The Marlin Mobile Blog

A recent summary article by Reuters, “Will Solar Speed up Emerging Cell Phone Revolution?“, does a nice job of capturing the current realities and future potential of solar powered cell phones in developing economies.  The correspondents quote Abdul Bayes, an economics professor from Bangladesh’s Jahangirnagar University, delivering a very powerful statement that is very familiar [...]

Global m-commerce is accelerating in global consumer adoption faster than the pundits anticipated.  In my mind, nothing reflects this more than eBay’s recent announcement regarding year-to-date revenue derived from m-commerce:   http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=31936 News like this has the potential to serve as a game changing proof point for mobile strategy-hesitant domestic retailers that may also be heavy [...]

Verizon recently announced it is creating its own cross-platform app store that will ship with its phones…and will only ship with their own app store installed: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=7EF200BA-1A64-6A71-CE5297EFB356998F The Verizon App Store will not block access out of the box to other app stores in its purview, specifically the Blackberry App World, Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for [...]

A news item that represents significant momentum in enabling 3G access to the masses in China: http://news.alibaba.com/article/detail/business-in-china/100136206-1-domestic-firms-win-big-3g.html Wire service reports indicate that the China Mobile service will be rolled out to 98% of China’s natural villages when the project is finished, which will gradually begin to provide stronger predictability and forecasting for the mobile experience [...]

When asked to provide an exciting example of a behind-the-firewall or enterprise mobile web experience, I most often cite examples pertaining to healthcare and field-based data collection.  I find the most compelling and vivid instances combine the two and are applied to the developing world.  Mobile Marketer recently shared the work of DataDyne’s EpiSurveyor that [...]

NTT DoCoMo is elaborating on its planned 4G push, which is targeted for availability in 2010.  For more info, check out this article by the Financial Times and this post on GoMo News… I find their decision to make 4G data consumption unlimited from the start very intriguing.  I am curious how wide spread that model will [...]

A new effort by Google, the Grameen Foundation, and MTN Uganda provides an SMS-based service to the disadvantaged: The suite of five mobile services, provided using Google SMS Search technology and the MTN network, includes Farmer’s Friend, a searchable database with both agricultural advice and targeted weather forecasts; Health Tips which provides sexual and reproductive [...]

News last week of progress in creating standards for Femtocells:  http://www.informationweek.com/news/telecom/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218100196 What is of interest to me is how pervasive this technology will become within the home…I am a power iPhone user and when I ask others how it has changed their routines, typically their first words are along the lines of  ‘I don’t open up [...]

PayPal provides further evidence of the developed world moving toward smartphones for mobile banking and away from SMS and WAP… According to PayPal, mobile users in developed countries are much more inclined to use mobile banking services if there is a sophisticated user interface that provides a quick, easy and satisfying experience. CGAP’s (Consultative Group [...]

TeleGeography provided an update today on the regional growth trends of wireless access… ‘There is a huge range in growth rates, which presents a real challenge to companies targeting the markets,’ said TeleGeography executive director John Dinsdale. ‘Many will be surprised by some of the countries at the extremes of this range. For example, many [...]