If I Was A Service Provider

The first thing I would accept is that voice is a commodity and soon will be given away for free.

Next, I find an application that allows me to generate revenues that both my subscribers AND advertisers could utilize.

Mobile service providers have to realize that they have an enormous untapped database that the Googles can’t touch, yet. Use that to your advantage while you still can.

Did you know there are over 3B unique web portals out there that can’t be accessed by the Explorer, Navigator, Firefox etc?

Sprint, Verizon etc have the unique ability to link 3B plus portals and generate revenues to do this.

If you told Google they could provide 3B plus sites in their database and sell advertising on them, would they find a way to tap into them?

These unique portals can:

Download a song from any CD
Register for a rebate
List allergic contents
Buy concert tickets
Put an item up on eBay
Provide bus schedule
Connect a call with a service rep

These portals will be open soon, but will the service providers be smart enough to offer it? This represents an incredible opportunity, but will they be too late?

The fear service providers should have, is a company introducing a platform that allows these portals to be accessed, while using my network. Not only am I not generating any revenues from this data application, but my backbone is being used for this. The SP provides the highway, but never collects a toll.

That’s not even the biggest problem. Once a consumer accesses these portals, a direct connection is made with a brand/advertiser, and the service provider doesn’t stand a chance at tapping into mobile marketing dollars.

There are 3 ways a SP can generate revenues from this application. Will they see it?

Here’s what I see. The closer we get to a 3rd party introducing this application on a grand scale, the service providers make a mad dash to introduce it on all of their Web enabled phones.

So service providers listen up. It’s time to put away the small- minded ringtone mentality and think big. Because if you don’t act soon, somebody else will.

In case you haven’t figured out how to get access to those portals, every packaged good has a hyperlink, you just need a camera phone.

2D Tickets And Coupons Come To Mobile Phones

Mobile marketing using a physical world hyperlink.

Twelve Horses and Mobile Technology Group join forces to deliver 2D tickets and coupons to mobile phones.

Delivering mobile tickets and coupons promises countless scenarios of transitioning electronic commerce and promotional relationships dependent on the desktop, laptop and landline to the mobile phone.

2D Barcodes are the Ticket to Mobile Commerce & Redemption

Built on the combined technologies of Twelve Horses and Mobile Technology Group , 2D Data Matrix barcodes can be delivered to mobile phones

Consumers can drive by a billboard, see an 800 number, call it, and start an interactive voice process to get a 2D ticket in to their phone, then drive to their favorite entertainment locations and redeem.

2D codes will be a great way to connect the physical world to the electronic world, but these must be applied to the object.

Can you think of a physical world hyperlink ALREADY on objects that can be used instead?

FOX TV Goes Mobile With SMS

Want to keep up with your latest FOX TV show? Want to get Stacked behind the scenes info? Want to know about the latest FOX text game?

Through FOX Mobile you can.

1. Type 36988 (FOXTV) as the short code.
2. Enter FOX as message
3. Confirm your registration as instructed.

I expect to see other TV channels introduce this as a way to introduce mobile marketing.

FOX should do a better job of promoting this.

Overstock Goes Mobile

More of the major ecommerce sites are recognizing they must provide a mobile solution. The ecommerce realize how important the mobile space is, when will the advertisers?


Overstock.com® today unveiled a new mobile commerce application called Mobile O(TM) that lets Mobile Web 2.0(SM) customers of Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless service provider, browse and shop the entire Overstock.com Web site right from their wireless phones.

Mobile O was designed, developed and deployed by mRocket Inc., a leading mobile commerce solutions provider, using its patent-pending technology.

eBay Goes Mobile

Both Moonlight Mobile and Abidia3 Wireless have introduced an application that makes eBay mobile

The new applications allow consumers to receive updated, real-time information onto their handset so they can watch, bid, buy and sell while they are on the move.

Mobile Auctions services include a scrolling ticker bar, showing the user's transaction status for live auctions and sophisticated alarm and alert settings allowing notification of bids being beaten, auctions closing and items wo

Cell Phone Payments From NTT DoCoMo

Your cell phone will eventually be your wallet.

A good article about MasterCard's upcoming IPO has some impacts on the mobile phone payment industry.

Start looking for phone manufacturers and service providers getting into this space as a way to keep customers and increase their average revenue per user (ARPU).

Nokia and Motorola are testing cell phones that read RFID tags, and Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. plans to launch new cell phones next year that can function like credit cards, in partnership with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, the world's largest bank.

I expected to see service providers buy into credit card companies or banks to tap into this wave. NTT DoCoMo already did.

RFID And Cars

I asked PP readers if they wanted me to post stories that I find of interest in other emerging technology spaces.
When I see a story this big, I look for all the players that will be associated with this application.

Technology giant 3M, which owns brands like Scotch and Post-It, also expects to launch a countrywide vehicle registration system based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags next month, said Jaime Ojeda, business manager of electronic vehicle registration.

3M’s technology incorporates RFID technology in sticker-like tags that would be placed on a vehicle’s windshield, as well as in reflective sheeting placed over the license plate.

Transportation departments could use the tags to monitor traffic and travel times, and vendors could use the system to accept micropayments for parking or drive-through restaurants

A Troubling Mobile Service

Local 6 News is reporting a troubling item.

Several Web sites will sell the last 100 phone numbers you have dialed to anyone who knows your phone number.

The report found that sites like Locate Cell will sell the private phone numbers for about $100.

Once the fee is paid on the Web sites, anyone can get access to the phone numbers, including bank, doctor and work numbers, Local 6 News reported.

The Web sites are not illegal, according to the report.

Yellow Pages Goes Mobile

Yellow Pages is now available on your mobile. Just type http://m.yp.com/on your mobile phone to get your info.

They offer yellow pages, white pages, address look-ups, maps and driving directions.

Mobile Marketing Dollars

BusinessWeek has a good story called Googling for Gold that forecasts what companies and technologies Google might buy into.

Last year U.S. advertising spending was an estimated $300 billion to $400 billion. Just $10 billion of that was spent online, even less than for ads in the Yellow Pages.

By contrast, newspaper and direct telephone markets were worth five and nine times as much, respectively. Yet, according to Forrester Research Inc., households now spend at least 30% of their media time online, while the Internet has just 5% of total ad spending.

We spend 30% of our media time online and yet advertisers only spend 1/30th of the total advertising dollars on that medium. Your cell phone is with you what % of the day?

Where do the advertising dollars go when advertisers figure that stat out?

CueCat Has Nine Lives

The CueCat was a great concept, but didn't have the right tool for execution, until now. A camera phone and a physical world hyperlink (barcode, logo, RFID tag) can offer Internet access.

From Wired.com The CueCat is back

The ill-fated CueCat bar-code reader has been reincarnated as a cell-phone application that recognizes corporate logos.

Distributed to millions of magazine subscribers, the scanner redirected readers to advertisers' web pages after they scanned a bar code printed in the magazine.

Mobile marketing campaigns are starting to offer physical world hyperlinks as a great way to interact with the consumer.

"We hyperlink the visual world," said Harmut Neven, NevenVision's CEO. "Users should come to expect that every billboard is not just a billboard -- it's a big shining link to mobile content."

Notice how we are seeing more press coverage about the physical world being connected to the electronic one. It's only a matter of time till brands realize how big a role this will play in mobile marketing.

Free Wireless Service

Is this a sign of things to come? Give away voice in order to get data revenues? Has voice turned into a free commodity?

Forbes is reporting that BT Group PLCis offering free calls on their mobiles

BT Group PLC will before Christmas announce plans to enable owners of new 'smart phones' to make free calls on their mobiles, the Business reported.

Smart phones, the latest devices made by companies such as Nokia and Motorola, use software that routes calls free of charge through local area wireless connections to the internet.

The calls will be free, but there will be a flat charge to use the network

Sports Illustrated Offers Swimsuit Reveal

From Phone Content I-play reveals SI Swimsuit models

I knew that would get your attention. From a mobile marketing standpoint, isn't this better than a ringtone?

I-play , the mobile games company, and SI Mobile, part of Sports Illustrated™, one of the world's most recognized media and sports entertainment brands, today announced the North American launch of SI™ Swimsuit Reveal.

The game provides a selection of the world's most beautiful women, hiding behind the game's simple yet compulsive puzzle matching gameplay. Players must have a good memory and the ability to stay cool when the steamy image begins to be revealed!

Cameraphone And Barcode A Powerful Tool

Another news medium is recognizing how powerful the camera and barcode combination will be. At this point it's a matter of educating the "early adopters" before the masses utilize this.

From US News.com Ringing up the best bargain

It turns out those cameras built into almost every new mobile phone actually are good for something: They can recognize bar codes and use that information to connect to websites.

"Your cellphone is your mouse, and you surf the real world," says Joe Jensen, marketing director of NeoMedia Technologies, one of the companies exploring the potential of using cellphones for shopping with the software it offers at www.paperclick.com

Competition is already forming to deliver the best mobile phone shopping technology: Almost 5,000 early adopters have visited www.scanbuy.comto download a test version of that company's Scan Zoom technology, which lets them link bar codes on products to such sites as Amazon and Pricegrabber.

Tagit Offers Physical World Connection

Add another player to the physical world connection list.

Tagit

Tagit allows the end-consumer, when interested or stimulated by any tagged physical media channel he sees, to trigger his own one-on-one interaction with the Web via a camera phone, allowing a wide repertoire of marketing and promotional information and benefits to be "pulled' to him at a time and place of his desire. It is absolutely fascinating."


The process starts with one snap of the camera phone by which a user captures the "tagged" image. The Tagit application software then decodes and enables the user to obtain information about the product or service in both text and visual form

Carnival Of The Mobilists

This week, Howard Rheingold and the crew at Smart Mobs hosted the Carnival of the Mobilists . Russell Buckley from MobHappy was the editor.

Each week we are able to see various viewpoints on all different mobile applications.

Mobile Cash Register

From NY Times Wireless cash register


When Michelle Dubé, a golf instructor in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., finishes a lesson, she whips out her BlackBerry wireless device - to schedule the next appointment, sure, but also to swipe the student's credit card for payment right there on the driving range.

Often using nothing more than an ordinary cellphone and a card swipe attachment, or a handheld device with a built-in swipe slot

Some retailers are already experimenting with hand-helds as a way to do what they call line-busting: making sure that people waiting in long lines for a cashier do not give up and abandon their merchandise.

Store Advertisers Use SMS

Can you see the mobile marketing opportunities with this?

From NetImperaitive Multimap and TXT4 launch SMS store finder

Online mapping service Multimap has partnered with text response service TXT4 , to launch a service that lets advertisers send nearest store information to customers responding to advertising and promotional campaigns via text.

Mobile users can send an SMS reply to brands’ adverts with their name, house number or postcode, and Multimap then validates and geo-codes the data, and compares the results against the client's database.

An SMS is then sent to consumers with full address details of their nearest store.

TiVo Does RFID

I have done extensive amount of research on the RFID space, but don't post too often about it.

From InformationWeek TiVo files patent for RFID recorder

The patent is for a personal video recorder that recognizes viewer preferences through an RFID chip embedded in clothing, jewelry, or somewhere in "the user's body."

The multimedia mobile personalization system would have a remote control that recognizes the viewer's RFID tag closest to the PVR.

The remote control device would identify and link the viewer to the system using an "RFID tag that is attached to a key ring, necklace, watch, in his wallet, or even a sub dermal tag inserted somewhere in the user's body."

I see RFID playing an enormous role with many technologies.

Tell me if you want my insights on companies and strategies associated with RFID on The Pondering Primate.

Physical World Connection Dichotomy

As I see more stories and applications involving a mobile phone being used to connect the physical world, I ponder.

I am seeing two completely different strategies for using the physical world connection and I wonder which will get adopted.

Today Aura Digital announces another mobile marketing campaign that allows mobile phone users get content from a movie poster using Hypertag (bluetooth) technology.
This is their second campaign and it appears to be even more successful than their War Of The Worlds one.

Who benefits, the advertiser and consumer.

The other mobile application that is getting attention is price comparison using a camera phone and a barcode. ScanBuy has been getting tremendous amount of press with their scanZoom application. Download their software and scan barcodes to get price information.

Who benefitted, only the consumer.

I think you have to look at why Google is so sucessful in order to determine what applications will win the mobile info race.

Google, is a free application, that allows users to find digital content with their PC. Both advertisers and consumers are able to utilize this application.

Google's Froogle service really hasn't taken off and that makes me question how much demand will there be for a mobile price comparison service.

Not only do I not see price comparison being used on a mobile phone, but why would any advertiser want you to compare their product price? But they will want you to visit their website.

Your "next Google" is a mobile application that allows a physical world hyperlink to provide information (coupon, rebate, call center) to a consumer and then allow an advertiser to interact with that consumer to promote his product.