Mobile Ad rates 25-40%-- this year

mobile CPMs, or the cost to reach 1,000 consumers, now average about $15 compared with the average earlier this year of $20 to $25. And with the out-of-the-box, $40 to $50 CPMs of last year more or less history now, pricing is beginning to normalize ...

According to AdAge

The Playstation Home experience ...

for MoGlee

India += 3G

finally!

MTNL went live with 3G today.

Airtel sez gimme 6 months and it'll be affordable.  That' remains to be seen!

Either way - the clock is ticking for us.

root cash analysis

About 5-6 weeks back, I was going around saying that the impact of the credit crisis has hit VCs too as their PE does come from college (endowment) funds, to some extent.

Here's a better way to understand it.

When a VC "raises" a $100 million fund, what the firm really has done is gotten commitments from LPs that they will deliver $100 million over the life of the fund. The firm then issues "capital calls" over the next few years and gradually draws the money down. It is these calls that some LPs are reportedly starting to default on.

the deepening divide ...

10% of US on food stamps, according to a Reuters article.

which by itself is ok.

The subscriptions to the program have been growing for the last 7 years - direct correlation with unemployment growth over the same period.

This leads to the concern. And the concern is long-term welfare dependence.
Typically, once one gets into this bracket, it take 5-6 years to get out of it.

And, irrespective of age, there does seem to be a direct correlation to lower employability. (obv the younger one is, when it happens, the greater the school dropout chances.)

Couple that with the lack of affordable housing for the weaker sections of the populace, and one will find that food money is being diverted to living costs.   Extending the spiral.

So, you have
- more people who are poor,
- higher dependence on welfare,
- with marginalized employment options (reducing further due to outsourcing),
- frustrated over being unable to "find a place to live - in the world's only superpower",
- while they see the "asian minorities" (the only ones who seem NOT to be affected) living in the lap of luxury and being regularly lionized by media.
- and an economy stuttering on the brink of a depression.

Recipe for general social unrest.

Japan -= Nokia

permanently!

Looks like 1% market share is a not a sustainable business model.  Go figure!

Interestingly, Japanese market also exhibits a really interesting user characteristic:
- people generally do NOT upgrade / replace handset regularly
- why did it take them 15 years to figure this out?!

Onto other Rising-Sun data ...

They key mobile market segments that exist in Japan today, are:
* One Billing,
* SMS (Short Message Service),
* MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service),
* Email,
* IM (Instant Messaging),
* PTT (Push To Talk),
* Content Download/Streaming,
* Mobile Broadcasting,
* Mobile Portal/Community,
* Mobile Advertising,
* LBS (Location Based Services),
* Personal Tool/Storage,
* Mobile Mall and Mobile Auction,
* Mobile Banking and Mobile Trading,
* On Chip Banking, and
* On Chip Credit Service or Payment

Unconfirmed high growth areas:
* SNS - social networking sites
* Mobile coupons
* Mobile shopping
* and, of course, blogging - something they seem to have taken a liking to.

3G:
* penetration has grown to 90% (from 60 in 2006).
* 90% use the mobile web
* 50% phones have GPS
* "killer app" == "myNet" - Content produced by the subscribers themselves and forwarded among friends and family

Popular sites:
* Rakuten and
* Yahoo Mobile
* Mobagetown (5.5 mln users, 3 mln in 1 yr!) and
* Magic i-land (leader in mobile books)

Other trendy data according to, this vendor
- ring tones are passe - ring songs are IN!
- preferred compensation models for advertisers: CPC, CPA, and sponsored listings

The economics of free, the net, and public services ...

This article outlines some of the factors that have kept ideas like
- internet via power cables
- laser powered net to your home
- muni-wifi
and why most of these continue to quintessentially be, "just around the corner".

Essentially, Tim Wu argues that providing a new service that does not provide either

• a significant cost advantage, or


• a superior service, and


• a way to address the economics of sunk cost leveraged by existing players

is SOL.

He also alludes that, in general, you need to have all the above factors addressed - as most early movers are generally over-hyped, under-qualified and have limited understanding of the market they are looking to dominate.

If you build it, people, generally, will not come.  Econ - 101.

mobile trends

an interesting perspective ...

am recording for the future reference.
Personally, I found the presentation (the view / pictures part) to be really very well done!
Clear, sharp, concise and effective.

the minus points - too much text on half the slides.

Memorium ...

Thoughts and prayers go out to the near and dear ones of the unfortunate casualties from the ongoing mumbai seige and terror strikes.

Incidentally, just found out Ashok Kamte was a senior ... 6 deg and all that ...

Let's all spare a moment in honor and memory ...

Bretton-nomics

The Europeans always seem to be calling on the Americans to put their house in order by reducing their trade, or budget, deficits while Washington always wants the rest of the world to increase domestic demand (and thus buy more American exports). The Europeans tend to believe in international arrangements (such as fixed, or targeted, exchange rates); the Americans do not want any constraints placed on their domestic economic policies.

So in the early 1970s, the Bretton Woods system broke down because the Americans (to European eyes) neglected their responsibility to maintain the value of the dollar relative to gold; in contrast, the Americans felt they bore an unfair burden because Europeans had the option to devalue their currencies which the US did not. In the 1980s, the Americans saw their deficits as the short-term consequences of pro-growth, tax-cutting policies; rather than being forced to cut back, they wanted other countries (and particularly the Japanese) to adopt the same approach. Jump forward twenty years and the cast has changed, but the script remains the same; Washington now wants the Chinese to play the role of consumer of last resort.

According to the Economist

Sounds like a build up to "reforming the truly global institutions" (read - build up for setting up scapegoats out of the WB and IMF so that the US has leverage to help close out the Doha talks.)

Back then in took 2 years to complete - thanks in no small part to the painstaking research contributions by the concerned - coming on the cusp-end of a war (generally a good economic time).

Now, amidst the global, cross industrial "bailout banshee" everyone wants a "2-minute Maggi" solution - while karoke-ing "Washington Consensus"-nomics.   Smells like a Drucker-Russia all over again!

Can you say - neo-world systems approach?

Lack of creativity or gumption?

News out of the UK:

Apparently, there seems to be a real steadfast inertia (PC equiv == risk aversion) on the part of the creative team to put together creatives specifically tailored for the mobile. They seem to want to just throw the respective TV ads in its place.

Which is a real shame, as it essentially means that are not leveraging the unique demographic-level advantages that mobiles offer - which should lead to more effective ad targeting and coupled with other features such as frequency, yield management and loyalty programs - resulting in - higher brand awareness, development, recall and thereby, acceptance (== ROI)!

Some of the really unique and compelling reasons to leverage the mobi space.

So, it seems the ad execs really don't like being held accountable and management couldn't be bothered.

Sad.

Enocding MKV or OGM to (XVID) AVI

Ever come across an OGM or a MKV file and try to rip it onto your DVD?
Tried burning either as a VCD/SVCD/DVD or data CD using your handy burner (Nero / Alcohol / etc)?

Didn't work, did it.

So, how does one do it?

1.  Get mplayer.  It comes with a handy little tool, mencoder.  That's what your really need.

2.  Use mencoder to translate, as follows:

"mencoder.exe "c:\video\video.mkv" -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1 bitrate=1000 -o "c:\video\output.avi"

3.  Go grab a bite to eat.

You should be good to go!

A great idea is to dump it onto a pen drive which hooks into your home theatre system (or get something like this).


Details:
-- mencoder.exe = this should either be in your PATH or give the full path to the exe on your system

-- "c:\video\video.mkv" = this is the input file (either mkv or ogm)

-- -oac mp3lame = translates the audio to mp3 using LAME

-- -ovc xvid = translates the video to xvid (or just use "-o copy" to leave the video source as is)

-- -xvidencopts pass=1 bitrate=1000 (only to be used with "-ovc xvid" above)

(if you are wondering about what bitrate to use:  either don't specify the option or get a clue or use this calc )

-- -o "c:\video\output.avi" = output file


If you just want to encode one file format to xvid: use 2 pass for best results...
e.g.: mencoder input.avi -o output.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=3000

and add "-vf scale=320:240" if you want to rescale the video size.

Sampling rates vs bitrates ...

An article on how your bitrate reflects upon you

Analog audio, e.g. sound, is a waveform. Waves of air pressure, or captured by a microphone to make an electrical signal representing the waveform.

Digital audio is an approximation made by measuring - sampling - the waveform at regular intervals. So the 'Sampling Rate' is how often the wave is measured.

Music reproduction equipment attempt to handle a range of audio frequencies from 20hz to 20,000 hz. To represent a sound you need a sampling rate at least double the frequency. Compact disc sampling is 44,100 Hz, Digital Audio Tape sampling is 48,000 Hz and are thus capable of representing 20,000 Hz signals.

A musical note is tuned on its basic frequency - its fundamental frequency. But each note has higher frequency harmonics or overtones typically multiples of the fundamental frequency.

A concert piano has notes ranging from 27 to 4,000 Hz. Human voice ranges from 80 to 1,000 Hz. But the fidelity of the sound includes capturing many of those higher harmonic frequencies as well. So you want to capture frequencies 4 times higher than the fundamental up to about 16,000 Hz which is the limit of the ears of most adults.

A telephone has a sampling rate of 8,000 Hz and thus handles sound frequencies up to 4,000 Hz. FM radio handles sound frequencies up to 15,000 Hz.

For a speech, a sampling rate of 8,000, 11,025 or 12,000 Hz should be fine. Further, the sound can be recorded as one channel Mono as opposed to Stereo for further space savings.

For singing, you want a higher sampling rate like 16,000, 22,050 or 24,000.

For instrumental music, or movie soundtracks you want at least 32,000 Hz sampling or the 44,100 or 48,000 standards.

Bit-rate, a number like 128Kb, is a different concept altogether.

A CD stores music uncompressed at a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz; a sample size of 16 bits and in stereo - 2 channels. The bitrate is 44,100 X 16 X 2 = 1,411,200 bits per second.

MP3 encoders vary in quality, but generally can produce a fair-quality representation of CD music using 128kb/s (11:1 compression ratio) and a very good representation at 320kb/s (4.4:1 compression ratio). AAC compression can produce equivalent quality with only 3/4 of the bits, so a 96kb (14.7:1) AAC file with the quality of a 128kb MP3.

The MPEG standards specify a list of bitrates, and all players should be able to handle all of them. Some MP3 encoders will allow non-standard bitrates that can make smaller files with adequate quality, but for compatability your bitrates should be on this list: 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 144, 160, 192, 224, 256, 320 kb/s

Standard sampling rates are: 8,000; 11,025; 12,000; 16,000; 22,050; 24,000; 32,000; 44,100; 48,000 samples per second (Hz)

Here are some typical sampling rates, their uncompressed sizes and standard mp3 bitrates that correspond to fair and very good compression ratios:

8,000 Hz, Mono = 128kb uncompressed : 8kb(16:1) to 24kb(5:1)

8,000 Hz, Stereo = 256kb 16kb(16:1) to 48kb(5:1)

22,050 Hz, Stereo = 705kb 48kb(15:1) to 144kb(5:1)

32,000 Hz, Stereo = 1mb 64kb(16:1) to 192kb(5:1)

44,100 Hz, Stereo = 1.4mb 80kb(17:1) to 320kb(4.4:1)

48,000 Hz, Stereo = 1.5mb 96kb(16:1) to 320kb(4.8:1)

-- credit: Wisegeek

US market realities ...

Take-aways:

4,4 m subscribers for Video on Mobile (2% of total user base)
42% of TV watchers also watch content over the Internet
However, they spend >50% more time watching video on the phone vs. the Net

A18-24 watch longer, but A25-34 watch more (with A12-17 coming in a second) video on Mobile
Pie: MVT (mobile video time) = 3% of TV time; NVT (net video time) = 11% of TV time;

62% of mobile audience is in the 12-34 bracket

Gender-wise:
TV: F - 54%; M - 46%
Mobile: F - 46%; M -54%

Free seems the way to go:
36% (91m) own a video-capable mobile phone with 15% (13.9m) having a paid subscription for it.

73% of the online pop watches video online! - and its NOT news!

-- According to Nielsen

Meter down ...

HotGigs reports on current rates for contractual work:

WAP hourly bill rates
WAP bill rate (low): $85.00
WAP bill rate (high): $95.00
WAP pay rate (low): $55.25
WAP pay rate (high): $61.75

Raises more questions than it answers
- type of project (small / med / large)
- location
- how recent is this information
- accuracy
- exp/skill set of people reporting, and
- onshore / near-shore?

Still, some noise is better than the sound of ().

Demographic Potpourri

Nielsen says Indian's play games, email and bollywood on phones.Sports is a distant 5th!?!

As expected almost 50% girls gossip on phones actively; 26% boys.

Estimated total number of social networking mobile users: 4 mln US; 800K UK.  Every other progressive market is at the 2% of population level (give or take).  All chasing the elusive pie-in-the-sky.

All the existing cell phone user base, almost 85% expect to use the net through the cell phone.  I hope they all have 3G access!

Haste makes waste?

Michael Shayer of King’s College London has been testing children’s thinking skills since 1976, when he and colleagues started studying the development of reasoning abilities in young people. In 2006 and 2007 he got 14-year-olds to take some of the same tests as 30 years earlier. The findings, to be published early
next year, are sobering. More than a fifth of youngsters got high scores then, suggesting they were developing the ability to formulate and test hypotheses. Now only a tenth do.

The tests did not change, so the decline was not caused by different content or marking. And since they explored the ability to think deeply rather than to regurgitate information or whizz through tasks, the results matter deeply. In the purest test of reasoning, pupils were shown a pendulum and asked how to
find out what affects the rate at which it swings. “Their answers indicated whether they had progressed from the descriptive thinking that gets us through most of our days, to the interpretative thinking needed to analyse complex information and formulate and test hypotheses,” Professor Shayer explains.

In 1976 more boys than girls did well, a fact the researchers put down to boys roaming further out of doors and playing more with tools and mechanical toys. Both sexes now do worse than before, but boys’ scores have fallen more, suggesting that a decline in outdoor and hands-on play has slowed cognitive development in both sexes. Britain’s unusually early start to formal education may make things worse, as
infants are diverted from useful activities such as making sand-castles and playing with water into unhelpful ones, such as holding a pen and forming letters.

from the latest issue of The Economist, Nov 1, 2008

wireless trends

-- near-field communications (NFC), Wibree, and Ultra Wideband
-- M-RFID - take your normal RFID and turn the tables ...
-- WiMax
-- Video Streaming

and the changing landscape ...

If we look back over the last fifty years, it typically took years for new technologies to reach their first million products in the field. It took the colour TV eight years to reach the million mark. The PC was faster, at 28 months, the Palm Pilot set a new record at 9 months. The iPod took just 17 days.

Wireless technologies have had even slower evolution. From the first to the millionth 802.11 chip took a leisurely 4 years. Bluetooth did better, but was still a slow starter taking 17 months from the first product to the millionth one, taking just another 5 years to get to the billion mark.

--

King of the handset hill

Here's what the latest shipment numbers look like, courtesy Fierce Wireless


As expected, Apple is missing this party - though a report pegs this at 2.2%.

Salvation for testing on blackberrys

DeviceAnywhere now provides Blackberry's! (iPhone 3G was already supported!)

If the wallet is deep enough, there is very little out there that replicates their solution.  And if you think, emulators can cut it - you just haven't been in a production level environment!

Is SMS getting stale?

Cellular News posted an article highlighting that Europeans received fewer SMS ads YoY (110 vs 112). Given that mobile ads are relatively a new thing - this is either a blip or an inflection point on its acceptability curve.  Something worth tracking.
Have reproduced a table from the above article below.

	Aug-07	Aug-08	% Change	Aug-07	Aug-08	Point Change
Downloads for mobile phone	40,792	35,915	-12.0%	4.4%	3.9%	-0.6
News or information	25,929	22,122	-14.7%	2.8%	3.2%	0.4
Mobile phone or plan	32,222	31,574	-2.0%	4.6%	4.7%	0.1
Entertainment	12,644	11,230	-11.2%	4.3%	5.1%	0.7
Total Mobile + Media Sectors	111,587	100,841	-9.6%	4.1%	4.1%	0.0
Clothing/Fashion	3,982	5,503	38.2%	5.8%	6.4%	0.6
Restaurants	1,037	1,424	37.3%	11.6%	15.5%	3.9
Cars	4,407	3,731	-15.4%	11.2%	7.9%	-3.3
Food	1,413	2,162	53.0%	9.2%	12.6%	3.4
Financial services	8,963	9,956	11.1%	3.7%	4.7%	1.0
Consumer electronics	3,957	4,647	17.4%	6.3%	6.7%	0.4
Travel	5,779	6,602	14.2%	4.9%	5.8%	0.9
Total Non-Mobile/Media Sectors	29,539	34,024	15.2%	6.2%	6.8%	0.5

A peek into the mandi madness ...

Medianama posted some interesting sub numbers ... Mobile stands at 315.24 Million -(reproduced their data table below).



This is well on its growth path (>50% covered) as outlined earlier.

They also have a summary of some of the discussions held at the recently concluded TiECon 2008.

The market scene seems to be one of "potential" as the telecom operators are loathe to venture out of their walled gardens, unlike their brethen in other parts of the world.

Voice-based VAS? Enter the voicesite!

Onto financing: Govind Sankaranarayanan, CFO of Tata Capital put out an article saying seed now for the future ... and oddly enough, I've been thinking the same thing over the past few weeks.

And lastly, something of immediate relevance, business lessons from the great depression.

Tinted glasses

Reproduced w/o permission.

A toon on the current financial crisis ...



In case the URL doesn't open - its: http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2959

Second - a political one - as the US election is just around the corner.



and finally, a link to the "Money as Debt" video on the way banks work ...

A global crisis ...

An excerpt from a recent issue of The Economist:

European banks were collapsing at a dizzying pace even as Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, declared that “there is no drama in front of us.” Hypo Real Estate was just one of five banks in seven European countries bailed out in three days. Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands carved up Fortis, a big bancassurer; Britain nationalised Bradford & Bingley; Belgium, France and Luxembourg saved Dexia; and Iceland rescued Glitnir. Separately, Ireland took €400 billion of contingent liabilities onto the national balance sheet, when it stood behind the deposits and debts of its six large banks and building societies. You have to wonder what Mr Noyer regards as dramatic.

Why are the non-US banks so worried? Their market exposure is high. Effectively they have been lending more than they have.   Roughly $1.40 for each $1 of deposit compared to $0.96 to a $1 in the US.  Coupled with the white elephant - junk American securities - they bought, housing busts in their respective countries (UK, Ireland, Spain - to name a few) and lack of oxygen (credit) in the system, have left most banks reeling.  Mind you, its not just the west that is feeling the pain.  Strong ripples have wafted through Russia, China, Hong Kong and even, here, India.

Short-term cover money is only available at exorbitant rates.

This is leading to everyone hoarding cash: banks and business.  New products are being canceled or delayed; jobs are being pruned; credit exposure is highly marginalized and new construction is all, but, happening, and orgs are undertaking cost cutting.

All in all, seems like a depression is imminent - although, most are reluctant to admit this.

More than just trilateration ...

In the evolution of MobiPorter's solutions portfolio - the latest entrant announced is GPS.

How does GPS work?  Here's a nice explanation.

So, other than finding a location of your favorite car, or restaurant or something, what other types of solutions could GPS factor in?

Here's a partial list - some collated and some original ideas.

GPS family of solutions
-- Tour / audio guides
-- Treasure hunt
-- Logistics co-ordination / asset location / attendance systems
-- fleet management
-- early and best response management systems
-- route-auditing -- see where someone has been
-- geo-coding / geo-tagging - e.g. highlight location of delivery of goods.
-- geo-fencing -- boundary management
-- route optimization
-- location-based advertising
-- location-based loyalty programs
-- crazy idea - point of sale solutions for a car -- literally driving away with a car!

eMarketing Intro

The 7C's of eMarketing

Am gonna doodle stuff on this. WIP.

Brick-n-mortar had 4 Ps - product, price, place, and promotion.  Old news.

eMarketing has 7Cs

Contract - goal: what will be your core USP

Content - what appears on the website and its hot-linked websites

Construction - how are you giving customers convenience? what's one-clickable and automated?

Community - site-to-user and user-to-user forums build grassroots loyalty

Concentration - targeting via online behavioral profiling

Convergence - how are you providing an interactive experience that leverage convergence of TV and the Net?

Commerce - monetization angle - direct to user or commission-based referrals based models?

The latest scourge of the online world ... (Market update - part 3)

... coming to a mobile near you.
Social Networking for mobile.

What are people doing?
Honestly - nothing much. At least in the west.
- update blogs - bah - who wants to type so much?!
- view friends' blog - ok - passive activity
- manage photo captions - barely interactive
- send and receive message - sigh ... 'sms'
- edit profile - how many times is THAT gonna happen
- status/mood - i'm happy, i'm sad, i'm busy, .... damn it, I'm bored!
- check your inbox - useful - but largely a RIM-recipe - ref: MobiPorter's @Mail solution - if you don't want to support RIM
- send email - wow!
- upload pictures to your favorite social network site - ok
- build sites - ho hum
- send greetings - ok


Jamie raises an interesting observation - corollaries follow:
- instead of finding ways to break the "walled garden", they are essentially creating "gardens of disdain"
- people have no real idea what will compel people to live off the medium
- none of the current players really have any idea about the future of social networking
- their respective "(g)rand (u)nified (t)heories" are really nothing more than 21st century "snakeoil", largely designed to keep their investors doe-eyed. (the plumber deserves the credit for the g.u.t.-acronym)

Probably being politically incorrect, but if these guys really had their act together, they would be "driving" the next facebook, rather than waiting for get acquired by it.

Am not criticizing their business strategy, am questioning their commitment to a cause - from a product perspective.

Things that they SHOULD be doing -
building (eco)systems to support the "ad hoc" and the "ad nauseum" (control freaks)
-- ad hoc stuff
-- hey (all), lets go to this new place that opened and do a bash / do a group movie / poker at Joe's tonight
-- take me to where my friend is hanging out
-- take me to where my friend isn't
-- send all my friends - the directions to the party along with a custom invite to let them through the door
-- group karaoke / counselling / disc
-- interactive gaming
... you get the idea

Advertising is leading the monetization angle in most cases.

for the "ad nauseum"
-- allow them to track stuff - fleet management
-- email and app-based alerts
-- branding - and sharing -
-- polling to find out where to go / hang out / eat / sleep / drink / whatever

in general, start looking at
-- location based updates (use: X-Forwarded-For header) -- these guys really seem to have a great pulse on this
-- recommend a nearby restaurant / a nearby bar/pub
-- recommend a nearby event - based on my facebook/social demographic
-- feedback systems
-- permission-based advertising
-- video streaming

Key take-aways.  Build an ecosystem.  Live a cause.   Pepper it with value.  You can't go wrong.

Key tech drivers, at this point:
- no single silver bullet - sms, wap, video, gps -
- look at "enterprise" level solutions, rather than stand-alone

DSLR and to UV or not to UV?

Am contemplating buying a camera. A friend suggested the Nikon D40.

Which, all things considered, this seems like a good entry-level choice at its price point.   Something that suits me to a 'T'.   Started doing some research and ran into the whole - "UV filter" disc.

Essentially, I've come to the conclusion that for dslr's, one is not needed.   Some reviews, including this one kind of made things abundantly clear.

Cheese!

Market data - part 2.1

A short note:

A recent report from ComScore outlines a couple of interesting facts.  Illustratively, its says - US 3G user base grew 80% over last year as compared to 47% to Western Europe!

Secondly. amid all the hype of "we love 3G", and the sharing of matching percentages (28.4 & 28.3, respectively) the fact that was hush-hush'd for the non-esoteric was, the Western Europe user base is *twice* that of US.  I would think its harder to maintain a percentage as the user base grows especially over a medium lacking a "killer app".

A major pain in the ....

Here are some of the major pain points associated with Mobile solutions, today:

* User demographic is highly concentrated on lazy 15-35 yr olds.
   - Highest participating group: 15-25 yrs
   - Very limited success with 35+
   - Usage tends to be highly sporadic and fragmented, yet habitual
   - 9 out of 10 users NEVER download apps
   - most view it as a social / collaborative tool
   - SMS is accepted as long as its costs are reasonable.

* Mobile Search / Advertising
   - web surfers population can only grow
   - WAP sites can only grow
   - ROI for mobile advertising is still low
   - Discovery is a headache and Entry is painful
   - High entry barrier.  Solutions driven by back-to-back agreements between content provider / solution provider / carrier.  Initial investment/cost of rollout is high.

* Mobile Web
   - Whose wap'ing? 1 out of 3 mobile users.  Phones need to become "like email": push/pull; async; attitude; productivity tool, rather than a "play thing".
   - Voice-2-Text is really needed!

* Mobile Applications / TV / Video
   - Solutions don't come cheap.  Refer Advertising above.
   - Small players have limited windows of opportunity; unless they are a one-stop shop, provide Adult content or a major content studio
   - Having said that, there is a strong case for "Wayne's World or Trekker" types to be come successful.  Those that leverage and focus exclusively on established "pockets" of interest.

* Mobile Games
   - WAP versions have some ground to cover.

Fortunately, MobiPorter's solutions can help you in almost all aspects.  Contact us today!

The law of averages & best practices ...

a satire ...

Market data - part 2

Mashup of various data nuggets scrounged up from the net:


Here's what's drawing people on cellphones - across various countries. 

• "Picasso", music, and sms ads largely with accessing info/news via browser being 4th across the board


• in US, music actually dropped some notches - which is quite strange given the size of that market!


• Sms ads seem to a phenom in most countries esp. France. Expect that to evolve with time

I get the distinct feeling that most people there are not content with the options being provided to them.   Ergo, the low adoption and acceptance rates, 'cept for a few things like music and photo sharing.  It would help to learn something from the Japanese.

Moving on.  There seems to be a slowdown in the mobile growth in US.  That was expected.  More interestingly, the mobile internet penetration there is about 15.6%. India with close to 300 mln mobile users - is roughly at 1.8%. Report.  And here's what they are doing on
it compared to their friends across the ocean.

The Indian mobile user base is expected to hit 600 mln by 2011 - that's roughly doubling in 2 yrs time!  Very few markets which have such a growth trajectory.  An exciting place to be in the mobile space, for sure!

Wireless subscriber growth is slowing due to market saturation, with US carriers adding only 26 mln new subscribers in the next five years to reach 266 mln in 2013. Adoption by teens and young adults will become nearly ubiquitous as the majority of the demographic already have cell phones, and 31% of parents with children ages 10 to 12 reported that their children also have cell phones, according to Jupiter Research

Trak.in has an article on the most popular mobile sites in India.  I find it a little dubious.  I don't think there is a full disclosure on how they collected and collated this info.  Half of these sites are not used by anyone I know.   Maybe I'm just outside the demographic.

CIOL reports that - The emerging trends of VAS in India show that growth is coming from the bottom of the pyramid with low end users (with about 59%, 175 mln). Hi-end users number roughly 7 mln (~2%).

The report also went on to say, that pre-paid mobile users are the main target of ads.  Another reason to switch to post-paid!

Lastly, as John Chambers has been famously quoted - the shift is going to move from "You to Us".  Expect - advertising, payment and social networking to be at the forefront of the mobile growth horizon.

More later ...

WAP and games?

That's right! WAP & games! And it makes perfect sense.

And the leader in WAP development in India continues its innovative approach by extending its portfolio to include WAP games!

What's so great about WAP games?  Here's some key points:
1. No firmware limitations
2. Bye bye - 1.4k deck and 160 character SMS limits
3. So long, long development cycles
4. Welcome - shorter development and release cycles
5. Certifications take on a whole new meaning
6. Costs are more manageable

The down side:
- Limited color options
- Limited color/bit depth
- Lack of an event-driven environment
- Limited programming options
- Unable to support effective "board" style play

How does it work
1. User requests URL; Phone connects to nearest tower
2. Tower passes request to WAP gateway
3. Gateway decodes, passes result to server @ URL (HTTP call)
4. Server processes request - returns data to gateway
5. Gateway may encode, passes data to phone
6. Phone displays

Other than this, have put together some key considerations that one should keep in mind:
- Majority of the action shifts to the server-side, so be careful w.r.t:

• server-side performance


• (server side) resource management


• session management


• keep each user footprint small

- User dynamics

• expect users sessions to be fragmented - each spurt < 5 min


• total game lenght should be < 10 min


• must-have: high persistence - ability to pause/resume frequently


• keep it simple


• variable display sizes from - 100 by 100 pixels, 1-bit graphics and lack of on-board processing


• users despise entering text


• entering URLs is a big pain!


• maximize URL-link menus

- There has to be a clear value proposition: as people are paying by data transfer
- Consider incorporating Location-based features
- Consider re-playability aspect

What types of games as suited for this format?
- turn-based, non-board games

• trivia


• role-playing


• gameshows


• text adventures


• non-board based strategy games

Other ideas include:
- stock trading or financial competitions and fantasy sports contests - something like ESPN Super Selector.

Proximity-playing - the bluetooth angle:
- expect single player, but be ready to offer - "nearby" players to join - proximity-multi-playing.

Using a Content Adaptation server, such as the one provided by MobiPorter, can easily extend the game across a plethora of handsets with minimum maintenance overhead while maintaining quality.

Gotcha's
- avoid select lists
- avoid soft buttons and tables
- Cookies are not always available, so use url encoding
- avoid imagemaps and unnecessary network traffic

Arguably, the main format for games in North America. Accepted in Europe. With the emergence of level4 browsers, expect the space to really start heating up!

Market Data - Japan

Came across some interesting mobile market data.

Am jotting/sharing -

Ref URL:

Excerpts below:

The mobile business in the walled garden of the carriers grew by
23% in 2007 to 10 billion dollars, according to a report
released by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications in July. However, the garden is getting very
crowded - there were more than 16 thousand mobile sites listed
on the carrier decks offered by 4,300 companies.

Mobile content sales accounted for about 4 billion dollars of
which 1.5 billion was spent on music. Due to the introduction
of flat data rate plans by the carriers, users do not have to
bother anymore about data usage, causing a shift to
consumption of rich contents. Downloads of full-length songs
reached 1 billion dollars, while the traditional ring tone
business fell 34% to 500 million dollars. Sales on e-books,
the fastest growing content, doubled last year to 200 million.
Popular genres are books about current TV dramas and movies,
mystery, comics, and history.

Mobile commerce is growing faster than the content business –
total revenues were about 6.5 billion dollars in 2007.
M-commerce is divided in three categories: shopping, services,
and transactions. Services - including sales of concert tickets,
hotel and restaurant reservations, airline and train tickets –
grew by 41% to 250 million dollars. The size of the mobile
advertising and promotion market was 550 million dollars in
2007.

Like on the PC, the search on mobile phones is a battle between
Google and Yahoo! Contrary to the PC world, MMD Labs, a market
research firm, found that Google Mobile is number two in the
Japanese market with a share of 52.5%, while 74.9% frequently
uses Yahoo Mobile. Most popular search categories are artists
and comedians, music, and vocabulary. Almost 40% of all
searches are for multiple key words.

A recent user panel survey by Net Asia revealed that
26% is watching mobile TV. It is not clear how the business
model around OneSeg will be defined

Chinese democracy and the Day that never comes

Something completely not-related to Mobiles.

Someone gave me copies of the leaked upcoming GnR album - Chinese Democracy.


Feedback - they are trying hard, trying new stuff, yet trying to stay true. However, they seem to have lost the magic. Average songs, mashed-up rhythms and off-key singing / or at least its not blending into the song (or vice versa).

Overall: For a band that's been trying to release an album for almost a decade and-a-half costing as many millions of dollars - it was disappointing. Nowadays, GnR is shooting blanks. Just, stay away.


Onto - part 2.


The other thing I received was a copy of The Day that Never Comes - off Death Magnetic from the band that doesn't believe in brevity when it come to song titles (almost as bad as Meatloaf)

The video at Leeds, Aug 22:


The song starts off a little strange - but the rhythm and beat stay true and for a long song - its needed - otherwise, one would think its a complete jigsaw of melodies.

There is the occasional interlude that seems out of place, but that's par for the course with these guys.

Solo's are back! Although with this song - it wasn't that great, but not complaining.

The great thing about this band and their music is that you can always feel the energy coming out of the song (provided you listen to this genre). And that is true with this song.

The lyrics are ok.

The song really kicks in from the bridge and really gets going (sounding like the band of old) and ends on a high.

Overall: If this is a precursor to the rest of the album, i'd say, for once, believe the hype!

Other songs off the album include: Cyanide, My Apocalypse, and of course continuing the angst series, The Unforgiven III

New joinee induction

Apparently, we have a new joinee in our company.

Time to indoctrinate (warning - extremely corny and cheesy bit follows):


May you WAP forever,
Be the bane of j2me!
J2me, shall your phone blight!
Let your warcry be heard far and wide - X H T M L - MP!
Graceful shall be your bandwidth consumption
extended your battery life be.


Chorus:
"Joie de vivre ... "

Mobile / VAS data - Part 1

One of the crazy things about India, is how everyone wants to be information hog! Its just amazing how insecure and petty people are with sharing information. Although I am not a proponent of "Information WANTS to be free"; I am a staunch supporter of the I-really-really-really-hate-information-hogs-who-hog-for-no-real-reason.". I am all for confidentiality, etc w.r.t. commercial enterprises, etc. but public and for-public institutions being like that, really gets my goat, so to speak. But that is a topic for another post. Not this one.

In an effort to start collect, collate and consolidate market data, I am going on start making a collection of market data that I am able to slurp, peppered with some of my thoughts.

Starting off:
market research report

which leads to believe:
-- That mobile subscriptions at almost a 19x multiple over all Internet/Broadband subs. 24x if you just compare against Internet.
-- I wonder how close mobile penetration figures tally with those of TV and cable ?
think mobi-TV ! :p
-- WAP is an untapped market! Largely, because of cost, hungry telcos and lack of infra by telecom providers.
Less than in 1 in 12 people use VAS. I would wager that's largely due to the SMS bombing that happens.
-- 6.1m GPRS users. That's like 3% of the overall user base! The optimist in me, screams - Growth opportunity! ;)

Mobile pundit has some interesting facts in its article. Reproducing an excerpt here:

" ...
Indian Idol got more than 55 million votes via SMS between Nov 04 to Mar 05. At Rs 3 per SMS, that is Rs 16.5 crore (Rs 165 million). The telecom companies made Rs 11.5 crore (Rs 115 million), and Sony about Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million).

Radio Mirchi gets 40,000-45,000 SMSes a day.

Indian music industry got about Rs 140 crore (Rs 1.40 billion) or 20% of its legitimate revenues from mobile music in 2005.

Shridhar Subramaniam, MD, Sony-BMG says a hit film can generate Rs 1-1.2 crore - about 5% of an album’s sale on mobile revenues. Its big mobile hit of the year is Rang De Basanti.

Saregama makes half its money on ringtones through its catalogue. It “sells nothing but ringtones. With new releases, we have the rights to images and wallpapers”, says Sarkar.

The big media firms — Star, Sony and BCCL, among others — have set up entire divisions for mobile entertainment.

Star CEO Peter Mukerjea has maintained that mobile telephony should eventually bring in 30% of the company’s revenues. And Sony will set up its own backend for digital downloads this year. ..."

Two more ... 1 here ...

Currently, the Indian market is split roughly at 60:30:10 between mobile operators, media companies and aggregators. Mobile operators argue that they make the investment and control the consumer, so they should keep a lion’s share of the mobile data pie.

and lastly ...

India has one of the lowest spectrum allocation per GSM operator in the world, about 6 Mhz against, over 25 in the UK or over 20 in China.

Just 15-20% of the phones in India have colour screens and/or cameras.

The revenues from VAS sector in India have been growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent and is likely to grow at a faster pace in the coming few years ...

Another useful data link

Revenue share between telcos & content providers / aggregators is 70:30, substantially more skewed in favor of telco than in other countries - further aggravated by lack of payment mechanisms.

That's enough to chew on for a bit. Will add more later.

A little history and a peek forward

This blog is supposed to focus on my rants/raves/general focus around the mobile/wap world.  Am working at the leading WAP solutions company in India, MobiPorter.  At MobiPorter, we are trying to help organizations who are currently "on-line" in terms of web-based, leverage the enormous potential of the mobile platform.  We are experts at mobify-ing anything and across technologies.  Simply put, we help put the net on the third-screen.

Some of the recent developments in the whole mobile world has started a snowball effect.  Initially, all mobile development used to be done either via C++ or J2ME apps (largely client side with a massive certification and maintenance headache involved.  The other option: was to create applications in WML - the Wireless Markup Language.  This wasn't a feature-rich language, but it did provide a small smattering of "html"-like options and then some.  However, the key thing, here was that WML is not HTML.  And, unfortunately, couldn't be translated into HTML, either (never the twain shall meet-types).  So, the bridge between the two worlds (the online/Web) and the mobile seemed non-existent. No joy!

But don't abandon hope just yet!  Along came a knight.  And that knight was: XHTML-MP! More details can be found in my whitepaper.
 
But, was this really the silver bullet?   In many and important aspects, the answer is a 'Yes'.  However, there were some casualties.  WML veterans would still be griping over them. 
These included the following:

1. XHTML MP does not support decks and cards

2. XHTML MP does not support timers

3. XHTML MP does not support events (bummer!)
   

4. XHTML MP does not support variables (ouch!)
   

5. XHTML MP does not support client-side scripting (ugh!)
   

6. XHTML MP does not support programmable softkeys (pain!)
   

7. XHTML MP does not support the tag

8. XHTML MP does not support the format attribute for input fields

9. XHTML MP does not support posting of data with anchor links

So, while some of the above were "acceptable" losses. Some clearly weren't! It did push the WAP phenom back a bit.

But lo! There is hope at the horizon.

With the advent of Level-4 browsers in most smartphones today (expect them to hit mass-market in the next 12-18 months), most of the above issues are bound to be confined to the annals of history.

So, exactly what is a Level 4 browser? If you haven't heard of that term either, relax, you are not alone.  Its a PIB!  It tries to identify those browsers that are HTML 4 compliant.  Currently, most are either 3.2 or lower (depending on your make, model and firmware).

So, will that solve the woes of the web world? Will this be the silver bullet? Will one finally be able to 'write-one and run-EVERYwhere'? Will everything be just an interface or a translation away?
Is Business Process Management truly possible?

Hardly! (But since when did that stop the "P. T. Barnums of the world" from trying ... ;) )

But it will nevertheless be a huge step towards helping the online world embrace the mobile one. One of the products we are developing at MobiPorter, is a catalyst to help organizations leverage all that is on offer today, and some of what's coming in tomorrow - to allow them to maximize their investments and leverage technology is a truly enabling manner (rather than 're-inventing the wheel').

After all, the future IS mobile! (for now, at least! ;) )

P.S. if you notice carefully, some of the links provided are actually wap-friendly... aren't I clever .... heh heh :p

A brand new day ....

Hi, Am a Thirty-something Software Professional. Based out of Delhi/NCR. This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer (past or present).

So, blogging is something I am starting off now. Its a new experience. Don't know how much I will like, want to do it, will feel comfortable with it or even if its stuff that I want to jot or remember down the line. But here goes, besides, its better to try and reject, than not try at all (at least with the non-life-threatening or "principle-safe" things).

Could I have started blogging earlier? Yes.
Why didn't I? Partly not really excited/thrilled with the whole blog-idea and secondly, I don't really want to start something I don't want to continue.

So, why now? Well, I have been wanting to pen my thoughts down for a while. Wasn't sure if a blog, especially a public-facing one would have been the best forum for it and also wasn't sure what I wanted to write about regularly. So, what's changed? For one, a few friends and I have launched a company in the mobile & software development space here in India. Secondly, am using this as a forum to share it with all of you. Thirdly, I expect things to start getting a little crazy over the next 12-18 months. So, thought this would an interesting way to doc it out. I do plan to be regular.

Those were the primary reasons. Did have a couple others.

However, as I started thinking and thinking and thunking ... I started bouncing, scraping, bumping, jostling, jumping, grinding, rubbing and tossing against all kinds of ideas. Secondly, I was trying to assimilate lots of information, but not really regurgitating it (to make sure that I really understood it) and lastly, I started developing this weird notion, that I was loosing my touch with prose. The last part's probably already happened. ;)

The last thing is that i would probably look at this as a medium to get away from the JD Salinger'ish type of prose that affects most of the bloggerati today. Funny, irreverent, easy-to-read, and probably far something that most are comfortable with. I have nothing against all these points. However, personally, I would like to try my hand with different styles. For me, that would part of the fun of this whole adventure. Otherwise, it would become too one-dimensional (at least from one perspective). The day is young, so who knows ...

To summarize: go visit MobiPorter, that's my company. We aim to be the leader in WAP and Video Streaming Solutions in India.

Cheers,