Juniper Research, makers of research and publishers of mindblowingly big 5-year-predictions recently released a report on “Mobile 2.0″.
The term, according to the free promotional white paper that comes with it, is to mean mobile services around the social web, geo-location and presence and may be based on
a mash-up of application functions and communication channels [that] can include mobile messaging and voice – namely SMS, MMS, mobile IM and VoIP.
All this is spot-on and quite agreeable (and I haven’t come to the predicted market size in – you guessed it – 5 years yet) but I feel they are missing a major, major point here, and that has to do with (if you want to call it that way) “mash-ups” and “convergence”: in short, they fall foul to the old mistake that, as media move on, the predicted revenues for a new medium is being comprised of the products and services of the old one; and that is wrong!
Mash-ups can already be seen between different kind of applications the report mentions (and, most notably, with some it didn’t mention at all): E.g. FourSquare or Gowalla are service that utilise presence (allowing your friends to see where you are). You can also share it via social networks and contact these friends (perhaps to ask them if they want to meet up as they are only 2 blocks down the road) but they have also added gaming elements (mayor of Oxford Circus or Union Square anyone?), and it was these latter ones that arguably gave the edge to the service and lifted them over and above many similar location-aware apps. The combination of a variety of the feature sets Juniper identified as being distinctly “2.0″, namely presence, social, and geo-location with other, “classic” products and services will unleash an even greater power: playful social interaction is not necessarily confined to “classic” games:
For instance did Ford take it a step further with the latest model of the Fusion Hybrid: they put something akin to a Tamagotchi into the car, which promotes economical driving: a plant grows (at the very right in the picture) when you drive economically, and it withers when you don’t. Cool, huh? What they do is to appeal to the senses of competition and, arguably, care in order to foster more economical driving. What’s missing is that drivers could share their “scores” with friends, challenge each other and, long-long-term, get rewards (eco-tax credit?) if they perform particularly well. Playful social interaction in a car – who would have thought?
A mash-up of e.g. games (and the playful-ness in all of us) with some of the other services that are available and – now – increasingly accessible will likely result in a completely new range of products, which will – I would suggest – exceed the predictions made by a large margin (check Jesse Schell’s talk at DICE 2010 for more [and even wackier] musings of what the future may hold). And the reason for this is that addressable user base and, indeed, usage will multiply because completely new and untouched segments (both in terms of users and products & services) are being unlocked for value-added mobile services.
So, for once (!), I think I may be able to beat Juniper’s lofty predictions; not sure if in total numbers (they’re always hard to beat on that: the one for mobile 2.0 is already at a not too shabby $19bn) but as to the scope of the market. Good times!
Here’s a cool graphic from the good folks over at Lifehacker/Gawker on the size and significance of the Internet.
Image credit: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/12/500x_theinternetisbig.jpg
The United Nations’ agency for telecoms, ITU, has released a set of numbers on mobile and broadband penetration globally. There have been many times more mobile phones than fixed-line telephones on the planet for a while now but now this also applies to broadband connections: by the end of 2009, the ITU expects 600m mobile broadband subscriptions globally compared to only 500m for fixed-line equivalents.
This is not to say that all is good already. The divide between the so-called first and third worlds is immense: the broadband penetration in Europe is 20%, in Africa only 0.1%. And it is the latter where the exponential further growth of mobile (telephony and broadband) will lie then: the competition mobile networks have from fixed lines is much lower in territories with less legacy networks built. And in rural parts of Africa (and elsewhere), the cost of putting up the respective infrastructure makes the installation of fixed line networks simply untenable.
The cost of ICT spend represent a whopping 41% of an African average monthly income. In the Americas (average of North and South), this is c. 7% and in Europe just over 1%.
Here’s some other bits from the ITU’s facts and figures:
- 4.6bn estimated mobile subscribers by end of 2009.
- 25% of the world’s population uses the Internet.
- China has overtaken the US as the country with the biggest broadband subscriber base (but still has “only” 6.2% penetration rate on a subscription (as opposed to household) basis.
- Of the world’s population (6.9bn), 70.8% (or 4.9bn) have access to a TV at home (not equal to number of TV sets) and 27.3% (1.9bn) have access to a PC at home. By number of households, this looks as follows: 1.7bn households globally, 1.3bn of which have a TV and 600m a PC. The gap is expected to narrow quickly due to declining prices and ongoing convergence.
- The US accounts for 82.6% of all mobile broadband subscriptions in the Americas (North and South). In Asia and the Pacific, 70% of such subscriptions are in Japan and South Korea.
- The top 5 most highly developed ICT economies (listen up, Mr Scoble) are:
- Sweden,
- South Korea,
- Denmark,
- Netherlands, and
- Iceland
Japan ranks on # 12, the US ranks on # 17, Canada on # 19 and Russia on # 50.
The ITU provides some reports as downloads: The World in 2009 [PDF] as well as a statistical profile on the state of the information society in Africa [PDF].
A lot of iPhones later, the industry now also has it black on white: Ease of use is the primary reason influencing the choice of a handset for users. Or so we are being told. It is not that surprising, is it? Here’s the top answers users gave on what they look at when buying a new phone. It is taken from 1,500 interviews that were conducted for Nuance, a top sponsor of MEX (which is, you guessed it, a conference on Mobile User Experience).
- Ease of use (69.0%)
- Screen Size (61.4%)
- Coolness Factor (61.1%)
- Camera (60.8%)
- Range of Accessories (58.4%)
- Keyboard (58.1%)
- Battery Life (56.6%)
- Music Playback (50.9%)
