Category — CTIA

As another year comes to a close I’m in the process of reflecting on 2009 & preparing my predictions for 2010.

Part of this process for me is reviewing the top stories and sources for a reminder of how far we’ve come over the last 12 months. One of my favorites sources for industry news and insight is the Smartbrief daily newsletter produced by the CTIA. Below are some of their top quotes of 2009 that have become some of my favorite quotes too.

Normally I’d probably just re-tweet them all, but unfortunately the best quotes are rarely less than 140 characters

He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.” –Mickey Mantle, National Baseball Hall of Famer

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” –Nora Roberts, American author

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.” –Peter Ustinov, British actor and writer

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” –Barack Obama

There is a real difference between managing and leading. … Managing winds up being the allocation of resources against tasks. Leadership focuses on people. My definition of a leader is someone who helps people succeed.” –Carol Bartz, Yahoo! CEO

Carol Taylor – Director of User Experience at Motricity presented mobile user behaviors and trends at the mobile strategies 2008 day at CTIA a few weeks back.  

It was a great presentation that focused on something that marketers and brands are desperately looking for – metrics and demographic information on mobile.  Here are some highlights of what was covered: 

Mobile users who use the mobile web are motivated by five primary things:

1. Staying connected
2. Staying current
3. Being efficient
4. Filling time
5. Urgent need

Mobile user who use the mobile web access it primarily for: 

1. Communication (i.e. email, MIM)
2. Scan for what’s new
3. Check a fact
4. Surf for general info
5. Look-up info for now
6. Look-up info for later
7. Commerce

How are mobile web users accessing the mobile web?

1. Mobile Web browser
2. Search engine on device
3. Web browser bookmark

Where are mobile web users accessing the mobile web?

1. At home – 44%
2. At work – 38%
3. In car – 33%
4. Other transit – 20%
5. Service facility (ie. bar) – 17%

Other key findings: 

• 1/3 of those who access news from the desktop web also access the mobile web for updates and as a secondary source of updates
• Communicating and scanning for new info is the top mobile behaviour
• Typing URLs, searching, and saved book marks are most common way of finding sites. Carriers sites are used about half as often
• Mobile web used at home and work primarily
• Make services relevant in a mobile context – otherwise it will fail as we’ve seen so far
• Create services that will compete (or compliment) other screens such as pc, tv, game console, portable gaming devices etc… with mobile

Want the full white paper? Download it here from motricity.

After two days of meetings, networking and participating in learning tracks, I spent most of day three walking the floor to see what was new and exciting in the mobile ecosystem. 

There were a few things that really stood out:

• Two voice related services that allow you to receive text messages as voice or the other way around. Services from GotVoice and Voiceonthego.com could have some very interesting applications – especially if your client or brand services the hearing impaired, the elderly… or as a safe hands-free or eyes-free access to email while driving

• Universal remote control- turn your blackberry bold into a universal remote control that is bluetooth enabled and allows you to manage up to 16 AV components per room. The interface is beautiful, simple, and a breeze to setup. Check out their site at unify4life.com.

• Walking hot spot- this demo blew me away.  Turn your Symbian or windows mobile device into a wifi hotspot in seconds! No cables or bluetooth required.  Leveraging 3G or wifi capabilities of your phone, you can instantly setup a hot spot and make your mobile device discoverable to anybody within 300 feet of you. 
  • You can allow up to 5 connections / devices to your mobile hot spot at a time. 
  • I’m spending around $60 / month currently for my Rogers network card – but apparently pricing for this software is about $25 / year!  
  • It’s not yet available for Blackberry or iphone devices – but they are working on versions for both

Overall it was another great week at CTIA. Look for more articles & perspective next week as I work through all the notes I’ve been taking

The highlight for me yesterday at CTIA was the keynote address from Yahoo executive Vice President Marco Boerries where he announced the introduction of Yahoo! oneConnect for the iphone.

The live demo demonstrated how this new application (optimized for the iphone) takes your address book and makes it social by aggregating all your mobile messaging via IM and SMS and all your lifestream feeds into one amazing interface.

Like friendfeed and Social Thing, you can add myspace, last.fm,dopplr,twitter, friendster, bebo,flickr,youtube and facebook feeds to oneConnect under their Pulse feature. You can now scan what is happening across all networks from one mobile interface.  This also means you can update your status in one place and have all your other streams automatically updated.

Users will also be able to track their contacts on a single screen, with information on their status and the ability to quickly call or send an IM or email.

The application is available for free in the app store – although it wasn’t indexing yet on their search tool. If you are having problems finding it, go to mobile.yahoo.com/oneconnect/iphone and click on the app link. This will bring you into the app store for immediate download.

I’ve spent some time on it so far, but I’m afraid of the roaming charges associated with customizing it right now, so look for additional perspective later.

Yahoo plans on releasing versions for other platforms, but it’s hard to imagine how they’ll be able to create a comparable experience on other platforms.

CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment is dubbed the largest technology event in the mobile industry covering all aspects of wireless data. It’s actually a smaller event than their annual wireless conference in Las Vegas every spring, but the focus at this show is actually more relevant to the mobile marketer. 

The show officially starts today; however, I arrived Monday night in order to participate in a pre-show event called exploring mobile web strategies. The event was organized and moderated by Ajit Jaoker from futuretext.com who did a fantastic job of pulling in some heavy hitters in the mobile space for presentations and panels. 

I took 9 pages of notes – much of which I’ll share on this blog over the coming week as seperate entries…although if you’ve been following me on Twitter you’ve already gotten a preview of what is to come.  Topics that really caught my attention were: 

• Understanding and enticing the mobile user by Carol Taylor (Director of User Experience at Motricity)
• Mobile personas and segmentation by Pankaj Asundi (VP Media and content at Ericsson)
• Panel discussion around mobile social networks with senior representation from myGamma, mocospace, itsmy, mig33 and intercasting corp. This was probably the highlight of the day for me and will warrant it’s own entry with perspective
• Monetizing digital communities by Jouko Ahvenainen (Chief Strategy Officer of Xtract)
• Panel discussion around driving mobile web adoption with representation from Openware, Vantrix, Skyfire, Greystripe and Admob
• Panel discussion around mobile advertising – today and tomorrow with representation from Ericsson, Yahoo!, Admob and Nokia
• Designing for mobile by Barbara Ballard (CEO Little Springs Design)
• Mobile search – present and future by Bena Roberts (President, Visibility mobile) and Michael “Luni” Libes (Chief Architect of Medio Systems) – who I ended meeting later that night at the Moco mixer party

Overall it was a great start to the week. I’ve got a full day of meetings and sessions planned today and will likely be taking more notes for future posts. I’ve also brought along my video camera – so you can expect to see some video blog entries similar to what I posted at GSM and CTIA in Mach. 

I’m also still adjusting to left coast time. Speaking of which, it’s time for another coffee

One of the problems we’ve had with mobile video is figuring what formats to offer the user and how.

On one automotive mobile site we offered two video types for download – but that assumed the user knew which one would work on their device. We also had to compress and shrink the video to the lowest common denominator so that it would fit on all devices.

What a pain in the butt… and try passing that off to your client as customer friendly!  

At CTIA this past March I had an opportunity to speak with Daniel Torras – the VP of Marketing and Product Strategy for vantrix – a company that specializes in mobile video solutions.

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Last week at CTIA Wireless I had a chance to sit down with Michael Chang, the CEO of Greystripe to talk about mobile gaming and more specifically about his mobile advertising platform.

Greystripe currently has over 800 java based mobile games which are distributed through their own site (gamejump.com) and about 100 other sites and partners.

What makes them unique is the fact that any person with a java-enabled mobile device can download their games for free as Greystripe’s gaming network is ad-supported.

Users downloading games must view 2 pre-game ads and two post-game ads in order to access their games.

Mobile Ads have not been a barrier to engagement

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At first glance, the pcEdge had a similar “wow” factor as the Polymer device that featured a roll-up / out screen as profiled here and seen as the WMC in February.

With only rumours of the 3G iphone coming in June and no sign of any real iphone killer or really fantastic next generation blackberry, this is the one device that stuck out the most to me this week.

It looks like a motorola razr – but much larger with an impressive 6 inch by 3 inch display and about 1/2 inch thick. That’s about double the screen space as the iphone.  It’s thin, it looks cool… but it falls short in my opinion of being a must have device.

[Read more →]

Today’s keynote address at CTIA was Sir Richard Branson who talked about doing things his way. He brought us on a 30 minute journey through the many bold successes Virgin has had. The highlight of his presentation was when he proclaimed that his next project once Virgin Galactic takes off is to build a modern day ”Noah’s Ark” for space that will send animals, seeds and 30 volunteers to travel to Mars for what he described could be a one way ticket.  

April fools joke or yet another bold project for the future?

Although his proclamation sounded more like a joke than a vision for the future – this wouldn’t be the first time he has gone against “the experts” to boldly go where no company has gone before (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Other things I’ve picked up on over the first two days:

1. If you lend you iphone to a stranger to make a local call, be sure to keep them within eyesight… or give them a quarter to make a call. Last night a stranger at an industry party walked away with my iphone. Good thing there’s an Apple store across the street from the hotel!
2. Much like the North American mobile industry, so much has changed in Vegas since I was last here two years ago. It’s truly remarkable to see the number of new buildings, casinos, and condos from 2 years ago. Even more remarkable are the massive projects currently under-way that will completely transform the infamous strip into something even more excessive. One project called the City Centre will have it’s own water treatment plant and power station. It looks like a series of 10 buildings that start at the strip and extend to the other side of the main highway. They have their own private monorail system for the place too.
3. Nothing new from blackberry this week…except a few more colour options for the pearl.
4. Although CTIA Wireless is the largest mobile event in North America, it pales in comparison to size and scale of the world mobile congress
5. 48 billion SMS messages are sent per month in the U.S.!!!

Time to catch a nap before heading over the i love the mobile web launch party!

 I’m on my way to listen, learn, and contribute to the conversation next week in Las Vegas for the 2008 CTIA Wireless conference – the largest mobile conference in North America.

This will be my first time back since 2006 – and much has changed

I’ve signed up to follow the mobile marketing track and have made several appointments with all sorts of players in the mobile ecosystem.

Here are a few things I’m especially looking forward to this week:

1. Alcatel’s session on 4G networks…and their after-party
2. U.S. Spectrum announcement – we’ll find out this week who won the new spectrum that was secretly auctioned off this year. Will it be AT&T, Verizon, Google…. Somebody else?
3. Sneak peak at the Blackberry 9000 series. We’ve seen pictures on the interweb, now let’s hope we can get a closer look
4. Also looking for more Google phone or gphone previews
5. The official kickoff of the “I love the mobile web” campaign which was started by Bango and inherited by the dotmobi MAG to extend the campaign out globally. Their party on Tuesday night should be fun too
6. Examples and application examples of how 2D bar codes are being applied in America
7. Meeting other mobile bloggers!

I’m not a gambling man, but I’m betting this week will be a hoot.