Firstly let me apologise for the gap between the last blog and this one.  I have broken the first rule of social media and not blogged regularly and often so I must beware of the wrath of the social media guru and await my fate.  To mitigate my heinous crime I must plead to general busy-ness and overwork – an office move, Barcelona, expectant customers and multiple software releases that have all taken their toll.  However, I have to admit to being very, very angry!  Most of the talk in Barça concerned apps. – iPhone vs. Android vs. the Okey Cokey 2000.  These days you have to wade through tons of virtual media hype to get sensible ‘non-app’ comment.  To cap it all I had a meeting with a new customer who wanted to base his new, exciting and pre-revenue business around the iPhone.  I tried to remonstrate “You are spending millions on this business and you want to balance it on a device which has 2.7%, and descending, of a 3.5 billion device market.  Why?”, “But I love my iPhone” he said. Read more »

The sentiment expressed in this trusty old adage seems to sum up nicely the current yardstick for success in the mobile applications market.  It was only last November when Apple announced that over 100,000 apps were available in their burgeoning App store, clearly an impressive number.  However, barely three months have passed and now the fact that the total has risen to over 140,000 is being widely trumpeted.  Amongst all the ballyhoo accompanying the launch of the new iPad, I gather that another 40,000 apps have been added since November and the total continues to grow unabated. To quote another old adage, the subtext seems to be “never mind the quality, feel the width” and this strikes me as both rather odd and in danger of missing the point.

The conclusion that we are expected to reach appears to be simply “the more apps the better”.  Please don’t get me wrong – choice is clearly a good thing, Read more »

I am deeply, deeply cross about the car parking charges at my local train station. There isn’t a bus I can take to the station, I can’t be dropped off every day and I have no friends. I have to drive to the station. And park. They put up the price of parking every year – I can’t understand why, it’s hardly a high maintenance facility. I’m so cross about the parking that, despite the operator’s attempts to make me pay for parking using a mobile phone, I have resolutely refused. I want them to have the inconvenience of counting the coins that I so religiously pump into the machine every day. It’s not easy, let me tell you. I stagger around most of the week, bow-legged under the weight of silver coinage collected to feed the ‘No Change Given’ monster. It ruins my svelte trouser line.

The other day, however, I was caught short. Being able to muster only £4.50 of the requisite £5.50, I was forced to concede and call the parking hotline. Imagine my surprise when I completed the entire registration and parking transaction in less than two minutes – entirely without defaulting to ‘operator assistance’. RingGo has the best voice recognition system and user experience I have ever encountered on a phone. I was so impressed, I did it again a few days later from a different station and I audibly squeaked with excitement when the automated voice recognised me, my car and my new location using geo-positioning on my mobile. I simply confirmed and was on my way, barely breaking stride. Read more »

You do not need a university education to know that one. Neither is the iPhone the only smart phone in the world. I am getting a little peeved by having to explain this simple but obvious truth and with every new sales call I am asked to attend (frequently becoming fewer unless I am able to contain the tantrums). However, such is the splendid job that our chums in iPhone’s marketing department have done that many would think the Motorola, Nokia and Samsung have ceased to exist. I am not going to attempt to redress the balance created by the iPhone phenomenon but I will only say that there is another world out there. Not only is the empire(s) fighting back but there is evidence that ground is being made up. Whilst I am eternally grateful for the advent of the iPhone – (how else would this mobile world have ignited) – there is a lot more to mobilising your brand than producing a nice looking app. Read more »

I am often asked where the next growth market to realise its potential for mobile is going to be. It does not take a great deal of thought because the answer is always and increasingly – Africa! I am also particularly pleased to be asked this question because this week Mobestar embarks on its own African adventure emanating from Nairobi, Kenya. This country has the most intensive mobile internet users in Africa, with each user browsing an average of 525 pages each month, according to a new report by Opera. Here, the number of unique users grew by 246.2 per cent in the year to November 2009 while page-views grew by 615 per cent in a similar period. Applications are starting to proliferate like the cash transfer system provided by the market leaders, M-PESA, which is now less than three years old but has 7 million customers and is reputed to process as much as 10% of Kenya’s GDP. Kenya is launching a branded version of our own mDate mobile dating platform which, we trust, will produce a similar uptake. In fact all over Africa the story is the same, massive mobile utilisation and exponential growth. Read more »

Unless you’ve spent the last few months trapped in a cave you will undoubtedly have seen, read or heard that cloud computing is on its way and is likely to affect the way that many of us use our computers and interact with the internet over the coming years.  Much has been written elsewhere about the implications of cloud computing in general and whether it is indeed destined to transform the way we use the web but, at this juncture, I am particularly interested in exploring what the impact of cloud computing will be on mobile applications.

For the uninitiated, it is probably worth reiterating briefly the key characteristics of cloud computing.  In layman’s terms, cloud computing simply refers to the use of powerful shared computing resources which are accessed remotely, typically via a web browser over the internet.  Users don’t need to know (or care) where the servers are located or where the programs they are using are running – they just need access to a web browser to use the service from anywhere in the world.  In practice, the term cloud computing has grown to refer to a number of related capabilities that can broadly be summarised under following categories:
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When asked to write a blog entry, I thought long and hard about “stuff” and tried to come up with something deep, meaningful and full of wisdom. But eventually I decided that as we are approaching the end of the first decade of the “new millennium” that I should stare into  a  crystal ball and come up with some future insights of my own.

Most people seem to look upon 2009 as a year to forget, and speed away from as fast a possible, but really the past year has been a time of great change and invention, necessitated by the fact that everyone has had to think a lot harder this year to find new and innovative solutions to their problems. That said our challenges have by no means disappeared and hopefully this will continue our hunger to create and develop new ideas and technologies no matter how weird, wonderful or just plain strange they may appear at the time.

This brings me nicely onto a few technology advancements (or perhaps a wish list) for the future:

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Contrary to popular opinion Apple has not taken over the world – well not yet perhaps. Granted – the iPhone is a phenomenon and with the number of apps (sic) now exceeding 100,000 (http://bit.ly/W6w4P) – the other smart phone providers have ingested a considerable amount of exhaust fumes. But the more important story for both business and consumers is going to involve the services that are enabled by those applications and the mobile devices they run on. Infrastructure providers, both internal and external, need to start providing guidance on how to properly bring business efforts to the mobile arena, including line of business applications, marketing and customer support, as well as determining which mobile platforms will be supported. There is a very important distinction between applications and apps and as time evolves the supplier of the former will be in an increasingly strong position. For example, if my organisation supplies a leading business intelligence application to some of the world biggest companies I will sooner, rather than later, have to supply a mobile version of the same that works on every iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. that incorporates all the values of my flagship product.
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Well we all know that the market for mobile applications is here at last. Just have a look at the proliferation of iPhone applications to see what we are talking about or even the number of people fiddling about with their handsets on the train home on non-conversational pursuits. From the consumers perspective the question of  whether or not to use mobile applications is not in doubt but from a brands viewpoint the question of “what is our mobile strategy” is a more thorny issue. Firstly 9 out 10 brands do not even have a mobile strategy because they have seldom been able to answer the question of “what is it and why do I need one” in the first place.  Once the more innovative organisations have asked themselves this question they are down to the how, what, where and why and that’s where the real fun starts.
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The mobile industry is now completing a huge shift in its attitude toward mobile data. Until pretty recently, the prevailing attitude among mobile operators was that data was a disappointment. It had been hyped for a decade, and although there were some successes, it had never lived up to the huge growth expectations that were set at the start of the decade. Most operators viewed it as a nice incremental add-on rather than the driver of their businesses.

But in the last year or so, the attitude has shifted dramatically from “no one is using mobile data” to “oh my God, there’s so much demand for mobile data that it’ll destroy the network.” A lot of this attitude shift was caused by the iPhone, which has indeed overloaded some mobile networks. But there’s also a general uptick in data usage from various sources, and the rate of growth seems to be accelerating.

The increased forecasts are driven by a couple of simple observations:
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