Mobile Internet devices include smart phones, electronic readers, connected navigation devices, media players, gaming gadgets etc. Due to a variety of reasons will see more of these devices around. Depending on the market, the combination of online and offline capabilities of mobile connected devices will present new business models. The success of such offerings is mainly based on the utility of services and whether wireless broadband prices are affordable.
Why will these devices rise in popularity? To name a few reasons: improvements in processors and computing capacity, advances in: hardware, storage, flash memory, battery life and the explosive growth of social computing. Abundant and affordable wireless broadband could be another factor but there is still plenty of room there for improvement.
Challenges abound as well. Problems with user interfaces are still a major issue with many portable devices which connect with Internet. One of the main reasons why Apple has emerged a winner is because it provided a slick solution to the common user interface problems. Sony is an example of a large brand which used to be poor performer in user interface and lost market share. Over the years Sony has improved on usability.
Other problems include lack of standards, proprietary OS and incompatible applications which make it hard to share data and force users to duplicate efforts. Of course there are business reasons behind these which can take up many posts but for an end user this is a major headache.
Device convergence and context-relevant advertisement are the potential killer areas. Cell phones claim that they are the one gadget which can absorb everything else but that’s not how it has worked out. Apple’s iPhone has done the best so far by including iPod in the iPhone. Admit it, for a while there will be multiple devices. Cell phone has made its way into third world countries, breaking the first and most important barrier. This presents an interesting opportunity for various adaptations of technology  for commercial and even NGO purposes.  How will the new crop of mobile Internet devices interplay with the two established platforms of web and mobile phones? Will there be a clear distinction of how youth uses these devices?
An excerpt from Forrester Research about the mobile Internet devices:
Mainstream consumers are now using digital photographs and downloading music — and are even starting to download and stream digital video. Unfortunately, they confine much of this activity to a home PC — or at least use a home PC to load up or “side load” mobile devices. Being able to connect mobile devices directly to media and communications services like photo sharing sites and music download services gives consumers, content owners, and service providers far greater freedom.
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A number of competing services are available for providing information and answers to questions on a mobile phone (Telenor Ask in Pakistan, Google’s sms and voice, Microsoft TellMe). ChaCha enters this crowded market with a free, human powered offering. I wonder if the premium service from Telenor Ask is a hit with users in Pakistan?
ChaCha is avaialble in US via SMS (242242) and Voice (800-2chacha). An excerpt from Mossberg’s review:
The service works by routing your questions to one of 10,000 hired “guides” — students, stay-at-home parents, retirees and others — who look up the questions on the Web and reply. They get paid 20 cents per answer.
Naturally, these guides vary as to their speed and accuracy. If you don’t like the answers they give you, or you want related information, you can call back or reply to the text message with a follow-up question. For instance, after learning which pitcher had won for Boston, I asked who lost the game for New York. I was quickly informed it was Phil Hughes.
Overall, I liked ChaCha. In most cases, I received fast, accurate, useful answers. But it has two weaknesses. One is that the low-paid, part-time guides can provide inconsistent service. When I asked for the best Mexican restaurant in D.C., for example, ChaCha came up with a choice that few locals would cite.
The other is that, unlike many other cellphone information services, ChaCha doesn’t automatically know your location. So, unless you include a location in your query, it’s clueless about questions such as “Where’s the nearest drugstore?”
CTIA Wireless 2008 is one of the largest wireless events in the US. Among its various programs is the Emerging Technology Awards which claims to highlight the most innovative products and applications representing all facets of the mobile lifestyle in wireless”. It is a good place to see some promising gadgets, applications and products.
Take a look at this report. Do you think these were truly worthy of awards?
Consumer Applications - Messaging (SMS/MMS)/Mobile Marketing
1st place - Cellfire 3.0
2nd place - Reply with Jott for BlackBerry
3rd place - SnapNow Mobile Visual Search
Consumer Applications - Mobile Entertainment/Social Networking
1st place - Ontela’s PicDeckâ„¢
2nd place - WidSets
3rd place - Yahoo! Go 3.0
Mobile Widgets - Consumer
1st place - Zumobi
2nd place - Fusion Voicemail Plus by PhoneFusion
3rd place - JACKED Mobile SportsTop
Here’s a peek at some of the interesting upcoming mobile phone technologies. These include next generation voice-recognition which allows you real hands-free control of phone, 3D maps, sending streaming video to cell phones, games (mobile second life), digital storage of documents for mobiles, surveillance, social applications which allow you to locate buddies using GPS and location-aware apps which provide personalized suggestions about attractions like restaurants as you’re walking around the neighborhood.
This post coincides with one of the biggest wireless event: CTIA, which opens today. Many of new mobile and wireless technologies are announced there. I’ll cover that soon.
Video courtesy of Wall Street Journal. Let me know if you are interested in the full article.
Osama Hashmi at Green & White on the relationship of startups and Telcos. Telcos are always looking for interesting value-added services to drive up their ARPU and will partner with anyone who can offer such mobile apps. Of course telcos are also known for their control obsession over content & partners.
This is part of a conversation that started in a Startup Insiders session - should a young fledgling firm with a good idea think about building products around the mobile telecom space?
If you have a nice brilliant consumer-focused idea today, you’ll also have a number of options available to implement it. You could realize your idea as a web-2.0 implementation, as a widget, as a facebook / open-social application, as a web-M solution (mobile-focus website), as a handset-only application, or as a specialized value-added service built and offered in close partnership with a telecom operator.
The question is - where and why would you want to work with a telco, when some of the other options (particularly facebook) can offer a much higher potential audience-base and much lower total development costs.
The answer, according to Adnan, lies not in what telecos in general are doing with service vendors, but in what they could do in terms of pricing of the service.
It is always pleasant to write about a trend, revisit that topic a few months later and report progress. A few months ago I wrote about how views about entrepreneurship are changing in Pakistan. I mentioned some success stories. with the emphasis that the successes are neither incidental nor anomalies. The Startup insider series is a solid evidence of the positive momentum and shows the resilience and determination of a small group of dedicated leaders such as Jawwad, Jehan and Osama. See the list below and look up some of them on the web.
You can read all about it at Green & White, where Osama Hashmi has blogged about all the events, starting from Karachi to Islamabad to Lahore. These events, first of their kind, have drawn tremendous crowds and sparked the entrepreneurial spirit of many. Here’s the description of upcoming event, on Feb 24 in Lahore. Theme is: Who is my customer?
Startup Insiders is coming to Lahore again on the 24th of February. This time the event is supported by LUMS and will be held at the LUMS Campus itself.
An incredible panel is aggregating together again, and this times fans of Jawwad wont be disappointed:
Faisal Qureshi, CEO, Kolachi Advanced Technolgies
Zia Imran, CEO, VahZay Pvt Limited
Jawwad Farid, CEO, Alchemy Technologies
Salim Ghauri, President & CEO, Netsol Technologies
Lucky us. Finally the mobile applications are getting the attention they deserve and no matter who loses among the giants, the end users will be the winner. Google, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft have invaded the mobile phone and application area. Apple of course was first to the market with their market disruptive iPhone. Google has created buzz with their android software stack and the $10 million (see details here) award announcements. See Brough Turner’s blog post about how Google bypassed Java’s licensing by using Dalvik VM.
What about Yahoo and Microsoft? They are playing catch-up.
The reaction from Microsoft was interesting. Microsoft played down the initial announcements and said that the perception that mobile applications are not available or cannot be developed are incorrect. Well, this is the classic windows mobile vs. linux war and I promise it will get very interesting and intense.
Yahoo is busy signing agreements to provide mobile Internet-search service to nine Asian mobile operators, as the company races to bring email, mapping and photo-sharing services to cellphones. With this move Yahoo’s mobile Internet services could potentially cover about 40% of Asia’s mobile phone subscribers, he said. Yahoo expects the global mobile Internet search market to grow to between $4 billion and $16 billion by 2011. More about this deal. Read more »
Building on the momentum which started a few months ago the ICT industry in Pakistan is moving ahead, despite the odds. I had written about the launch of Business Acceleration Program in Aug 2007. This month MITCEF of Pakistan has announced the winner and 4 finalists, as reported here. The winner, Sofizar is a very interesting startup which promises to fix one of the major problems with onlines ads: click fraud.
I have been on the mailing list of the  organizers and it is a pleasure to see this event take place and conclude sucessfully in Pakistan. If you want to get a first-hand account of how such events help startups to rise and shine, see this post from Jawwad Farid of Alchemy.
The organizers, sponsors and mentors deserve a pat on the back for making this happen and for creating a precedent of excellent coaching and feedback to emerging entrepreneurs in Pakistan. A special thanks to Ken Morse and Bill Aulet of MIT Entrepreneurship Center for their continued support.
Here’s an exclusive coverage of Korea technology show in Dallas this week. Even though large Korean companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai are well-known all over the world there are many small to medium sized Korean companies which are working hard to establish themselves. This exhibition was part of this effort by these electronic and telecom firms to market their products in US.
The event included an exhibition and a Future of Communications Forum in which SK Telecom, Nokia, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon presented. I attended the exhibition and the talk. I was very impressed by the level of innovation, quality of products and the effort to market their work with high quality presentation material and politeness. In this post I’d like to share some of the interesting products I saw there. In later posts I’ll cover other companies and related topics (such as WiBro) in more details. There will be a separate post about the presentation by SK Telecom on the telecom trends.
In the exhibition there were over 50 companies covering telecom (IPTV, VOIP, telecom infrastructure), electronics (home and portable electronics, bluetooth multimedia, PC components) and home/office security monitoring.  There were quite a few medium sized companies and startups in the telecom field; here’s a brief lineup of the prominent telecom companies - please visit their site for more info. You can also contact me for details to know further about my discussions with these company representatives.Â
BlueBird Soft - PDAs for consumer and business use
Rabta is Urdu for making a connection. Here is the official Telenor press release about this. I am curious to find out more about the affordability of these centers and if these centers have the appropriate set of applications for the population in the remote areas.
“We want to establish an easy-to-access point for these communities to benefit from e-mail, scanning, faxing and printing facilities in their everyday lives. With information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) becoming an ever-increasing part of our lives, there is need for such facilities to be made available in Pakistan’s rural and semi-rural areas too”, said Sigvart Voss Eriksen, Chief Marketing Officer in Telenor Pakistan.
Telenor Pakistan recently launched Telenor Rabta Centres as part of a pilot project involving local communities. These community information centres offer all modern communication facilities under one roof. The services use Telenor Pakistan’s high-speed EDGE network.
Telenor Pakistan is collaborating with the GSMA Development Fund, Nokia Siemens Networks and the ILO (International Labour Organisation) on the project. Rabta Centres have been established in Quetta (Balochistan), Khuzdar (Balochistan), Bagh (Azad Kashmir), Jamal Deen Wali (Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab), Ahmadpur Sial (Jhang, Punjab) and 18 Hazari (Jhang, Punjab).
Each centre is equipped with two PCs with EDGE data card to connect to the internet, a printer, scanner, webcam and a handset with Telenor Pakistan connection.
The GSMA Development Fund is providing support in project management and facilitation activities for the pilot implementation. Telenor Pakistan and its project partners have selected entrepreneurs from the corresponding local communities to run these centres as their business. All entrepreneurs have been trained in computer and entrepreneurial skills.
Mapping is the killer mobile app. Whether you have location-based services (LBS) or not, the chances are that you are using mobile mapping software on your smartphone and starting to take it for granted that it will just be there for you when you need it. So it is no surprise that there has been some interesting M&A activity in this space.
Navteq and TeleAtlas are the top providers of street-level information, which is the key to enabling mapping and navigation applications. These are businesses where the barriers to entry are quite high–getting the initial set of street-level data requires a ton of data crunching & surveying. From that perspective, the two companies’ core value proposition is well-protected.
With the two big street mapping players now part of larger and even slower-moving companies, there may be an opportunity to disrupt this market in the next five years. The key question is one of bootstrap costs to get to a critical mass of good-enough data. I expect the solution will include three aspects:
User-generated content. See OpenStreetMap, for example.
New Location Mashing Technologies (LMTs–I’m inventing a new term here because I don’t know what to call these). I see these coming in two forms: (1) from the world of unstructured information to the world of latitudes and longitudes, e.g., MetaCarta, and (2) between more traditional geolocation databases, which some in notoriously many different formats.
Business models that use Navteq and TeleAtlas data (perhaps via their consumer rendition of Google Maps, etc.) as a crutch to fall back to when the data isn’t good enough.
The trend of business case competitions, awards and other related activities in Pakistan is encouraging. I am excited to write about another great opportunity for innovators and entrepreneurs in the information and communiction technology sector.  The PASHA ICT Awards are now open for nomination in 15 categories. Category winners represent Pakistan at the APICTA ICT Awards 2007 in Singapore in November, one of the most well respected regional competitions for software companies from Asia. PASHA will cover the airfare to Singapore. But hurry the nomination ends on Oct 19 21 (extended by 2 days).
As you rush to send in your nominations, see Jawwad’s Blog post for his team’s past experience and observations (an excerpt below) and Jehan Ara’s Blogfor more info about the different clusters and product definitions. Jehan emphasizes that “the student category is also important so if you know of any student projects that deserve recognition, please ask them to nominate their projects for the P@SHA Awards.”
The real reason why you should participate is that the Awards are a very strong mechanism for changing perceptions about Pakistan. Two of my very good friends in the region thought that this country had no significant technology focus or future when it came to technology. Their interaction with the number of technology companies from Pakistan at the awards and the depth of our product offerings changed their point of view. Â Both of them are now bullish on us as a nation. Both took the time to travel to Karachi. One of them, I suspect is responsible for the Singapore Pavilion at our local IT exhibition this year.
So if you think you have done something remarkable  that the world or at least the Asia Pacific region should know about, use the PASHA ICT Awards and the ASOCIO APICTA Awards to showcase yourself.  Make us proud. It makes for great bragging rights.
CTIA Wireless 2008 is one of the largest wireless events in the US. Among its various programs is the 
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