Recently I was having a healthy debate with my friend Steve Sorge over at Mobile Fringe around “Wap vs App” – or should marketers focus their efforts on building out a mobile website vs. building out a mobile application.

Since my presentation at marketing magazine’s mobile 2.0 conference, my point of view had been shifting towards Wap – or the mobile web. My reasoning being that with the mobile safari browser webkit being commonly adapted by nearly all smartphones we can now build once and deploy many times with few changes to fit each platform while outputting a very rich experience.

This is not only cost effective but ensures reach – which is key if your audience isn’t on an iphone yet.

Steve pointed out that most people with iphones would rather search or browse on the App store than on Google – a huge shift in behaviour. With over 85,000 applications and 2 billion downloads, the App store is evolving to become your life tool for anything you need. After all, isn’t there an App for everything?

I was being trumped with my own traditional point of view – user experience trumps technology every time.

Yesterday it was announced in the media that the iphone is coming to Bell and Telus next month. Having recently completed upgrades to their networks to enable GSM (which is what the iphone works on), they can now offer the iphone and compete head on with Rogers. With iphone users already driving +60% of all mobile web traffic in Canada, what will happen when you suddenly make the most popular device available to everybody else?

2010 will be the year that the iphone changes the mobile landscape in Canada.

Although Canadians have other great options in the Palm Pre and the pending new Storm from Blackberry, making the iphone available to nearly all Canadians is a game changer – for both consumers and marketers.

So… Wap or App?

I’m back to the middle. You should probably do both, but start with a mobile website – unless your target audience is already on the iphone. By this time next year, that could be everybody.

“Yak” has many connotations – some more positive than others.

What yak mobile will mean to Canadians this time next year when they go to market nationally (minus Quebec) has equally as many possible implications for consumers and the mobile market.

CEO Tony Lacavera of Globalive Communications Corp. (who own yak) presented an overview of their vision and market strategy this week at Mobile Monday.  Here are some highlights and what they may mean to you and to the competitive market:

• They bought enough spectrum nationally to reach 25 million Canadians – but have set a short term goal of 1.5 million customers. They are going to initially focus on their own yak long distance customers (who are mostly middle-aged women), so don’t expect them to compete with the big 3 on their own turf
• They aren’t expecting Bell, Rogers, and Telus to make it easy on them to use their cell towers as mandated by the CRTC and they expect it will take a while to create network infrastructure that can compete with the big 3 for reliability.  Look for them to make deals with other spectrum winners (like Shaw and Videotron) and MVNOs as a way to fill some infrastructure and / or service gaps
• They are going to be GSM based in the AWS spectrum.  This means you should have more choice of devices to either bring over to them or to buy then if you were on Bell or Telus
• They expect that mobile penetration in Canada will be as high as 93% in three years and they hope to have about 8% market share – or enough to survive / hang on until 2012 when the next spectrum auction is expected to occur for the powerful 700 mhz range
• They will leverage big box and other major retailers primarily for distribution. This will make it easier for consumers buy and try yak mobile before fully committing to them. This is common practice in other countries like Italy and Greece where there is heavy penetration (100%+). With pay as you go programs, it’s not uncommon for consumers to carry multiple Sim cards
• Yak’s pending arrival has already impacted other flanker brands such as fido, solo, and koodoo as they are all repositioning themselves to be more competitive and in line with other international standards (like dropping system access fees, 12 month roll over minutes etc…)

yak mobile (or whatever they end up branding themselves) may not be the giant killer many consumers are hoping for, but they are the first of 4 new entrants that promises to restore the Canadian market to competitive levels not seen since 2000-2002 before the last wave of new entrants were bought out by Rogers and Telus

This weekend I was in Collingwood for some rest & relaxation – and maybe a little golf.  With thunderstorms pounding the area all morning, we decided to go into town to do some shopping.

We popped into the Rogers wireless store to see if they had any 3G iphones in stock. We were in luck – they had both the 8 gig and 16 gig versions available.  I asked for the 8 gig version… and that’s when the fun began.

Rogers will not sell you an iphone if your existing contract with them is less than one year old.

If your contract is less than three years old, they will sell you one – but will add up to $100 more to the price.

The reason? The sales guy said they don’t make enough money from you to pay for the phone subsidy otherwise. The fact that I bought a SIM card last September and not a phone (I alreaday had a few unlocked GSM phones) had no bearing on the outcome.

Any marketer with any customer relationship management (CRM) experience knows that it’s far more expensive to acquire a new customer than to grow an existing one.

By punishing new and existing customers with policies such as the one outlined above, they are actually decreasing loyalty and increasing the likelihood the consumer will leave Rogers the moment there is a competitive alternative. Instead of being an advocate of Rogers, they are creating badvocates as my friend Craig would say.  

I know what you are thinking – Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada and the only one with the iphone… so they can treat customers as poorly as they want because they have no where else to go.

That is currently true – but both those statements are not likely to be true by this time next year… at which point I’ll be switching carriers.

Up next: Upgrading my first generation iphone to 2.0.

What was cause for celebration a few weeks ago has turned into a national embarrassment and another reminder that the Canadian mobile marketplace is not yet a very competitive one.

The new plans announced by Rogers are not consistent with plans being offered south of the border by AT&T or in other countries where plans include unlimited data for around $30/month.

The Rogers iphone plan starts around $60 before system charges and other fees. It does include talk time… but only 150 minutes.  You also have a data limit of 400 megs of data… which is not a lot considering the iphone is heavily dependant on data for all their widgets and the average iphone user uses 8 of them on a regular basis.  

Americans on AT&T get 3 times more talk time and unlimited data for about the same price 

Even the Rogers heavy usage plan doesn’t offer unlimited data. Since the announcement and subsequent consumer backlash, they have now indicated that customers can use other “smartphone” plans instead of the announced iphone plans. For example, I could transfer my blackberry rates (~$100/month for data alone) to the iphone. Again, no big deal and still substantially more expensive than other iphone plans offered in other countries.

Wait at least a month if you still really want one and here’s why…

Bell just announced that they will be releasing the new Samsung Instinct on August 8th which will include an unlimited data plan. The Instinct is a touch-based phone like the iphone and offers many of the same features. The user experience isn’t quite as great as the iphone… but it’s a great alternative. Thanks to Kate for sending a tweet on that announcement yesterday!

I wouldn’t be surprised if Telus came out with a similar data plan for their HTC or other smartphone products too… which means Rogers will likely update their plans if they don’t reach their targets with the iphone.

There are two more reasons to wait to buy that iphone…

1. The Rogers deal to sell the iphone isn’t exclusive – which means another GSM provider can sell it. With at least one new carrier coming to Canada after the current spectrum auction finishes up in the next few weeks, it’s almost a certainty that they’ll be GSM based. Expect them to be in market later this year or early next
2. The iphone is a great device… but what makes it really super awesome are all the utilities, enhancements, and UI hacks available for those who were brave enough to jailbreak it.  As of today, there is no jailbreaking solution for the new 3G iphone… but it’s only a matter of time

If you haven’t made the dash to Buffalo or some other U.S. border town already to buy a first generation iphone, you can probably stand to wait a month or two for better rates and more flexibility in customizing & personalizing it.

In the meantime, feel free to join the following online petitions against the new Rogers plans:

• 
• Petitiononline.com

Today Canadians everywhere waited with baited breath for news from the MacWorld 2008 Conference and Expo in San Francisco that the iPhone would finally be coming to Canada to a Rogers plan near you.

That news never came

Industry speculation is that Rogers won’t offer fixed or cheap data plans to match what other countries have offered. While you can get an all you can eat data plan for the iphone in the U.S. for around $20 / month, the best you can do right now on Rogers is an $80 monthly plan for 500 megs of data…which sounds like a lot, but wouldn’t be enough for those who want to take full advantage of the media rich features that come standard with the iphone.

Apple wants to control every part of the user experience – so getting an unexpectedly high bill for your fancy new iphone could negatively impact brand perception and advocacy for Apple. I certainly wasn’t thrilled with the $400 bill I received from Rogers the first month after hooking up my iphone on their network.

Now the good news

As reported in the Toronto Star this week, there is a chance that Telus will make the switch from CDMA (a common format in North America) to GSM – which has been adopted by the rest of the world.  An industry source also indicated to me this week that Bell is also investigating a potential switch to GSM.

The reasons are three-fold:

1. To get a piece of the global roaming fees that are currently exclusive to Rogers
2. To get access to a wider array of mobile devices that also offer more margin and more flexible terms
3. To compete with the pending new Canadian wireless carrier who is expected to build a GSM-based network as well

More Canadian GSM-based carriers mean more competition which means more choice and better value for Canadians.

It also means when new mobile devices such as the iphone burst on to the global scene, we won’t be the last industrialized country to get it.

It also means I will no longer be one of the few in Toronto with an iphone.. but I can live with that