Mobile agent

Anyone want to discuss analytics? I’ve been looking at a number of mobile forums this weekend and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of discussion about it.

Are people actually tracking these mobile browser interactions of their applications? and I dont mean ‘panel reports’ which should really be called market research rather than analytics.

I know I have a ‘barrow to push’ working for www.amethon.com but it seems most people are just worried about applications looking good on mobiles rather than actually tracking usage.

Check out Mobile Agent for more info or drop me an email if interested in discussion commercials but better still post here and talk about what you are using to measure your mobile interactions..

iPhone the mobile phones answer to Paris Hilton:
Everyone’s talking about the iPhone. That’s hardly surprising when Apple, with the help of its many loyal disciples, has created a level of hype never seen before in the mobile industry.

There’s no doubt Apple is a unique company. But over the years, it has developed a fan base that at times resembles a new religious movement. Many of those fans have the attitude that everything Apple creates is fantastic, and that if you can’t see this, or disagree, you’re either the devil himself or need serious psychological attention.

I have heard a lot of rumors of a 2nd gen in the works but I don’t know what to believe. I want to buy one but if a newer one is coming out I would want to buy that one… Anyone hear anything?

Mobile phones (otherwise known as cell phones in some parts of the world) are revolutionising communications across the globe, more so in developing countries where landline infrastructure is lacking in many rural (and some urban) areas. Mobile phones represent the only means of communication for hundreds of millions of people

At the same time, mobiles have opened up huge economic opportunities for their owners. They can now be more easily contacted when work is available, they can use them to advertise their services, receive market prices, job information, and so on. Others now make a living ’sharing’ their phones and charging non-owners to make calls. Some make a living charging phone batteries, selling top-up vouchers, or covers and chargers

If you’re interested in how mobile phones, used socially, are changing the face of the planet - and in particular developing countries - then let’s share news, experiences and knowledge

With an increasing interest, and momentum, in this area right now, this is a great time to get connected with fellow Group members - researchers, practitioners, bloggers, ICT professionals, developers, authors and members of the general public all interested in this field.

The past year may have been a wireless dream come true if you’re a fan of the iPhone and more open handsets and networks, but it was a nightmare for some major new alternatives to traditional mobile services.

Municipal wireless networks, WiMax and MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) began the year buoyed by high hopes before each faced a reality check. In each case, business woes at one company were just part of the reason.

The recent growth of wireless in many forms helped to generate excitement and investment for new technologies in 2006 and early 2007. Municipal wireless networks seemed like a new channel to deliver ubiquitous high-speed Internet access without waiting for traditional carriers to step up. WiMax, possibly an alternative to 3G and Wi-Fi, finally had a marquee customer. And MVNOs promised to deliver complete cellular services, including phones, targeted to specific kinds of consumers. But as it turns out, it’s not so easy to flip the wireless world upside down.

San Francisco’s Wi-Fi Woes

As the year began, San Francisco reached a deal with EarthLink for one of the most hotly anticipated municipal wireless networks in the world, one in which Google would provide a free citywide service in addition to EarthLink’s paid offering. As in EarthLink’s deal for a Philadelphia network, the city would pay nothing. Meanwhile, leaders in Silicon Valley were planning an even bigger network, spanning 1,500 square miles and multiple technologies.

Politics kept the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from approving the EarthLink plan for months, until the service provider delivered some bad news of its own. In April, EarthLink said it would focus on both the municipal networks it was already committed to and to driving up usage in large cities rather than seeking out new deals. The San Francisco project’s future got blurry. Then, in August, the company said it wouldn’t invest any more money in its free-to-cities business model. A shrinking dial-up business and other problems were forcing big cuts at EarthLink.

“We will not devote any new capital to the old muni Wi-Fi model that has us taking all of the risk by fronting all of the capital, then paying to buy our customers one by one,” President and CEO Rolla Huff said. By November, EarthLink was considering “strategic alternatives” for the Wi-Fi business, an indication that it may be sold off. The Philadelphia network is going forward but has drawn fewer than expected subscribers. Meanwhile, backers of the Silicon Valley network were left searching for a new builder and operator after their first choice couldn’t attract enough financing, even in the heart of the IT industry.

WiMax to the Rescue?

Municipal wireless turned out to have one big technology problem — it required more access points than expected — which worsened its business problem: Where would the money come from? Analysts say the key now is to find areas that lack other broadband alternatives or get cities to sign up for services themselves. Telscape Communications, a mobile operator focused on the U.S. Hispanic market, is negotiating to buy a municipal Wi-Fi network in Tempe, Arizona, that has 1,000 access points and only 500 subscribers. The company hopes to use better marketing and some combination of cellular and Wi-Fi voice services to make it a success.

WiMax has been promoted as Wi-Fi with a wider reach for several years, and its big opportunity came in August 2006, when Sprint Nextel chose the technology as what it called its “fourth-generation” network. Vendors including Intel, Motorola, Samsung and Nokia piled on, and it looked like the high manufacturing volume that would drive down WiMax prices was finally on its way. The network would reach 100 million U.S. residents by the end of 2008, Sprint said.

In July this year, the carrier announced it would team up with wireless data provider Clearwire to jointly fund and market the WiMax service, called Xohm, and allow roaming between the two networks. Sprint would build 65 percent of the network, Clearwire the other 35 percent, each covering some cities the other couldn’t reach. However, the companies gave the same target: 100 million people by the end of 2008.

Then Sprint CEO Gary Forsee, a backer of the estimated US$5 billion WiMax plan, was forced out of the struggling carrier. A few weeks later, the Clearwire deal was off, with the companies saying they couldn’t reach final agreement on its details. And Sprint said it was reviewing its WiMax plans and would say more in early 2008. As the year’s end approached and new Sprint CEO Dan Hesse took over, it wasn’t clear what his take on the project might be.

Sprint’s soft launch of WiMax in Chicago and the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area went ahead before the end of the year as planned, and the carrier said it still plans commercial service in the first half of 2008. But WiMax is starting to generate more interest for emerging markets than for advanced economies, including from Cisco Systems, which acquired Navini Networks in January. The company said its main focus with WiMax is to get broadband widely deployed in countries that don’t have enough wired infrastructure.

The uncertainty surrounding Sprint and its plan is affecting the image more than the reality of WiMax, said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua.

“It’s not problems with the technology, it’s problems with the company,” Chua said. “The momentum we’re seeing behind WiMax in the rest of the world continues.”
Exploring Mobile Options

Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), which resell mobile capacity from established carriers, pulled in a lot of investment money in 2006 but suffered some high-profile failures in 2007.

At the end of July, youth-focused Amp’d Mobile shut down after it attracted nearly 200,000 customers in less than two years but failed to collect enough of the revenue it was due. In September, Disney said it would shut down its specialized service for families by the end of the year and look to offer its features through an established carrier. Helio, a money-losing joint venture of SK Telecom and EarthLink, stayed afloat thanks to $270 million of added investment from SK after EarthLink decided the MVNO game was too rich for its blood.

MVNOs and their supporters often didn’t realize what an uphill battle they faced, according to analysts. They needed to build up in months the kinds of billing systems and distribution networks that traditional carriers had taken years to refine, and frequently they fell short. Meanwhile, trying to make a profit by buying minutes and bytes from another carrier and reselling them is hard even for a well-run company, analysts said. The foggy future at Sprint, which provides the underlying network for most MVNOs in the U.S., cast yet another cloud over the business.

Metric frontwomen to headline MJF concert

Mobile Jam Fest presents singer/songwriter Emily Haines to headline an all female concert. Emily Haines is an artist that defies labeling. Frontwoman for Metric, she is proud to release her debut solo album, Knives Don’t Have Your Back on Last Gang Records. Written and recorded over the past four years in Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto and New York, the record sites contributions from the likes of Scott Minor from Sparklehorse, Broken Social Scene’s Justin Peroff, Stars’ Evan Cranley and Metric’s Jimmy Shaw.

The concert will be held March 30, 2008 at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto Canada. The concert will also launch the third creative contest, so make sure to check in for more updates. Also stay tuned for additional artist announcements.

Mobile News -A NURSE who watched porn on her mobile phone and starved patients of oxygen has been banned.

Stephanie Louise Payne was struck off after the Nursing and Midwifery Council upheld 10 complaints about her conduct on ward B6 at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.

The watchdog ruled Payne showed “a far-reaching lack of competence” involving “serious failures of record keeping, communication, drug administration and basic nursing care”.

Speaking after the case, an NMC spokesman said: “Patients were put at risk and Payne has shown no apparent insight into her shortcomings or indicated any capacity or intention to improve her practice in the future.”

The nurse, of Nantgarw, near Caerphilly, did not attend the hearing and later refused to comment on the judgement.

The hearing was told she failed to take a patient’s blood pressure for more than six hours, instead of on an hourly basis, and left one patient’s oxygen levels unchecked for more than eight hours.

There was another incident where the oxygen levels of a patient in her care plunged to “very low” – and Payne also failed to report a vulnerable elderly patient’s fall.

An NMC spokesman said the tribunal then heard evidence that Payne encouraged a colleague to watch porn on her mobile.

“The registrant had her mobile phone turned up to full volume and was watching pornographic video clips which she insisted on showing to Carla Williams,” said a spokesman.

“We accept the evidence… that the registrant should not have been using her mobile phone on duty, let alone watching pornographic material. Her behaviour was entirely unacceptable.”

The Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, which runs the UHW, backed the professional body’s inquiry.

Deputy nurse director Mandy Rayani said: “The Trust carried out its own internal investigations into this case and referred it to the NMC.

“We fully supported the NMC throughout the course of its investigations and the hearing, and we were commended by the council for the high-quality evidence and written information we provided.

“The Trust takes allegations of professional misconduct very seriously and this case shows that our internal systems are very effective in dealing with them.”

2007 was a year of innovation in the mobile Web space. The iPhone proved that mobile Web devices were still capable of near quantum leaps in improvement and innovation, Twitter demonstrated what was possible in the realm of truly network-oriented social software on mobile devices, and Google dramatically improved their mobile Web applications with innovative capabilities throughout the year, particularly with Google Maps Mobile.

However, while the iPhone isn’t quite ready for enterprise use yet (though it will likely get their soon), both Twitter and Google Maps Mobile have become poster children for mobile consumer apps that have had successful cross-over to the business world as enormously useful tools in day to day work.

The Spectrum Auction

At stake is a premium slice of 700 MHz bandwidth that is being freed up as analog TV stations transition to a digital format. Bidders consider the swath of spectrum, which could be used for mobile television or advanced data services for cellphones, so valuable that some have assembled war rooms to plot their strategy.

The auction is scheduled to take place on Jan. 24. The spectrum is being made available thanks to the transition to digital broadcasting by television station owners. It is expected to raise as much as $15 billion for the government.

There appeared to be no major surprises among the list of bidders. Google, bidding as Google Airwaves Inc., previously had announced that it would be participating in the auction, a commitment that made headlines.

Today, wireless operators in the U.S. dictate what mobile phones and services will work on their network and lock in customers with long-term contracts, in return for subsidizing the cost of the phone.

Apple AAPL cut a deal with AT&T in order to bring its iPhone to market, for example.
Google and others, though, lobbied the FCC for the open access rules. Google said it would bid for spectrum if that, and a few other conditions, were met.

Verizon Wireless objected to the rule, but has since surprised the industry by announcing it would open its network to third-party devices and applications that meet certain technical standards.

Verizon was persuaded to open its network by Google’s drive for open access rules and by Google’s recent announcement of Android, an open mobile software platform that Google is developing with 30-plus partners that include big players such as Nokia
If the auction’s open-access goal succeeds, cell phone consumers would enjoy the same flexibility people now have with PCs and the Internet.

You now buy an Internet connection from one company but can attach different computer brands and models to it, as well as run virtually any software application. In the future, you might buy your mobile connection from, say, Verizon Wireless, then pick a BlackBerry handset, run the Skype Internet phone service on it, and load ring tones, music files, TV shows or news clips from different providers. And you could buy such services from providers other than your cell phone carrier and its authorized partners.

Fortunately for consumers, the open-access movement had been picking up steam well before the FCC auction. Last month, Verizon Wireless did an about-face, announcing that it was opening up its network next year to outside devices and applications. Last week, AT&T made a similar pronouncement. Other cell phone companies should join the movement.
And, since there’s a strong chance that the deep-pocketed and entrenched cell phone giants will emerge among the winning bidders, the FCC must watch carefully to make sure their networks are truly opened up.

Google deserves praise for stoking the movement. It was a leading voice in lobbying the FCC to include an open-access rule in the coming auction. The search engine company plans to make a bid, most likely for the open-access slice of spectrum that carries a minimum price tag of $4.6 billion. And Google helped the cause by joining an industry alliance promoting “open” handsets and by releasing its Android software platform, which is designed to make it cheaper and easier for independent developers to create mobile applications.

Both the FCC and winning bidders must ensure that whatever changes occur in the wireless world live up to the auction’s promise of greater competition and innovation.

Mobile Advertising:

Advertisers & marketers nationwide are setting their plans in motion for 2008. Big-name brands will embrace new technologies and adjust their budgets in some surprising ways. And as an entrepreneur, you can use some of these tactics to reach your own audience in the coming year. In 2008, you can expect to see major mobile marketing trends!

A shift from traditional to alternative media

Advertising in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and TV will continue to be marketing staples, but spending in new media will show the biggest growth as advertisers move money into online, mobile and alternative out-of-home advertising. Many marketers are finding alternative media the best way to reach audiences effectively and to yield a measurable ROI.

Important Industry Events:

July: Various industry and interest groups pitched their ideas about spectrum auction rules to the FCC. Advocacy groups such as Public Knowledge and Consumers Union asked the FCC to require that part of the auctioned spectrum be sold with open-access rules attached. Large broadband and wireless providers, meanwhile, argued that placing heavy conditions on the spectrum would decrease its value and would hamper their efforts to create next-generation services.

July 31: The FCC put open-access rules on one-third of the spectrum to be auctioned off, voting to require that the winner of 22 MHz of spectrum allow any wireless devices to connect to the network.

Sept. 14: Verizon sued the FCC over the open-access rules it placed in the spectrum auction. Verizon dropped the suit just over a month later, on Oct. 24.

Nov. 5: Google, Sprint Nextel, Deutsche Telekom and 30 other companies banded together to form the Open Handset Alliance, an industry group dedicated to promoting the use of Android, Google’s Linux-based open platform for mobile devices, in order to “foster innovation on mobile devices and give consumers a far better user experience than much of what is available on today’s mobile platforms.”

Nov. 27: Verizon announced that it plans to give customers the option of connecting to its network through outside devices, marking a departure from its past position on open-access networks.

Google’s “Gphone” Morphs Into Android

Google’s anticipated “Gphone” announcement in November was both less, and more, than what had been long expected. For almost a year, rumors circulated that the online search giant was going to offer an actual phone. Google and its partners ended up unveiling not a device but a Linux-based open software platform, called Android, upon which mobile phones can be built. The idea is that a common platform will allow developers to build applications that can run on devices from many manufacturers on many networks, reducing complexity for both developers and consumers alike. Skeptics were quick to point out that Android might instead add complexity, since developers will have to build applications for it as well as existing platforms. Android-based phones, due out in mid-2008, will face entrenched platforms such as Symbian and Windows Mobile.

The Mobi Blog for Emerging Mobile News 2007

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