Microsoft's Bing411 is Significant Enhancement

Microsoft unveiled a toll-free information service at 800-TellMe after its acquisition in 2007 of Tellme, and this service still operates, though the new 800-Bing411 has a much better feel and function. Matching many of Goog411's features for business searches, Bing411 provides listing information including a "star" rating and automatically sends an SMS message with details of the search result. In addition, it offers driving directions, the ability share the listing via text with another phone, and to automatically connect to the listing. On subsequent calls, Bing411 offers to provide information about the last listing. One problem we found was that on subsequent calls, we couldn't get the "tellme my choices" option to work.
-Stuart Whitaker

VIRGIN MEDIA LAUNCHES ROUNDU LOCAL SERVICE

Mobile Commerce (www.mobilecommerce.co.uk) announced that Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com) has launched a new mobile internet portal, available for all UK mobile users, featuring the RoundU local search service. RoundU integrates handset location with a comprehensive range of local information. Using listings aggregated from Mobile Commerce’s partners including toptable, Itchy Guides and The Press Association, the service brings a full range of the latest UK arts and entertainment content straight to the handset, as well as complete Thomson business listings.

-Stuart Whitaker

APPLE DOMINATES MOBILE AND HTML SITE TRAFFIC

AdMob (www.AdMob.com) released mobile metrics for April which showed that 43% of mobile requests to mobile sites and 65% of mobile requests to HTML sites originated from iPhones. iPhone represents an estimated 8% of the total installed base. AdMob reports that 3% of mobile requests to mobile sites and 9% of mobile requests to HTML sites originated from Android phones, which have an estimated 1% of the handset market. iPhone and Android devices are the only platforms for which share of traffic to mobile and HTML sites exceed their handset share.

The relation between mobile traffic to mobile sites versus HTML sites is reversed for Symbian and RIM devices. Symbian handsets, which have 52% of the market, generate 36% and 7% of the requests to mobile sites and to HTML sites, respectively. RIM handsets, which represent 17% of the market, generate 9% and 3% of the requests to mobile sites and to HTML sites, respectively.

Windows handsets, which represent 12% of the handset market, originate 3% and 6% of requests to mobile and HTML sites, respectively. Palm, which represents 2% of the handset market, originates 2% of requests to both mobile and HTML sites.

One conclusion from this information is that development of mobile sites is much more important for publishers who are interested in reaching Symbian and RIM users, and much more important in regions, such as Europe, where Symbian devices predominate. HTML sites are much more important when targeting iPhone and Android users. We think it is likely that mobile web sites will fall out of favor with publishers as the share of more-capable Internet handsets increases.
-Stuart Whitaker

MOBILE APPS FORECAST TO REACH $ 25 BILLION BY 2014

Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that the total market for mobile applications, retail, and Value Added Service (VAS) revenue will increase by almost three times from 2009 to $ 25 billion in 2014. VAS includes subscriptions, premium events, and additional content. Juniper expects that by 2011, the majority of all app-related revenues will come from apps delivered via app stores rather than from non-store channels, and that the real value of non-store revenue will decline from 2012 onwards. Operators need to develop app store partnerships to share in the app store revenue.
-Stuart Whitaker

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR: FREE IPHONE APPLICATIONS HAVE HIGHER INTEREST BUT LOWER RATING THAN PAID APPS.

Our review of the Apple iPhone App Store downloads finds that free applications continue to evoke much higher interest, as measured by the number of “ratings” the top twenty-five free and the top twenty-five paid applications have received, though the rating “score” is significantly higher for the paid applications than for the free applications. The top twenty-five paid applications have received 31,965 ratings with an average rating of 3.8. The top twenty-five free applications have received eighteen times as many ratings as the paid applications—588,718 ratings, with an average rating of 3.0. Games and entertainment dominate both the free applications, which finds twenty free applications in these two categories, and the paid applications, which finds twenty-one applications in these two categories. (Table available). -Stuart Whitaker

New mobile voice services on their way

Tellme (www.tellme.com) founder Mike McCue is leaving Tellme, which he founded in 1999. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft in 2007 and is becoming increasingly integrated into Microsoft. Tellme recently announced that it will offer the first mobile voice service to combine content and communications, simplifying how people interact with their phones every day. Tellme says it is the first to allow people to press one button, say what they want and get it, whether that is to send a text, make a call or search for information. Tellme has designed a unique version of this experience specifically for Windows phones due out this fall.

Tellme says that the new service puts many of the most popular phone functions behind a single button. Windows phone users just press the side button of their phone to:

* Send a text by saying "text" to open a text box, then speak the text message and say "send" to send it to anyone in their contact list;
* Initiate a call simply by saying "call" and then the name of anyone in their contact list;
* Search the Web with Microsoft Live Search by speaking your request, such as "weather in San Francisco, California", "Pizza in Kansas City" or "Mother's Day gift ideas."

Datamonitor (www.datamonitor.com) predicts, separately, that the global market for advanced speech recognition (ASR) in mobile handsets will increase from $32.7 million in 2009 to $99.6 million in 2014. Datamonitor predicts ASR in-vehicle telematics will grow at a similar rate, from $64.3 million in 2009 to 208.2 million by 2014.
-Stuart Whitaker

TWEETMART

Tweetmart.com (www.tweetmart.com), started in January, is a Twitter classified service. Users "list an item online," and Tweetmart sends tweets to all your friends (we tweeted Tweetmart to find out whether "friends" means followers, followees, or both, but haven't been retweeted). Items remain active for seven days. "Post a job" lists jobs for thirty days. Users can resend posts at will.-Stuart Whitaker

US Mobile Giving Space Heats Up

Guide by Cell (www.guidebycell.com) announced that it has become one of Mobile Giving Foundation's (MGF) (www.mobilegiving.com) approved application providers. MGF administers mobile giving for major US phone companies.

According to MGF Chairman and CEO Jim Manis, Guide by Cell is the US leading provider of mobile solutions to the museum and cultural nonprofit community. The Guide by Cell program, which will operate through a new Give by Cell division, allows participants to make on-the-spot donations. Guide by Cell also offers audio tours, mobile advertising, training, and a mobile platform. To make a donation, the donor sends a text message to a short code provided by Give by Cell, referencing the nonprofit's name. The donor receives a confirmation message and will see the donation charge on a subsequent phone bill.

MGF is a tax-exempt non-profit (501[c][3]) organization headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, founded in 2006 by Jim Manis and Jenifer Snyder. Other MGF application providers include Distributive Networks (www.distributivenetworks.com), mGive (www.mGive.com), Mobile Commons (www.mcommons.com), MobileCause (www.mobilecause.com), and Wireless Factory (www.wirelessfactory.com). Mobile carriers collect and forward the donated funds for free.

Some mobile giving campaigns are being aggressively promoted with high-profile advertising. The United Way took a ten second ad (www.youtube.com/watch?v=b38idebP4ag) during the 2008 Super Bowl, urging viewers to text "FIT" to 864833 (UNITED) to donate $ 5.00 to United Way Youth Fitness.



Actress Jessica Biel shot a one minute video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrR-8sDgQU) in conjunction with Major League Baseball urging viewers to text STAND to 40202 to "Stand up to cancer" (www.standup2cancer.org).

-Stuart Whitaker

AWAITING OVI STORE LAUNCH WITH GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Announced in February with a planned May debut, Nokia’s Ovi Store (www.ovi.com) has the benefit of learning from mistakes of earlier application stores, including Apple, Blackberry, and Android. One of the most powerful aspects of the Ovi Store is its social networking strategy. Consistent with the hypothesis that advertising is dead—or dying—and making best use Nokia’s acquisition of Navteq’s mapping capabilities, the Ovi Store reportedly will offer a recommendation scheme based on three factors: 1. The individual subscriber’s social network; 2. The individual subscribers’ location; 3. The individual subscriber’s particular interests. The Ovi Store's social discovery feature will allow users to share information about applications that they have downloaded. The Ovi Store will be available initially on an estimated 50 million phones, including S60 and Series 40 devices, using XHTML and Java. Nokia estimates that by 2012 300 million users will have access to the Ovi Store. The Nokia N97, scheduled for launch in June, will be the first phone with the Ovi storefront onboard.

An example of an application running on Nokia devices is the Nokia Sports Tracker (www.sportstracker.nokia.com). Using GPS information in compatible Nokia devices, information such as speed, distance, and time are automatically stored in the user's diary. Data can also be published and available on the Internet. The sports Tracker won the Best Mobile Internet Service award earlier this year at GSMA.

Nokia indicates that there will be thousands of applications initially available at the Ovi Store. Missing from the ecosystem is a public discussion group along the lines of Android, though reports are that a discussion group is being developed and will be available within a matter of weeks. Developer revenue opportunities exist through application subscriptions, advertising, content sales, and application hosting.
-Stuart Whitaker

ORANGE UK APPLICATION CHALLENGE: FIVE CUBED

The Orange Partner program (www.orangepartner.com) announced a challenge to get five new mobile apps into the Orange UK Application Shop on five devices within five days during the JavaOne conference (actually four days--June 2-5).

The five devices are the Nokia 6500s, Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K800, Sony Ericsson W910i, and Samsung G600. The application must fall into one of the Orange UK Application Shop categories:

- Just for Fun;
- Phone Magic;
- Astrology Zone;
- Orange services;
- Men’s Zone;
- Books & recipes;
- Themes & Personalization;
- Messaging services;
- Health & Fitness;
- Quizzes/Trivia;
- Travel guides. -Stuart Whitaker