Peter Arvai and friends Per and Aage
Mobile Internet Challenges by Peter Arvai from Mobispine
In Japan, 90% of music downloads come from mobile phones! This may be because of the advanced handsets and technology (as well as constant innovation) in Japan. KDDI has sold about 150 million songs through their supported mobile handsets. This means about 10 songs have been downloaded by each user! That’s quite a high penetration rate! Japan seems to be the most mobile people around, and the people who are most likely to innovate. Ever wonder why?
Orange+bebo = smart move or not?
bebo was supposed to be associated with Orange phones. However, social networking does not work well with a carrier but within networks all over the world.
Peter shares some personal ideas of how to gain a competitive edge on the apps market. He introduces a book : The Attention Economy by two economists, Thomas H Davenport, and John C. Beck. If you develop a product and want to make a sale, the toughest challenge will probably be getting the attention of your customers. If you develop something that helps consumers manage their attention, you get a competitive edge!
He goes into a facebook app. When they introduced the newsfeed for facebook, the user rate of facebook, and membership, increased dramatically. It seem to me that people out there really do want to know what other people are up to, in real time! Like me with Jaiku!
Mobile Interface Characteristics
1. The first personal media. If you lose your wallet, you will probably report the item lost within 26 hours. However, if you lose your mobile phone, the average time taken to report it lost is 68 minutes!
2. The first always carried media. Out of 10 people. 6 people actually bring their mobile phones to bed and sleep with them! Are you guilty of this?
3. The first always-on media. Flashcam.When your screensaver comes on, you get a newsfeed.
4. The first media were the audience can be accurately identified. With mobile phones, we can actually track user behavior. A problem here? With the internet, we had an issues with cookies. With traditional television, it’s hard to track statistics. However, the mobile phones is the “holy grail” of marketing. It is easy to track user statistics.
Digital Media trends
- unbundling
- long tail of content
- social networks
Key consideration: mobile interface
Personalization. How can you customize your product to fit your customer? Mobispine has a suggested solution. “I hope you want to speak to me later”, says Peter.
Peter is joined from Aage Reerslev from Sqauce, and Per from Pixbox for a panel discussion. Commenting on why people in Japan might have such a high mobile application and usage penetration rate.
Do you think operators are the bad guys in the telecoms industry today? “No, I do;t think they are the bad guys.. but they are part of the problem,” Aage comments. Just last week there was talk of a mobile operators to use advertisement to make things cheaper for me, for example. Content providers should tell me how much it costs for me to consume, not the operator.”
The debate about subscription: flat rate versus a non-flat rate.
Kai, from the Singapore Club in Sweden asks about the Intellectual property in Sweden. How important is intellectual property in terms of patents and so on? Is it interesting how all the venture capitalists asks for patents. Aage says it’s speed and marketability that really matters. “Patents are good of course, but you shouldn’t put too much energy into it. It’s more important to build your brand. Most international venture capitalists do not look too much into patents.”
“It depends who you talk to. Some people consider the core team is more important. Some people think the business idea is more important. You shouldn’t be bogged down in patents”, comments Peter. Per can’t think of one single patent on the internet of the services he loves to use. “Don’t make patents, make users”, finishes Aage.
So what kind of premium services would people be ready to pay for in a mobile device? Per comments, people are not paying for mobile services. They are really paying for the content of the mobile service, or what value it bring to them. For example, premium sms comes with updates from Aftonbladet. There aren’t a lot of services out there though.