Mobile Advertising Guidelines Released

The Mobile Marketing Association has released the first set of global mobile advertising guidelines.

“The creation of ad guidelines by the MMA ensures that the industry is taking a proactive approach to keep subscriber experience, content integrity and simplified execution as the driving forces behind all mobile advertising programs,” says MMA President, Laura Marriott.

You can read more about the new guidelines on the Mobile Marketing Magazine blog here.

Mobile Projection

If you’ve ever suffered using projectors during a presentation your prayers could be answered with a new mobile phone projector. From the site:


The DLP pico-prototype further advances TI’s mobile projection technology, building on the 2006 introduction of DLP-based pocket projectors. These products are in the market today from manufacturers, including Mitsubishi, Samsung, and Toshiba. Pacific Media Associates (PMA), a global research firm, expects this pocket projector category to grow to more than 1M units by 2010. TI demonstrated the viewing experience advantage of showing mobile phone content on a pocket projector in January 2007. The introduction of the pico-projector capabilities will provide manufacturers and end-users even more options on how they can view and share information and content.

GPS gaming

Very interesting project being developed by Tom Hume, Locomatrix is a GPS game that forces players out into the real world. Whereas before gaming was limited to pushing buttons on a controller – games such as, ARG’s and Geo-caching are extending the game world beyond a screen and into a real world environment. From the site:

Gaming is heading in a new direction. Where once photorealistic 3D worlds were the future of gaming, the Wii phenomenon heralds something new: a world where gamers get out into the real world.

Locomatrix is a new digital game publisher with a mission to bring gaming back to the outdoors. The brainchild of Brighton entrepreneur Richard Vahrman, Locomatrix have partnered with Future Platforms to bring this vision to life.

This is no blue-sky dream: the first working prototype using mass market technology was built and tested at the end of 2006, and we're now working on a full production version.
The game is built in Mobile Java and can therefore reach most handsets on the market today
It uses standard matchbox-size GPS units, available from several mobile accessory retailers

The game communicates with the GPS unit over Bluetooth - again available on most mobile handsets on the market. A "game designer" allows players to create their own games
The prototype is a multi-player game.

Gathering in a field with a mobile phone and a GPS unit each, players hop into the game and then start wandering around the real-world playing field, picking up letters and bringing them back to a home-cell. As the team progresses, they see their letters come together to spell a word.

Romancing the phone

Mills and Boon novels are to be offered for users to download to their mobile phone to combat the “embarrassment factor” of carrying around the books. From The Times article:

“Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins have all signed up with ICUE, a British company offering the capability to transfer books into mobile phone-friendly content. None, however, has pursued the idea with as much vigour as the company founded in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon.

Our Japanese operation has had great success selling our books in mobile-phone format,” Ms Byrne said. “Japan is normally 18 months ahead of the UK. They are finding that it’s women who like reading on phones and romantic fiction that’s rising to the top.”

Museums go mobile

A number of museums have now gone mobile – they will offer images of famous works of art, photographs of historic personalities, voice and sound recordings, music and video for download to mobile devices.

They will offer some of the following content (from the press release):

“· Masterpieces as Wallpapers – Historical Recordings as Ringtones ·
Masterpieces from various epochs are available for download as wallpapers or screensavers or to be forwarded as greeting cards. From Breughel and Rubens to Schiele and Klimt, and from Cezanne to Van Gogh to just name a few of the present artists. The multimedia experience is enhanced by:

• Music by some of the world’s greatest composers, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Original voice recordings, for example from the emperors Franz Joseph of Austria and Wilhelm II. of Germany, the German chancellor Hindenburg or Max Planck

• Films and interviews of Sigmund Freud • Recordings of ethnic or religious music as well as dialects from the last century from a variety of countries and cultures. The first multimedia-museum for mobile phones also offers background information, newsletters, up-to-date exhibition news in German and English and a greeting - cards section.”

Mobile Visa card launched.

A mobile Visa debit card has been launched by T-Weed. This follows the predicition by, chief executive of Visa Europe, Peter Ayliffe, that Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years. Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.

From the press release:

“T-Weed's Wireless Visa Card intends to give unbanked Americans, small business owners, immigrants, and families the freedom of a bank debit card that can be used in coordination with a current bank account, powered by employment direct deposits or deposits made at Money Gram or Safeway locations. New Wireless Visa customers do not need to have a previous bank account or credit history, only a cell phone and a US address.”

UK mobile users tune into radio

From Moconews:

New figures from RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited), an organization that operators the UK’s audience measurement system, reveal over half (55 percent) of the UK population now listens to the radio using a method other than a radio.

A few highlights:

• 11 percent of mobile phone users (3.9 million) use their phones to listen to radio content - a rise from 10 percent in Q3

• 25 percent of 15-24 age bracket listen to the radio on their mobile, up from 23 percent in Q3

• 2.1 million users (or 17 percent) of mp3 player owners use their mp3 player to listen to downloaded podcasts, up from 15 percent in Q3

The complete presentation can be found here.

UK mobile users tune into radio

From Moconews:

New figures from RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited), an organization that operators the UK’s audience measurement system, reveal over half (55 percent) of the UK population now listens to the radio using a method other than a radio.

A few highlights:

• 11 percent of mobile phone users (3.9 million) use their phones to listen to radio content - a rise from 10 percent in Q3

• 25 percent of 15-24 age bracket listen to the radio on their mobile, up from 23 percent in Q3

• 2.1 million users (or 17 percent) of mp3 player owners use their mp3 player to listen to downloaded podcasts, up from 15 percent in Q3

The complete presentation can be found here.

Top 50 Mobile companies announced:

From Moconews Article:

Mobile operator O2 and Real Business Online, a major British business magazine, have joined with a panel of judges to review and rank the country’s top 50 firms. Leading the 50 to Watch in Mobile list is YoSpace, a YouTube-type company enabling mobile uses to create and share content.
The Top 10:

1) YoSpace 2)

2Ergo (Back-end specialist)

3) Piccochip (Fabless silicon designer)

4) Arieso (removes network blackspots)

5) Mobile Interactive Group (mobile consultancy)

6) Sponge Group (ran a mobile Win an iPod campaign for a snack food brand)

7) I-Play (mobile games company)

8) M-Spatial (local mobile search firm)

9) Volantis (mobile TV enabler)

10) Apertio (puts operators’/subscribers’ data in one place)

Click here for the full list of companies

Mobile Content and Services will be worth $150 billion by 2011.

From Moconews:

Informa Telecoms & Media has predicted that the global market for all mobile content and (non-voice) services will grow to $150 billion by 2011, reports Reuters. The analysts think that most of that will come from messaging, with SMS, MMS and IM generating more than $93 billion by 2011, up from $60 billion in 2006. Entertainment services (including games, music, TV, adult content and gambling) would grow to $38 billion by 2011 from around $18.8 billion in 2006, according to Informa. The mobile music share of this will fall from 40 percent last year to 36 percent in 2011. User-generated content and communities are forecast to be worth $13.2 billion by 2011. Also, Informa predicts that by 2011 just under half of all mobile subscribers worldwide (that’s more than a billion people) will use mobile browsing, facilitated by new offerings from operators such as T-Mobile’s Web n Walk and 3’s X-series services. Still, SMS will generate over half of the data revenues in 2011

UK users don’t pay for downloads

From Moconews:

The Guardian reports a new study into music downloads by Q Research found around 85 percent of users in the U.K. own MP3 players such as iPods, yet nearly half of them pay nothing for music downloads. The study surveyed 1,500 people between the ages of 11 and 25. Of paying users, one-third spend less than GBP5 ($9.70) on downloads per month.

Youth mobile market slow to adopt mobile Internet.

An article in The Times that indicates that young mobile users are not using mobile Internet as they were widely predicted to. From the article:

The average young customer spends €25 (£17) a month on their bill — about 20 per cent more than the €21 (£14) spent by the wider population — and the majority of additional spending after the monthly contract goes on text messages, ringtones, picture messages and television voting.

The growth of mobile internet use, by comparison, remains sluggish. More than half of respondents said that they never browsed the internet, and only 8 per cent said that they used it once a week or more. When it came to daily use, the figure dropped to 1 per cent.
A separate study by Q Research suggested only 3 per cent of young people aged 11 to 25 had downloaded music directly to their mobile phone, with the high cost of doing so the main dissuading factor. By comparison, two thirds of those aged 20 to 24 spend up to £10 a month on music downloads to their computer, and nearly half of those under 16 spend a similar amount.

Worldwide SMS revenues to hit $67bn

A report by Portio Research predicts a healthy future for SMS. From the press release:

Although the growth of SMS revenues will not be as aggressive as the growth of SMS volumes due to declining prices, by 2012 global SMS revenues are expected to reach 67bn USD, driven by 3.7 trillion messages. The report, ‘Mobile Messaging Futures 2007 – 2012’ outlines an exciting future for other mobile messaging technologies especially instant messaging and mobile e-mail amid continued strong worldwide subscriber growth.

Number of page views for websites using mobiles

M:Metrics has released some data on websites with the most views from mobile phones. The following are the most visited sites on a mobile (by page views):

--google.com 21.9 m

--yahoo.com 20.9 m

--msn.com 13.7 m

--craigslist 7.5 m

--facebook 5.1 m

--cnn 4.4 m

--live 4.4 m

MySpace.comes in at around 2.2m page views. 20 percent of the population of the US sites visited from a mobile.

Original Source: Moconews

British more likely to use mobile social networking applications.

Research conducted by M:Metrics suggests that the British are more likely to use mobile social networking applications than American or German mobile users. The study shows that 10.1% of Britons, 7.2% of Germans, 6.7% of Americans and 6.5% of the French have all uploaded photos or videos to the web, used chat or dating applications.

For a more detailed statistical breakdown of the report, click here.

Mobile games market set for bright future

The future of mobile gaming looks healthy, with market intelligence firm,
iSuppli forcasting continued success for the genre.

Mobile video will continue to drive mobile growth.

A new Juniper Research study predict that mobile video across 3G networks will have will grow from a 2006 value of $4.2 billion to $9.5 billion by 2011. Juniper says Europe will account for 40 percent of those revenues, with the Asia Pacific market ringing up 33 percent and North America chipping in 18 percent

Click this link to read the full article:

Mobile media entertainment market will continue to increase over next few years.

Informa Telecoms & Media have forecast that the mobile entertainment market will be worth $38.1 billion worldwide in 2011 in comparison to $18.8 billion earned in 2006. According to the company, music an graphics accounted for 64% of the mobile entertainment market over the last year.

For the full article, click here.

Ringtone Wars between Labels and Publishers

The Register has an informative article on the current battle between labels and publishers regarding ringtones. Although all four major labels also own the four major publishing. Despite this fact they are involved in what The Register terms a “civil war”. The main dispute between the two sides is if ringtones come under a compulsory licensing law in the US. If the law changes it could see ringtones from acts such as The Beatles become available for the first time as ringtones. From the article:

“The labels pay production costs running into millions for the production of master recordings, but publishers control songs simply by signing a songwriter to a contract. The compulsory license provided by Section 115 of the United States Copyright law…permits anyone to make a mechanical or digital copy of a full song for only 9.1¢; So some publishers, for instance those controlling songs by the Beatles, Aerosmith and Jimi Hendrix, have refused to license their music for ringtones for any price, thus denying the labels significant potential revenues. Therefore, it was hardly a surprise that last September the labels, through their trade organization, the RIAA (Recording Industry Ass. of America), challenged the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) to determine whether ringtones are subject to the compulsory license provided under Section 115 of the US Copyright Act.”

Users will be able to influence TV drama with text messaging.

In a move to involve users more with television, The Guardian reports that British broadcasting companies are set to use new technology that will allow users to vote for what they want to see happen in drama programs via SMS. French broadcasters have already used similar methods and have seen an increase in revenue to their programs. Other types of TV programmes, such as news and documentaries, are also looking at introducing similar technology.

Nielson Ringscan announce the top US ringtone downloads for 2006

Nielson Ringscan have announced the top selling mastertones and ringtones in the US for 2006.
Title/Artist Sales Title/Artist Sales

Mastertones
1 Smack That/ Akon 1,574,362
2 Lips of An Angel/ Hinder 1,270,996
3 Sexyback/ Justin Timberlake 1,215,058
4 Irreplaceable/ Beyonce 1,039,231
5 We Fly High/ Jim Jones 1,012,949
6 Money Maker/ Ludacris 944,581
7 Chain Hang Low/ Jibbs 927,899
8 8 My Love/ Justin Timberlake 901,369
9 I Wanna Love You/ Akon 884,912
10 Walk It Out/ DJ Unk 753,487

Ringtones
1 Super Mario Bros./ Theme 747,900
2 My Humps/ Black Eyed Peas 517,757
3 Grillz/ Nelly 499,935
4 Ms. New Booty/ Bubba Sparxxx 455,550
5 Laffy Taffy/ D4L 367,106
6 Pink Panther/ Theme 347,217
7 Gold Diger/ Kanye West 310,763
8 Halloween/ Movie Theme 291,077
9 Mission Impossible/ Theme 284,335
10 Candy Shop/ 50 Cent 282,203

Universal agrees deal for SMS jukebox service

Universal Music Enterprises has agreed a multi-year licensing deal with Akoo for its m-Venue music service. From the article: “Customers can queue up songs using SMS or mobile internet similar to a jukebox, find information and buy content on the song playing, and eventually order full track downloads.”

http://www.moconews.net/entry/universal-music-signs-on-for-mobile-jukebox

Technology Trends 2007

Oppenheimer & Co., have released a report on the top trends of 2006 and what they consider to be the top 10 trends of 2007. The report indicates that the mobile media market will continue to grow significantly over the next year.

Mobile Media: Large and Growing
1. Over 1bn mobile devices are expected to be sold in 2007, compared to 200mm PCs and
200mm TVs. As a result, the market offers a significant platform for the addition of features,
such as video, cameras, and music.

2. Significant growth is expected in the wireless gaming market. According to IDC, the U.S.
wireless gaming market is expected to reach $1.5bn by 2008, up from roughly $600mm in
2005 (35% CAGR). With its recent purchase of JAMDAT Mobile, Electronic Arts (EA) is now
the leading wireless gaming publisher with revenues in the $140mm range in FY07.
According to Telephia, mobile gaming revenue increased 63% YoY to $140mm in Q2 with
EA’s Tetris and Bejeweled the number 1 and 3 ranked games in the US carrier market. The
key driver in the market will be the growing installed base of game-capable handsets, which is
expected to grow from roughly 300mm units in 2005 to 745mm units in 2009 (Informa data).

3. Additionally, 2007 could be an important year for Mobile TV. Verizon plans to launch
QUALCOMM’s MediaFLO solution in early 2007, using handsets from Samsung and LG.
Launches of mobile TV using the DVB-H standard should occur over the next several years in
European markets. Increased utilization of mobile video services, including broadcast,
download, and unicast, could create demand for microwave backhaul equipment, which could
be positive for companies such as Andrew and Harris.

Source: http://media.twango.com/m1/original/0030/6e044c8c9de94fde8784e0d28a136a25.pdf

mobile game market will continue to grow

The mobile game market will grow from $1.8 billion in 2005 to $6.1 billion in 2010, according to iSuppli, a compound annual growth rate of 27.2 percent. The number of users by 2010 is predicted to be 134 million per month (it was 38 million in 2005).

source:

News Corp. to use mobile barcode technology

The News of the World have teamed up with NeoMedia Technologies Inc. to bring interactive content to its audience. The technology called “qode”, enables users to take a photograph of a barcode with their camera phone or enter keywords to be connected to Internet information on their mobile phones.

From the press release:

“Mike Anderson, managing director of News Group Newspapers for News Corp. said News of the World will use qode mainly to bring TV clips of English Premier League football (soccer) to its readers via their cell phones over the mobile Internet. He said qode technology could also be used by News of the World advertisers to offer readers discount vouchers, or additional product information via their handsets.”

Orange Photography service: 1 million photos uploaded after the first 5 months.

According to this press release, the Orange Photography service in the UK has had over a million photos uploaded over the last five months. The service also allows users to share images with friends. Orange gives some of the credit to Pixota, a mobile imaging client developed by NewBay

Preference for Mobile Data Services

This report has some interesting information about which services mobile users have a particular preference for. For the full article, click here.

Service and Ranking

1 Text messaging (SMS)

2 Email

3 MMS

4 Alerts via SMS/MMS

5 Instant messaging

6 Web browsing and searching

7 Location-based services

8 Mobile radio

9 Financial transactions

10 Downloading content

11 Mobile TV

12 Video calling

13 Video sharing

14 Gambling

Music companies make up for lower CD sales with singles and ringtones

This is an interesting article about how sales from ringtones and other mobile products are actually producing a substantial amount of revenue for record companies, from the article:

“According to the data, sales of the CD still accounted for roughly 74 percent of the U.S. revenue earned by the company, or roughly $17 million. But sales of an array of individual digital products added almost $6 million. About two-thirds came from ringtones of hit singles, but the figure also included roughly $330,000 from mobile phone games related to the artist and $94,000 in sales of cellphone “wallpaper,” or screen backgrounds.”

Encouraging findings for mobile TV in the UK

A new study released by GfK Technology (this article in Revolution has some information on the results) shows encouraging findings for mobile TV usage among users in the U.K.

Overall, the study found 70% of active subscribers are using the service at least once a week. However, the vast majority actually watch mobile TV for less than half an hour at any one time, and only 38% claim that the typical length of a viewing session is for more than 20 minutes.

Over half of the respondents (the study conducted 280 online interviews with users of mobile TV over the last three months) said they watched mobile TV for something to do during their downtime; 18% said they watched to catch favourite programs when they were away from their TV at home; and 10% said they wanted to catch a particular program on-the-fly. The three most popular forms of content on mobile TV are: News & Weather (65% watch often or sometimes), Sports (56% watch often or sometimes) and Music Videos (46% watch often or sometimes).

Source: moconews.net

2006 Sprint Productivity Survey

The recent Spirit Productivity revealed some interesting findings and trends among wireless mobile users in the US. Around 93% of Americans take their work-related mobile phones with them on holiday. The report also found that respondants thought that technology was essential to their levels of productivity.

From the report:

Productivity with Mobile Phones
When asked what services on respondents' mobile phones help maximize their lives (respondents could choose more than one), respondents said:
Text messaging (64 percent)

Email (62 percent)

Camera (60 percent)

Wireless Web (59 percent)

Music (58 percent)

Instant messaging (58 percent)

Location-based services (driving directions, GPS tracking) (55 percent)

News (55 percent)

Games (51 percent)

Similarly, when asked which feature on their mobile phone helps respondents make the most of their time, voicemail led the way. Respondents said:

Voicemail (86 percent)

Phone book (82 percent)

Speed dial (65 percent)

Speakerphone (65 percent)

Camera (56 percent)

Text/instant messaging (53 percent)

Calendar (51 percent)

For the full report, click here.