Planet Mobile Web

Version 0.8.6 of twibble mobile allows you to define text templates you can easily add to a tweet without re-typing. This could be tags (”#web20expoberlin”, “#current”), Locations (”L:San Francisco:”) or any other phrases you use often (”Good Morning Tweethearts, you Princes of Twitter, you Kings of the Web!!!” by courtesy of @PickiHH Should save you a lot of typing on your little tiny phone keyboard.
It also fixes some bugs most notably twibble shouldn’t steal focus any more when running in the background. The joystick left/right buttons are now assigned to page up/down and [8] or [h] puts twibble in background.

Many of the recent announcements in the desktop browsers world have been focusing around how this or that browser improved performance-wise, in particular in their Javascript engine: Mozilla's TraceMonkey, Google Chrome's v8 engine, Webkit's Squirrelfish, etc.

And these claims are generally supported by results of getting these engines through a variety of performance test suites. These include:

• Sun Spider, developed originally for WebKit, focused on the core Javascript language;
• Dromaeo, Mozilla's selection of SunSpider tests, wrapped in a harness that allows to record results;
• DHTML benkmarks that focus on the speed of animation allowed by the Javascript engine: bouncing balls and sliding squares;
• the performance test developed for V8, the engine behind Google Chrome;
• Opera 9.5 performance tests, focusing on ECMAscript and DOM manipulations;
• a test on image manipulation in the browser;
• the SlickSpeed Selectors test that compares performance of some well-known operations across various Javascript frameworks.

All these tests certainly provide a lot of incentives for desktop browsers vendors to compete on performance.

But do they help in the mobile world?

Unfortunately, most of these tests are so CPU, network and memory intensive that they are mostly useless on most mobile browsers, even on fairly recent devices, as the Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group discovered by running them on a sample of browsers/devices.

The Test Suites Working Group is considering providing more mobile-friendly versions of these test suites as a result, but before we put any resources into this, we are looking for feedback on:

• whether this would be a useful service, esp. to browser vendors, and mobile web advocates,
• whether anyone has already started such an effort, either as part of one of the existing performance tests, or entirely separately.

Should you have any view on this, please comment below, or send your feedback to our mailing list (public-mwts@w3.org) or to me privately (dom@w3.org).

I've been using 1and1 shared hosting for about five years. Until last month it was great; fast, cheap, reliable and when I did have a problem it was fixed quickly, usually in less than an hour.

January thorough August this year I averaged 2 hours/month  downtime as measured by host-tracker.com.  That works out to 99.7% uptime which I consider pretty good for shared hosting.  Then things started to go downhill.  September saw nine hours of downtime and in the first six days this month WapReview.com has been down 22 hours.

Yeswap.com has fared even worse.  On Sept 20th both sites, which were on the same shared hosting package, started returning HTTP 500 errors approximately every other request.

1and1's explanation was that I was hitting their limit of 12 simultaneous processes.  This didn't sound right because my traffic today is half what it was in March when Chinese users discovered the HTML to WML transcoder on Yeswap.com and started to hit it with 50,000 requests a day, presumably to get around the "Great Firewall".  After a month of that, with the site handling the traffic with no signs of stress, Chinese traffic dropped overnight to about 50 requests per day.  I guessing that yeswap.com got blocked in China too.  Why am I hitting the limit now when I wasn't with 2X the traffic, I don't understand.  The only logical explanation is that the 12 process limit is new.

I tried to solve the problem by purchasing a second shared hosting package from 1and1 and moving yeswap.com to it. I figured that by isolating the WapReview blog traffic from yeswap.com, both sites would have more headroom and perform better.  At first, it seemed to work. I checked several times a day for a  couple of days and all seemed well.  Then I got sick and was unable to monitor the site for a while.  Last week I took a look at yeswap.com again and discovered that the dreaded error 500 was back and worse than ever.  The site varies from being completely down for hours on end to working approximately every other request.  1and1 has been "investigating" for 72 hours with no resolution or explanation.

I tend to believe that yeswap.com really is attempting to use more than 12 processes. 1and1's PHP implementation spawns a new process for every request so the limit translates to 12 simultaneous requests.  Yeswap gets a lot of requests, about 40,000 daily pageviews, but the pages are small, under 3KB, and most are pulled from a cache with no database access needed.

At this point I'm looking for recommendations for a new hosting service. 1and1 has become unreliable and  the tech support structure seems to have collapsed under the load. Issues which used to be resolved in a hour or less now go unanswered for days.

My requirements are PHP 4 or 5 and MySQL support and a monthly cost of $20 or less. The sites to be hosted are this WordPress blog which averages about 5500 daily PV's plus yeswap.com, a  high volume (40,000 daily PV's), but low bandwidth (no images, page size under 3KB) mobile web site.

I'm leaning toward Dreamhost's shared hosting based on the generally good reports I see about DH on the web and the fact that they claim not to limit the number processes and to have "flexible" limits on CPU utilization.  I'm also intrigued by Media Temple's Grid Server which sounds good on paper; a cluster of servers connected to a SAN with traffic continually load balanced to send requests to the the least loaded server.  It sounds like a smart architecture but I'm a little leery as I've  seem a number of complaints on web forums about excessive latency and database issues with the service.

So I'm looking to the lazy web here.  If you have any experience, good or bad with Dreamhost or Media Temple I love to hear from you.  Or if there's another other shared hosting provider you really like, please tell me about it.

Remember the $19.99/month unlimited MediaNet data add-on for AT&T's GoPhone Pay as You Go (PYG) plans that the carrier launched in April?  Well, it looks like the party is almost over. Phonenews.com has confirmed that the widely rumored demise of the plan is true.  November 11th or 12th is the last day that you will be able to purchase the feature. You can currently stack up to three $19.99 packages for 90 days of service. Assuming that that Nov 11 is the last day to buy the feature and that AT&T doesn't change the rules, it should be possible to keep the service active to Feb. 9th, 2009.

Why is AT&T doing this?  No one really knows for sure, but I lay the blame to the myth of "unlimited" wireless data.  Bandwidth on mobile networks is actually quite limited.   I believe that AT&T determined data availability on the network was being compromised because  too many people were using the package for tethering and with data cards.  Those uses are prohibited by the MediaNet TOS but the restriction is unenforceable given the anonymous nature of US  prepaid and GSM's easy swapping of SIM cards.  Sure the carrier could revoke a user's data privileges for tethering, but there is nothing to stop the user from buying  a new SIM on eBay and starting all over.  The option probably cut into AT&T's sales of $60/month for 5GB  data card plans, too.

If you look around the world, very few carriers offer unlimited data to prepaid users.  What they do offer and what is lacking in the US market are affordable megabyte data bundles.  Italy's WIND for example, has packages ranging from 244MB for €3.00 ($4.14) to 4.88GB for €30.00 ($41.40). That's between $0.008 and $.017 per megabyte.  In contrast the prices that ATT still offers PYG users are; ad hoc data at $.01 per KB ($10/MB) and 1MB and 5MB feature packs for  $5 ($5/MB) and $10 ($2/MB) respectively.  These are outrageous rates, between 100 and 1000 times what WIND charges for the same thing.

In the last 5 months I've used about 470MB of data on an N95 on a  GoPhone account at a cost of $99.95 ($0.21/MB).  This usage represents a couple hours of web surfing a day, almost all of it using Opera Mini which compresses pages to about 20% of normal size, plus a few videos (about an hour's worth of video over the entire 5 month period).  I don't own a laptop so I don't tether.  Using $10 feature packs this same level of usage would have cost a completely unacceptable $940 ($188/month)!

With the loss of unlimited MediaNet there are no longer any cost-effective prepaid data packages available on any major US GSM network.  T-Mobile does give prepaid users free unlimited access to a walled garden on seven sites, but there is no way to get access to the open internet on T-Mobile USA' prepaid plans.

The only GSM alternatives are "hybrid" plans. AT&T's Pick Your Plan hybrid option starts at $29.95/month for 200 minutes plus $19.95/month for unlimited data.  If you don't actually use 200 voice minutes a month there's a loophole that lets you get some of the money back after a year. A major drawback of Pick Your Plan for international travelers is that a  US credit or debit card or checking account is required.  I wonder if AT&T will accept one of these prepaid credit cards that are available at convenience stores? Probably not, but if anyone has done that please let us know in a comment.

T-Mobile's Flex Pay hybrid plan is another posibility at $30/month for 300 voice minutes plus $5.95 for proxied data with only ports 80 ( HTTP), 25 (SMTP), 993 (secure IMAP), 110 (POP) and 443 (HTTPS) available through the proxy or $19.95/month for open internet access plus free use of T-Mobile's 8900 WiFi hot spots.  No credit card is required for FlexPay, you can visit a T-Mobile store each month and make a cash payment

If you are willing to abandon GSM there are some more affordable options.  Verizon will sell you unlimited data  for $1/day (charged only on days used) on their Impulse prepaid plan.  Verizon can control data usage as, unlike GSM, CDMA doesn't use SIM cards. To change handsets you have to call CS or enter the new device's ESN on a web form.  Verizon will not allow you to switch to a datacard or even a smartphone on Impulse.  It is at least possible to hack some Verizon phones to allow tethering. This violates the TOS, of course, and could eventually get you device's ESN blacklisted

There's also Sprint's Boost Mobile iDEN prepaid which has a $10.50/unlimited Wireless Web option.  The downsides to Boost are the extremely limited iDEN phone selection and a glacially slow 19.2 Kps data rate.  All iDEN phones are tetherable out of the box and tethering is apparently allowed by the TOS,  but surfing at a fraction of dialup speeds is no fun at all.

I'll probably load up my Go Phone account with three months worth of unlimited data early in November, When that runs out, it's back to Boost.

What I'd really like to see AT&T do is to replace their present overpriced prepaid data plans with something reasonable, say 250MB for $5, 500MB for $10 and 1GB for $20.  These rates would be attractive for phone only browsing including streaming media but are signifigantly higher than the data card rate of $60 for 5GB to avoid hurting sales of that plan.  I honestly don't expect to see AT&T offering anything like that but it would be the smart thing to do in the long run, getting prepaid users hooked on affordable data for a nice boost in ARPU.

Hello from Budapest where I am attending the Mobile Marketing Association mobile advertising forum this week.

Ahead of the conference 15 or so of had dinner in central Budapest tonight and debated among other things the state of the mobile advertising market.

For those of us not here, the next best thing is this week’s carnival of the mobilists at Xellular identity.

Among the mobile advertising post s this week you will find

Scott from Mippin Blog debunks two myths regarding the US mobile internet penetration and mobile advertising.

London Calling brings presents a summary from a recent mobile advertising roundtable and also addresses some of the reasons why mobile advertising has been slow to take off.

Igor Faletski from MobScure shares some very interesting measures of sent SMSs by location which provides very interesting insights about the possible triggers for sending messages.

Head over to Xellular identity for the best in mobile this week.

This week’s host Xen Mendelsohn at Xellular introduces the Carnival an old tradition where the best mobile posts of the past week are linked from one blog. Well described Xen, and yes we are getting older, and better too.

This week’s host Xen Mendelsohn at Xellular introduces the Carnival an old tradition where the best mobile posts of the past week are linked from one blog. Well described Xen, and yes we are getting older, and better too.

The W3C Mobile Web Initiative is opening up a new session of its on-line training course on the Mobile Web Best Practices, starting October 13, for a duration of 5 weeks.

The course is free, but limited to 100 participants. Learn more about the course and register on-line.

This is a fascinating development which I am watching with interest - Music stars unite to seek control of their music under the featured artists coalition

As per the campaign of the featured artists coalition

>>>
Why change is needed

Featured Artists, those credited on recordings and who are the primary named performers, are responsible for the majority of income in the music industry. Their interests need to be properly represented.

Digital technology has transformed how we buy and listen to music. In doing so it has radically altered the economic relationship between artists and consumers, and the business world that operates between the two.

Navigating this new commercial reality is complicated. Issues range from the little known, little understood 'making available right', and the lost artist income arising from it, through to the wholesale distribution of large collections of copyrights by technology companies without fair compensation for artists.

The industry needs to change fundamentally to address these issues. Artists need an effective collective voice to represent them and have a real say in shaping the future of the industry.

A new approach.

Historically, many artists signed away control of their rights for long periods of time in agreements devised before the digital age when the music industry operated in a different cultural and economic climate. In the digital era there needs to be a new set of agreements that reflect the new ways music is consumed by fans.

The Featured Artists' Coalition will provide artists with a collective voice, guidance and advice on their rights and how best these should be exploited.

Artists are constantly exploring new ways of connecting with their fans. The laws and regulations governing intellectual property, and its administration, will evolve with the digital age. We want the interests of artists to be at the forefront of this transformation.

This is a major change and a very welcome one ..

Nokia's got a plan to sway a few potential iPhone buyers and it's called the 5800 Xpressmusic. With touch screen technology, the 5800 XpressMusic introduces the Media Bar, a drop down menu for access to music and entertainment such as tracks, videos and photos. With a single touch,...

Welcome to Found on the Mobile Web, a semi-regular feature at WapReview where we list, describe and link to sites recently added to the WapReview Mobile Directory and YesWap.mobi mobile portal.  With these latest additions the directory and portal now contain 1209 mobile sites.

In Search/Directions

wap.geocaching.com - Geo-caching is a sort of geek treasure hunt where players search for hidden caches using Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS).  The GPS coordinates of caches are published on the Internet.  Each cache is a hidden container enclosing small prizes and a logbook.  When a player finds a cache, he signs the logbook and takes a prize replacing it with an object of his own.  Geoching.com is the oldest and largest web resource for geo-cachers.  The mobile version lists caches with coordinates, hints and Google maps. There is also a virtual logbook function that lets you log success (or failure) in finding a particular cache.

In Portals/WAP

Oh! Mobile (oh.dirlink.mobi) - a fast growing mobile portal with over 1500 quality hand picked mobile links. Oh! does not accept adult or gambling sites.  Listings are organized into hierarchical categories and each includes a brief description of the site.  Oh! Mobile is quite similar in size and purpose to WapReview/YesWap but with a different mix of sites.

Toci Mobile (toci.mobi)  Another new mobile portal that covers all the bases: free ring tone downloads, song lyrics, phone reviews, music top 40 and other charts, chat rooms, forums and a news section focusing on entertainment and technology with a smattering of hard news.

m4u (m4u.mobi/n)  Another large mobile portal. m4u is an extensive list of mobile links grouped in broad categories like "Handy", "Tools" and "Popular".  You can also search by name or browse a more specific set of categories (click "Links" to find the category list).

The site is available in English and Dutch and carries links in both languages. Changing the interface language doesn't seem to filter the link list to include only sites in the selected language, an advantage only if you are bilingual.

The site also has an iPhone version at http://m4u.mobi/iPhone. The iPhone version also worked well with S60WebKit and Opera Mini but other than a larger font it doesn't seem to offer any extra features.

You are supposed to be able to  create your own list of favorite sites but this feature did not seem to work. After selecting "Edit #Favs" an "F" to add the link to your favorites is supposed to appear next to each listing. However I never saw the the "F" link.

Fonet (fonet.mobi)
Another large mobile portal with a lot of features.  Fonet combines a mobile web directory with a social network and a personal portal.  Social networking features include profile pages, friends list, messaging, groups and blogs.  The personalized portal provides users with an online phone book, to do list and their favorite  links and RSS feeds.

In News

Elections 2008 (google.com/m/html/elections08.html) Google has created this custom page of news and information on the 2008 US Presidential Election.  The site features links to Google News filtered to show election news, a preselected set of political feeds in Google Reader, links and click to call numbers for local voter registration information, pre-populated Google searches for "Obama" and "McCain" and a selection of YouTube videos from the candidates.

In News/International

Typically Spanish (typicallyspanish.com/mobile) The latest news from Spain.  National, regional and business stories arranged  by tag.

NineNews (m.ninenews.com.au) A new Australian national news site. NineNews covers international and national news, sports. finance, technology.  This site has lots of photos which are re-sized to fit the screen widths of various browsers. Still, the number of images pushes page weight over 40 KB resulting in slow page loads on GPRS networks and low end phones.

In Search/Traffic

BeatTheTraffic (beatthetraffic.mobi) One of the better US traffic US I've seen yet on the mobile web, especially in terms of number of covered cities and depth of information. It covers about 60 metropolitan areas with traffic maps. estimated travel times and delays for popular trips in each region and a list of current incidents. BeatTheTraffic offers a subscription service ($20/year, one week free trial) that adds SMS or email traffic alerts and the ability to add custom routes along with a number of other (non-mobile) features. The main downside of this site is that the maps are much larger than they need to be (500px wide and around 85 KB each) which means that they won't load in many mobile browsers.

In Business/News

The RetailBulletin, an online trade magazine for the US retail industry now has a mobile edition at retailbulletin.mobi. The site carries the full text of the last 30 or so items from the full web site. It's frequently updated with industry news of interest to retailers including financial results, M&A activity and sales figures. Small page size and text-only format makes the site usable, if a bit dull, on most any web capable handset. Source: Mobility.mobi.

As mentioned in my previous post, last week I spent a couple of days in South Korea’s capital, Seoul, for the Digital Leaders Forum at CHEIL Worldwide HQ (view the presentation I did on Mobile Digital Storytelling).

It is well-known that South Korea - together with Japan - has one of the most advanced mobile cultures in the world, it was thus a privilige to have a closer look on anything mobile there.

One of the first real mobile beahviour differences I noticed was that most people waiting for the bus in Seoul watch their mobie phone screens, opposed to having the device to their ears while in a phone conversation. People are totally immersed consuming digital media whenever possible on their mobile phones in Seoul.

Some statistics on South Korea’s mobile internet applications & services consumption usage. For more detailed staistics and insights, I recommend the Digital Korea book, authored by Tomi Ahonen & Jim O’Reilly.

- The country has 44.5 million mobile subscribers in total, or a 90.7% penetration rate (May 2008). MNO’s are SK Telecom (22.5 million subscribers), KTF (14 million subscribers) and LG Telecom (8 million subscribers).

- 63 percent of South Koreans make payments using their cell phones.

- Over 30 percent of South Korean students send over 100 text messages a day (source: Korea Times, February 9, 2006).

- Average amount of daily consumption of DMB digital TV on cell phones in South Korea was 129 minutes per day (source: MIC January 2007)

- Nearly 100% of South Koreans buy ringtones.

- Almost 80 percent of South Korea’s households have broadband access, fostering active online interactions.

- In 2006, 57 percent of South Korea’s music sales were digital

- 37 percent of South Koreans download cell phone games

- Naver is the most popular search portal in South Korea (also on the mobile phone). According to comScore, Naver received 2 billion queries in August 2007, accounting for over 70% of all search queries in Korea, and making it the fifth most used search engine in the world (!), following Google search, Yahoo!, Baidu, and MSN. Note that Google Inc. has recently snapped up South Korean blogging software company Tatter and Company (TNC) in a bid to expand the Internet search leader’s reach in Asia.

(image courtesy of LG Telecom)

Some of the apps/services that most surprised me are the Polygraph which is a mobile lie detector allowing South Korean girls to test if their boyfriends are telling them the truth about their where-abouts etc. Seems stupid but South Korean teenagers just love the service, wether you want to play with it or just take it serious…

Another interesting mobile service is the Navi Call Taxi Service. Calling a cab to specific number, and it knows where you are As to make the taxi experience more safe for young women, the service sends a text message to the parents and/or friends with the name and number of the taxi and its location. Ain’t that cool? Wondering when we get such a service over here in Europe and US.

You can view both services demonstrated and explained here below in a video produced by Andrew Berglund (Global Interactive Executive Creative Director at Cheil Worldwide) called “A Day in The Life of a Mobile Phone in Seoul” - An Interactive Exploration of Marketing Technology among the YMCs (Young-Minded Consumer) in South Korea.The video was originally shown in a workshop at Cannes Lions 2008.

The video gives a great overview and insight on mobile phone usage and behaviour of YMCs living in the modern digital metropolis of Seoul. How today’s youth consumer is making the mobile device an extension of his/her existence - utilising a wide spectrum of mobile services from video calls, SMS, MMS, vlogging/blogging, internet, mobile TV broadcast, digital multi-media broadcast, m (mobile)-commerce, m-banking, m-mags, m-movies and other dynamic multi-sensory social content.

 

You can view Part 1 soon here on YouTube’s  iCheil’s Channel.

The big question to me is how countries like South Korea and Japan, in let’s say 5 years from now, will be able to sustain their closed ecosystem model in a growing global mobile market heading towards an open ecosystem ecomomy with new industry players applying different business models to connect the physical world with the internet using the mobile phone.

They have the choice to become an isolated island in such an economy or open up and - why not - become an industry leader on a global scale using the knowledge and experience they have acquired from the sucessful mobile applications and services models they have applied in their home countries.

Here’s my Flickr set of my trip to Seoul.

For my Korean readers, there’s an interview with me in the Maeil Business Newspaper.

모바일을 모르면 돈 벌수 없는 시대가 온다

세계적 모바일마케팅 전문가 루디 드웨일 사장 “PC시대는 저물어 가고 있어”

a day in the life, Analysis, cell phone, cheil, convergence, digital korea, dotopen, innovation, korea, lbs, location based, Mobile Apps, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile phone, mtrends, rudydewaele, samsung, seoul, south korea, Trends, worldwidea day in the life, Analysis, cell phone, cheil, convergence, digital korea, dotopen, innovation, korea, lbs, location based, Mobile Apps, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile phone, mtrends, rudydewaele, samsung, seoul, south korea, Trends, worldwide

The first Android phone will be announced by Google and T-Mobile tomorrow, September 23 at 10:30 AM Eastern time in New York City.  The phone itself is the HTC Dream branded as a T-Mobile G1. Beyond that everything about the phone is conjecture.  Most rumors put the device in stores Oct 13 at $199 on a two year contract.    Further rumor mongering  predicts UK and German releases, also on T-Mobile in October or November.  There's also  the potential of a wider Android roll out this year on T-Mobile which operates in 13 countries. Other than T-Mobile, no carriers have confirmed Android launches in 2008.  China Mobile, KDDI, DoCoMo, Sprint, TIM and Telefónica are members of the OHA, the industry consortium backing Android, and all can be expected to launch an Android phone in 2009 with Telefónica likely to be the first.

Carrier adoption is certainly a key factor in Android's success, but I don't think it's the only or even the most important one. Google certainly wants Android to be available through carriers.  Most consumers worldwide currently buy their mobile phones from their mobile network provider and Google needs to be in that channel.

However, I believe that the carrier channel is only part of Google's Android strategy.  They have a much grander plan to dominate the mobile device landscape and turn the mobile industry's business model completely upside down.  This strategy involves at least three channels. The first is through carriers. The second and third are direct to consumer and direct to business.  I don't believe that Google itself will sell Andoid phones.  Rather they have created an OS and adopted a licensing model that enables third parties to effectively build and sell Andoid phones into all three channels.

Google has spent four years and, by my estimate, at least 150 million dollars creating a complete mobile OS and application stack with very advanced capabilities, all for the purpose of giving it away.  And giving it away under a permissive open source license that lets carriers, device manufacturers and system integrators use it, sell it and modify it any way.  Like everything Google or any other business does, they are doing this because they expect it will make them money, lots of money.

When you look at Google's business model, its almost entirely based on advertising.  Almost everything Google does is designed to place ads on as many pages and screens as possible. Google accomplishes this by offering compelling ad-supported products like gMail and Google Docs and with search. Search is designed to monetize all the world's content that Google doesn't create or own itself using AdWords and AdSense.  Google is also very good at tracking user behavior, demographics and preferences, all with the goal of delivering the most targeted advertising possible.

Android extends Google advertising and tracking to mobile in a way that goes far beyond current Google mobile products like Search and Maps.  It's no secret that mobile search isn't very easy to use or powerful. Android is intended to change that by combining speech recognition and synthesis (for faster, easier input and output) with personal data from the handset (location, contact names and addresses, calendar and to-do entries) and data known to Google (maps, web index, and the user's search and  purchase history) to deliver a revolutionary user experience.

Here are a couple of examples of  potential services that the combination of Google and user data with Android  APIs  makes possible:

• A location enabled mash up of search and the phone's contact book which, using voice recognition, would let you speak "Directions from here to Ian's home" (where Ian is one of your contacts), and have the phone give you visual and spoken directions via car, walking or transit.
• Automatic background monitoring of the flight status for upcoming trips based on on flight numbers in the handset's calendar entries. The phone would alert the user if one of the flights is canceled, changed or delayed.

Building these types of applications is extremely difficult using current phones due to the application signing and certification restrictions demanded by operators.  Only your mobile provider can give you integration between PIM, location, speech, payments and the Web. Historically mobile operators, except in Japan, have lacked the innovative spirit to go beyond the basics in mobile services and PIM integration.  Even when carriers do offer any sort of useful new application it usually ends up  being  a subscription service charged at $10 to $20/month.

Android uses a different security model.  Instead of protecting users by limiting what they can do, Android gives the user tools to control information sharing and trusts them to know what they are willing to share and with whom.  If an Android developer wants to build an app that uses location and PIM data they declare that intent in their code.  When a user installs the app they are prompted to grant or deny that application access to each requested resource. No sensitive API can be used unless the application declares its intent and the user allows it.

Google will build innovative data services that are tightly integrated with handset capabilities and bundle them with the OS for free as well as enabling third parties to do the same. Applications that use  Google's APIs for geolocation, mapping, search, and serving ads will feed data back to Google helping it to better sell and deliver targeted advertising.

If the above sounds a little scary, it is. No one with responsibility for enterprise security will allow open Android devices to access their internal networks until controls are in place to limit what users can do with company data.  This is where Android's open source licensing will enable established manufacturers like OHA members Motorola, HTC, LG, and Samsung as well as independent VARS and  system integrators to modify Android to provide the security controls that enterprise buyers require - thus enabling the direct to business channel. The ability of 3rd parties to modify Android to meet individual enterprise requirements gives Google an advantage over Apple's closed platform in the business market.

Google's direct to user strategy is to make it possible for low cost ODMs (original design manufacturers) to build advanced handsets with minimal R&D expenses. Google is hopping that the direct to consumer market will be flooded with cheap, unlocked, unbranded Android smartphones sold through online channels like Amazon Affiliates and through independent retailers around the world. This model works especially well in markets with a high percentage of prepaid users who are accustomed to buying unsubsidized or lightly subsidised phones.  The combination of a free mobile OS and low cost chips combining a 3G radio, video processor and ARM CPU will drive the direct to consumer cost of an Android smartphone below $200. For a price only a little higher than that a mid-range feature phone,  users will be able to purchase the most powerful, feature rich smartphone available.

For Google to make money with Android the OS has to be nearly ubiquitous.  Carriers are cautions and  will resist ceding real or potential revenue streams to Google. Adoption of Android by providers will be slow at first.  By breaking the major manufacturer/carrier distribution model, Google hopes to create a large base of Android users who will champion the OS's superior capabilities compared with other phones on the market.  To meet customer demand, providers will be forced to adopt Android.

Incidentally, I don't expect the G1 to be particularly exciting. The OS is reportedly  incomplete in some respects (no Gears and missing  Bluetooth APIs) and the physical design is similar to some of HTC's Windows Mobile touch screen sliders from years past. There will be plenty of negative comparisons of the G1's aesthetics, features, form factor, user experience, touch screen quality and stability with other phones particularly the iPhone.  However the G1 is Release 1.0 and Google tends rollout products that are initially a little immature compared with Apple.  Think of G1 as a Beta product that is being launched to shake out the OS and provide some traffic for load testing Google's Android back-end. Google is committed to fundamentally changing the way we use mobiles and they and their partners both in and outside the OHA will continually improve the Android experience.

Over the next couple of years I see Android causing a fundamental shakeup in the mobile industry.  Carriers and companies like Nokia and Microsoft will be forced to either work with Google or compete and innovate like they never have before.

Related Posts:
How Big is the Android Phone?
Anticipating Android at Google I/O
Why Android Matters
Android First Impressions

Last week's Carnival of the mobilists no 143 at the Phones show . I am delayed with this again .. but the carvnival is such a great read(as is this one) and better late than never!

This is interesting .. and makes me think ..

Just because we WANT people to pay - does not mean that they WILL .. If the observation in this blog is true, it means that many a business plan based on paying for Context will also hit rough waters (considering that location is one of the most important elements of the Mobile context)

Consider some of the paid iPhone apps from the telegraph.

Vicinity (has got good reviews etc and also GPS based with wikipedia links and so on) is only £1.79??. Is that 1.79 per month or for all times??.

As far as I can see, it's a £1.79 price as a one off charge.

Other paid iPhone apps are (from the Telegraph link above)
* Starmap Planetarium (£6.99): Astronomers and space nuts will love this - a stargazing guide that provides information about constellations, planets and even shooting stars, plus oodles of scientific details.
* Etch-a-Sketch (£2.99): Twiddle the virtual dials to start a sketch, or draw directly on screen using your finger. "Tilt technology" will be added soon to enable you to move the iPhone itself to create a drawing.
* Meal Splitter (£4.99): There will be no need to squabble over restaurant bills with this application, which precisely calculates what each diner owes based on the cost of the meal. Okay, so the iPhone's in-built calculator could do pretty much the same thing, but this takes the pain out of the entire process; it will even work out how much the non-drinkers should pay compared to the drinkers.
* Vicinity (£1.79): Takes advantage of the iPhone 3G's GPS to provide one-tap access to information about local services and amenities. It will even pull in relevant Wikipedia entries and Flickr photos.
* Band (£5.99): Compose your own music using the collection of virtual instruments.
* Stage Hand (£4.99): Control your Apple Keynote presentations using your iPhone or iPod touch, and read and review slides on its screen.
* Super Monkey Ball (£5.99): The pick of the bunch of new games for the iPhone and iPod touch. Tilt the device itself to control the progress of a monkey inside a transparent bubble. The graphics are first-rate, and the gameplay is highly addictive.

The games(super monkey Ball) seem to be valued higher as does niche apps

However, the business model does not seem to be so good based on this evidence since the useful apps like vicinity seem to be valued only at £1.79

We have all seen many many reports saying that LBS will be the big saviour, people will pay for location etc etc - and then we see a very good LBS application priced at only £1.79. This is in the same series of posts where I talked about taking the principles of better than free for mobile and also said that Google's initiatives point to a pricepoint of free for mobile applications - for instance, if we contrast Vicinity to Google maps - then Google maps on mobile is free. And although Vicinity gives us some cool features like wikipedia integration which I love - it does point to a very low pricepoint if that becomes a precedent. Further, it points to a one off price point i.e. not a monthly fee ..

Alex Kerr sent me this one the Telegraph link (Thanks Alex)

Dean Bubley of Disruptive wirelesss adds his own insights to the above:

I don't see what's wrong with this.
Far too many communications companies think that they can somehow turn an application (or even just a feature or a function) into an ongoing, billable service.
Why pay a service provider to provide "Where is my nearest" capabilities, when you can do it yourself with a one-off payment for a capable piece of sofware? Why repeatedly pay a service provider to tell you where you are, when a cheap GPS chip can do it for you over and over again for a fixed price?
Everyone talks about the move to SaaS (Software as a service) or even Hardware as a service - basically hosted applications, often paid for with a subscription fee. But there's a counter-trend coming the other way: *Service as software* (and also, Service as Hardware).
But I reckon that consumers can sense those "services" which essentially involve the provider "turning the handle" on a fixed-cost system, which has probably paid for itself already. People innately *know* when their extra service cost "goes straight to the bottom line", and feel ripped off. They'll jump at the chance of replacing that service with hardware or software.
Yes, there are certain instances where the SaaS approach makes sense - if there's lots of maintenance involved in doing it yourself, lots of complexity involved in configuring & setting up software and so on.... then yes, it makes perfect sense to pay a service provider to deal with it for you. But replacing something easy or "plug and play" with a billed ongoing service is (often) a waste of money.
The bottom line here is that many telecom services (LBS, IMS, or whatever) involve buying a standard application server from a vendor, hooking it up, and then turning the handle. The operator is essentially taking someone else's generic application, and trying to make it look like a service. Spot the problem?

Thoughts?

I have to agree with Dean and also my initial hypothesis - just because we WANT people to pay - does not mean that they will .. This means that many a business plan based on paying for Context will also hit rough waters (considering that location is one of the most important elements of the Mobile context)

Which begs the question: What WILL people pay for? (which was the original intent behind the series of posts)

kind rgds
Ajit

In the past few weeks, I’ve told several groups of mostly skeptical people that I thought the US was pulling ahead in mobile. Well, now the Nokia CEO is saying the same thing.

Our reasons are actually similar, though expressed differently. I see two types of companies playing in the mobile space: those dominated by Telco thinking, and those dominated by Internet thinking. And Apple, which is dominated by Jobs thinking.

The Telco style companies are worried about systems working across all devices and networks, about reliability, about not taking the network down. Companies include the operators, most manufacturers, and Microsoft and Motricity/Infospace.

The Internet style companies are worried about providing cool services, and if it goes just to a couple devices that’s okay. Streaming video is cool, and who cares about battery life or network congestion. Companies include most Silicon Valley startups.

Yahoo and Google – and Little Springs Design – try hard to have a foot in each camp. And are succeeding.

The Internet style companies are providing the majority of the innovation in wireless, as well as most of the mistakes. We help them fix their mistakes (hopefully before they’ve made them).

Internet style companies are concentrated in the U.S. especially Silicon Valley; Telco thinking is predominant in Europe. Yes, these are sweeping generalizations, and there are plenty of counter examples, even within a single company.

---

©2008 Little Springs Design is a user experience design consultancy focused exclusively on mobile.

Perhaps this picture taken in leafy Holland Park needs no caption.

For all the emphasis on Open systems, the OpenGardens blog has always been a pragmatic voice in the Open debate .. specifically that - as we continue to open up and liberalise, there are certain threats which we have to acknowledge and combat - for instance I said a while ago that while I support open APIs, uncontrolled access to APIs is an invitation to scammers and paedophiles. - especially because the mobile device is a personal device and unlike the PC, the risks are higher

In that context, I am happy to support this UK Government initiative 'Safer Children in a Digital World'. which was brought to my attention by Dr Mike Short. Mike is on the advisory board of this initiative. More details below. Thanks Mike for bringing this to my attention and keep up the good work!

GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES NEW UK COUNCIL FOR CHILD INTERNET SAFETY

29 September 2008

- FAMILIES AT THE FOREFRONT OF MAKING THE INTERNET SAFER -

Some of the biggest names from industry and charities have joined forces
with the Government, parents and young people to help keep children safe
online, Children's Secretary Ed Balls and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith
announced today.

The new UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) will unite over
100 organisations from the public and private sector working with
Government to deliver recommendations from Dr Tanya Byron's report
'Safer Children in a Digital World'.

Reporting directly to the Prime Minister, the Council will help to
improve the regulation and education around internet use, tackling
problems around online bullying, safer search features, and violent
video games. This unprecedented coalition of experts and organisations
will ensure that parents and young people have a voice in the
development of a Child Internet Safety Strategy, to be delivered early
next year.

The strategy will:

* establish a comprehensive public information and awareness and child
internet safety campaign across Government and industry including a
'one-stop shop' on child internet safety;

* provide specific measures to support vulnerable children and young
people, such as taking down illegal internet sites that promote harmful
behaviour;

* promote responsible advertising to children online; and

* establish voluntary codes of practice for user-generated content
sites, making such sites commit to take down inappropriate content
within a given time.

Speaking at the launch of the UKCCIS at the Science Museum in London,
Children's Minister Ed Balls said:

"Today's launch is a significant achievement and I thank all members of
the Council for their support and commitment. We want to help children
and young people to make the most of what all digital and interactive
technologies can offer. By putting in place the right support for
children, young people and parents we can reduce much of the anxiety
that exists around the internet. UKCISS will enable everyone from
parents to industry, Government, education, and children's welfare
organisations to play their part in keeping children safe online."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said:

"We are determined to do all we can to ensure that the internet
environment is safe for children to use. Earlier this year, the Home
Office published the first ever social networking guidance developed
with industry, charities and law enforcement.

"The new UK Council builds on this by bringing together over one hundred
organisations all committed to keeping children safe online. By working
in partnership we can intensify our efforts to protect young people."

Review author Dr Tanya Byron said:

"Every parent will know that know that video games and the internet are
a part of childhood like never before. This is extremely positive;
giving kids the opportunities to learn to have fun and communicate in
ways that previous generations could only dream of. But it can also
present a huge challenge to parents and other adults involved in the
welfare of children.

"That this why we need industry, regulators and parents to work together
to protect children against the risks. Setting up UKCISS was a key
recommendation in my report and I'm delighted that the Government along
with industry, education, law enforcement, and the children's charities
have acted so promptly to make this a reality.

"The Council will be a powerful union of some of our key players giving
support to parents and guidance to children as they come more and more
accustomed to the virtual world - it will also give families, teachers
and most importantly children and young people the ability to input
experiences and concerns. The UK is a world leader on internet safety
for children and I look forward to others adopting this partnership
approach."

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said:

"We all know the number of benefits the internet has brought to our day
to day lives. But it has also raised questions about how we can and
should protect the public, and particularly children, in this online
space. To our very great benefit, we've embraced the online world
wholeheartedly, but we must ensure that what is unacceptable offline
should not be acceptable online. The UK Council for Child Internet
Safety will allow all stakeholders to work together in finding
appropriate ways of maintaining the standards of the online material
that young people have access to."

Matthew Bishop at MICROSOFT said:

"The internet opens a door into all our homes. It is perhaps the single
greatest innovation for expanding the horizons of knowledge and
creativity. But, as with all human growth and exploration these benefits
come hand in hand with elements of risk, especially for children. As an
industry, and as a company, we are working hard to ensure that the
internet is as safe an environment as possible. All of us who are
concerned for the welfare of children, or have children of our own,
welcome the formation of this council and its objective of protecting
young people in the digital world."

The Government also announced today the successful appointees to the
Council's Executive Board. Chaired by DCSF and HO Ministers, the Board
includes senior representation from across Government, industry, the
third sector, law enforcement and the devolved administrations. UKCCIS
will report annually to the Prime Minister at the Child Internet Safety
Summit.

Editor's Notes
This press notice relates to 'England'
1. In September 2007, the Prime Minister asked Dr Tanya Byron to lead an
independent review to help parents and their children get the most from
new technologies while protecting children from inappropriate or harmful
material. The focus was on the internet and video games.

2. Her report, 'Safer Children in a Digital World', was published in
March 2008: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/

3. The Government accepted all of Dr Byron's recommendations and
published The Byron Review Action Plan in June 2008 to set out how the
Government intends to implement the recommendations. The Action Plan can
be found at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/actionplan

4. The establishment of a UK Council for Child Internet Safety was a key
recommendation in Dr Tanya Byron's Report. The Council is a multi
stakeholder forum within which all those with an interest in Child
Internet Safety are able to come together to develop a strategy for
improving child internet safety based on two core elements: better
regulation - in the form of voluntary codes of practice that industry
can sign up to - and better information and education for children,
young people, parents and carers. The Council will be chaired by DCSF
and Home Office and be supported by a cross Government secretariat.

5. The Council will be the largest ever coalition of internet safety
experts, bringing together some of the biggest names in industry,
children's charities, law enforcement, Government as well as children,
young people and parents. The current membership of the Council is at
Annex B.
[CLICK HERE]

6. The Executive Board to the Council will be chaired by Home Offfice
and DCSF Ministers and is expected to meet on a quarterly basis. Its
role will be to provide strategic support and direction to Council
activity, hold the Chairs of the working and sub groups to account and
ensure progress against the strategy is secured. The membership of the
Board is at Annex A.
[CLICK HERE]