASA has planned to build a colony in the moon after 2020. Now, it is planning further to help the people who might live in that proposed colony. With an uplink speed of 2 Kbps and downlink speed of 3 Kbps, you’ll be able to send text messages from earth to moon.

What next? Will the IRS start an office in the moon to collect taxes from the colonists over there?

Categories: Rant, All things mobile phones.

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iPhone 2.0 from Apple - Are you ready for the future?

Few days back, on March 6, Steve Jobs made an announcement which made everyone sit up and take notice. It focused on something called iPhone 2.0, based on which Apple has planned its moves for the iPhone.

As we all know, the iPhone is what it is today, because it stands out from other phones. In fact, we can’t even categorize Apple iPhone as just another phone. It’s almost like a handheld computer in which you can make calls. So, Steve Jobs has stated that he considers the iPhone to be a platform. Or even better, a multipurpose, handy device meant for both computing and communication. This is what the idea of iPhone 2.0 is based on.

Steve plans to categorize the mobile phone market into two main categories – ordinary mobile phones and the iPhone. While the ordinary mobile phones can be used for calls, text messages (SMS), MMS, songs, radio, and mobile TV, the iPhone platform, as it’s called, will offer superior mobile web browsing, email, instant messenger, multimedia applications, and other things that you can run on a PC.

Ever since its release, iPhone has got 28% of the smartphone market in the U.S. under control which is amazing. As we all know, the U.S. smartphone market is generally dominated by Blackberries and the iPhone is slowly changing that.

Steve Jobs has also mentioned that the next version of iPhone will support Microsoft Exchange Server. Now, this is a very significant move on the part of the iPhone. The reason is quite obvious. Microsoft Exchange Server is the system used to manage applications like email, address book, calendar, and more for big companies around the world. With the iPhone supporting this server, most companies will switch from Blackberry to the iPhone. And that should make Steve a happy man.

Categories: Apple iPhone.

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Mobile coupon is the way to go?

Cellfire, a mobile coupon service provider, was recently in the news for having teamed with some big names in the market to test the impact of mobile coupons in the U.S. Procter & Gamble, Clorox, General Mills, Del Monte, and Kimberly-Clark are some of the big names that have joined this effort, along with retail giant Kroger.

Cellfire has made a name for itself in mobile marketing by being one of the top providers of mobile coupons and discount offers to customers via mobile phones. Now, by teaming up with the big names mentioned above, Cellfire is planning to experiment with mobile coupons on a large level, across the country.

The reason why these big names have come together to experiment with mobile coupons is simple. In the recent past, there has been some encouraging news about mobile coupons and their success rate, which has kindled the interest of the aforementioned brands. Especially, the success of My Subway Mobile has made a lot of people take note of mobile coupons.

According to a recent report, the redemption rate with ordinary coupons is around 2%, whereas the redemption rate with mobile coupons is 5%, making it way more effective. The reason is not hard to find – customers don’t have to do anything extraordinary to make use of these mobile coupons. All they need to do is, sign up to the offer, get text messages, and while shopping, simply show the text message to the retailer to make use of the offer or discount. Can’t get any simpler, can it?

If this test becomes a success, we can say goodbye to traditional coupons as we can get everything we want in our mobile phone.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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