Mobile Point View by Paul Ruppert

One Year in my Blog Life: Keeping Score at Mobile Point View

Readers from 128 Countries

Journalistic cycles  are often driven by calender milestones so today I celebrate my first anniversary as a blogger--albeit it slightly tardy. 

I started Mobile Point View in April of 2007 primarily to frame and define my "personal brand", project and shape awareness of my industry perspective and "thought leadership", enabling me to keep my eye focused on the mobile industry and global business trends through a discipline to discuss my views.

Along the journey I found it also fed internal motivations such as a love/hate relationship with writing, and my wanderlust for "Adventure Roads" and "Adventure Capitalism."

Plus, it feeds my spirit to learn more about other cultures and keep my skills sharp in making connections--both technical and human.  I've been told I've got a combinatorial world view which my blogging reflects, being part travelogue, wireless industry and global commerce analysis, pus a passionate interest in high growth markets such as China, Africa, and the Middle East.

Recognitions & Connections

An unexpected turn along the path has been the recognition of my views and writings by technoscenti like Om Malik of DigOm, Gerry Purdee of Forrester Research and mobilista Rudy De Waele. A surprising approach by Mobile Messaging 2.0 to contribute to that corporate sponsored blog has led to additional "thought leadership" and recently my being tapped to be the Managing Editor of Mobile Messaging 2.0. So now I'm a "professional" journalist, meaning my meanderings put some coin in my pocket.

Another unexpected consequence of having a cyberspace billboard has been the people I've become acquainted with--gratifyingly in other countries--who have graciously shared their time, interests and expertise with me by reaching out and establishing a personal connection as result of my views, especially Lars in Tokyo, Ben in Beijing, Mikki in Hong Kong, Tarek in Egypt, Feng in Beijing, James in London, and Mohammed in Iraq.

Reflecting a modicum of success, the connectedness of the mobile industry and power of the internet, the number of others who I have met at conferences who entered a conversation with "I know you, I've read your blog!" has been surprising and energizing.

What I'm most proud of is being relevant and interesting to readers from 128 countries.   

After a year of blogging, I've got a slurry of mixed metrics on total visits (over 100,000 ), page views, time on blog, google juice, etc., but the one which I'm most proud of is the reflection of my reach and global view point.   Having readers from so many countries reflects my purpose, passion and pursuits to illuminate the power of mobile communications to consumers and its fundamentally global characteristics. 

Interesting Quirks of Where My Readers Are 

Some interesting aspects of my readership include:  9,600 visits from readers in India, 900 visits from readers in Pakistan, 30 visits from readers in Myanmar, over 740 visits from readers in Iran, and 400 visits from readers in Nepal. I've got one regular reader in Foggaret el Arab, the dead middle of Algeria with a population of 4,300. The snowiest reader must be in Bathurst Inlet, Nunavut, Canada--probably someone visiting the Lodge.

I guess that reflects the power of the web, the strength of interest in mobile communications, and once in a while my ability to strike a chord which resonates with a variety of people in diverse international locations. 

Here's a tally of reader countries as of June 2008

A Year in the Blog Life
	Visitors from 128 Countires
Americas (25)	Europe (40)	Asia (26)	Middle East (11)	Africa (26)
US	UK	Australia	Afghanistan	Algeria
Barbados	Andorra	Bangladesh	Bahrain	Botswana
Bolivia	Aserbaijian	Brunei	Egypt	Cameroon
Brazil	Austria	Cambodia	Iran	Canary Islands
Canada	Azores	China	Iraq	Cote D'Ivoire
Cayman Islands	Belgium	Fiji	Israel	Djibouti
Chile	Bosnia	Guam	Jordan	Ethopia
Columbia	Bulgaria	Hong Kong	Kuwait	Gambia
Costa Rica	Czech Republic	India	Oman	Ghana
Dominican Republic	Denmark	Indonesia	Qatar	Libya
Ecuador	Estonia	Japan	UAE	Madagasacar
Grenada	Faeroe  Islands	Kazakhsatan	Yemen	Mali
Guatemala	Finland	Korea		Mauritius
Haiti	France	Laos		Moambique
Honduras	Georgia	Malaysia		Moldova
icaragua	Germany	Marutius		Morocco
Jamiaca	Gibraltar	Myanmar		Mutitania
Martinique	Greece	Nepal		Nigeria
Mexico	Iceland	New Zealand		S. Africa
Paraguay	Ireand	Pakistan		Senegal
Peru	Italy	Philippines		Sudan
Puerto Rico	Latvia	Singapore		Swaziland
St. Vincent	Lichtenstein	Taiwan		Tanzania
Trinidad	Lithuania	Tajikistan		Togo
Urguay	Luxemburg	Thailand		Tunisia
Venezuela	Macedonia	Uzbekistan		Uganda
	Mallorca	Vietnam		Zaire
	Malta
	Monaco
	Netherlands
	Norway
	Poland
	Portugal
	Romania
	Russia
	Serbia
	Spain
	Sweden
	Switzerland
	Turkey
	Ukraine

MWC Slick Sightings Trifecta: 3 Winners--Inside, GestureTek and Tagattitude

I've been writing in earlier posts about some slick innovation sightings in the mobile industry which I saw at the Mobile World Congress --Inside, GestureTek, and Tagattitude.

Seems my views were shared by the powers that be, namely the GSMA Innovation Awards.  Congratulations to GestureTek (motion detection for a mobile using the on-board camera) which was the Overall winner, Inside (contactless payments chips and software) took away the  Award for Most Innovative Device Centric Technology, and Tagattitude (use of the voice channel for secure NFC transactions) won the award for Most Innovative Consumer Application.

Congratulations to all the winners.  Guess I should have stopped at Ladbrooks to place some bets before hand.

MWC Podcast: GSMA's Innovation Outpost

Last year the GSM Association launched the GSMA Mobile Innovation Marketplace to assist fledgling  companies developing innovative mobile services and products in their quest to "crack the carrier barrier" and bring their value to mobile consumers.

The purpose of this arm of the GSMA is to identify, foster and highlight innovative companies within the mobile communications ecosystem. While in Barcelona I had the chance to learn more about what I'm calling their "Innovation Outpost" (which Andy seemed to like) in an interview with Andrew McGuire, GSMA VP for Mobile Innovation, who runs the program.

Listen to my podcast with Andy McGuire of the GSMA (10 mins)

Looking to raise the profile and bring attention to the initiatives of innovative companies, the GSMA has crafted a GSMA "endorsement" process to take mobile technology, application or service ideas from concept to launch through a unique, high profile audience of Operators, Investors and Media. It's a great   idea providing a tool which enables the mobile operator community to be more of a center of influence within the mobile industry ecosystem. Something that has been lacking in the past, although some operators have corporate venture arms such as Orange FT's Innovacom or Swisscom which serve similar purposes.

Besides the Mobile Innovations Awards at the Mobile World Congress events in Macau and Barcelona, they are developing a "match-making marketplace" for innovators, investors, operators, stategic partners, and corporate interests to stimulate and facilitate research, introductions, discussions and, most importantly business development.

Mobile Innovation Market Place conference

Look out for some of the world's leading mobile innovations to be highlighted at the Mobile Innovation Marketplace conference in Atlanta, June 3 & 4, 2008.

MWC: Slick Sightings in Barcelona part 2

Tagattitude

NFC using the phone’s audio channel to transmit secure data signing transactions.

Translation: How to use the phone’s voice channel as an NFC (Near Filed Communication) device enabling mobile payments transactions. Really? What are you making a call to use the channel?  No.

Like GestureTek, Tagattitude shows combinatorial innovation where a set of seemingly unrelated component technologies can be combined for new innovative applications. It uses NSDT (Near Sound Data Transfer). Consequently any existing or future mobile phone can make a secure mobile payment transaction similar to those of specialized NFC services requiring embedded handset software, clients or other more complicated and costly NFC solutions. Time saver, money saver, means faster to market in the NFC world.

 

I like Tagattitude since it fills technology gaps and provides interoperability which are key factors in harvesting revenue from mobile technology. It provides a technical bridge until the complete, more robust deployment of NFC solutions hits the marketplace. It offers low cost contact-less services for non-NFC phones. It can be a backup for NFC services in case of temporary unavailability. It offers immediate contact-less payment solutions to begin educating the market. Great value proposition.

All these leapfrogs the need and necessity for hardware medication or software injections while awaiting for mobile phones with new technology. It uses a previously otherwise used audio channel as a cryptographic pipe to transmit secure transaction data. Very clever. This simple use of "current pipes" is ideal for established and emerging markets.

Imagine you're a street agent for a carrier in an emerging economy country and would like to have a transfer from your phone account to a subscriber's. With Tagattitude, the agent's "point of sale terminal" can be his mobile phone, and he can readily accept and make transactions. This is significant to the operators as well since they can transform all their prepaid accounts to essentially pre-paid money accounts thus offering mobile payments to all their customers. An FI (Financial Institution) can also launch mobile payment solutions independently of all telecom operators.

Founded by three French smart card and telecoms execs, Yves Eonnet, Loic Eonnet and Herve Manceron, the company is based in France and funded by Innovacom, Orange France Telecom's venture arm.

MWC: Slick Sightings in Barcelona

Trade shows of the scale of the Mobile World Congress always have constant serendipitous moments when you are standing in the canyon boulevards of four story exhibition booths frantically trying to orient yourself with thousands of people streaming by you. You forge on, look up and find yourself next to a booth and something about it catches your eye, or you run into someone you haven’t seen in a year, or even better you bump into someone you saw only two short weeks ago but 10,000 long miles away. Such are my run ins at the Mobile World Congress.

That’s how I came across GestureTek and Tagattitude.

Mobile Wii Device or Reflecting New Movement in Mobile Technology?

Gesture Tek provides computer “vision” and gesture-recognition technology for presentation, information and entertainment systems. Telefonica O2 recently announced a strategic investment in GestureTek and they were being showcased at the massive Telefonica Movistar booth.

What GestureTek does is provide motion sensor capabilities to your mobile phone-- without any additional costly chip or handset client. That’s critical since it means there is no additional cost layer to the operator nor consumer to make your phone a spectacular tool, especially for gaming. Think turning  your mobile handset into a Wii controller, and you’ve got the idea.

How they do this is even more remarkable. By engaging the camera on your phone a signal emanates from the lens and “senses” changes in the 3 dimensional topography the camera sees. Amazing. It must have some serious math processing going on somewhere in a box installed in the network.

GestureTek is a 20 year old company which has shaped ‘applied computer vision’ for computer-human interaction.  The company’s multi-patented video gesture control technology (VGC) lets users control multi-media content, access information, manipulate special effects, even immerse themselves in an interactive 3D virtual world – simply by moving their hands or body.  They deliver Wii-like gesture-control without the need to wear, hold or touch anything.

Seems the company has been way ahead of its time, and now the mobile camp has caught up with it and they’ll now become a permanent residence.  No one from GestureTek was at the Telefonica booth on Wednesday while I fought throught the crowds there, so I’ll have to learn more about them at CTIA.

Bet on them getting attention in Vegas for CTIA.

Continue reading my "Slick Sightings" at MWC part two here.

iPhone Revenue Gap

$120 million lost for Apple in US?

According to figures released by Apple this week, the iPhone has produced an unexpected revenue gap.

Analysis of sales figures from Apple and ATT indicates that more than 25% of of iPhone users are not using the ATT network. This translates into roughly 1 million iPhone purchasers are not accounted for  and are not producing revenue for neither ATT nor Apple.

Recall that Apple extracted a revenue sharing deal for ATT''s exclusive distribution of the iPhone.  3.7 million iPhones have been sold in the US according to Apple, but ATT figures only show 2 million new iPhone driven activations. 

Blame China?

There is no "official" explanation of what is going on here, but one can make an unofficial guess. The bulk of these iPhones have been hacked and are being used overseas. This is especially so in China. According to my industry friends in Shanghai and Beijing, iPhones are quite prevalent in Chinese electronics stores and the pricing is roughly equivalent to a US sold iPhone at roughly US$474 ( 3,400 RMB).

The financial impact is significant. Apple receives a revenue share for services and airtime for the Apple iPhone. Industry estimates are that it is roughly US$ 10 per subscriber per month. At a million AWOL phones, that translates into roughly $204 million in unrealized revenues not hitting Apple's top line. Conservatively speaking let us assume that 75% of these have gone offshore, with 25% being hacked and held in US hands. Assume a US iPhone user has an ARPU of US$ 100 per month. That translates conservatively into a half a billion dollars or more of unrealized revenue by ATT.

Now, consider what is being lost in the UK. According to the Financial Times, O2 has sold only 190,000  iPhones since it launched. That's 47,500 potentially AWOL and applying the same revenue share, approximately US$ 5.7 million in unrealized present revenues with projections growing to $23 million for all of 2008.  Alot of iPhones are being sucked into China's Middle Kingdom.

Recall we've been covering the China Mobile iPhone saga with on 11/27/07 with  "China Mobile Selling iPhones?", as well as at Mobile Messaging 2.0 where I am a featured columnist, and in my January 30, 2008 post "Apple Rides the Dragon: NOT!" . Stay tuned, the story isn't over yet.

OK. Now its your turn. Do you think the these are significant numbers? Is China being blamed yet again for a consumer electronics phenomenon? Comments are very welcome, please! If you liked the post, please dig, delicous, or stumble to spread the word! Thanks for your readership.

Hong Kong's Mobile Matrimonial Wars

A friend of mine at Hong Kong operator Hutchison (branded "3" there) has relayed that tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents have signed up for a tracking service enabling them to monitor the movements of their spouses. The "Follow Me, Follow You" service offers subscribers unlimited "spot searches" to track a person's location by identifying the location of their mobile signal. Nothing really new here--this is location based services originally positioned as a means to locate the whereabouts of your children. Launched in 2005, the service requires both finder and findee to consent to the searches being carried out in this global city of 7 million people. This takes texting your secret lover to higer quantum level. Kind of like "prisoner's dilemma" with your spouse!

In Flagrante Delicto

This interested me since another friend at a competitor to Hutchison advised me in 2005 of a "secret service" they offer with ringer tones. This operator cleverly adapted the ring back tone phenomenon (where a caller hears a custom ring tone which is usually a slice of music instead of the trill we're used to) for philandering spouses visiting their lovers across the border in the mainland. Since HK calling ringers were different than when you were roaming in China, this operator offered a solution for those visiting the mainland potentially having an afternoon delight--a ring back tone that was the same as though you were still physically in the home network.

Should you receive a call during a mainland flagrante delicto, your calling spouse would think you're in Hong Kong. The intriguing commercial aspect to this was my mate came up with the idea by culling their billing records for those MALE customers who were most often across the border during the day as reflected by their calling records, then via a telemarketing call offered this special service. At a high monthly premium close to US$10, they had a closure rate over 75% and a user base of "over 10,000."  That is a million $ revenue stream, all without the consuming public knowing of this "elite" service. Sound way to make quota with a high margin revenue stream to boot.

"Never Enough"

Some say "Hong Kong is the marriage graveyard" for gueilos ("white ghoasts"=westerners). Be cautious out there mates & mate-esses, this could happen to you (click here). An example of unfettered capitalism offering a technical solution appealing to all the facets of human foibles.

OK. Now its your turn. Do you think Hong Kong is "marriage graveyard." Do you think either Hutchison or the "secret service" provider has crossed a moral/commercial line?  Did my mate violate privacy rights by offering a service to consumers who recognized "value?" Comments are very welcome, please! If you liked the post, please dig, delicous, or stumble to spread the word! Thanks for your readership.

Birth by Mobile Light

First Light of Birth?

Acoording to Cellular News of London a power outage in a Russian hospital (city unknown) has forced a woman to give birth by the light of mobile phones due to a power failure blackened hospital.

After local generators failed, resourceful maternity nurses rounded up mobiles from visitors and medical staff and were ablt to generate enough light for the doctors to complete the birth. Mother and child are doing well according to reports.

This is not the first time a mobile has served as the source of surgical light. Reports exist last year of surgeons in Lahore, Pakistan regularly carrying out medical operations using the light from cellphone screens at times, due to persistent power failures in the national electricity supply.

= x (# lumens per Mobile) x Y mobiles= ?

A small (d=24") operating room lamp kicks out about 4,000 ft candles of illumination. Any handset techie out there willing to compute the ft candles generated by the average handset back-lit screen, and how many mobiles equal the standard operating theater lamp?

CTIA IT & Entertainment: Podcasting on Carriers, Control & Advertising

Over at Mobile Messaging 2.0  (click HERE), I've podcasted a post with Debi Jones of Mobile Jones and Ewan Spence of Ewan's Musings on some of our Tuesday impressions from CTIA IT & Entertainment in San Francisco. In the 20+ minute conversation we talk about the buzz currents and themes of the day we've observed independently and collectively. Starting with a look at the control that the carriers try to manifest over change, we also discuss the game-changing/rules changing nature that Apple’s iPhone has brought to the market ( see my post "iPhone Impact: Here & Now"), the (non) effectivness of mobile advertising; user generated content and branding; and the impact of social networking on the smartphone. We'll be doing again tomorrow so stay tuned, and sign up for a feed so you don't miss it.

CTIA: iPhone Impact--Here & Now

I've been casting about today trying to identify some themes and hot impressions from the buzz of the CTIA show. As a here and now guy focused on driving revnues, as opposed to over the horizons speculating type, one thing that stands clear is the impact of the iPhone.

In fact it is the only part of the show so far that has created it’s own undercurrent. Not surprising, just look at ATT’s earnings report today announcing a 41.9% increase as compared to the Q3 006.

My core impressions are as follows. [Note: Later in the day I podcasted with Debi Jones and Ewan Spence from Mobile Messaging 2.0. Check it out here.]