Bango Foresees WAP Billing to 'Dominate' Subscriptions

Mobile Web tech vendors Bango say they see that the opening-up of mobile traffic channels – paying for on-deck links to off-deck sites and mobile advertising through Yahoo! and Google as an indication that content providers are acquiring customers through the mobile Internet rather than via PC Web affiliate programs.


“WAP billing is now the preferred way to sell content to customers acquired through mobile marketing,” says Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances atBango ( News - Alert), adding that they predict this “e-commerce for the mobile Web” will “dominate how subscriptions are marketed and sold in the US within the next 12 months.”

Subscriptions tend to be the mainstay of the mobile content market in the US. Bango’s MMA-compliant WAP-based mobile subscription service is designed to eliminate the need to send text messages to make a purchase – “the price, subscription time period and T&Cs are clearly displayed on-screen before consumers click to purchase,” according to the Bangovians.

Earlier this month TMC’s Nitya Prashant reported that a Bango survey of the 20 most trafficked PC Web sites has found that “half of these sites do not work well on mobile phones.”

The survey concluded that that PC Web sites are not adapting fast enough to match mobile browsing trends. Even though five percent of visitors to PC Web sites come from mobile devices (compared to 1 percent last year), the Bango study concluded, “PC Web sites have yet to show mobile-friendly versions of their sites.”

A recent update to the Bango mobile subscription service provides an API so content providers can see the status of their subscriptions. ”Bango re-bills consumers on their behalf once the subscription period has finished, notifying the user by text,” Malhotra explains.

The WAP model “capitalizes on this year’s surge in mobile Web browsing,” Malhotra says. “We anticipate US mobile operators will support more flexibility around subscription pricing models next year with the introduction of weekly subs, at price points other than $9.99.”

Going Green with your Mobile Phone

Mobile phones are greening up their act.

If your like me you leave your mobile phone charger plugged into the wall at all times. Well that constantly plugged in charger continues to pull energy from the socket long after your phone is fully charged and you have removed your phone.

Mobile phone manufacturers are taking note and have developed an energy rating system for mobile phone chargers to enable consumers to make greener purchasing decisions. LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson have teamed up to make mobile communication a bit greener.

The new rating system takes these two factors into account and is based on both European Union and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star energy standards. All five of the companies’ current chargers will be including in the five-star rating system where five stars categorizes the most efficient and zero stars the least efficient.

There has been no news from Research in Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry, but are welcomed to join the green initiative. Until then I will just have to unplug my charger.

Kids and Teens Are Always On

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

eMarketer estimates that 82% of US teens ages 12 to 17 and 43.5% of children ages 3 to 11 will use the Internet on a monthly basis in 2009.

Comparative data from Nielsen Online indicates that about 19% of active Internet users in July 2008—or 32.4 million people—were under age 18.
MultiMedia Intelligence found that there were 16 million mobile teens in the US in 2007.

According to the US Census Bureau, there are 25.7 million teens in the US. That means nearly two-thirds of all teens have a mobile phone.

Pew Internet & American Life Project and the College Board’s National Commission on Writing found that a greater percentage of US teens have a mobile phone than own a PC
“This audience navigates between a multitude of electronic options for communication, including social networks, text messaging, instant messaging and virtual worlds,” says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Kids and Teens: Communication Revolutionaries. “They expect transitions between communications media to be seamless—messages sent by one means ought to be accessible in another.”

In fact, the distinctions many adults make between “online,” “offline” and “mobile” communications are meaningless to these young multimedia mavens.

“Kids and teens just communicate, period,” says Ms. Williamson.

What tools they use to interact are less important than how simple the interaction is, how seamlessly they can move across devices and how engaging the experience is.

“Marketers have never confronted a faster-moving or more elusive audience,” Ms. Williamson says.

Consumers Want Quality Cameras on Mobile Phones

The Strategy Analytics Wireless Device Lab service research, "The Camera is Still King: Consumers Willing to Pay for a Quality Camera on Their Mobile Device," shows that a quality camera is the primary mobile phone add-on for which consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe would be willing to pay--and willing to pay the most--compared to other mobile device features.
These findings are based on a survey of over 2800 wireless device owners in the US and Western Europe. The survey showed that mobile consumers are also willing to pay for a video camera, music player and removable memory cards.
"Strategy Analytics research shows that over 60% of all respondents would be willing to pay extra for a quality camera on their mobile device," commented Chris Schreiner, Senior User Experience Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "This desire for imaging features prevails across all age ranges in both regions."
Kevin Nolan, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics User Experience Practice, added, "Cameras, video cameras and music players are quickly becoming table stakes when consumers shop for mobile devices. They also requested additional memory in order to store this media."

Do you ever turn off your cell phone?

This is the question of the day at Gizmodo.

There are very few times that I power down and usually is it out of sheer frustration. But I did spend one week in Mexico this summer where, GASP, I had my cell phone off, and in the hotel safe for 8 days.

Due completely to the fact that I refused to pay the exorbitant roaming charges I sent one text to my family letting them know we arrived safely and locked my phone away.

And to be honest I didn't miss it at all, OK that's not entirely true. There was one time when I was wandering the hotel and couldn't find my companion that I wish I had my phone to place that "Where are you?" call. But what good would it have done if I had my phone, when his was still in the safe.

And its funny because coming home I thought that my cellular vacation would have made me less dependent on my mobile phone but it didn't it might have made it worse because now I know I can be without a mobile but I just choose not to be.

Will mobile phones kill the TV station?

That’s a question one can’t help but ask Patrick Parodi, CMO of mobile advertising solutions provider, Amobee. As chairman and global board director of the Mobile Entertainment
Forum , Parodi loves to play the role of evangelist, telling mobile operators to turn into a media company. In an interview with ET, the messiah of mobile entertainment and marketing speaks at length on how mobile operators are probably close to missing the bus, the lessons they could learn from the commoditisation of internet service providers (ISPs). And, of course, the fate of the TV station.


Mobile marketing is largely tactical or promotion-led , and is rarely part of a long-term strategy. Is the mobile useful only as a shortterm marketing tool?


To a great extent, mobile marketing is being used as a direct marketing tool for lead generation and as a push model. That’s going to change. We are going to see mobile more as a media option where the user becomes the centre of the medium. That’s largely happening because of the advancement in handsets like the iPhone, or what others like Nokia, HTC and Google’s Android platform are doing. From our perspective, the operator is in the centre of the wireless ecosystem. But they have a big job ahead in accelerating their networks to become media companies.

Online and Mobile Family Connections

Families stay in touch, with and without wires.
Nearly nine out of 10 married-with-children households surveyed owned multiple mobile phones, and nearly one-half owned three or more. Two-thirds of such households had broadband at home. The national average for all households is 52%.

Many of the families surveyed used their mobile phones to keep in touch: 70% of couples in which both partners owned a mobile phone contacted each other daily to say hello or chat, and 42% of parents contacted their child/children every day by mobile phone.

“Some analysts have worried that new technologies hurt family togetherness, but we see that technology allows for new kinds of connectedness built around mobile phones and the internet,” said Tracy Kennedy, author of the report, in a statement.

Mobile Phones: 100% Just Isn't Enough

October 13, 2008, was a milestone in mobile communications: the 25th anniversary of the first commercial cellphone call. As the revolution-without-wires has spread, the result is an adoption rate that would have left Alexander Graham Bell himself speechless. Within a quarter century of that call—which was placed to Mr. Bell’s grandson—the majority of people on this earth have a mobile phone.

Think of anyone you know, odds are that person is a wireless subscriber.

In a phenomenon that baffles newcomers to the mobile world, penetration figures sail past 100%—and no one so much as bats an eyelash.

The reason, of course, is that people have more than one mobile. One for home, one for work. A contract phone for around town, a prepaid phone for the road. This happens to a particular degree in Europe, where frequent travel across borders means juggling subscriptions to keep from paying steep roaming fees. Usually, this means carrying one phone and switching out the SIM card, the little chip that stores your subscriber information.

For example, Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that by the end of the year, 28.9% of prepaid mobile subscriptions worldwide will consist of “secondary or tertiary SIM card ownership.” Certainly a very useful figure to know, but can you blame us if “tertiary SIM card ownership” sounds an awful lot like “has more phones than hands?”

Heck, the GSM Association reports mobile phone penetration in Italy at 154%. It’s hard not to picture every man, woman and child in the country carrying baskets of phones, trading them like currency, using them as noisemakers at football matches, building sculptures out of them to stand alongside fountains and in piazzas.

Worldwide mobile cellular subscribers to reach 4 billion mark late 2008

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré announced in New York that worldwide mobile cellular subscribers are likely to reach the 4 billion mark before the end of this year.

Source: International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

Mobile hardware outpaces software, user capabilities

Mobile hardware is outpacing software capabilities and the mobile user experience, according to a panel of technologists at Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference held at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Among those speaking was Rich Miner, group manager of mobile platforms at Google Inc., who said open operating systems -- like the one launched on Google's long-awaited G1 Android phone -- will drive future innovation, but much of it may be lost on the user in the short term.

"The easiest way to see this is ... about 80% of mobile phones have cameras in them today, yet if you were to ask how many people actually use those cameras (know how to get photos off of the phone), it's probably literally 10% to 15%," Miner said. (ie ClickOVA)

But with the entrance of companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Google in the mobile platform market, a shift is coming. In a few years, a large contingent of consumers may not even use a PC, but instead perform all their Internet and communications applications on mobile devices, according to panelist Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer of the experience and technology group at Adobe.

Text Messages Drive Mobile Data Growth

Medium demands savvy use by marketers

Mobile data service revenues in the US rose to $14.8 billion for the first half of 2008, according to the CTIA. That was up 40% over the first half of 2007, when data revenues reached $10.5 billion. Mobile data now accounts for one-fifth of all mobile revenues.

"More and more people are using wireless devices to access the Internet, take photos, get directions, watch videos, download music and send text messages," said Steve Largent, CEO of the CTIA, in a statement.

Do Ads Fit with Mobile User-Generated Content?

Once, long, long ago, advertisers only had to worry what was on the facing page.

YouTube educated the mass market about authoring and sharing user-generated content (UGC), and now advertisers are catching on, too.

Clearly, mobile UGC spending is growing. But advertisers still face challenges in reaching consumers in highly personalized—and often unpredictable—UGC settings. Nevertheless, smart marketers are beginning to address the distinct mobile UGC environment through contests, branded tools and other forms of digital collateral that add value to consumers' creative and distribution efforts.

Evolution of the Mobile Phone

See how Far the Mobile Phone has come.

U.S. 3G Adoption Rivals Europe

The number of U.S. subscribers with 3G-enabled devices has grown 80%, to 64.2 million during the past year, comScore reports. The market has responded enthusiastically as mobile vendors have rolled out their enhanced networks and a new crop of 3G-enabled devices.

Source: Wirelessweek.com

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Increased 12 Percent in Second Quarter of 2008

Worldwide sales of mobile phones reached close to 305 million units in the second quarter of
2008, a 11.8 percent increase over the second quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, Inc.
Sales of mobile phones in the mature markets of Western Europe and North America slightly
recovered after a difficult start. Western Europe reached close to 42 million units while North
America surpassed 44 million units in the second quarter of 2008.

Nokia sold 120.4 million mobile phones in the second quarter of 2008 and widened its lead
to control 39.5 percent of the global mobile phones market.

Samsung’s mobile phones sales into the channel reached 45.7 million units.

With mobile phone sales reaching 30.4 million units, Motorola’s worldwide market share
dropped further in the second quarter of 2008 at -4.5 percent year-on-year.

LG’s positive momentum continued in the second quarter of 2008, with mobile phones sales
amounting to 26.7 million units. This represented a 2 percentage-point increase
year-on-year.

Sony Ericsson’s market share grew slightly in the second quarter of 2008 sequentially with
worldwide mobile phone sales reaching close to 23 million units.

Source: Gartner

Is your cellphone corny?Samsung hopes it is!

Samsung unveils its latest “eco-phone.” The E200 Eco is the third phone Samsung has introduced this year with parts made from bioplastics — materials extracted from corn. It is the first, however, in which the entire case is bioplastic.
The E200 Eco has a 1.3-megapixel camera, video messaging capabilities and an MP3 player. It's due to release in Europe in September but American's are going to have to wait it out to get green as there isn't a release date yet for the US.
And in case you were wondering even the packaging materials are green, having been made from recycled materials.

Where Will You Be Watching The Olympics? From Your Mobile Phone?

With the 2008 Olympics well underway hopefully most of you have figured out how you will stay updated. And various media companies are hoping you turn to your mobile device for your updates. They're banking on the Olympics being the watershed moment for mobile content, and even mobile advertising. And, when you think about it, the Olympics has a perfect recipe for making this come true: there's a gigantic, worldwide audience full of people who can at times be ravenous for updates no matter where they are.
YAHOO! has developed a specific mobile page devoted to the event; NBC, the official Olympic broadcaster in the U.S., has a number of options; and a number of smaller scale companies have launched everything from mobile TV to microblogging sites just in time for the Aug. 8 event.

Mobile TV To Be Biggest Ad Revenue Generator By 2010: Report

Jupiner predicts that spending on mobile TV advertising will grow from $335 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. Total annual global spending on mobile advertising will hit $1.3 billion in 2008, rising to $7.6 billion by 2013. China and the Far East will remain the largest regional market for mobile advertising, because it includes the massive population of China and the advanced mobile markets of Japan and South Korea.

New Satellite Will Supply TV To Cell Phones

The satellite is designed to provide 10 to 15 live television stations for mobile phones in the future. It is powerful enough to not require a dish to receive broadcast.

3 takes your mobile phone to the cinema

3 is one of the most innovative mobile phone companies in the world. The Vizux iWear goggles are exclusively available in 3 stores this week, using pocket-sized video glasses to “make the big screen as portable as your mobile”. Tiny high-tech displays inside the glasses create a virtual screen that’s the equivalent of watching a 62-inch plasma TV.

Older Adults Shifting To Mobile Phones From Landlines

In a survey conducted in the fourth quarter of last year, Harris Interactive found that about one in seven adults only uses a cell phone, up from roughly one in 10 in 2006. The percentage of adults with landline phones has dropped slightly to 79% from 81%.

LG Launches `Touch-Web’ Mobile Phone

LG Electronics has come up with touch-based multimedia handsets in a bid to take a bigger stake in the promising global touch-screen mobile segment.

Send a Video Message to the Presidential Candidates’ Cell Phones

Start-up Mogreet, out of Venice Beach, Calif., which recently launched a service that lets people send personalized video messages to cell-phones, is empowering the U.S. population by letting them send video messages to the presidential candidates’ cell phones.

Flash Lite and Reader LE for Windows Mobile phones

"Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that Microsoft has licensed Adobe Flash Lite software, Adobe's award-winning Flash Player runtime specifically designed for mobile devices, to enable web browsing of Flash Player compatible content within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser in future versions of Microsoft Windows Mobile phones.

Report: Phones to outsell TV sets in 2008

The Dublin, Ireland-based firm predicts that 300 million such phones that can play audio and video and browse the Internet will be sold in 2008. Its new report, "Mobile Media 2008: The Third Screen for Entertainment," also found that half the world's population, or 3.3 billion people, now have a mobile phone subscription.

Cell phones to ring up sales even in time of recession

Even with fears of a recession looming, the cell phone has become an item that most Americans can't seem to forgo. Eighty percent of the population carries a mobile device, according to industry figures.

62% of Adult American Used Mobile Data or Web, Says Pew Internet

Pew Internet reports overall, 62% of adult Americans have either accessed the internet with a wireless connection away from home or work or used a non-voice data application using their cell phone or PDA, according to the Pew Internet Project's December 2007 survey.

Americans love cell phones more than TV and landlines

For the first time, Americans reported their love for their mobile phones trumped both their feelings for television and landline phones, according to a survey released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

2007 was a Blockbuster year for Mobile Phones

February 27, 2008 (IDG News Service) With more than 1 billion phones sold globally for the first time, 2007 was a banner year for mobile phone sales. Worldwide sales of mobile phones ended up surpassing 1.15 billion units in 2007, a 16% increase from 2006 sales of 990.9 million, according to figures from Gartner Inc.

$11.5 Billion U.S. Mobile Phones in 2007, Says NPD Group

According to The NPD Group, a leading consumer and retail information company, mobile phone sales to consumers in the U.S. reached 146 million units by the end of 2007. NPD estimates total 2007 consumer sales of $11.5 billion, after rebates and promotions.

Mobile Broadband Heads Upstream

The first generation of High Speed Packet Access mobile services increased download speeds to mobile phones. Now carriers are also launching HSPA services, also known as Turbo-3G, with faster upload speeds, making the mobile office even more of a reality.

The Tipping Point: One in two humans now carries a Mobile Phone

Between January 2001, and December 2010 (a decade), our global society will have transformed from one where 13% of carried a mobile phone, to one where 70% carry one according to Mobile Intelligence data – that’s one hell of a leap with some massive implications.