Posts filed under 'Mobile'
With the passing of Steve Jobs, the impact of Apple on our lives is well-documented, and in the travel space, its products have indirectly impacted how we plan and experience travel. Its spate of recent “iTravel” patent-filing may do so even more directly in the future.
What’s taken a temporary back seat in Apple news right now with Jobs’ death, albeit for good reason, is the new iPhone 4S and its clear focus on Siri’s voice platform.
For travel, we’re on the verge of another serious potential player in mobile and voice-based travel search along with Google’s emphasis on Android voice search and Microsoft’s integration of voice in Windows Phone, Xbox and Kinect.
How could this impact travel? About a year ago, we identified a convergence of forces that could enable Android voice search integration with ITA Software’s QPX airfare technology, and now Google’s flight tool sends consumers directly to airline sites while bypassing OTAs. Voice search doing the same may not be far off.
Though accuracy needs to progress, natural language air or hotel voice search could take only 5-7 seconds to speak and a few more to return results. Along with the placement of voice search on mobile device homescreens, those are two critical advantages for voice platforms over current travel sites and applications.
Now Apple and Siri have two of the three major steps to deliver travel-focused voice search – what they need are airfare and hotel query partners to bypass intermediaries as well. Is it going to happen? Unclear for now, but Apple is already integrating with Yelp and other content partners on voice command.
What is clear is that among the major mobile platforms, we’re continuing to move along the path of voice integration that could alter travel search as we know it, while existing intermediaries likely cannot replicate it and must invest just to market their mobile apps in the first place.
October 7th, 2011
For several years, tech pundits have predicted that mobile TV will become popular with North American consumers. However, it hasn’t taken off yet, even though broadband connectivity has increased and a variety of mobile TV models have been experimented with. Standalone mobile TV devices, for example, have arrived too late; falling victim to increasing mainstream adoption of smartphones.
And mobile TV apps on smartphones are where the future of mobile TV is, at least for the near-term. A variety of TV apps are available on the iOS and Android platforms, and will be available on Windows Phone 7 devices as well. Smartphone owners don’t expect mobile TV apps to fully replicate their home TV viewing experience – that’s what their living room TVs are for. They’re looking to mobile TV apps to provide a light-weight entertainment experience that is inexpensive (preferably free) and viewable (functional app, good audio and video).
Some mobile TV apps haven’t achieved both of these criteria yet, and they’re suffering for it. DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket app, which requires a subscription regarded by many as exorbitantly expensive, has an average review in the iPad app store of 2 stars. Hulu Plus, launched this year, also barely nets a 2-star average review. Consumers aren’t happy with its $9.99 monthly cost – when they can get the same service for free on their computers. Bitbop, also recently launched, suffered from early customer reviews complaining about poor functionality.
Other mobile TV apps have made better progress meeting consumer expectations. MobiTV has arguably been the most successful in this space, inking distribution deals with all major North American carriers and setting in-app purchase records with its own branded iPhone app. Key to MobiTV’s success is its freemium approach and flexibility: users can access live news and on-demand content for free, and upgrade to additional live & on-demand content for $9.99 / month.
The ABC Player iPad app has also been well-received by consumers. It delivers content from just one channel, but it works well and is free (ad-supported).
As the mobile DTV industry matures, local mobile TV broadcast feeds will become more accessible through smartphones. But that’s still a few years away. In the meantime, expect to continue to see mobile TV apps hit the market.
–post contributed by Lenati consultant Jonathan Shaw
October 18th, 2010
The mobile/wireless ecosystem continues its rapid evolution with many exciting implications for business, culture and society at large. Last night’s Mobile SIG presented by TiE, brought together an informative and entertaining panel of experts to share their thoughts on strategies for growing successful businesses. Moderator Mark Donovan, SVP Mobile at comScore helped set the stage by sharing some statistics that are shaping the future of the mobile industry:
Rapid shift to Smart phones: In 2008, 10 of the top 10 best selling phones were clamshell models. In 2010, 6 of the top 10 selling phones are smart phones (Blackberry Curve is the #1 selling smart phone).
Bandwidth use and data plans growing: In the US 2009 43% of phones use 3G; 21% of all US users are on a data plan with 17% of those now owning smart phones.
Rapid growth in Media distribution via smart phones: Carrier’s report customer plans are split 30% Talk only; 30% Talk +SMS, 30% consuming Media with the last segment growing more than 20% in the last 12 months.
Mobile internet penetration: 67MM mobile users in the US surf the mobile internet
Donovan also observed that Smart phones/Super Phones are ushering in a transformative state to our society and culture at large. These new devices so closely mimic human capabilities and are quickly becoming the Eyes (Camera), Ears (Microphone), Mouth (Speaker), Nerves (Sensors, Accelerators) and Brain (Chips and Cloud) of our society at large.
How are revenues going to grow in the mobile marketplace? Several options and insights were shared by the panel of experts.
Lower barrier of entry enables entrepreneurs to enter the market quickly and at much lower cost. Darren Austin, Director Product Management for AOL Mobile, commented on this shift, but also cautioned that this has created a lot of noise on the market and shifted costs to other area of the business. Jeremy Korst, Sr. Director of Broadband products at T-Mobile agreed saying, “How does the consumer discover the apps and services that add most value? 7-figure development costs have now been replaced by 4 full time marketing personnel who need to push really hard to get a new product noticed by a target audience.”
What’s old is new again: Carriers are gateway to profit. Michael Coen, SVP Business Development for GoTV Networks, stated the three best ways to make money in mobile:
- Partner with the Carrier (they act as a filter and will promote your service).
- Be on as many storefronts as possible (GoTV is available through 30 different partners).
- Charge for content and programming. (Coen chided entrepreneurs who still advocate for free content then making it up in volume). Then stay relevant to your audience and add value to the user.
Dwight Krossa, EVP of Kiha Software, a Paul Allen start-up operating in stealth mode (as much as a Paul Allen start up can be stealth) agreed stating “Carriers are a path to success. As usage grows the business model most appealing to a carrier is adding more services.” He also cautioned however that carriers are under pressure to hold prices even as network usages increases. He expects user intolerance for higher pricing will create margin pressure for carriers and their partners.
Technology Advantages: Jeff Giard, Director of Mobile Services at Clearwire has no such constraint stating “Bandwidth is not a problem. In fact we are looking for apps and services that take up more bandwidth. For Clearwire increased bandwidth – more and faster- is a differentiator.” To give evidence of this advantage, Girard shared that smart phones through carriers on average transmit ~1.5GB per month while the average user on Clearwire transmits 7GB. Clearwire is making a significant bet on this advantage and has plans to add 10,000 new cell sites by 2012. Giard closed by emphatically stating, “We want to move bits.”
Scale Matters: Darren Austin also encouraged entrepreneurs to look across the ecosystem and leverage all the distribution points: carrier, direct to consumer and app stores. However, he cautioned “ plan to take time. It won’t happen overnight.”
Advertising Gold? In the near term the panel was not bullish on mobile’s ability to drive significant new revenue from advertising. Some factors: Mobil, unlike the web, is too fragmented and accurate campaign measurement is still a weak point.
Donovan from Comscore was the contrarian among the panelists and remains bullish on Advertising for mobile, but agreed it was a long term play. He cited these trends as indicators.
- 1st wave: Mobile companies have been the first wave of advertisers “to eat their own dog food” becoming the #1 advertisers on the platform.
- 2nd Wave: Fortune 100 are starting to come aboard via sponsorships.
- 3rd wave: Mobile Web and growth of advertising using mobile web to reach audience. Google is making big bets on mobile and their entire model presumes ad revenue.
Near term: No one is getting rich, but long term prospects are strong. Also Donovan predicts that “as margins get squeezed, Carriers will look to advertisers to augment their revenues.” [ BTW: It’s interesting to note that this perception has not changed in some time. Take a look at the comments captured by industry consultant Chetan Sharma in his blog post from a TiE Mobile SIG in 2007 ]
Location Based Services (LBS): Ability to manage privacy is a huge asset and an advantage of the Carriers. “Trust with the customer is key and drives tremendous value,” said Korst. It is also a fulcrum against Google and Social Networks who, through the 4pt type buried in EULAs, technically protect privacy, but in practice, their platforms allow users to expose themselves. Eg: PlesaseRobMe.com that aggregates social media feeds where users tell their “friends” that they are not at home and overlays this info to maps.
B2B is ripe for mobile: Focus on high value/high return. Krossa from Kiha cited the example of : Salesforce.com as showing the way on how to make money in B2B stating, “sure the app is “free” on the iPhone, but it is only valuable to you AFTER you pay the $749 annual subscription. Salesforce leverage their business model to extend the value of their platform to the mobile user creating even more demand.”
Mobile transactions via Carrier. Lots of infrastructure required to make a transaction process work seamlessly and it is lacking across most Carriers. Also, a near term concern for the Carriers in the US market is “bill shock”—customers are comfortable seeing a $99 monthly service bill , but once they start making multiple transactions through their mobile device and generate > $1,000 monthly bill, will they perhaps gets spooked into switching services? That said, electronic transactions are beginning to happen (mostly for for electronic and mobile services), but wholesale adoption is still a future state.
Where you do you think future riches in mobile will be mined? Please join the conversation with your comments below.
–article contributed by Lenati consultant Mark Ippolito
March 22nd, 2010
With all of the hype around mobile applications and the success of the iPhone Appstore, we’ve had a number of our clients ask us how they should approach mobility. What’s encouraging to me is that they know they need to engage current and potential customers when on-the-go, but the challenge is, they aren’t sure how. Should they build a mobile optimized website, a mobile application or both? I have my ideas that I’ll outline below, but I’d also like to hear from you. Please comment on this with your own theories and experiences.
In my opinion, the first step before you do anything is to set your mobility strategy and determine exactly what experiences you want your mobile customers to have and how that would differ from a typical web experience. For a number of reasons, they shouldn’t be exactly the same. I know the actions I take and the information I seek is very different when I’m mobile than when I’m sitting at a PC. Here’s the recipe I’d follow to set my mobility strategy:
- What would be the common scenarios for why a customer would come to my mobile web-site or use my mobile application? (e.g. if I’m a retail business I may want a store locator)
- What value can I add to my customers experience leveraging the mobile ecosystem (e.g. can I offer them something unique based on knowing their location?)
- Once I have their mobile attention how would I integrate their experience back into my PC and offline customer experience? For example if my goal is to introduce them to new products they may not want to purchase immediately via phone. How would I ”hand-off” that information for further use by sales and marketing?
Once you have your strategy set, it should be fairly easy to determine what you want to do. I believe that you always need a mobile optimized web-site. The standard web experience is getting fatter and fatter as video, flash, etc. are added so you’ll need to come up with a relevant skinnied down version that loads quickly (given current network constraints). Here are a few pros and cons.
Pro
- A mobile optimized site will likely reach a broader audience then a mobile application alone
- It doesn’t require a customer to download a new version everytime you update the site.
- It can be cheaper to develop as you don’t need to port it across various OEM operatin systems (e.g. Apple, Android, MSFT, PalmPre)
- By keeping the experience “in-house” you can gather a variety of metrics and determine ROI on your efforts.
However, there are some draw backs to keep in mind.
Cons
- It’s difficult and costly to maintain an experience that is optimized across the plethora of devices and operating systems in the market.
- Don’t try to please everyone – the experience on a small, candybar phone is going to be poor regardless of the optimization so I’d shoot to optimize for smartphones.
Check out how Toyota and Lexus are using mobile advertisments to drive potential customers to a mobile optimized experience. Kudos to this one. It’s valuable, it’s unique and it’s tied into their other sales and marketing efforts
http://www.lexus.com/lexus/jsp/pub/mobile/models/HSh/hello_someday.jsp
They narrowed down your experience to really 2 things you made do when mobile. 1) Gather more information about a product and 2) find a dealer near you. Click deeper into the experience and I think you’ll agree that this is really well executed
So why would I build an application then?
Primarily, I think an application should be a supplemental effort to your mobility strategy that allows you do something valuable for your customers that you can’t easily do on your site. It should not just be a repeat of your web experience. CNN’s mobility site and their iPhone application are virtually identical so I question why I’d use one over the other. They must have thought the same as I just discoved the iPhone app is no where to be found (only CNN Money).
Here are a few thoughts on the pros and cons of building an application
Pros
- Relatively inexpensive to build and maintain given only one OS is involved
- The application can leverage features of the mobile device including the camera, GPS and voice. Try that with your website
- The applications run on the device and still work even if network connectivity is an issue (asuming the app is self contained)
Cons
- You have a smaller addressable audience for any application. Even if you target the iPhone platform which has millions of users, you likely likely get lost in the shuffle of 65,000+ other applications
- Applications need to be updated which can degrade your customers experience
- Should you decide to expand you audience, it can be very costly to port an application to other platforms.
- You can’t get any solid metrics on application usage (at least to my knowledge)
A company that has done an incredibly good job with their iPhone Application is Amazon’s Store App.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000291661
Not only does it let you shop from your phone, but it leverages the iPhone to enhance your experience. You can take a picture of any product and send it to them. Within a minute they will send you back similar sample products for sale in their store and let you purchase them on the spot. Very cool!
So I’m curious what you think? Do you need a mobile optimized site, a mobile application, both or neither. Please comment with your thoughts.
September 24th, 2009
