EDM2008 Monday 9th June

11 06 2008

I attended EDM08 on Monday which was coincidentally the 8th year the conference had run. It is a fairly small affair with perhaps 100 people (max) but they travelled far and wide to be there and on my table were people from the US, Nordic area and mainland Europe.

EDM stands for European Directories Marketplace and the event is run by Whitaker Associates. It is fair to say I had no idea about how the connection with directories worked before attending but it is of course to do with the delivery of information services and hence this years theme: mobile.

The keynote was delivered by Dr Mike Short Director of R&D at O2 and a man’s whose credentials in mobile are extensive. He is Chairman of the mobile data association (the mda) amongst other things but has spent 20 years in the mobile/telecoms industry. He shared plenty of stats and insight to research that O2 will publish in July both of which I have summarised here in a few bullet points:

  • there were 2.95bn mobile subscribers at June07
  • 3.3bn are forecast by end 2008 (source: The mobile world)
  • There is 115% mobile penetration in the UK which equates to 69 million handsets
  • There were 57 billion sms sent in the UK in 2007
  • 449m picture messages were sent in the UK in 2007
  • 17m accessed the mobile internet in 2007

From O2’s research:

  • Most people would rather leave home without their wallet than their mobile
  • Research that trialled combining mobile with Oyster and Credit card (separately and together) using near field communication technology (NFC) resulted in a greater degree of success when sim and oyster were combined than sim and credit card. It will be interesting to see what conclusions O2 draws from this as it seems to me that it is a moot point. Ultimately won’t they all be combined anyway?

Finally Mike described the phases of mobile, starting at phase one with voice and text, up to present day phase six which is the ‘Content’ phase. Mike believes that phase 7 is the ‘application’ phase.

Following the keynote there were a range of presentations and discussions and I am not going to blog them all. There were some really interesting debates and opinions that I would like to record.

There was some debate around the importance of mobile compared to pc and James Levey of Amdocs suggested that click through rates online were currently at about 2% on average but that he predicts mobile will achieve 4% click through rates in the near future. In terms of search, mobile search currently represents 2-4% of desktop search globally, where China is an exception with mobile search representing 25%. Google predict that the cross over point where mobile search overtakes desktop will be within 4 years and that not long after mobile search will double desktop search.

To put some more context on this it is worth mentioning stats presented by Russell Buckley of Admob. Admob started business in 2006 and are already the worlds largest mobile ad marketplace. Russell talked briefly about global page views on mobile and which countries had the largest global share. Currently he estimates that there are 3bn page views per month on mobile [correction: which Admob see on their network and on which they serve ads on today]. The largest contributors to that number are:

  • US = 50%
  • India and UK = 10% each (total 20%)
  • South Africa = 5%
  • Indonesia = 5%

Interestingly all the above are in English language!

Other presentations delivered nuggets such as ‘in 10 years you will be able to access the knowledge of humankind from a mobile’ and the fastest growing age of penetration of mobile phones in the UK is 7 to 8 year old’s. All exciting stuff. But then I was blown away by Simon Grice of www.Ideas.org.

Simon rattled off more concepts and ideas in 10 minutes than I have in a decade. The few I caught hold of were “Information is the new pollution”. IN a conference focussing on information services and directories he argued that in the future this will be too much and humans won’t be able to deal with the flow of info. Search will become useless because the range of results will be too difficult to filter. Simon suggests that when people get bogged down with information they ask people they know for advice and in this way sites like Twitter and facebook become the information services networks of the future.

Simon also talked about discovery as opposed to search. Search is fine if you know what you are looking for but what if you don’t? For example your local pub is holding an Italian night. If you don’t search for that you may not find out so you need to be told or have a way to discover it that is not necessarily advertising. Location based services have a role to play but it is not clear what role at this stage.

These ideas are worth exploring further, which is what I intend to do.


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Categories : Economy, General Comments, Mobile, Multi channel

Steve Hurst: Customer Strategy

7 06 2008

Customer Strategy log

I had the pleasure of putting the customer experience world to rights yesterday morning over a bacon roll with Steve Hurst, Editorial Director of Customer Strategy, a CMP publication. Steve has been with Customer Strategy (previously Customer Management) as long as I have been with Foviance (over 7 years) and has seen the same developments in the industry that I have observed. As a result we had a wide ranging conversation which frequently resulted in the conclusion that “customer experience only gets better if the CEO wants it to”. It seems in quite a few organisations, they simply don’t!

I recommend checking out Steve’s Blog Industry Insider as it covers ground beyond customer experience. We both agreed that actually customers are pretty much at the centre of everything organisations do - or at least they should be.

One area I was particularly interested in is an interview Steve has lined up for next week with Premier Hotels. One of the aspects he hopes to discuss is the expansion in India and I hope to hear whether they intend to include mobile booking engine as part of their expansion plans. Given the ’single screen economy’ nature of India this would seem sensible although I haven’t yet seen figures about mobile internet penetration. A ‘to do’ for me. I did read this week about the drive to produce a lower cost mobile (sub $30) and the work Motorola were doing here but I am fairly certain these devices don’t contain web access. The target market for the hotels is the growing middle class in India and these I assume will have mobile access to the web, and presumably desktop access also. Like I say, more research required.


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Categories : Customer Experience, Economy, Mobile, Multi channel

Mobile VOIP launches in the UK 13th May 08

15 05 2008

To coincide with my wedding anniversary (kind of them) Nimbuzz launched in the UK. According to their Chief Marketing Officer Tariq Dag Steinberg Khan, Nimbuzz goes beyond Skype and offers “free calls, chat and more.” On the face of it this is true. In addition to mobile VOIP calling it also offers conference calling, instant messaging, chat, photo and file sending across multiple IM communities including Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo! and Social networking sites likes Facebook and Myspace.

The application is free to download and once the user has registered the contacts from their selected IM communities are aggregated in to a single contacts list with icons that show real time status - online or offline. Apparently Nimbus already works with more than 500 handsets and VOIP works in 90 handsets worldwide. If they can integrate geo-location somehow that would be even more interesting.

Although the calls are free the costs of data are still charged for by the carriers and so the recent announcement by Vodafone in the UK of the first all-you-can-eat data package is even more significant. A year ago flat rate data plans didn’t exist in Europe and the launch of this type of technology would not have generated the excitement it no doubt will.

Nimbuzz claim to have subscribers numbering 500,000 from 176 countries and that their launch is driving data take up on mobile devices. I mentioned Trutap in a recent blog and like it, Nimbuzz is another example of technology the uses the specific attributes of mobile devices. It is still the carriers with their control of data rates that will control the effectiveness and adoption of these new technologies.


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Categories : Customer Experience, Mobile, Multi channel

Mobile metrics: Carriers are witholding

13 05 2008

An interesting example of the flawed mobile business model surfaced this week. According to Matthew Feldman, president and CEO of Versaly Entertainment “Anyone in the mobile industry will say reporting is probably one of the weakest segments of the mobile industry”. Jack Hallahan, VP of advertising and brand partnerships at MobiTV Inc., which has almost 4 million subscribers said the company also has the problem. “MobiTV knows what device type is watching at any time, but it still doesn’t know who that user is”, he said. The problem is that whilst they know the device the content is being viewed on they don’t have any detailed demographic information. “We don’t have a data point of exactly what’s happening on the last mile,” Hallahan added.

The information is held by the carriers but they are not sharing it. Not only are they not sharing data they are also taking a large share of the revenues for providing the pipe for distribution of digital media like video - typically 35%. The combination of these two factors is reducing investment and stifling innovation. Until the business model changes mobile will suffer. Interestingly, in the US data revenues fell for the first time ever in the second half of 2007. Will it take an economic collapse of the scale seen in the music business caused by innovative consumers to force the change or will carriers wake up and smell the Begonias?


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Categories : Mobile, Multi channel, iDTV

Mobile experience: voicemail charges

4 05 2008

Like many I suppose, I am trying to get my head around how the operators charge their customers. In many ways they seem to have no idea about how to deliver a consistent brand experience (or even a consistent user experience) and at every point where there is an opportunity to disappoint they take it with willing hands. This post deals with the way voice mail charges are dealt with and in particular when roaming round Europe.

Link to how much? image

The main issue here is that users (customers really but being treated like users) have no idea about the charges they incur until they have incurred them. Sometimes they are not necessarily unfair, it is simply the lack of knowledge in the hands of the customer that creates such a lousy user experience. Also there is significant inconsistency between the network operators so if you move from one to another the acquired wisdom does not transfer.

Lets take the first example of someone making a trip abroad, taking the mobile with them but not making any calls. On their return home they receive a bill for £9.50 for “usage outside the EU”. Further investigation reveals that the bill has a number of identical call pairs. One of these is to the phone owners number and the other to Voicemail. This was a T-mobile example and it turned out that if anyone called the mobile while it wasn’t in the country incurs two charges. One for letting the caller leave the voicemail and the other to let the owner know they have a voicemail.

These charges are perfectly legitimate but to the average user they may well seem to be crazy. They will no doubt incur a call centre service charge when the phone owner calls in to complain and also leave a nasty taste in the mouth, which in these days of switching is probably the last thing the operators want.

Some costs can be incurred by poor usability or device design. For example some devices make it very easy to press the browser button without knowing it (whilst in a pocket for example). I had a Sony Ericsson that did just this and came with the side button configured to launch the browser app. I quickly changed it but other, less savvy users would perhaps be unable to do so easily and would become frustrated.

Another example with O2. They say that you will also be charged for callers leaving you voicemails - even if the  phone is switched off. They recommend that you turn off the voicemail service entirely before going abroad to avoid any unexpected charges. They said that as soon as the phone was picked up roaming in France the voicemailbox was moved to France and therefore you had to pay callers who were calling from the UK and leaving messages. Helpfully the O2 website suggests that you set up a “divert all” command for all voicemail calls and this will do the trick.

Some countries are better regulated. For example in Italy it is a legal requirement that a user is notified when they are about to be charged. This is a great idea in principle as it would appear to improve the user experience by providing an additional confirmation step before a user went online even if a button was pressed by mistake. However research showed it is very off putting for users and made them more nervous.

There is a technical explanation for all this but it is way to complicated fr me and involves Home Location Register (HLR) and Visitor Location Register (VLR). You can read more about this at http://www.mobilein.com/. I found this white paper on their site that explains mobile networking quite clearly.

All our research shows (ours being my company Foviance) that users have not a clue about the way they are charged for mobile internet and for most it is a barrier to entry. The all you can eat packages that include data charges are changing this (and will need to for iDTV also if the red button is to be pressed more than it is) but far too slowly as operators try and maximise revenues rather than focus on building loyalty through delivering a better user experience.


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Categories : Customer Experience, Mobile, Multi channel, iDTV

BBC TV License fee: BBC Internet License fee

3 05 2008

BBC Logo

I contacted the TV Licensing authority recently to try and establish beyond doubt what the licence fee covered and whether it was future proof. It convinced me once and for all that the BBC will have to at some point operate without a licence fee and that no doubt means advertising revenue. Here is the reply I received to my enquiry:

Dear Sir

Thank you for contacting us.

A television licence is required if you use television receiving equipment to record and/or receive television programme services. Television receiving equipment could be a television, video recorder, DVD recorder/player, PCTV (computer with facility to receive television programmes), or a television card for a computer. If your lap top computer is capable of receiving live broadcasts, whether on-line, or through an aerial or satellite dish, then it is classed as television receiving equipment. This means a licence is needed to receive BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, digital television, other terrestrial services, satellite television and cable television.

If you receive programme services (as defined above), live via the Internet, BBC Online for example (Newsnight is one such broadcast), then a television licence is required. If you are using the Internet to browse archived programme services websites, then a television licence is not required.

If your equipment is not used to receive or record television programmes, please let me know your address. I will then make sure our records are changed to show you do not need a television licence.

I hope this information is helpful.

Yours faithfully

name not included to protect the innocent
Customer Services

How a DVD player can be considered television “receiving equipment” is beyond me but that is beside the point really.

The implications of this are that the license fee is actually an internet license fee. Does that also mean it is a mobile license fee? If I subscribe to Sky mobile TV I am potentially in breach of the licensing law because I will be receiving live, streamed video to my phone. I don’t need to own a TV, have a Sky subscription or meet any other criteria to sign up for this. If I travel abroad what happens then?

It seems to me there will have to be a major shake up of the BBC license fee if it is to keep up with the multi-channel world we are increasingly living in.


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Categories : Mobile, Multi channel, Web, iDTV

Mobile Customer Experience

30 04 2008

I attended Internet World yesterday (29th April) and joined in the round table discussion in the Masterclasses stream run by James Hilton Joint CEO of Inside Mobile, and Andy Smith, Sales Director of Admob. Both were good speakers, who had strong opinions about the industry, bunches of knowledge and spoke with passion - a recipe for success in my opinion.

One of the questions that came up from the floor was how the mobile operators could be assisted in improving the experience they deliver. This was asked by Nadia Kauser from Motorola and the response was revealing about the state of the mobile market. Although technology providers are very focused on what their customers demand they are unable to meet their needs in user experience because it is simply too complicated. With literally hundreds of different devices the best they can hope for is to render screen images in a meaningful way on all the different devices but carrying out  user testing  is simply uneconomical.

James believes that the development of Android is the key to the future of the industry. The software will provide a platform that enables anyone to develop for mobile devices in a meaningful way. In turn this will allow user testing to take place on a single, representative device rather than needing to test on all devices and it therefore becoming uneconomic to do so.

Another question that came up was about whether the panel thought mobile and web would truly merge so that one was the other or whether applications specific to one or the other would still be developed. There was a strong feeling that convergence would be total as screen sizes increased but this only deals with the web through mobile.

There are a bunch of application opportunities that utilise the unique capability of mobile devices - small size, always with you. Take Doug Richards new Venture Trutap. This is an application that leverages all that is good about mobile. It is an IM tool for the mobile that allows you to bring in your Messenger and Yahoo IM accounts and use your mobile to keep in touch. Yes you could use this instead of a PC and probably some people will, but it is an obvious and viable  mobile application.

I recommend your check out James and Inside Mobile as I think they do some clever stuff.


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Categories : Customer Experience, Mobile, Multi channel

MMA Mobile Manifesto

29 04 2008

The Mobile Marketing Association has published it’s manifesto for best practice rules it hopes will increase uptake of mobile. The rules have been endorsed by IAB and dotmobi so hopefully will gain some industry momentum. They are:

  1. Icons are dead and the content itself is the new interface.
  2. The role of the mobile device is expanding beyond the hand.
  3. The structure of the mobile industry is killing application developers.
  4. Fashion is a stronger motivator than features.
  5. The developing world is the new frontier for mobile user experience.
  6. Search requires a radically different approach in the mobile environment.
  7. Presence and IP-based messaging change the dynamics of mobile communication.
  8. Mobile payment applications will lead the next major leap in wireless communications, when our interactions with machines start to outnumber our interactions with people.
  9. Customers cannot be defined by numbers or segments or demographics.
  10. The industry’s love affair with all things ‘2.0′ is blinding us to the reality that customers are spending more time than ever making basic voice calls.

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Categories : Mobile, Multi channel

eComm Conference: what will drive wireless innovation (2008)

29 04 2008

The eComm Conference 2008 at the Computer History Museum, Silicone Valley has just been taking place (12 to 14th March) and during the conference a session was run on the future of wireless innovation. There is a video of the session available on Google videos here where a panel of experts discuss the question. The experts are Brough Turner from NMS, Martin Geddes from STL Partners, Stanley Chia from Vodafone, Sumit Agarwal from Google, Jonathan Christensen from Skype, Christopher Allen from iphonewebdev.com and Benoit Schillings from Trolltech/Nokia. The video is 86 minutes long so you may want to make a cuppa and get a comfy chair.

Martin Geddes kicks off by explaining why he believes innovation will be driven by business model evolution rather than technology. He uses the iphone launch and market changing aspect of the business model whereby the handset manufacturer gets a slice of the ongoing revenue - different to any other mobile manufacturer. Despite everyone else attempting to convince the audience that technology or user behaviour will be the driving forces in fact mostly they end up referring to business models.

Stanley Chia talked about the changes caused by flat rate charging in Europe and that it is causing significant momentum behind data usage. Data usage has increased by 10 fold in past 6 months because of the changes made and this is expected to continue. He went on to say that operators are starting to realise that the old walled garden model is not viable on a long term basis - 3 to 5 years changes must be made. However they don’t want to become just a big pipe and this is challenging their business model.

If operators views are changing this is really good news. They are a confused species and trying to be all things to all men has only one outcome - a bad deal for the consumer. They don’t want to be a big pipe is a concern although spinning out infrastructure businesses as they realise they are neither strategic nor major growth opportunities (once the market is fully developed) is the likely outcome.

Jonathan Christensen was lamenting the problems with the platform not allowing for consistent VOIP services. 3phone in the UK is a great example of a mashup - Skype experience, fixed price but deteriorating audio quality due to bandwidth. Lots of discussion about the 700Mhz spectrum and the opportunity for this to be completely open. However there is uncertainty about whether new business models will be tried due to the tried and tested and profitable old.

Interestingly the point was made by Benoit Schillings that he didn’t expect their to be harmonisation in mobile device operating systems. Instead he felt there would be development in the bridge that spans between the native technology and declarative environment (Ajax and HTML). This will remove the constraint on developers to do everything in Java or scripting and will give the 90% commonality which is the browser type environment. This would be a more likely outcome rather than expecting one operating system to go and “dominate the world”.

Coming back to Martin Geddes suggestion about iphone I agree with the business model argument but not with the example. I don’t believe other manufacturers will have the same power that Apple had as first to market and I don’t think they will therefore convince operators to share the revenue. Pretty soon the devices will be the same but there are short term advantages to be gained for first to market brands with innovative and desirable technology.


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Categories : Mobile, Multi channel

Will 2008 be the year mobile internet comes of age?

28 03 2008

There is a great deal of speculation currently that 2008 with be the year mobile finally comes of age. Much of this discussion is as a result of the increasing interest in mobile advertising and 3’s announcement that Skype will be available over their network. Given all the hype I thought it time I got off the fence and made my own prediction.
What are the factors that will drive adoption?” Certainly, advertising money tends to follow audiences and I agree that evolution of user behaviour will be a primary factor in the adoption of mobile for internet access. But user behaviour is driven by a number of drivers and we can end up in a bit of a chicken vs. egg dilemma. The economics of the way mobile internet is purchased drive behaviour in the same way they do in interactive TV, but also technology limitations through the vast plethora of mobile devices removes behavioural consistency. The way mobile applications are developed is also fundamentally different to the way websites are developed and this also has a big impact on adoption. Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

The economics of mobile operate in a fundamentally different way to internet. Mobile operators act as both the provider of the access pipe and also of the content in a way that Internet ISP’s do not. This walled garden effect means that although the operators gain a large share of the market, the total available is rather small. Further, as I mentioned above, like iDTV, there is enormous uncertainty about tariffs for data downloads. We have conducted a variety of iDTV and mobile research and the same situations come up time and again. Users simply don’t know what the cost of pressing the “Red” button is and they are equally uncertain about the cost of going online on their mobile. We can now get fixed price, or even free, Internet access and as the large players connect with each other (like Sky who now own iDTV, Internet and Mobile businesses) we should find mobile internet access increasingly being bundled in. Until this happens with mobile access take up will be limited.

Technology development has been considered a barrier to adoption. For some time conventional wisdom said that nobody will watch TV on a tiny mobile screen. Well as the picture below shows, in Asia this myth has already been proved wrong and frequently commuters can be seen waiting on the platform, watching TV on a 2” screen.

iw2007012.jpg

So if screen size isn’t the problem what is? In many ways it is the problem that Microsoft fixed in desktop computing. By creating MS Windows and achieving massive adoption the majority of low tech had a singular view on how they should interface with their technology. If you own three different mobile phones you can experience three entirely different operating systems and the situation is worsened because the mobile operators are providing not only the operating system but also a good deal of the applications. Open standards and adoption of conventions would put fewer burdens on the user and open up a greater degree of functionality and content.

The launch of Apple’s iphone is a step change in the way mobile technology is interfaced with by a user. The development was run with the user in mind and real investment went in to developing a new paradigm for user interaction. The same cannot be said for the way mobile internet applications are developed. A good deal of these are developed with little or no user exposure in the development process and as a result exhibit very poor usability. The economics of development don’t allow for user involvement either. I met a company recently that produces a number of mobile sites. Their core business is not development but it has become an essential add-on to their business. Every site is developed in central Europe and the cost is less than £20k. Most web developments spend multiples more than this on user research alone.

So can user behaviour force the change? I recently became the proud owner of a Blackberry – the first time I have owned one. It has mobile internet on a screen that is suitable even for someone with a few grey hairs like me. I use a web based conference call booking system and was on the train recently when I had to move the conference call. I visited the website via my Blackberry, logged in to the site but could not change the time. The functionality that worked through my PC’s web browser would not work on mobile.

For sure it was getting a new device that changed my behaviour. It made me try something new to see if it would work. It helped that my company was paying the bill and it was work activity as I had no realisation of the cost. The interface rendered relatively well on my mobile device and actually the user experience – up to the point when I could go no further – was very similar to that on my PC. But the site wasn’t ready for me and clearly had not been designed with mobile in mind. Until all these aspects come together it is hard to see mobile internet adoption sky rocketing.

So I think 2008 will be a significant year but not the year for mobile. According to Bill Gates “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” I think this will prove true of mobile internet use and in many ways already has. The UK’s 3G licence auction was in 2000 and values were driven up by anticipated change in the way technology would be used. Of course we all know that the networks made huge write downs on their balance sheets as the actual value of the network assets they had acquired became understood. Using Gates prediction 2010 will be the year mobile really takes off but I am prepared to give or take a year across a decade and look to 2009 for major adoption to occur.


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Categories : Mobile