The Marlin Mobile Blog

The Verizon App Store and the Evolving Role of Carriers

Posted on 2009-07-23 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 Mobile, and the Android Marketplace.  The consumer faces no barrier to download them on their own.

There is a lot to talk about here.  A carrier taking this approach was inevitable given the success of the iPhone App Store, but several topics come to mind…

How far out into the future will the triple and quadruple-play revenue streams of the major carriers begin to blur and fundamentally change their models?  What actions will be taken to ensure that these revenue streams remain distinct for as long as possible?  I am fascinated as to when we will see market pressure that will substantively combine home television and internet access (mobile or otherwise) into one service.  This is a topic for a different blog, but interesting nonetheless.  It is abundantly clear however, that the role of the carrier in our lives is changing given the extent of their access.  Many thought leaders in technology and finance are conceding that the path to sustained growth for carriers is to ultimately serve as banks, further leveraging their expanding role in facilitating transactions.

It is obviously a big leap to go from an app store to banking, but I believe this is a vivid example of a carrier asserting itself with a keen understanding for its role in commerce and an abundant awareness of the rate of change it faces.

3G Contracts Awarded by China Mobile

Posted on 2009-07-17 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 in-country.

Of significance besides the obvious current and future m-commerce and mobile banking potential, is the ability over time to progressively optimize the mobile web experience which will be aided by a more consistent set of variables.  Specifically, the market dominance of China Mobile will thwart network provider variability as an element of mobile web fragmentation that warrants significant attention.

Mobile Enterprise Solutions and the Developing World

Posted on 2009-07-14 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 is revolutionizing global public health through disease surveillance and the collection of public health data in developing nations.  This serves as context for those who have traditionally had a hand in optimizing web experiences that must now embrace what makes the mobile web different, the fragmentation, as part of their ongoing efforts and routines.  The combined factors of varied device profiles, geographies, and network providers in developing/emerging economies which are ‘mobile web-first’, create a void in significant benchmarking data to enable web experience managers to proactively optimize their mobile web applications for the rapidly evolving infrastructure and progressive solutions that are applicable to them.  Marlin Mobile intends to be at the forefront of enabling the optimization of such mobile web experiences from anywhere in the world.

NTT DoCoMo 4G Push Explained

Posted on 2009-07-13 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 become globally as 4G expands and whether the move to 4G, with its mobile video potential, will be the caveat to unlimited data consumption in geographies that are well entrenched with limited data consumption models.  Several efficiencies exist for the deployment of 4G networks that did not for 3G deployments, namely overlay on existing 3G infrastructure, that will of course turn 3G service into a commodity faster than its predecessors.  Perhaps a better question is just how quickly will all of this occur?

mUX / 3 – W3C Standards for the Mobile Web

Posted on 2009-07-06 by Adrian Mendoza  | No responses

We came across this press release from the W3C Consortium, W3C Standards Make Mobile Web Experience More Inviting. This represents another example of how mobile web development standards continue to evolve.

Mobile Services for the Poor Launched by Google, the Grameen Foundation, and MTN Uganda

Posted on 2009-07-01 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 health information, paired with Clinic Finder, which helps locate nearby health clinics and their services; and Google Trader, which matches buyers and sellers of agricultural produce and commodities as well as other products. The services are SMS-based and designed to work with basic mobile phones to reach the broadest possible audience. Users can access the services quickly and privately at the time of their choosing and search relevant content on-demand, like someone with access to the Internet.

Imagine the possibilities of such information applied to smart phones, as they become more pervasive in the developing world, enabling richer experiences…

Femtocell Standards Update

Posted on 2009-06-25 by Justin Souza  | 1 response

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 my laptop as often’.  I’m curious if femtocells will create a tipping point for a ‘mobile web-first’ mentality for the broader laptop-toting/smart phone-carrying crowd simply through capacity and indoor coverage enhancements.

American Airlines Introduces Mobile Boarding

Posted on 2009-06-25 by Adrian Mendoza  | No responses

http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?p=/urls/mobileBoarding.jsp&anchorLocation=DirectURL&title=mobileboarding

An interesting scenario of using the mobile web and leveraging bar codes to quicken the boarding process.  What happens when you are waiting in line and the network fails?  Or when your screen resolution might not be good or clear enough for the scanner?  Interesting to see what happens in the long term, but this is a great idea to use the phone as a transaction device and the mobile web as the vehicle for mobile experience (no pun intended).

Mobile Money Summit, Day 2

Posted on 2009-06-25 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 to Assist the Poor) Timothy Lyman touches on striking the balance between sound regulation and maintaining opporutnity for commercial self-interest…

On e-money, Lyman said that a regulatory shift was occurring that reflected its move from a payment product to a full transactional banking product that could be used in other ways, such as a savings account. He noted that consumer protection was not currently being treated satisfactory, but said that the regulators must not “set the bar so high no one can serve the poor profitability.”

Wireless Growth by Region; Thoughts on Vietnam

Posted on 2009-06-24 by Justin Souza  | No responses

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 countries in Eastern Europe have very rapidly moved from subscriber boom to saturation and minimal growth.’

As the fragmentation of the mobile web experience increases, it will become imperative for those managing the experience to become very sophisticated in their performance monitoring and optimization efforts.  Assumptions made about the consistency of the experience across devices, geographies, and networks will prove unfounded, which likely will be compounded by poor expectation setting with stakeholders prior to deployment.

Vietnam is highlighted for their incredible growth rate over the past year, near 100% for all of 2008.  I view Vietnam as a beacon for the potential of the mobile web and expect to refer to the nation often in this blog…As the ninth largest country in the world, it is pacing itself to slowly become a market-driven economy much in the same way China has.  The web-enabled phone is obviously its focal point for internet access.  By the end of next decade, I expect that some will begin to include Vietnam in the same breath as the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations as an emerging economy.  The mobile web will be at the forefront of this transformation with Vietnam’s new found consumerism on the horizon.

« newer posts — older posts »