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  • Wireless Carriers Are Increasingly Interested In An App Store-Like Business, GetJar Says

    GetJar , which distributes free mobile applications to consumers on the Internet and over the phone, said it is branching out its business by building application storefronts for wireless carriers. A few months ago, that would have been unheard of because carriers typically want to own the relationship with their subscribers. But with the success of Apple's ( NSDQ: AAPL ) App store, which Steve Jobs said made $30 million in its first four weeks, copycats are really starting to take off. For example, earlier this month, I reported that T-Mobile will create an open storefront this Fall that would allow developers to sell their applications freely to their subscribers, and yesterday Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) announced the Android Market, a store for Android phones when they become available later this year. Of course, there's other app stores too, including Handango, which sells apps to smartphone users. When I met up with Bill Scott, GetJar Network's VP of sales and business development in Seattle this week, he said GetJar is seeing the same trend and is starting to work with carriers to distribute free apps on their decks. The numbers are convincing. So far, GetJar claims that consumers have downloaded 300 million applications in total from its site, with a monthly average of about 13 million downloads worldwide and more than 500,000 in the U.S. It distributes everything from Google Maps and Yahoo's ( NSDQ: YHOO ) Go to nifty, but also less useful items, such as Disco Light, which makes your phone flash, and Battery Drainer, which makes your phone flash and beep until it's dead. Adult entertainment is also fair game. The company initially had no intentions of being an app store, but Founder Ilja Laurs of Lithuania stumbled into it. As a game developer, he always had a hard time getting his games tested. One day he posted it on a Web site, asking people to download it for free and report any bugs (That also explains the company's name...Jar is the suffix...
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  • Mobile Content Bits: Obama Texts 2.9 Million; Kinoma Player, Hi5 Mobile; USOpen.org WAP; MailTXT

    -- 2.9 million text messages sent from Obama campaign: Nielsen Mobile estimates 2.9 million people received a text message from the Obama campaign that named its vice president over the weekend. Nic Covey, director of insights at the firm: "While much has been said of the timing and the scoop by news outlets, Obama's VP text-message still ranks as one of the most important text messages even sent and one of the most successful brand engagements using mobile media. The value of the message goes far beyond the 26 words and 2.9 million recipients. Here, Obama branded himself as cutting edge, inflated the already enormous press attention paid to his VP pick and further established a list of supporters' most coveted form of contact: their cell phone numbers." ( Release ). -- Kinoma releases mobile media Browser and player: Kinoma has launched Kinoma Play, a new mobile media browser and player that brings media capabilities to Windows Mobile smartphones. The application includes Kinoma Guide, a built-in search mechanism and catalog of more than a terabyte of media available online. Kinoma Play costs $29.99 and is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 and higher. ( Release ). -- Hi5 Mobile launches in 26 languages: San Francisco-based Hi5 launched a mobile version of its social network service in 26 languages, CNET reports . The site, which is used a lot in Latin America, has been optimized for the iPhone, BlackBerry and handsets from Nokia ( NYSE: NOK ) and Samsung. Hi5 doubled its visitor count over the past year, and recent comScore statistics show the social-networking space in Latin America has grown by a third since mid-2007. -- USOpen.org launches WAP site: USOpen.org has launched a WAP site and a variety of fresh mobile content ( http://www.usopen.org/en_US/interactive/sms/index.html?promo=hp_features ) along with almost 50 different types of text alerts, MobileContentToday reports . The site also launched a mobile sweepstakes with an opportunity to win...
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  • Mobile Content Bits: Nokia-Lonely Planet; Garmin-Where; UK Met Office; Palringo-iPhone

    -- Lonely Planet-Nokia Maps tie-up : Nokia ( NYSE: NOK ) has struck a distribution deal with Lonely Planet, which will provide Nokia Maps with downloadable destination guides. The guides, which are located in the Guides section in the Extras menu, cost 7.99 euros and can be downloaded over the air on select devices or sideloaded via a PC ( release ). -- Garmin gets local : Garmin has inked a deal with location-based application firm Ulocate to put its software Where.com on to some of its devices—though no specifics yet on which one, reports CNET . Where gives users access to Yelp reviews, GasBuddy, and the company's own Buddy Beacon software—which can be joined to a Facebook application to let users share their current locations with friends. -- UK weather service to provide video forecasts: The UK's state weather service Met Office is planning to offer made-for mobile video forecasts to operators, aggregators and handset firms, reports Mobile Entertainment. Currently, its mobile efforts have been confined to streamed bulletins on the MobiTV services of British broadcaster ITN. Met Office Media, the commercial arm of the weather tracker, has already plowed a "six-figure" sum to target new channels, including mobile. -- Palringo pushes talk on iPhone: Mobile instant messaging firm Palringo has added "Push to Talk"—or what it calls the vocal instant messaging—to its free iPhone application. Unlike most "push to talk" services from carriers, Palringo integrates with several existing IM services, including AOL's ( NYSE: TWX ) AIM, Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) Talk, Yahoo! ( NSDQ: YHOO ) Messenger, Gadu Gadu, ICQ, Jabber, Windows Live Messenger, as well as Apple's iChat ( release ). Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
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  • 5.2B Mobile Subscribers By 2011, 1.7B On Mobile Web And 2.1B Mobile Purchases By 2013: Reports

    A trio of new research reports detail the dramatic and swift rise of mobile in terms of subscription growth, mobile web usage and mobile payments for goods downloaded to mobile phones. On Pace For 5.2 Billion Mobile Subscribers By 2011 Last year there were three times as many people using mobile phones than land lines worldwide (3.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectively), according to Infonetics Research. Mobile subscriptions jumped 31 percent year-over-year while land line subscriptions declined 5 percent in the same period. Latin America and the Caribbean are the only regions where land lines are expected to grow. Strong growth, no surprise, is expected to be primarily driven by voice services in Brazil, Russia, India and China – countries where double-digit GSM subscriber growth rates are common, the firm concluded. Based on the current rate of growth, it predicts there will be 5.2 billion mobile subscribers by 2011, at which time there will also be one wireless broadband subscriber for every four wireline broadband subscribers. ( Release ). 1.7 Mobile Web Users By 2013 The number of subscribers using the internet on their mobile phones is expect to nearly triple from 577 million today to more than 1.7 billion by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research. Social networking, user-generated content, instant messaging, location-based services and search and discovery are all driving a more open environment where users can share, collaborate and exploit content free from carrier restrictions, the firm wrote. Asia is expected to be the largest market for mobile web where almost 416 million users are anticipated to be surfing the internet on mobile phones in five years. Currently, 190 million users are accessing the mobile web there in those regions. Juniper Research predicts South America holds the "greatest untapped potential for mobile web" because of relatively low wireline broadband penetration in those countries. ( Release ). 2.1 Billion Mobile...
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  • Autoglass's Typical Mobile Advertiser Experience

    So what's holding back mobile advertising? Online marketing and e-commerce research and consulting firm E-Consultancy has an interesting interview with Chris Smith, the online marketing manager, of Autoglass , one of the UK's largest vehicle glass replacement companies. Smith decided to take a punt with mobile advertising without the help of an agency and his experiences, (which I suspect are probably very typical at this early stage) of stumbling around and discovering things haphazardly show you what a long way mobile search and display advertising have to go. Being an online marketing manager, Smith was actually quite intrigued with mobile, and what mobile advertising might do for his company. Last year, he spent £2000 ($4000) knocking up a stripped down mobile (.mobi) site and for the last few months he's been watching as the traffic trickles in, and how his mobile advertising efforts in both search and display are panning out. As it turns out, the biggest hurdle for him has been his inability to track traffic. Smith: "...We only really actively started promoting it in April. This was because initially, we had great trouble finding a way of tracking traffic to it. I didn't want to spend money on advertising if I couldn't measure the result, and what people were doing on the site." Smith also reiterates a complaint about Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) Analytics that has surfaced before . "Obviously [it] is not really geared up for mobile as it uses JavaScript, which most mobiles are not geared up to handle. It would tell us we had 100% direct visitors and so on, but it wouldn't give me any breakdown on where those visitors were coming from. It was obvious it wasn't really a workable solution for mobile." Smith eventually resolved the tracking problem by using Bango's mobile analytics software. Meanwhile, despite the early hiccups, Smith says he plans to do more with mobile advertising, including doing paid search on Google...
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  • Mobile Content Bits: Avot Media; JumpTap's European Expansion; LiveWire Mobile Gets SPV Content

    -- Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Avot Media said it is launching a mobile video service in about 100 Home Depot stores that will help sell a product called Safety Quick Light's Fast Attach. At the stores, users will see a sign by the product that allows them to download a short educational video about the product by sending a text message to a short code. A few seconds later, a person receives a message back with a link to the video. The deployment, which is occurring in 100 Home Depot locations in Florida next month, is the company's first roll-out. The one-year old company identifies what phone the user has, transcodes the video, streams it and modifies it so that the playback smoothly. "We are going out to any content owners, advertisers or mobile marketers, and are saying, do you want help delivering your video today? It's not widely used today, mostly because of the barriers to entry," said David Sloan, Avot's director of product market. By using text messaging, which is something millions of Americans are comfortable using today, "we are knocking away all the barriers to adoption." -- JumpTap, a Cambridge, Mass.-based mobile search and advertising company, said today it is opening up new offices in Stockholm, Sweden and Madrid, Spain, to help serve their European and Baltic customers, including TeliaSonera, which is deploying search and advertising services across Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Estonia and Lithuania. Telefonica ( NYSE: TEF ) Spain has also partnered with JumpTap to manage its on-portal search and display advertising. Oddly enough, it also said it hired "several well-known executives," however declined to name them. Release. -- LiveWire Mobile , a subsidiary of NMS Communications, said today it has signed a worldwide licensing deal with SPV, an independent rock label. The deal will include ringbacks, full-tracks, ringtones and videos from German-based SPV's four record labels: Steamhammer, SPV...
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  • Mobile Content Bits: 3 UK Adds Fun Text; AOL And Time.com on iPhone; Egyptian Ads; RollingStone.com

    -- 3UK/Fun Text: 3 UK is adding Fun Text - a cutesy picture messaging service - to its Planet 3 mobile web portal. Cambridge-based Fun Text - which routes basic graphics and videos from a "premium" catalogue over MMS, has had the portal carry its WAP-based service since December, but 3 UK is the first carrier to link to its new client app, which supports Nokia ( NYSE: NOK ) N95, N73, E65 and 6120 handsets. -- AOL ( NYSE: TWX ) iPhone search: AOL said today it has just launched a version of AOL Mobile Search specifically for the iPhone. Both iPhone and iPod Touch users can access the beta version of the search site by going to http://search.aol.com on their device. Of course, people with other phones will be able to access the same URL, but it will render differently for them. iPhone users will be able to touch the screen to click on a map or to call a business listing. Other users will have to scroll down and click. -- Time.com For iPhones: Time.com said it has also launched a special version of its site for iPhone and iPod touch users. With the help of Crisp Wireless, Time will offer iPhone users access to exclusive content, such as the 24/7 political tipsheet "The Page," weekly newsmaker interview feature 10 Questions, Quotes of the Day and interactive photo essays. -- Ads Come to Egypt: Italian mobile content company Buongiorno (BIT: BNG) said today it has signed a deal with Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ) Egypt to help launch its first mobile advertising program. Some of the first advertisers are BMW, P&G, Pepsi and Hyundai. The program will include several types of ads, including MMS, WAP Banner, SMS and Interactive Voice Response. -- RealNetworks ( NSDQ: RNWK ) and RollingStone.com: Real launched a mobile-optimized site for RollingStone.com, which is operated by Rhapsody America, a joint venture between Real and MTV. To build it, Real tapped into the RSS feeds on RollingStone.com to create the mobile site. The site is published up to 12 times a day...
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  • Content, Apps Provider MobiVentures Buys Email Marketer PurePromoter For $7.8M

    Mobile content and apps creator MobiVentures is acquiring UK-based email marketer PurePromoter for $7.8 million (3.9 million pounds). MobiVentures has secured $2 million (1.01 million pounds) in financing from Trafalgar Capital Specialized Investment Fund in the form of convertible debentures to support the acquisition. MobiVentures plans to tap Pure's customer base to market its mobile app. For its part, Pure expects to benefit from the distribution and other services from Move2Mobile, another recent MobiVentures acquisition. Release
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  • Yahoo And T-Mobile UK In Mobile Ad Tie-Up

    Yahoo ( NSDQ: YHOO ) and T-Mobile have struck a deal in which the search firm will provide display advertising on the network operator's internet service Web 'n' walk in the UK. Reuters reports that Yahoo has been pushing into the mobile ad space aggressively, especially as rivals such as Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) have made serious inroads into its core web search and advertising business. The partnership with T-Mobile follows a similar deal made with Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ) and means that Yahoo now has access to two out four of the UK's top networks. Yahoo Europe's VP of Connected Life Geraldine Wilson said that with the two operators on board the search firm now had " the kind of interesting scale of audience for advertisers to start considering this medium seriously ." Most of the advertising will consist of banner ads. Related @ CES: More On Yahoo's New Mobile Offerings Yahoo Signs America Movil For OneSearch; 16 Countries Included
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  • Microsoft To Buy Norwegian Search Firm Fast Search & Transfer For $1.23 Billion

    Microsoft ( NSDQ: MSFT ) will buy Norwegian web search software firm Fast Search & Transfer in a deal that values the company at 6.6 billion kroner (US$1.23 billion), reports Bloomberg . The software giant will pay 19 kroner (US$3.54) for each Fast share. Fast Search is currently unprofitable and has struggled in the past year to stay afloat. It reported a $100 million loss in the third quarter, and a $26 million loss in the second quarter. In August it cut jobs and restructured the company, and has been focusing lately on mobile search. It formed a joint venture with Japanese internet service company Rakuten to provide mobile search and advertising services in Japan. In December it launched an enhanced mobile search platform that also includes personalization and recommendation technology. Microsoft expects the transaction to be completed in the second quarter of 2008. Related Fast And Rakuten Partner For Japanese Mobile Search Fast Search Laying Off 148 Employees; Does Restructuring
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  • Off-Portal Surfing Boosts Network Traffic And Content Sales; Voda at Top

    UK operators that allowed their customers unfettered access to surf beyond the confines of their walled gardens saw their network traffic and their content sales grow the fastest. Mobile web platform provider Bango, (AIM: BGO) which helps companies create a presence on the mobile internet, trawled through the data from their total base of content providers and found that Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ) UK has risen to the top in off-portal content sales (of course this is one vendor reporting data, so take it for what it is). For years, operators have feared that letting consumers surf beyond their walled garden would damage data sales, but Bango found that the opposite is true. What benefited content providers--including higher pay for their content and encouraging consumers to go "off-portal"—also benefitted the operator. Aside from having some of the highest payout rates to content providers among UK operators, Vodafone's clean, consumer friendly WAP billing interface has helped its sales as well as a prominently displayed search box on its Vodafone live! Home page. Bango CEO Ray Anderson notes that 2007 was the year that UK networks moved decisively to support off-portal content sales, and predicts they will offer even better payout rates next year, approaching that of credit cards ( via release ). Key drivers in boosting content sales and network traffic include: -- Putting a search box onto the operator portal for off-portal content searching -- Introducing flat rate data charges to encourage more mobile web browsing -- Providing higher price points and high payout rates encourages content providers to run promotions on these networks as they receive a better return on their marketing investment. Related Walled Gardens, Government Intervention And Innovation Carriers Vs Content Providers—Battle Or Opportunity?
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  • Round Up: UGC Vs ***; Google IPhone; Carbon Footprint; Mizpee

    -- Australian incumbent Telstra has learned the dangers of unmoderated user-generated content… Its mobile video sharing site Wotnext.com.au has been taken down for emergency maintenance after being overrun by smutty video clips. People pay $1 to view the clips, of which Telstra gets half. "Telstra made assurances at the time of the launch that all clips would be checked by moderators before they were published, but as of this morning most of the most-viewed clips were clearly designed for sexual gratification" notes the SMH . -- Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) has launched an iPhone-specific interface, apparently without fanfare reports TechCrunch . Kudos on not making a big deal out of what is essentially another handset port. Google is also releasing a new application for the iPhone which combines e-mail, search and calendar into a single interface, reports Reuters . -- The European Commission has launched a mobile application to let people calculate their carbon footprint and compare that with national and world averages, reports ZDNet UK . MobGAS is available in 21 languages. -- MIzpee, a mobile service which lets you locate the nearest toilet developed by Yojo Mobile, went live today. "You visit the service on your mobile phone browser, and search for bathrooms by city and street address, then see a list of the nearest ones. It includes user-created rankings for how clean each bathroom is, as well as a note about any access fee. It also says whether or not a bathroom has a diaper-changing station, and whether its restricted to a premise's customers." It's a reasonably good idea although I'm not sure there's a viable busines model for something restricted to toilets. ( VentureBeat ) -- Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys will be appearing on mobile in comic form. Uclick has teamed up with Papercutz, which publishes the titles as graphic novels, to launch the service.
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