Mobile & Wireless Roundup - Innovation & Industry News

UBIK, a Volantis owned company, has now gone into Open Beta with its tool to create mobile web sites.

Tagged “Get Mobile Now”, it allows users to create full mobile web sites using their interactive interface. With lots of templates styles to choose from, all the user has to do is add pages, insert text, and upload images, in order to have a mobile presence.

Two interesting features that have been included, are the ability to make donations and payments through PayPal, and also the ability to upload photos directly from your mobile phone using MMS

Although the service offers a very Web 2.0 look and feel, the actual functionality of the site could be improved vastly to appeal to the likes of Bloggers and Content Owners. Enabling a simple RSS feed option to read in existing content from blogs and other content sources such as Flickr. Other functionality, that although simple, should be incorportated, to make more use of the properties of accessing the site on a mobile. For example, send a SMS/MMS using the smsto and mms to functionality (if device supported).

Compared to the likes of site.mobi (powered by mobisitegalore) this offers the user a more visually attractive user experience, with a greater variety of templates. The WYSIWYG interface for UBIK is clean and fast, and makes the most out of AJAX capabilities. Whereas, the templates on site.mobi looks very Microsoft Publisher 97.

This round goes to UBIK, but I hope that the additional functionality will make it into the final product. At the moment, UBIK are aiming at people who want simple static sites, and by the looks of it from the templates, at individuals who wish to have a mobile presence (is this the right market to be targeting?)

Visit my landing page at m.ubik.net

Last week saw the launch of Wireless Box Office on the Rogers portal in Canada in collaboration with Live Nation. The service is available to all Rogers Subscribers. If you purchase your tickets through your mobile, you will also be given VIP treatment and own entrance to skip the line ups.

Users can now purchase tickets to major gigs and concerts across Canada through the Mobile Web. The service makes use of 2D barcodes which will get delivered via MMS. These then get scanned at the event.

With Wireless Box Office™ you can now browse and purchase concert tickets directly from your Rogers wireless phone! Anytime… anywhere.

Rogers Wireless Box Office allows you instant access to the best Live Nation concerts across Canada through Live Nation Member Ticketing (Live Nation Tickets).

You’ll always be upfront for all the action with the Roger’s exclusive group of preferred Live Nation Tickets, only available from the Wireless Box Office and only from Rogers!

To purchase tickets…

This campaign is aiming big, and Rogers are really trying to make an impact on the mobile industry in Canada. I have seen full page newspaper ad to generate interest.

However, I did note one vitally missing element to the newspaper article. Most newspapers are thumbed through on the daily commute, and cafes. The “call to action” on the newspaper is directing the user to the website: http://rogers.com/URTicket and not making use of the readers current situation, where they do not have computer access, but have their mobile phone, which is the main emphasis of the project, sitting in their pocket, idle.

Anyways, this has been seen as a ground breaking product in the Canadian industry,its a first for full ticket purchase using the Mobile Web. Lets hope Rogers keep up their innovative mind set, and allow future products of similar innovation to come to Canada.

Tricia Duryee over at MoCo news published an informative article on the two companies strategies for the mobile web.

I’d have to agree more on Yahoo’s strategy on the mobile web, than on Apple’s, which seems to be take the internet as it is, and make it available to consumers. Yahoo’s approach to take elements of the internet, pieces of information that users actually care about when on the move and need quick access to it, and present it in a mobile friendly way. The concern I have about Yahoo’s strategy is that Yahoo! Go is Java based, and therefore suffers from the fragmentation issues that are inherent with J2ME apps.

It would be interesting to see how far their widgets will extend, and hope that we will soon see browser based widgets making the most of the devices capabilities.

If transcoding is to become the “norm” which i sincerely hope not, then i hope that new transocoding intelligence will be included.
- Check for microformats to see if the developer has specified their menu structure, the content, and any other standard page feature, instead of guess work.
- If RSS or other feed is available, use this to generate the page instead of transcoding
- Check all the variants on mobile sites to see if they reply with appropriate mobile content (m. .mobi wap. mobile. /mobile etc..)
- Give the user the option if they wish to have a transcoded site (not “optimized” as currently pushed to users) or for the mobile site (if found)
- Pass through of “User-Agent” to allow for the website to decide if it wants to provide mobile content or not. Do not use a non-standard user-agent which causes developers headaches to apply new rules.

Lets see how it goes…

The point Sarin made about “the new-new thing is internet on the mobile” struck me as flawed. I am apposed the the one web principle. Mobile needs to be considered as a seperate entity to the internet. Just like newspapers, television and radio are for delivery services to the user. The Web has been implemented for computers. Sure, certain aspects of the Web wil benefit Mobile, but to simply say, “Internet on mobile” is not a good message to be sending to developers.
Designing a “one web” will lead to various problems:
- Developers making sacrifices in innovation in order to achieve compatibility.
- Developers relying on transcoding tools to take their web site and make it mobile
Both of these problems will lead to poor user experience, and not show the user the true potential of the MOBILE WEB.
Mobiles are designed to be mobile and in your pocket, Computers are designed to be on your desk and at home or office.
When will the industry wake up to these facts, and encourage companies to do more about promotion of innovation. Don’t take your website, and translate to mobile, think out of the box, and see how the meanings of the word mobile can translate to benefit to your company, and the solution that you are offering.
-Olaf-

Mozilla have produced some mockups of their ideas for their mobile browser.
http://dougt.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/we-want-you-proto-mobile-uis-posted/
There is a Firefox plugin so you can simulate the browser designed for non-touch screens at:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/UI/Designs/NonTouchScreen
https://people.mozilla.com/~blassey/spbrowser.xpi

I’ve been waiting for a Mozilla implementation of a mobile browser, and from what I have seen on the screen shots I am disappointed to see that they have gone down the route of following w3c’s 1 web approach. Horizontal scroll, long pages, and huge download sizes will not appease the user. In order for mobile web to improve, people must develop another version, as PC based and Mobile based have totally different user requirements.
Research needs to be taken up on how to identify a mobile edition of a site, and giving the user the choice. Instead of relying on their input of URL and also third party transcode solutions which in my opinion do a very poor job at moment.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Mobileweb, mozilla, browser

Volantis have just announced their intention to go open source with their “Volantis Mobility Server” opening the product to the wider development community. The Open Source licence will be released in Q1 2008, but is available for free download now.

Will this create the drive for innovation in the mobile web industry?

Full press release can be found here:
http://www.volantis.com/news/press-releases/20071113.php

Get your free download and developer community account here:
http://community.volantis.com/

Lets get creating innovative products that the industry has been lacking, and really push forward the presence of made for mobile websites instead of relying on transcoding solutions such as Google and Novarra’s Vodafone solution.

Quote from telecomskorea.com

Requires a paid subscription to read..

Tags: SouthKorea, Mobile Internet

A few people have recently questioned the need consider WML when developing mobile web services. As the device market creeps up a few notches since the birth of WAP, traditional PC based web standards have been adopted by mobile browsers in order to make development easier, and compatibility greater.

Mobile technologies are being deployed at a rapid rate, and hence drives users to upgrade their handsets more frequently. With carriers and retail stores offering substantial subsidies. This in turn is driving the “average” technology on the device up.

On this basis, will be see WML become a legacy language? Well this all depends on target audience of your mobile web service. Generally, mobile web sites fit into one of the following categories:

• Information Portal
  • News
  • Sport
  • RSS Feed
  • etc
• Communication
  • Email
  • IM
  • Social Networks
• Entertainment
  • Ringtones and Mobile Content Downloads
  • Streaming Content
• Research
  • Auction Sites
  • Shopping

You will then need to consider the types of users that own the varieties of handsets. Here is a typical case for each handset type:

• Black and White (WML)
  • Older generations who use the phones for emergency purposes. Just to make and receive calls and send occasional text messages

• Basic Colour (WML)
  • Young children who want to use a mobile phone to “fit-in” at school, and show off their ringtones and pictures.

• Advanced Colour (XHTML-MP)
  • Usually used by the age group 16-40, who see their phones as an important means of communication and also as a style accessory.

• Smartphones (HTML/XHTML)
  • Business users and early adopters tend to use this class. Communication, applications and mobile web are the most important features of this phone

From this basis, you can see that the users that are likely to be experimenting with web applications are those that have XHTML capable devices. Using it mainly for “Communications”, “Information Portal” and “Research”. Colour WML devices are in abundance with the younger age group, as they are affordable, and tend to have gimmicks to tempt the users in. In conjunction with this, these users are also more likely to be drawn in and spend their “pocket money” on ringtones, JAVA games, and wallpapers which promote their favorite band, or movie stars. Black and white devices will hardly be used for these services. The user does not expect to see a web solution on their phone, and are more likely to use their PC for email communication and keeping in touch with relatives.

So, to summarise, depending on the type of solution you are providing, WML should be approached in different ways. Information, research and communication type services can provide a basic WML legacy site. This means that the minority of basic devices that will use these services are not rejected. Innovational services should be focused on user groups that will see the benefit. With content delivery solutions, basic colour devices can be seen as the most important user group, and hence WML should be carefully implemented, ensuring that the content is quick and easy to find. That said, the majority of content requests will not come through a WAP portal, bu more likely through an alternative channel such as reverse billed SMS and WAP push of the content item.

It is however, still vitally important not to over estimate the capabilities of mobile browsers. For example, the SonyEricsson T290i and T610, both are capable of XHTML, however, they render it very poorly, and a more compelling user experience can be delivered through WML markup.

This has been based on the mobile market in Europe, USA, Japan and Korea, where mobile communications have flourished. In developing regions, a different approach will need to be angled. See  http://www.wirelessroundup.com/2007/10/06/emerging-markets-how-to-approach/

Not too far in the distant future we will see the lower segment of the device market, improving further, and the need for WML support will diminish further, but in the meantime, its not over just yet.

As everyone is trying to predict the next killer application for mobile, I thought i’d throw in my opinion.

At the W2Forum Launch party in Soho, London, I was asked on several occasions what I thought would become the next success in the mobile industry.

The mobile content market is ever evolving, and new pricing strategies, and content services are being exploited on a regular basis, and there currently seems to be no let-up in its growth of innovation and youth attraction. One of the main drivers of content, is the “All you can eat” data packages, which for a set monthly fee, you can download an unlimited (Yeah Right! 250MB on O2 for example) amount of data per month. But even through this “unlimited” offering is always truly unlimited, content should always be “made for mobile” ensuring that the best CODECs and compression ratios are used for the mobile device, therefor reducing the data download requirements.

The mobile content industry has been seen as a very lucrative market, and has had its share of bad press with companies like Jamba offering subscription services when a user tries to download a single ringtone, charging them every week without notice. But recently, this has been cleaned up, and the companies must make it very clear now that they are offering a subscription and not a single download. But none the less, this relatively new revenue stream has attracted thousands of companies to offer premium content to mobile.

Definition - Premium Content: An item that is viewed by the end user after making a payment. This content item can be a Ringtone, Video, Wallpaper, Horoscope, Joke, News Subscription, etc..

As there are so many companies now offering these services to mobile, the user now faces too much choice. Where will the user go to find “Strawberry Fields by the Beatles” as a ringtone? The first place i guess they will look is their carriers portal, and then if they cannot find it there, they will give up.

Solution
A product like Google’s Froogle or Kelkoo, which offers price comparison can be utilised. With a database of all the mobile content storefronts, a user can perform a search for the content item they are looking for, and a list of variants will be returned. This will give the user the chance to find not only the cheapest, but also related content items (wallpaper, or other ringtones), and special offers.

The problem that such a solution will currently face, is the on-portal content that is only available through the carriers network. This, however can have a benefit to the carrier, as it can promote content items to other carriers customers which may encourage the user to switch. Another problem with many mobile storefront solutions is that they perform “on the fly” transcoding, adapting the mobile content to the users device after they have requested it, so the resulting content item can not be guaranteed. The final issue, which I hope will be addressed by store front and CMS solutions, is that they should provide a query feed in RSS or ATOM, that allows search engines to query the content store, and get returned an XML results page.

Benefits
This will provide a way for the content providers to promote their content, and with some business cases, they could also “pay their way” to increase their search rankings.

Affiliation programs will help to create further revenue streams