Tag: web 2.0

Mary Meeker’s Wisdom, 2010 Edition

On 17/11/2010

Every year at Web 2.0, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker unveils her Internet Trends. I will not rattle down the entire list (the briefest of brief summaries over here at TechCrunch) but one thing that is really noteworthy as compared to last year’s edition (which I briefly covered here) is that mobile takes centre stage: in 2009, she started covering mobile in earnest on pages 28 et seq. This year, it is topic # 2 (but even topic #1 [Globality] has more than 50% mobile in it).

Now, the learned readers of this blog have (I suspect) known this all along but it is good to see that one of the more influential analysts of the web at large “decrees” this on the Web 2.0 (sic!) stage, too.

And it is of course blindingly obvious: large parts of the world leapfrog the desktop Internet simply because they do not have access to desktops. The access instrument of choice is mobile. And these parts of the world just happen to be the ones where most of the growth occurs.

Incidentally, Meeker’s third point was social ecosystems. And there as well, we are seeing the huge impact of mobile. If you take Tencent, China’s IM/Social Networking solution of choice with a whopping 637m active IM users, and compare that with the Chinese Internet users (384m), we have a delta of 250m people who are accessing this via mobile. Just like that… Again, it is not that surprising: after all, mobile is – by design – the most personal digital medium we have ever had and when this coincides (as it does) with it being the prime access for digital content bar none, you create a very powerful mix indeed. And this will not be constrained to the somewhat crude experiences of feature phone WAP browsers either: in 2011, we will see smartphone penetration breezing past the PC size (desktop and laptops alike). It is mobile, mobile, mobile!

If you want to have a read through the presentation, you find it here.

Vodafone Germany’s “Generation Upload” or the Importance of Walking the Talk

By Volker

On 10/07/2009

In 1

Here’s a tale of the brave new world of the web, the collaborative, open, participatory one. It starts harmlessly. Vodafone Germany did something new: a new image, a new target group, a new PR format… The formal pointer was the full integration of Arcor, which it took over about a year ago.

There was more to it though, on the image side. Now, Vodafone did its homework (or so it thought) and thought of something fairly revolutionary: it announced its new initiative in a “Live PK” where they allowed everyone (!) to contribute comments via web (as they said: “contribute, ask!” (as an aside: PK is to stand for “press conference”; they may have overlooked the fact that the abbreviation is [was?] also used to describe a runny form of stool). Anyhow, lots of puns possible but let’s move on as it would otherwise unduly overshadow the fairly impressive way with which the story unfolds:

Now, a little bit of background:

Vodafone announced in good German their latest campaign aimed at “Generation Upload”. This is, so they tell us in a blog (!) entry, the opposite of the only consuming download generation. Download was yesterday. Now is the Upload folks who “is full of energy”, “do not let themselves be constrained by conventions” and “lets everyone else participate in their excitement”. “It uses communication technologies not as a means in itself” (did anyone ever?) but as “a tool for realizing their own dreams” (or something like that; there was a lot more of PR blurb of course; German version here).

But then it came: “With Vodafone this generation wins a partner that provides the tools for this.”

Ah. Do they now? Well… What was your data tariff? €35 per month you say? Um…

And so disaster struck – somewhat… The invitation to contribute and ask led to 2,100 (!) comments during the press conference alone, way too much to handle of course. Also, it transpired that the Vodafone data pricing might not actually be fully in sync with the message it wanted to communicate, namely that the uploaders are being appropriately embraced by Vodafone (a partner… tools…).

But then came the somewhat revolutionary bit: today, in a blog post (and when did any carrier ever announce something like this via a blog?) they a) admitted having misjudged the whole thing and b) promised to work on their tariff structures: “if we really want to become the partner of the upload generation, then we must provide the respective tools in terms of hardware and rates. We will be measured by this.”

This, for a carrier, is revolutionary indeed. And it is a sign that they might actually have “got it”. The web as it has emerged is a different one, simpler but also infinitely more complex. Be sincere, be transparent, be honest. In the new digital society, attempts to cover mistakes up by misguided PR-BS almost certainly fail. They seem to have understood that. Will they act on it? Ah, brave new world!

Vodafone: hats off to you!!! And now: deliver… 😉

EA, the iPhone and Mobile 2.0 in general…

By Volker

On 11/01/2008

In OEM

EA‘s Travis Boatman, VP Worldwide Studios, recently commented about the adverse effects Apple’s iPhone would have on the sales of mobile games. He moaned that, whilst the device was good, “it’s a replacement for someone who had a Razr before. They still want their content but there’s no distribution platform in place so there’s a negative impact on the industry.”

Now, is that short-termism or the understandable fear of someone who oversees classic game development studios of being replaced by something else, namely online games. Because this is in fact what the iPhone is promising: a replication of the web on mobile. One could say, it’s the entry of mobile 2.0. Online games on desktops became prevalent with the ascent of broadband and data flatrates. This is exactly the environment quite a few people predict for mobile, too. And whilst it was “World of Warcraft” et al that gave the EA’s of this world the shivers on PCs, it is now the iPhone – but not because it’s the iPhone but because it is the first device that, due to its intrinsically different approach (OS, touchscreen), focuses solely and only on the web as the fulfillment medium of content dreams.

Someone then also smartly noted that “[t]he problem of transferring games to new phones has actually plagued the mobile gaming industry since its inception. When users upgrade to a new phone, they most often can’t bring a game that they bought for their old phone along with them.” And the market data seems to confirm the challenges the industry faces: the percentage of mobile phone users who have ever bought a mobile game increased from 10 percent in 2005 to just 12 percent in 2007; that’s not much…

Moving from downloadable games (or other content items) to ones that can be played (or consumed) online reduces the complexity to users enormously. Due to bandwidth challenges, there are some constraints as to what can be played with a certain level of satisfaction online and what can’t: as a rule, everything turn-based, casual puzzles, etc would appear to be adaptable, heavier, more action-related games can’t. However, is this any different on the desktop or, for that matter, the console? Has anyone ever heard of online versions of Call of Duty or EA FIFA? No, because they would not translate in such a constrained environment. Now, Tetris (published on Apple’s iPod by, guess what, EA), Zuma, Luxor, Bejewelled, Poker, on the other hand, provide a rather splendid user experience even when played online and, lo and behold, they are predominantly found as online games on the desktop, too.

The same applies to other content sectors, too: prior to YouTube, the consumption of video via desktop was niche. One might watch a DVD on a long-ish train ride but who in their right mind would download shorter clips to watch them later (well, maybe with the exception of certain post-watershed offerings)? YouTube came and made it easy to consume AND operated in an environment dominated by an economical usage ecosphere, i.e. data flat rates and sufficient bandwidth, and off it went.

For EA (and any other mobile games publisher) this may mean that, in the mid term (i.e. once now pertinent issues such as data charges, bandwidth constraints, etc have been tackled), users will go online on their mobiles, too, to play such casual titles. However, fans of more intense genres will continue to download. The challenge is therefore not so much someone like Apple and any of their products but the current distribution and commercial environment (namely regarding billing) that would appear to slow down take-up. So, yet again, the finger points to the operators who, from their position understandably (why would they be reduced to a bit pipe if they don’t have to?), are in the way of turning mobile into a media consumption channel like any other. The front is however getting diluted: more and more operators throw their data plans into the open and offer more generous plans to users (led by 3 who even offer dedicated Skype mobile phones with the respective data plan to come with it).

And what will EA do? Well, continue to publish games which only make sense when played on dedicated devices. Oh, and they will probably release the Sims as an online version… Not so bad then…