Q: When will the carriers start to let go of the grasp they have over what applications and content can be put out there on their network/deck?

A: The topic of carriers becoming less controlling & more open has been a very hot topic in the U.S. especially and even led to Google’s initial bid on the U.S. spectrum auction.

Although nearly all carriers say they are open to being open, they also say that without controls and checks built into the system, they fear losing all control of their devices – and therefore their ability to deliver a consistent and positive experience to their customers.

Whether or not you believe that, the reality is that few carriers want to open up their platforms to third party developers until they no longer have any choice – whether that be through legislation or to keep pace with a competitive force.

Having said that, “off-deck” mobile websites are growing every day and offering content and services not currently available through on-deck.  Mobile browsers are getting better and are now rendering richer and richer experiences – so the need to have a fully open carrier may become less important as most of what consumers want can be serviced through the mobile web.

Q: As you said, you mobile device is very personal. As a marketer, what kind of mobile marketing tactics can you do that don’t annoy or invade consumer’s perceived personal space

A: Unlike some other marketing mediums, mobile is not an interruption medium – which means every tactic can be perceived as annoying or invading personal space… unless you get permission or an opt-in first.

In cases where you are leveraging bluetooth to engage a consumer directly, ensure the message is specifically relevant and in context to where they are receiving it, and ask for permission to continue the conversation before delivering the message.

For all other mobile channels (sms, mms, mobile web, widget etc…) it again starts with relevance and in the case of acquisition based initiatives, you need a strong call to action.

Mobile rarely works on its own – so don’t think of a mobile tactic as something to replace something else in your marketing mix that has worked before. Instead, think of mobile as an extension of your existing campaign.

For examples and case studies on effective mobile tactics, check out the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) website here.

With retailer’s becoming more technologically advanced (RFID, Bluetooth, wifi) what is the future of “proximity marketing” through a mobile device? – Ian Barnett, spider marketing.

With technology playing a larger role in the retail experience, we can expect traditional old in-store media to become very interactive. It’s happening now with LCD screens – but the ability to get additional product information or get drawn to products through bluetooth, SMS, mobile web, or qr codes represents real and near future opportunities

In some countries like South Africa for example, consumers are entering malls and downloading virtual coupon books through Bluetooth before starting their shopping. They download a widget or application to their device once, then simply update the content through bluetooth every time they enter a bluetooth zone in the mall.

Think of mobile technology as conversation enablers vs. interruption devices. Nobody wants to be bombarded with messages on their phone – so the successful retail experiences will incorporate opt-in first for any technology play that goes beyond signage.

When will this happen in Canada?

It’s already started. Several malls in Ottawa and out West have already started piloting bluetooth projects and other mobile related projects are also in play across the industry. RBC is piloting a mobile payments platform called mobex which could also roll out to the masses in the next 18 months.  You won’t see widespread qr codes until a carrier incorporates them on their device.

We have enough examples from around the world on the future of proximity marketing in Canada, the bigger question is when will proximity marketing really take off. My bet is 2010.

This is an excellent question posed by the panel audience earlier this week.

The short answer is – nearly 100% of mobile devices in Canada have a mobile browser.

Every new device comes with one and consumers are updating & replacing their devices faster than ever. It used to be that every 2-3 years a consumer would update their device. Now it’s about every 6-9 months. Also, thanks to Stephanie at Yiibu for this link which shows device market share by Country.

Having said that, keep in mind that the mobile web experience varies greatly from device to device. You can design and develop sites that will work just fine on every device if you follow the standards laid out by the W3c and dotmobi.

Unlike the interweb where we are often designing for the lowest common denominator, you can design for the highest common denominator for the mobile web.  We can auto-detect your device before serving content so that you can serve up a very rich experience for smartphones (i.e. bb bold, iphone) and a more basic experience for your standard clamshell device for example.

Data plans in Canada have come way down in the last year. You can get unlimited data plans for as low as $7 / month from Bell and Telus for your flip phone, and as low as $30 / month for your smartphone from Rogers.

Summary: The mobile web is a viable channel to extend your message.  Be sure to design for mobile and user context instead of trying to cram an interweb site into a smaller screen.

Here’s a really interesting concept and tool for those looking to build a mobile website that will be compatible across all devices – for free. Including hosting.

mobiSiteGalore has introduced a desktop and mobile based publishing platform that allows anybody to build their own mobile website within minutes using a templated system that walks you through 6 steps that ends with your own mobile site published on their sub-domain.

The entire process is mobile web driven – so you don’t need to download any widgets, applications, or peform complex downloading sequences.  The templates are pretty restrictive (unless you’re a code geek), but it needs to be to keep it simple.

Having said that, you can add feedback pages, upload images, format content, restore to previous versions, add hit counters, send email and SMS invitations, optimize for SEO and include auto-redirect to your desktop website if someone attempts to access your mobile site on a laptop or desktop.

You can even do all that from your mobile device – a first in the industry.

Check out their online demo of building a site through a non-smartphone mobile device here.  

What surprised me was that the “free” user generated websites on their sub-domain did not include mobile banner ads or other forms of mobile advertising…. which begs the question – why do this if they aren’t generating revenue?

If you don’t like the idea of promoting a sub-domain, you can always setup a redirect from your dotmobi or mobile enabled domain to their sub-domain.

Now what’s your excuse for not having a mobile website for your company, service, or brand?

Earlier this year I made 10 predictions for mobile – and many of them have already come true! Check out the original post here. 

As part of their mobile insert this month, Strategy Magazine asked if I could provide 10 new sets of predictions… so here they are 10 predictions for the Canadian Mobile marketing ecosystem over the next 12 months as printed in this month’s issue:  

1. Fixed Bluetooth networks will appear all over the country – giving marketers and advertisers proximity marketing abilities as seen in the UK and South Africa
2. One carrier will start the 2d bar code craze by introducing a line of devices that come with a decoder pre-installed. Scanning heads of lettuce for nutritional information will become common-place shortly after (as they already are in Japan)
3. The Mobile web will become more important for marketers as a channel than SMS as devices such as the iphone and the blackberry bold (and rumoured thunder) will raise the bar in terms of overall experience with a high speed mobile web experience on our national 3G network
4. Mobile widgets and applications become bigger drivers for consumer behaviour than the device itself. It will no longer be just about the hardware
5. Palm will make a comeback and once again compete in the “smartphone” space
6. Thanks to built-in GPS in many devices, Location based services (LBS) mashups will make your mobile device more personal and relevant. Marketers will be shortly behind
7. A new Social Networking utility goes totally mobile (with LBS) – and competes with facebook for Canadian mindshare
8. Mobile gaming will explode in popularity – leading to strong growth in mobile advertising
9. At least one new GSM national Carrier will enter the marketplace and will compete directly with Rogers. They’ll probably sell the iphone too. Look for either Bell or Telus (or both) to signal a move into supporting GSM in Canada as well
10. Over 30 billion SMS messages will be sent in Canada – up from the predicted 18 billion this year

The CWTA released their quarterly report last week and highlights are consistent with year long trends.

More Canadians are texting more often.

It will be interesting to see if proposed new charges for incoming texting as announced last week by Bell and Telus will impact overall numbers. It will also be neat to see the impact of the iphone…  will Canadians text even more or will they simply migrate to mobile instant messaging (MIM), Twitter, and other mobile web based communication options?

I know – it’s not just about the iphone – super awesome third generation mobile devices from Blackberry (Bold), Palm (Centro) and Samsung (Instinct) promise to make the next quarter an exciting one for our market.

Here are some highlights to the report:

• 4.1 billion messages were sent peer to peer in Q1 (note messages related to mobile marketing campaigns are not counted). Note that 10.1 billion were sent in all of 2007
• 1.4 billion messages were sent in March 2008 alone
• 42% of Canadian mobile subscribers sent at least one peer-to-peer message in March 2008. Imagine what that number would if your friends who return your text with a phone call because they don’t know how to text… figured it out?
• MMS-capable common short codes were made available for the first time
• As of May 14th, North America’s first user-generated mobile picture messaging service on broadcast television was launched in Canada
• There are 25 active mobile micro-payments (m-commerce) applications approved in Canada

We knew this was coming… but results from a new report from Opera, a Norway-based mobile browsing company even surprised me!

According to the report, 40% of global mobile web traffic starts with popular social-networking sites such as MySpace, hi-5 and facebook. 

That number grows to 60% when you look at U.S. numbers – which is not surprising as Americans tend to spend more time on the mobile web relative to SMS than other markets. No Canadian specific data was published in the report.

It will be interesting to see how mobile-first social networking site and utilities will impact this number in the next 12 months.

Other mobile social media sites to watch are:

• itsmy.mobi (and check out the blog & demo I published back in Feb here)
• bebo.com
• faceparty.com
• friendster (making a come back?)

Interesting enough, Nokia’s own mobile social media site (mosh) did not make the top 10 most visited on any of the countries reported in detail within the report. I guess owning ~40% of the global handset market does not guarantee software or mindshare dominance.

You can read the full report here.

The Globe and Mail recently reported that mobile advertising was years away from a breakthrough. You can read their full article here.

Although I agree we are still in the early stages of mobile advertising, I would suggest that “years” is more likely about two years. Just as we’re seeing exponential growth in leveraging the mobile channel for marketing activities, we are now seeing similar growth in mobile inventory for brands looking to place ads on carrier networks (both on and off-deck).

In Canada, there was virtually no mobile ad inventory to buy a year ago. Today, there’s well over 5 million impressions in mobile inventory to be bought on and off-portal. Although relatively small in comparison to email or the desktop web, this is growing rapidly.

Industry insiders have indicated that the metrics are looking pretty good too.

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I’ve recently installed the Weather Network blackberry widget on my Blackberry 8800. One of the advantages of creating a device specific widget is that you can enrich the user experience beyond a typical mobile website.

The Weather Network is no exception – taking full advantage of the blackberry Java platform to delivery an intuitive and easy to manage widget.

Once you’ve downloaded the widget, you can select your city of choice for weather updates. Coming soon – the ability to add up to 5 more cities – although I believe there should be an unlimited city option like there is on the iphone weather widget by Yahoo.

The neat thing is that once your choice city has been selected, you can get the current temperature by just scrolling over the icon on your blackberry desktop. Clicking on the icon will give you a detailed forecast for that day. Using the options button, you can switch to short and long term forecasts too.

Want to try it out? Point your blackberry mobile web browser to: http://weyebb.pelmorex.com

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