MomoLondon: Mobile Payments

I arrived a few minutes late and missed the beginning of Dave Birch’s introduction, but I gather it involved Star Trek and early Visa commercials…

Dave has posted his own summary of his introduction which was all about needing a better story to tell about mobile payments. He reckons we don’t have a really good narrative to get people excited about the subject, and that makes it harder to get the future technologies more widespread.

Some other points he raised were:

• Keuffel & Esser (world’s largest manufacturer of slide rules) commissioned a report about the future in 1967. It was amazingly accurate apart for the bit where they went out of business 5 years later due to the invention of the calculator…
• Facebook have money transmitter licenses in 38 out of 50 states — a good start, but not really useful if you need to pay someone and they go on holiday to a state that’s not covered…
• In EU there was a regulatory barrier and now there isn’t — arrival of non-banks will be a big game change
• UK Universal Credit system — payments won’t be by cheque any more
  • going for prepaid accounts
  • £2bn per month will be going through the new system
  • a big opportunity…

He then challenged the panel to come up with some good narratives for digital, mobile money. My usual summarised notes are below. Dave did a good job of making the evening interesting to listen to, but we didn’t really come away with any new stories to tell. As Margaret Gold tweeted later, the most we talked about was buying coffee…

Panel

• Dave Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion @dgwbirch
• Jennifer Payne, Ponti’s Group @pontisgroup
• Russell Sheffield, paythru @russsheffield
• Iain Herd, PayPal Mobile @iainherd
• Nathan Cushnie, O2 Money @gncushnie

Nathan Cushnie: O2’s Mobile Money

• what is the user case?
• just payment as utility is not very exciting
• discovering deals, then paying directly
• consolidating payments with other financial things — the rest of the wallet

Iain Herd: PayPal

• what is the value for the merchants?

Russell Sheffield: paythru

• has to be seamless, global & ubiquitous
• fit the nuances of different cultures
• Turkey have 10-12 merchant accounts for each merchant — they choose which to use
  • in Turkey, terminals are provided by the banks for free so this is possible

Jennifer Payne: Ponti’s (retailer)

• not enough benefits for the retailer
• want the experience to be user friendly, social, tie in to marketing
• want a little hub and want it to be handed to us

Masabi - train tickets

• merchants are terrified that they’ll install the wrong hardware (betamax)
• masabi trying to provide several different versions all the time
• what about a platform that will support multiple systems?

Are we just waiting to clear the logjams before Apple tells us what to do?

• RS: it is complex - have to make sure it’s secure and keeps customer confidence
  • better not to let the consumer decide
• IH: most players not looking at the whole journey
  • Apple good at making things work end to end
  • good at simplicity
• JP: so many people creating different wallets
  • do I wait for them? do I make my own app?
• NC: don’t want the consumer to have to choose technology

Audience experiences of purchasing on a phone?

• used an SMS to buy using a local currency (Brixton pounds)
  • strong community narrative which was nothing to do with payment
• starbucks app — did what it needed to do
  • very simple
• been in a shop and got pissed off: used Amazon to buy direct
• IH: used Pizza Express payment app
  • audience: fairly simple
  • retailer had no difficulty using it
• audience: bought something in Macy’s
  • frustrated that had to take the phone out of his pocket
• audience: paid with NFC on iPhone at Starbucks
• RS: all down to the customer — the moment they have to think about the transaction, the interruption can stop the payment
• DGW: the goal with the phone is to make things better
• DGW: no good experiences involved PayPal, Barclays, etc
• IH: need big companies involved to get reach — all previous mentions were small scale

Wandering through the building and paying

Do we even need to get our phone out of our pocket? Is it better just to walk around and have things credited to our account automatically?

• Ben Whitaker, Masabi: femto cells on trains/buses… could just pick up people on the journey by being there
  • what about people on the bus stop?
  • track people across the journey…
• PayPal Here/Square: check in to a merchant
  • next time you’re in the shop, the POS terminal shows your face
  • you can pay just by walking up to the till and talking
  • loyalty scheme — offers targeted at retail customers
  • POS machine shows how many times you’ve been in the store, what your last purchase was…
• what does the mobile channel deliver?
• is just leaving your wallet behind enough of a change?
• JP: people go to a restaurant for the customer experience
  • just ordering on your phone is a lonely experience…
  • want engagement as opposed to payment
  • if it comes to payment later then that’s good

mobile should do more

• payments going through to expenses automatically?
• want someone to help me budget & track my spending…
• NC: narrative needs to be bigger than just a transaction
  • accounts departments won’t accept electronic receipts at the moment…
• RS: NatWest doing moneyless accounts in last couple of months
  • been that way for 15 years in South Africa because banks & mobile operators working together
• DGW: Orange & NatWest did a trial in 1996… unfortunately not much has happened since then

Is it really just a squabble about who owns the customer?

• IH: when working at a mobile operator, looking far too much at the commercial model than at what the consumer actually wanted

Risk - mobile payments should be more secure, and therefore cheaper?

• IH: very large percentage of PayPal is risk management
  • when talking with partners, that’s one of the main things they bring to the table
• however, PayPal’s risk management seems to involve offloading a load of risk onto the merchant — see the various articles about PayPal seizing and freezing accounts

What about identity on mobile?

• RS: single sign-on
• NC: not really looked at identity
• IH: PayPal has less accounts than Facebook, but they’re all verified
• DGW: if you figure out identity, then payment falls out in the wash…

What about payment with non-currency, e.g. selling personal information?

• despite the promise of a new idea, this question didn’t get much of an answer…

Why can’t I take the phone round a supermarket and scan products as I go myself?

• NC: O2 Wallet does include a bar-code scanner
  • can scan a virtual/digital barcode poster shop
  • next step would be paying for real things

Don’t want Starbucks & McDonalds — I want independent merchants

• Not just taking the payment utility, want community and local interest

Replicating existing stories hasn’t worked - successes are those that create new markets

• “What frustrates me is that those electronic, mobile transactions don’t appear any different in my bank statement”

Working backwards from the future

• NC: consumer makes a gesture; consolidate offer & loyalty points; merchant gathers data

Payment of medium sized amounts between people (e.g. £600 for doing something)

• PayPal is not legal tender — cannot force someone to be paid by PayPal…
• the revolution is on the customer acquisition side, never on the usage
• IH: PayPal focused on getting to Facebook size
• it’s only a matter of time until you can send money via Facebook
• audience: if you get a parking ticket, pay it by PayPal — it totally confuses them!
• want to pay a builder, who pays his contractors, who use the money immediately to go down to the pub — cash is the only accepted mechanism right now
• DGW: refuses to pay cash as he refuses to take part in the black economy!
  • part of the story could be that you’ll pay less tax if you pay by mobile :-)
• IH: can give people prepaid PayPal credit cards — they can withdraw cash from an ATM

What about beggars? Small transactions to unknown people

• DGW: contactless terminals by busker pitches in the underground set at £1
• DGW: Not a problem he’s trying to solve…

Should I have the right to make an anonymous payment?

• IH: that’s where PayPal came from
• Data that goes with the payment that seems to the root of the business models we were talking about earlier…

Would it be good for Ponti’s to get rid of cash?

• JP: it’s not on our radar — all that matters is that we get paid and the customer is happy

What is the market asking PayPal for?

• in UK fashion group pay by barcode
• all German shops close on a Sunday, but can put panels (with QR codes) in windows so people can shop online when you’re closed

Is showrooming a problem for retail (comparison shop and then buy online)?

• JP: Not particularly true in a restaurant…

Wrap up:

• need to look bigger than just replicating credit cards
• In 1967 the USA banks thought it would take at least until the 1980s to get rid of cheques… Money changes very slowly

---

Announcements

• Samsung Smart App Challenge - $4m worth of prizes
• 19th July — Smart Accessibility Workshop: 4-7pm
  • what to think about when designing apps on mobile
  • already a third full
• 24th July — Mobile Apps Marketing

Over The Air 2011: The FT Web app - We've Got a Website for That

Andrew Betts, Assanka @triblondon

• An app is:
  
  • responsive design
  • responsive to human interface (mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, TV remote, …)
• The Daily app is now generating less than 50 tweets a day (and still going down)
  
  • Down from over 200
• iPad web app also works on other devices
  
  • not just tablets – phones too
  • currently only accessibly on iPad
  • works on Android & QNX but not released yet
  • Android imminent, QNX a few months
• server serves the same code to all devices
  
  • client does customisation and caches as much as it can
  • so can go offline and still access pages
• FT web app
  
  • 8 months with 3 people
  • then additional 4 months with same people to get Android & Playbook

issues

• flowed columns and flowing text around fixed elements
  
  • adobe webkit fork has great flow additions - but not available on devices
  • css3 template layouts – but again not supported
  • so have to measure content and cut it into positioned containers using Javascript
• content balancing
  
  • always show a whole number of items across the width
  • done by classifying devices into four groups according to screen size
    
    • small, medium, large, large wide
• podcast pages
  
  • want to keep playing audio even when move to another page
  • put audio player at the top of the DOM, so not altered
  • entire app is in a single page – just swap content in and out
• swiping between sections
  
  • continuous carousel made out of three divs
  • middle one is always the current
  • outer ones are preloaded as required
  • implemented swipes using touch gestures
  • have to do your own gesture interpretation
    
    • distinguish between slow drags and flings

tools

• playbook has remote web debugging
• WeinRE can do similar, but can’t debug Javascript
• TouchScroll allows you to keep headers fixed and snap to columns when swiping across
• web debugging proxies (e.g. Charles)
• use desktop for layout, but real device for interaction (swiping)

discoveries

• people use native apps differently
  
  • they tap lightly and fast
  • the web browser waits for fast taps in case there’s a double tap to zoom
  • if you don’t want double tap to zoom
  • Assanka made fastclick

offline access

• launching app offline
  
  • need to specify URLs in app manifest
  • if you change a single file, all of the manifest needs to be re-downloaded
  • store as little as possible
  • the more you store, the longer your app will take to launch
  • iOS manifest is buggy – you can get name conflicts with other webapps
    
    • so make sure you give your manifest a custom name
  • development is hell – things get cached the whole time
    
    • instead, add a comment that changes every minute (for dev)
    • still leaves you time to refresh a few times to check the cacheing
• manifest is no good for editorial content
  
  • local storage is much faster than SQLite
  • so if you only access by key then use it
  • you need permission to store > 5Mb
  • strategy:
    
    • launch app from web, just store <= 5Mb and prompt to save to home screen
    • saved from home screen, immediately ask for 50Mb and never ask again
  • images downloaded from server as base64 encoded strings
    
    • can combine images into single requests
    • and can then gzip the whole thing
    • stored in local SQLite
    • rendered into DOM as a data: URI
    • base64 transfer also avoids operator image recompression!
• analytics
  
  • can’t use Google analytics
  • log user actions into local DB
  • POST the log when requesting updated content
  • on the server, rewrite the log into an Apache format access log

unresolved issues

• SSL security: no browser chrome, so no browser padlock
  
  • trusted, because we tell you…
• Social media integration – OAuth in separate window doesn’t work
  
  • have to reload completely when return to app
• offline adverts:
  
  • not technically hard, but ad server companies don’t know how to deal with them
  • can’t retract the ad
  • can’t measure clicks
  • can’t click through at all…
• automated QA – selenium doesn’t really work
  
  • ended up using lots of people and lots of devices

platforms

• Android is by far the poorest web environment when compared with iOS and QNX
  
  • mainly due to lack of hardware-accelerated CSS transitions
  • so FT have a native Android app which has a single native component – the gallery to enable swiping
  • the rest of the app is HTML/CSS/JS
• QNX has a native app too, but only to have a home screen icon and to provide distribution

Q&A

• upset Apple?
  
  • probably not – FT are specific market
• differences between web app and native
  
  • web has more sections than native ever had
  • web app preloads content, so people swipe more often
  • as a result web app gets much more interaction
• is not appearing in the app store an issue?
  
  • yes, but instead making tactical native apps
  • e.g. FT Top 100 Companies – tells users if you want the full edition, go to the web app

iOSDev UK: Standing Out from the Crowd

Craig Lockwood, HuwDavid, @craiginwales

• put a QR code on the presentation screen for a voting web page
  • works surprisingly well (given good network connection…)
  • voting page was well presented too http://wbxapp.com/join-in
• pre-render your icon so you have control of the gloss
• localisation
  • french, dutch, german, italian translations pay dividends
• app microsite
  • drive traffic with google adwords & track with analytics
  • good example: http://thecocktailapp.com
• using social media
  • shout loudly yourself
  • and get your users to shout louder
  • “if you’re not ethical, at least be targeted”
• make your app meta data relevant
• watch out for the app size
  • you can’t download an app > 20Mb over 3G
  • you have one opportunity to sell — don’t waste it
• niche press works well for niche products
  • e.g. rare pig breeds app (Guide to Pig Keeping), got featured in Farmers Weekly and got 6,000 downloads in a short period
• getting designers:
  • there are plenty of media students who are looking for portfolio work…

Q&A

• how to deal with app store feedback complaints?
  • point to the app website & twitter account within the app
  • people look at the reviews more as the cost goes up (even if it’s only to £2.99)
  • get your friends and family to review when you release — get in first with 5 star reviews
  • good screenshots can filter out people who don’t understand the app
  • price tier 2 gets less scathing reviews than tier 1 & free

iOSDev UK: Tap to Experiment

Chris Ross, Osmosis Apps, @darkrock

An attempt to find success on the AppStore

• App: Tap to Chat
  • Other chat apps look very similar — buddy lists & tab bars
  • Decided to try something different — picture-based
• Go along to a nearby group (e.g. Brighton iPhone Creators)
• Experiment #1: universal Facebook chat app with a novel UI
  • 1.5 weeks each for two people
  • Used pre-existing code from other apps (Facebook XMPP chat)
• Collaboration helps — both to evolve good ideas and filter bad ideas
• Can appeal app store rejections, even if you don’t change the code (e.g. if your app relies on a third party that was down during testing)
• Don’t underestimate the phenomenal power of the Christmas period
  • e.g. EA drop their prices just before Xmas, their apps go to the top, and their downloads rocket
• Experiment #1.5:
  • iAds seeing only 10-15% fill rate
  • Apple pay you just to show the advert
  • Admob have a higher fill rate, but only pay you for click-through
  • More differentiation with paid app
  • Removing adverts is not enough to get people to buy the paid version
  • Added “share app on friends’ walls”
  • had a spike -> 1000 shares a day
  • revenue jumped to £4-4.5K / month
• Experiment #2:
  • Started a company to house the app
  • Rewrite the code
  • Changed the facebook (spamming)sharing since Facebook complained…
  • but they were polite
  • Added Google chat, AIM + others
  • More free apps: one per API — better upgrade path (get all in one app)
  • Got a designer
• Aimed to do all that in two weeks…
  • but took three weeks from 6am-11pm
  • downloadDidFailWithError is a private API
• Got an expedited AppStore review to be in store in time for Apple Design Awards
• Results:
  • Revenue jumped to c.£6k/month
  • Difficult to convert people from v1 to v2 (especially since v2 was on a new (company) iTunes account)
• Success in the AppStore?
  • Overall stats:
  • Mean amount of money made: £30,000
  • Median amount made: £600
  • Tap to Chat:
  • 18% revenue from paid apps (18K downloads)
  • 82% revenue from adverts in free (500K downloads)
  • £40K made so far
• Moving to using mopub to do advertising
  • provides more control on the server side
• Mistakes
  • changed sharing in v2 — less visibility
  • no push notifications in v2 (but kind of a choice anyway)
  • transitioning to a new iTunes Connect account
• Next steps
  • building a backend server for push notifications
  • building libraries for MSN & AIM
  • improving user retention:
  • Osmo character offers advice and news

Q&A

• Facebook App ID
  • can share same app ID between apps
  • v1 & v2 (different iTunes Accounts) and free apps use same facebook app ID
• Facebook spamming guidelines
  • you must have a single action per share
  • you must allow the user to edit their text on others’ walls
  • If there is an issue, facebook contact you to say that you have to resolve the issue in 24hrs — but they need you to respond in that time
  • you can ask for a grace period
  • Tap to Chat asked for 2 weeks
• Transferring iTunes Accounts
  • can convert a personal account into a corporate account if you ask
• Experiments with price?
  • v1: 59p
  • aim to bump the price with each added network
  • “no point putting things for less than £2 on the app store — if people have made a decision to buy it, then they’ll buy it…”

iOSDev UK: Handling the Press

Chris Phin, Editor, Tap! Magazine, @chrisphin

Or, “How to get five-star reviews, sell millions of apps, and retire six months from now — guaranteed!”

• Getting an app noticed:
  • Exposure
  • Endorsement
  • Tap! magazine really want to embrace developers
  • Purchase
  • 91% of readers buy recommended apps
• UK magazines make money from selling issues
  • In the US it’s more based on advertising
• How reviews are chosen?
  • Gut feeling from the editors
  • Fitting in to specific sections
• How to piss off an editor?
  • Not knowing the magazine title or anything about it…
  • Unfocussed pitching
  • Aggressiveness
  • Choosing the wrong comms channel (email/SMS/phone)
• How to make an editor happy?
  • Devs with passion & high standards
  • Personal connection — trust other devs’ feelings
• Freelancers
  • e.g. Craig Gennell — Tap! mag contributing editor for games
  • Some are integral part of team; some are chancers…
  • But help them as much as possible
• Press releases
  • Same rules as any other content — first line should be who made the app, its name and what does it do
  • Links — to the web site and the app store
  • Contact details
  • include twitter
  • After all this, can put in description of company (but not before)
• Website
  • What it is — in as few words as possible
  • Price — including details of promotions (if poss)
  • Screenshots — equinux.com does a good media room
  • Contact details — again, specific media details if poss
  • Contact forms not so good as the sender can’t track the outgoing email
  • So have an obfuscated email address on the page
  • Reviewers’ guide
  • Often hooked around a narrative
  • Opportunity to guide the review — pick out USPs, etc
• What to do when you get a review
  • Read it! Not just the score…
  • Take any feedback
  • app reviewers see a lot of apps, so maybe a little more informed
  • but they are just another individual user!
  • Shout about good reviews
• Other ways to get in a magazine
  • Not just full reviews: app roundups, features, updates
  • Building relationships leads to tweets etc

Q&A

• innovative ways of catching attention
  • direct mail involving cookies!
• press area
  • often include reviews from other magazines (but that’s not useful for reviewers)
  • screenshots, hi-res logos, videos
  • useful to have a zip
• beta builds
  • interesting from bigger apps (well-known, anticipated)
  • Chris loves TestFlight
• mailing out
  • really targeted, passionate, individualized approach to 5 or so key targets
  • mailshot out the rest
• screencasts?
  • prefer image galleries as can skim them
  • otherwise, 20 seconds max!

MomoLondon: 200,000 apps - where's mine?

Advert:

The Cloud releases new FREE iPhone Wi-Fi finder

Featuring:

• offline hotspot search — find your nearest Wi-Fi from an iPad or in the underground
• integrated maps — search the thousands of Cloud hotspots across Europe and see them all on the map
• easy registration for O2 iPhone users — make sure you get your free Wi-Fi!

Download now from the app store!

---

200,000 Apps — Where’s mine?

A busy Mobile Monday tonight — perhaps sparked by the twin pull of the “marketing” and “apps” tags in the event description!

It was a good panel with a fair spread of perspective: Eli from Vision Mobile provided a lot of useful information, based on research with mobile developers as to what works and what doesn’t; Dave Burrows talked about the traditional BlackBerry corporate apps; and Alyssa Tisne understood how to get people to buy things amongst 10 million different audio tracks.

There was a good mix of people afterwards as well — not just the usual suspects, but some design and marketing students on a 3 month course at Birkbeck and a load of BlackBerry developers too.

Anyway, on to my notes, typed at speed as usual. If you’d like to add anything or correct something I thought you said, please add a comment or contact me on twitter at adamcohenrose.

Keynote — Mike Kirkup, Director, Developer Relations, BlackBerry

• BB introducing lots of ways to pay
• enabling in-app payments
• running a Super-App Developer Challenge at the moment (ends Sept 6th)
  • focussed on “super-apps”: tightly integrated, efficient apps
  • apps need to be in Developer World to be entered

Panel

• Chair: Ben Scott-Robinson - Creative Director, We Love Mobile
• Chris Bourke - MD, Mobext
• Dave Burrows - Director of R&D Interchange Group
• Alyssa Tisne - VP Strategic Partnerships, 7Digital
• Tony Pearce - CEO and co-founder, TeePee Games
• Eli Camilleri - Asssociate, Vision Mobie
• Mike Kirkup - BlackBerry

Why apps rather than mobile internet?

• CB: speed. Apps compensate for the lack of speed across mobile internet
  • speed will gradually improve over years
  • but apps provide clean, sophisticated, richer user experience
  • but can have local storage & javascript in browser apps…
• AT: Apple has set gold standard for music apps
  • 7digital’s iPhone presence is web-only as can’t compete with Apple
  • however, can integrate with last.fm and built-in player on BB
• MK: BB6 web platform has been optimised to ensure that it gives a great experience
  • 30-50% increase in traffic just by having an app icon (on home screen and app store), even if the app just launches the browser
• EC: user experience is much better, but ubiquity is much harder
  • if you want to target a market rather than a technology then you have to strike a balance

Demographics & handsets: which demographics on which handsets?

• EC: most people are not looking at demographics…
  • when asked devs where they were getting market information, they said mates, colleagues… not really the people actually using the app!
  • survey sponsored by Telefonica — they have more experience understanding the demographics
• TP: hardest thing for any publisher is to get their app discovered
  • need to peel back the profile of the user
  • find out what they actually like
• DB: we do a lot of B2B work — boss buys app and imposes on staff
  • don’t have a high curve of under 25s
  • instead have a large number of users all the way to 60+
  • most people want to do one thing on the device and that one thing well
  • amongst first feedback: “yes, but can we take the phone away please” !?!?
• CB: mobile is moving too fast. although they’re tracking analytics, the market changes continually
  • seeing 13 year olds with iPhones purchased by their parents
  • they’re probably hand-me-downs as the parent gets the next version…
  • have run campaigns which were more successful with younger brother or sister of target audience — other family members were grabbing phone

BB has become a youth device — was this deliberate?

• MK: partially driven by people transitioning from SMS, but also by other capabilities
  • not a concerted strategy, unfortunately :-)
  • were surprised at take up of BlackBerry Messager (BBM)
  • people walk into shops and say “I want BBM”, “Oh, that’s for BlackBerry”, “so that’s what I want”

Apps as marketing tools & marketing for apps

• CB: iPhone apps may be a case of the CEO’s wife…
  • but also association with a cool company may rub off
  • launched a campaign for EBLEX: responsible for promoting beef & lamb in UK
  • made an app to help you BBQ better (iBBQ)
• TP: no-one knows the apps on facebook
  • top few games are there because the publishers have the money to keep investing in advertising
  • http://teepeegames.com is a discovery site for mobile & social media apps
• EC: market towards niches
  • these are services — can learn from old industries how to get to individuals who need them
  • even games are entertainment services
  • seeing links between old platforms (e.g. magazine) & new (digital) ones
  • can do guerilla marketing
  • need to take responsibility for own marketing
  • get association with a brand that’s trusted & known
• AT: 7digital want to integrate with other music apps
  • esp. streaming apps — “now buy the music you’ve just heard”
• MK: seems like a new problem but it’s a new set of people encountering the problem
  • if you convince crackberry.com blog to feature your app then downloads go through the roof… (email: kevin@crackberry.com)
• DB: the real estate is on the device
  • when first buy a PC, first thing I do is remove the ISP adverts
  • there will be a time that this will happen on mobile

Apps are pushed through other media. How?

• CB: need to have significant budget and use it wisely
  • for BBQ app, targeted mobile ad networks & aggregators
  • initially ran an explosive campaign to push app into top 25
  • then get organic usage and get talked about
  • when start to fall out of top 25, need to give app another push — a bit more budget
  • BBQ app relied exclusively on mobile media
• CE: Royal Academy of Arts app — all users had downloaded it when they visited the museum
  • front desk had told them about it
  • still don’t know why they’re not promoting retail apps in retail stores (e.g. Selfridges app)

Is it worth plugging a free app?

• EC: yes, if it’s extending services for a segment they want to own
  • again, BBQ example fits well
  • but not if it’s your core product
  • freemium works if the extra functionality is worth something and has clear value
  • bad free apps create noise — destroy space and time for apps that people will really value
• TP: Nokia users are used to paying £5 for an app, whereas iPhone users are shocked at 59p
  • unless you have a freemium model and can get existing users to give you money
• EC: ad-funded apps were not making money they expected
  • ones that were working were
  • maybe because of numbers
• TP: content is key
• DB: have to monetise somewhere?
  • sometimes get the money paid as development
  • marketing done by somewhere else
  • ad-funded market is in its infancy
  • have to have consolidated advertising mechanisms to provide content
• AT: can send push message to get people to interact with app
  • get free releases and browse associated paid ones
  • since 7digital is a store, the app is always free

Is sponsorship a realistic model for launching an app?

• CB: absolutely (see above)
  • actively looking for sponsorship opportunities
  • white labelling apps (esp. games)
• BSR: lots of useful case studies
  • e.g. VW approached a specific game, stripped it down just to show VW car and released it for free
• CB: Brand Butler idea
  • releasing services and games to consumers is a great way to get brand awareness & engagement

Andrew Scott (Rummble): discoverability should be about word of mouth but some operators still have a rate sheet for their promoted places

• BSR: in theory app stores provide word of mouth
• MK: BB twitter app has a load of feedback comments which are attempted first tweets… (is that a problem with the BB store?)
• TP: teepeegames.com will have a combination of user recommendation & editorial control
  • putting a social network behind each product
• AT: with 10 million audio tracks available, discoverability is about genre, really good meta-data (which is not always available from the item itself), friends recommendations, …

Fragmentation: has anyone used an app-porting mechanism, and how did it work?

• CB: they tend to break down at the edges
  • a bit like decorating your house — it’s only beautiful at the end when the details have been completed
  • app-porting tech tend to deal with heavy lifting well, but don’t deal with the polish
• Charles McCloud from metaflow: have sent roughly 50 million SKUs to market
  • there are a few porting technologies out there
  • it’s tough, complicated & costly
  • it comes down to what user experience you want to deliver
• BSR: if you want to deal with extra percentages covering the market, it gets more and more expensive
  • fragmentation is getting worse from an agency perspective
• when porting, you want to take advantage of the new platform — not just port the app
  • e.g. to port an iPhone app to iPad — a day or so
  • but to take advantage of the iPad and make a good iPad app — a couple of months

How can apps modify people’s behaviour? e.g. foursquare

• DB: “mission critical” apps need to modify behaviour or won’t get ROI
  • BBM is changing his behaviour
  • carriers want stickiness

How do small new companies get market knowledge?

• EC: talk to the people who you think are your real customers
  • mobile metrics are mostly irrelevant — they come from technology point of view
  • even talking to 30 people who you believe you want to use your service
  • also want to test apps with people who will actually use it
• CB: can also do croudsource-based testing (e.g. mob4hire)
  • can target individual segments or geographic regions
• BSR: avoid listening to the press!

Helen Keegan: where does a small development house start with marketing, PR, branding?

• MK: have a very popular “Marketing for Developers” session at BlackBerry World — can send slides
  • simple things: start a blog
  • respond to complaints — the faster the better
  • BB recommend mob4hire
  • get ideas from professionals giving a quote
• CB: only way to get noticed is to cause trouble!
  • have something in your app that people will talk about
  • do something that will upset somebody
  • or start saving and then come to us :-)
• BSR: don’t target a big audience — target a niche
  • communicate to people in context
  • if you’re in a niche, you probably know the people already

---

Notices

• Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition launching this week
• nothing in August
• Over The Air 10/11th September
  • need volunteers to help
  • and sponsorship money
• Demo night on Monday following
• October — Design for Accessibility
• October — DCKTN/UKTI competition for dev places to Mobile World Congress

MomoLondon: Where Mobile Meets Media

My first Mobile Monday for a while — I’ve been kind of busy with my second child, Oren, born on 7th April.

I arrived late for the presentation by Hugh Griffiths, though what I caught was a bit slow and plodding. However, Helen Keegan did a good job getting an interesting panel of content providers and advertising services together.

Nothing much new was discussed, but it was interesting to hear how the media producers are dealing with the massive skew in the market of the iPhone. Various people are quite rightly saying that targeting the iPhone leaves 90% of your audience feeling left out, but then the percentage of traffic from only those devices indicates that the rest of the market are just so much harder to reach. The iPhone (and hopefully Android too!) makes it easy to interact with digital media when you’re out and about. You didn’t necessarily know you wanted to beforehand, but once you start using it you get hooked.

Panel discussion

Here’s my notes on the panel discussion. I definitely missed various comments from some people, so if you want something corrected or added please leave a comment or @me on twitter.

• Chair: Russell Buckley @russellbuckley — Admob
• Jason Daponte @jasondaponte — managing editor of mobile for BBC
• David Gibb @dgibbs72 — mobile content @ Sky
• Neil Johnson — Teletext Mobile
  • digital publishing arm of Daily Mail group
  • apps been downloaded about 500k times
• Helen Keegan @technokitten — mobile media consultant
• Dave Gwozdz @gwozdz/@mojiva — mojiva
  • serve ads on mobile (motion mobile)

What’s the difference between print & digital?

• DGz: digital won’t perform the same — different
• HK: reading more news articles — friends tweet the links
  • concentration span gone down, but media consumption gone up
  • not so much context, just an interesting article
  • not as much brand loyalty

What’s specific about mobile digital?

• NJ: location
  • length & tone
  • iPhone has been sold with flat rate — key driver
• HK: using NexusOne primarily at home, when can’t be bothered to get laptop out
  • less adverts on mobile web — can focus on what I want!
• DGz: maybe you don’t notice the ads ‘cos they’re more relevant - part of the content
  • because it’s a small space, publishers think more carefully about what they place
• JD: give consumers as much choice as possible
  • BBC have adopted strategy of customisation — allow user to say what their context is
  • short form is a bit of a myth — average viewing time is about 23 mins
  • definitely see people using full fat stuff when the device is capable
  • don’t use location that much — only for people customising content by saying what their local setting is (e.g. roads, weather)
• DGi: have found that people want to get at the questions of the moment
• RB: over 50% of pages on iPhone are accessed over WiFi rather then 3G

What about content behind the paywall?

• HK: have to look at multiple niche revenue streams
  • need to be able to experiment
  • sponsored apps, micropayments, etc
  • lots of people don’t want big brands to experiment, and will crow when they fail
• DGi: subscription business already…
  • web service is free
  • looking to add value to subscription
  • advertising is one part of our business but not the only part
  • I believe that people will pay for content — as long as it’s integrated
• JD: not going to be putting up paywalls on the BBC anytime soon!
  • previous job was an editor at economist.com
  • had a subscription model that provided access to the whole brand: web, print, mobile
• NJ: euromoney has been behind a paywall for a long time, mail & metro free on the web
  • paywalls need content that is valuable enough to pay for — the user can’t get that information elsewhere
• DGz: question not whether people will pay for content, but how?

Why is the iPhone making such a noise when it has such a small market share?

• JD: generates 80-85% of traffic
• DGi: easiest thing to show a manager is to show them an iPhone — but then it can be hard to convince them
  • it has changed our business — that’s where the audience is
• NJ: application platform
  • all you can eat data plans
  • frictionless payment system
  • all come together to make it many times more popular
  • would love another platform to get such an audience
• HK: how do we convert this whole other audience to data using in the same way as the iPhone users?
• DGz: seeing similar 80% of page views from iPhone — totally out of whack with market share
  • but Android is catching up very fast
• JD: when started, people thought his job was driving around in a truck… now they say “oh iPhones”!
• HK: still only small percentage of consumers — if advertise an iPhone app, then immediately alienate a large percentage of customers
• NJ: can you get ROI from anything other than an iPhone app?

Is RSS a new platform for mobile?

• NO
• twitter has replaced it completely

Are we going to see traditional media companies failing like bookshops?

• DGi: customers of tomorrow are on youtube and mobile
• NJ: seems to be more of a willingness (and ability) to pay
• HK: media owners have to innovate or die
• RB: a big time lag between advertising agencies and reality…

Will iPhone-only dev mean another IE6 legacy…?

• HK: already having legacy handsets — two year contracts and unwillingness to lose data
• NJ: relatively new platform — actually quite cheap to develop compared to a fully-featured mobile site
• JD: keep working with open standards on mobile web as well
  • BBC gets an incredible amount of traffic from Africa — pretty sure they’re not using iPhones
• NJ: apps will remain part of the mix
• JD: apps will be around for functional stuff — Shazam etc
  • content will move more to the web
• DGz: the ultimate winner will be eBay — people will sell their apps that aren’t getting any money
• HK: search & discovery is the issue
  • hard enough to find apps on Nexus One…
  • end up reverting to mobile web
• RB: seeing increasing use of app providers using advertising to increase search & discovery

How will bi-directionality of mobile media affect things?

• DGz: click to call
  • but when phones start ringing, they don’t know what to do
  • “that’s what you want to do, no? call, order”
• HK: sms, email, IM, voice
  • customers should be allowed to give their feedback
  • but can’t assume that all your customers want to have a relationship with you
  • most don’t have time to interact
  • though social media allows sharing and selling on your behalf
• JD: starting to include “share this” buttons on BBC mobile (facebook, etc)
• DGi: how do we take calls out of the call centre?
  • customer service apps
• NJ: a classified business fits perfectly — call to contact & buy
  • 35% of facebook visits came through mobile in March

Is the iPad niche, or a saviour?

• HK: niche. have played with one and thought “hmm, so what”
  • at this point the Tom Hume said: @technokitten in shock “hard to impress” on stage confession…
  • some things will look amazing, e.g. toytek’s Ultimate Alphabet
  • iPad will reach maybe the same number of customers as the iPhone, but no more
• DGi: “what do I need it for?”, but then what did you need an iPhone for before?
• JD: coffee table device — my mum is the perfect consumer
  • want something to show friends on the table
  • content looks better than it does on some people’s TVs
  • it’s nice to sit on the couch and read the newspaper
• NJ: when you start living with it…
• JD: when we launched BBC iPlayer on mobile, peak time viewing has been after BBC primetime
  • think that people are watching shows in bed

What does the panel think of Android fragmentation?

• JD: have a very big cupboard with lots of devices… it’s a risk
• DGi: have to focus on the ones that you think will do well
• HK: that’s where mobile web comes into its own
  • fragmentation won’t go away
  • not all customers will buy iPhones

How will people pay for content on mobile? @edent

• HK: paywalls using traditional methods at the moment (i.e. credit card)
  • payment mechanisms as fragmented as platforms
• DGi: require credit cards at the moment, but using other mechanisms (e.g. Apple)

Appetite — research at Yahoo by Laura Chaibi

• See teaser on slideshare
• 55% of people in UK don’t care if it’s an app or a website
• 44% of people now blame brand if the experience is bad — no longer the operator!
• “stop building vanity apps and having a one-night stand with your customers”
• M&S going for mobile web, but with microsites and micro-apps to support
  • e.g. app to create labels for your kid’s school clothes
• the touch revolution is coming — web site needs to be touch-enabled (and you might as well make it mobile friendly while you’re at it)

Why build an app when you can build it with a web app?

• NJ: discovery — it’s more difficult to find a mobile web site
• DGi: easiest way to market is an app store

This seems bizarre to me — surely it’s just as easy to search the web as it is to search the app store? I think it’s more awareness than discovery that’s the issue: iPhone users don’t search Google for a new icon on their device, even though lots of websites will make nice home screen bookmarks

What can happen to move us more towards 3 or 4 screen model (continuing access onto multiple devices)?

• JD: have to relate to customer on the terms that they understand you, but move them into the digital world
• NJ: some usage is substitutional to PC and some supplemental
  • e.g. “I saw this great house today — here, what do you think?”
• DGi: with iPhone, finally have a direct channel to the customer without the operator getting in the way
  • previously, this has been hard
• HK: phone usage survey
  • do you use the mobile web? No
  • but use facebook & email…

What’s the future of newspapers?

• DGz: it’ll be here forever
• HK: will decline, but not completely
  • if media owners can reduce their cost of producing
  • another 50 years
• NJ: if it does die, the last paper sold will be a copy of the Daily Mail…
• JD: will reduce to one or two titles
  • the ones to survive will be the ones that innovate and invest in journalism

---

Announcements

• Open Mobile Summit: code MOMO gives reduction to £850
• Coming soon in MomoLondon:
  • June 14th: Mobile Fragmentation
  • July: Marketing Your Mobile App
  • Sept 10th/11th: OverTheAir
  • Sept 13th: Demo Night

MomoLondon: Go your own way? A fresh look at LBS

Tonight’s event was probably the busiest I’ve ever seen the CBI Centre — the room was packed and there were loads of new faces. In terms of the content, there were good bits and not so good old bits — the “walk past a shop and get a voucher” idea reared its ugly head yet again, despite being shown several times to be of no interest either to advertisers or to the consumers.

Vodafone showed off their 360 phone and some services, but shorn of the glitzy launch, it looked a little clunky. The panellists spent a lot of time talking about foursquare and Andrew Scott of Rummble got a few words in edgeways. I’m not quite convinced that either of them have a business model. Shazam looked impressive and gave a good demo — they do have a business model, even with Spotify around. The guy from Cloudmade knows his stuff about maps (the stuff they do is fantastic), but didn’t seem to have much of a clue about mobile.

Skyhook Wireless

Kate Imbach

• Now selling hybrid location: Wi-Fi, Cell ID & GPS
• 10-20m accuracy within 1s
• Drive to find networks
• London coverage follows people, but empty in parks
• 125m+ APs worldwide
• 70% population coverage in Europe
• Commercial apps require an ad revenue share or a licensing fee
• Free apps can use SDK for free

Some examples (all on the iPhone):

• Sit or squat — rate toilets…
• MyStarbucks
• Flixster — cinema reviews w/social features + find cinemas & restaurants close by
• Shazam tying music to locations
• Sportacular — voting by location, then see stats over country
• TuneWiki — see where people are listening to what music, and what’s popular around you

Advertising

• MyTraffic — driving alerts, works in Boston
  • has smarter location-based advertising — but who is selling them?
• Scoreloop — location-based leaderboards
• Amazon — what’s popular in Seattle this week? what are the business books selling in London?

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/developers/developersguide.pdf

New launch — Maps Booster for S60

• feeds Skyhook location into all location APIs on the phone

Vodafone 360 Demo

Patrick Weissert

• WiFinder acquired by Voda and providing location for 360 phone
• VF 360 widgets (see http://jil.org) have location API available
• Apparently Vodafone 360 is still beta…

Flook

Tristan Brotherton

• browse photos (“cards”) around you and see where they are
• can add comments to the cards
• have a follow model like twitter
• can collect cards you find interesting (favourite)
  • can then add categories
• scoring mechanism
  • if other people collect your cards, you score more
• seems too much like twitter with twitpic
• (integrates with twitter)
• what’s the business model?

Shazam

Jonathan Symons

• > 35m users
• live in 150 countries
• Jonathan’s role is to think of the money…
• money comes from:
  • users getting involved, sharing app & music
  • buying things
• getting roughly 60,000 tweets of music a day
• “I can find myself in a bar”…
• meet new people who like the same music
• basic service for free, funded by advertising & follow-on content acquisition
• additional services cost

Panel Session

Panellists:

• Stuart Dredge of Mobile Entertainment
• Kate Imbach, Skyhook Wireless
• Jennifer Hicks, Ink Communication
• Nic Black, Cloudmade
• Roberta Lucca, Vertu
• Patrick Weissert, Vodafone

Vertu

• just launched a new phone
• together with a location awareness service
• Vertu consumers work hard, play hard, spend hard
• travel way more than average
• not digital natives — use things that are relevant for them
• want recommendations & whole experience, completed with human concierge

Cloudmade

• here to lower the barriers to entry for location apps
• making location a feature, not a whole application

Ink Comms

• Global Marketing & Strategy
• analysis

Is iPhone leading the way? What about Android & Symbian?

• KI: a lot of focus on iPhone
  • Android devs scaling back and going for iPhone instead, since that’s where the money is now
  • Lots of faith in Android but it will take its time
• NB: various limits for iPhone, esp. everything has to be active
  • Android allows swapping out services for others, e.g. using Cloudmade map service instead of Google
• PW: VF360 addresses 3 out of 6 segments
  • iPhone is making mainstream what we thought a couple of years ago was just for geeks
  • Android will take similar path
  • can share VF360 even if you’re not on Vodafone (and it picks up facebook, etc)

Foursquare

• JH: foursquare may come up with a biz model with advertising on a local level
• NB: foursquare about building up local content
  • need it for developers to play with
• RL: content useful and so is location, but targeting is vital — need to match the right content according to the influencers
• NB: have a choice of “what don’t I show on the map”
  • depending on the activity, the time, the context
• SD: segmenting by the apps you select
• RL: sometimes people don’t want discover things — they want the choice made for them

Has the industry come round to starting with the service rather the tech?

• KI: lots of complaints that the Apple App Store has too many apps, but there are a lot of niches
• KI: 100s of millions of lookups every day — location is becoming ubiquitous within apps, becoming mainstream

How are people making money?

• KI: Visa are sponsoring a shopping app, seeing $15-24 CPMs — does anyone know what this is?
• JH: still trying to come together
  • lives in Amsterdam, people are using foursquare like crazy
  • social networking side of location services
• NB: releasing first part of location based advertising service later this year
  • tailor advertising to app’s context
• RL: need to involve audience
• PW: flixter are ticketmaster — they sell tickets
  • the app is advertising for their own service

@torgo: What about the privacy issues? Could that lead to a backlash against location services?

• KI: app developers are sensitive to the privacy issues
  • generally sharing location for the user experience
  • weird when app asks for location for no reason
  • Skyhook don’t do user application tracking
• JH: consumer issues will hit as this stuff spreads
  • consumers can get picky
  • getting libel suits as twitter becomes mass market
• NB: thinks the early adopter community are more concerned by privacy issues

How does immediacy affect social mores?

• RL: different countries reacting differently
  • next generation will not bother about personal info
  • e.g. Google StreetMap just useful
• KI: gave up on privacy after my mother guilted me into accepting her friend request on facebook
• Floor: In Amsterdam, youth feel privacy is very important
• JH: want you to ask permission to share their info
  • teens will not part with their phones
  • will not be sliced by age; depends on industry
• PW: need to enable location selectively
  • not enable every tweet
  • choose to

How does Vertu work with location?

• RL: Vertu handsets are Series 40, but luxury
  • use of location is made clear — transparency
• SD: more like “push my location to the paparazzi right now!”

What is the thing that O2 UK could do that would be most helpful?

• NB: reduce barriers to entry: make location part of the platform, and pay them for using it, via location

Does advertising really work?

• A user is in Kensington, shoe shopping and I want to serve them an ad. Right now, advertisers might have an advert about shoes, probably clothing instead, almost certainly not Kensington
• NB: might also want to tell people about coffee shops nearby
• JH: talks about walk-by advertising…
• @fj says “I’m not responsible for any store making money - get outta my phone!”
• KI: no inventory
  • no incentive to sell more targeted ads as they sell less impressions that way
  • location-based banner ads are probably not the way things will go
• PW: time & location push model doesn’t really work
  • more about pull — enabling people to find you

Will there be more integration between mobile and web apps?

• PW: VF360 all about that. Can sync them up
• RL: all about lead time: takes a long time to put a new device on the market, but not to launch a service

Are we going to see content fragmentation?

• PW: biggest problem of app store model — think that services will converge
• SD: federating content like wikipedia
• NB: will be launching a “publish content through a central service” later this year

For certain apps, a facebook app is worth about 400 leads

• JH: it’s too early
  • foursquare think they will make money from local advertising
  • they’re experimenting at the moment
• Andrew Scott: foursquare not making money — just taken $100m of funding…
• RL: concentrate on providing something that is highly valuable for their consumers

Upcoming events

• 26 Oct — Mobile Phones for the Senior Market
  • Even in the UK there is only about 50% penetration in the 55+ market
  • Learn about the opportunities and how to take advantage of them
• 26 Oct PM — DCKTN Mobile World Congress competition judging
• 9 Nov — Mobile Monday joint birthday part w/Swedish Beers
• 7 Dec — Heroes of the Mobile Screen
• 4 Dec — OpenMIC in Guildford on AR & Location

OverTheAir '09: Mobile Visual Interactivity

Geoff Ballinger — mobile acuity

Geoff runs a mobile development agency in Scotland, specialising in applying vision technologies.

• lots of real people use the camera on their phone
• in 16-34 age group 78% have sent an MMS, 48% cameras regularly
• there are graveyards in Japan with QR codes on each headstone!
  • scan them to get some details about the person
• examples:
  • take a picture of a goal and MMS it — it responds with a mobile web page that tells you whether you scored, then pulls you in to further interaction
  • Nike PhotoiD — find some colours you like, send it in and get a picture of trainers coloured that way
• Visual search apps on iPhone store (CDs and books):
  • Snaptell Explorer from Amazon
  • Barnes and Noble store app
  • Mobile Acuity Visual Shopper — not yet released
• recognise images from database of 10m
• code libraries
  • Haar recogniser
  • ARToolkit
• web service APIs: Kooaba & Mobile Acuity (available on a per-use basis)
  • feature recognition from images

Future of Mobile 08: Summing Up

So here's my summary of the Future of Mobile 2008, before I start putting up my notes from the Android and Yahoo Blueprint workshops on the following day...

Emerging markets in developing countries will most likely have a lot of capable phones

• Simon Rockman (Head of Requirements, Sony Ericsson) disagrees -- there are still loads of "just voice call" phones being sold at very low prices
  
• Doug Richard at Trutap is aiming his app at emerging middle class around the world -- this includes people living in a wooden shack in Mumbai :-)
  
• Rich Miner of Google Android sees Android moving towards lower range handsets than G1 -- "it's capable of running on 200MHz chips"
  

Marketing, especially on mobile, needs to involve people, not spam them

• Gapingvoid cartoon used at least three times:
  "If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they'd punch you in the face"

The conference felt like a poor relation compared to Future of Web Apps

• There was no free wifi -- this should be an assumption nowadays
• Without wifi you lose out on the back channel from twitter etc, which is vital to keep the audience involved. The people that were online were either using their iPhones or had 3G dongles. I ended up paying £10 a day...
• There were no lunch facilities at all. Last year there was at least a café on the premises to keep people together.
• Again, this means the conference misses out on enabling a lot of networking
  
• FOWA had videos of presentations going up within the hour -- FOM still hasn't had anything put up by Carsonified. What's going on?
  

Apple continually ignore such conferences -- and get away with it for the moment...

Future of Mobile 08: Advertising, Advocacy, Attitude & Aptitude (What!?)

Jonathan MacDonald — Ogilvy One

Jonathan gave an impassioned speech arguing that all advertising should be personalised; that companies should work with their customers to offer them opportunities to buy more things they like; and involve them in encouraging their friends to buy the same things too.

It kind of sounds like a friendly way to do things, but it’s still all about persuading people to buy more stuff. Using social media for advertising can work well up to a point, but to make the things that Tomi and Jonathan talk about work, you need access to a fluidity of data that isn’t there for most of the world — yet. And I’ve a nasty feeling that aggressive, Blade Runner-style advertising will keep on winning enough new customers to keep the corporates interested.

• Would you accept advertising on your mobile?
  • Of course not — it’s too personal!
• New advertising model: brand as facilitator
  • see David Armano for graphics
  • Creating armies of fanatics
  • What happens after brand awareness?
  • e.g. pizza company will pay you £100 if you complain — it’s cheaper than losing £500 due to lost sales
• We are not consumers
  • We tolerate segmentization and useless marketing
  • We filter out stuff that doesn’t mean anything to us — sometimes even before we find out if it’s actually useful
  • JMac would like to abolish toleration of non-personalised marketing
  • It still works for my 5 year-old son — though I wish it wouldn’t… :-)
  • “If it fails once, it’s an outright fail”
  • How not to do it: Jose Avila was sued for making loads of FedEx furniture & blogging about it
  • • Fedex said that he “violated their terms of use” — a great way to put off lots of customers!
    • Wikipedia: “The dispute attracted widespread press attention, and Avila was frequently interviewed to tell his side of the story”
• More buzzwords: Vendor Relationship Management & Vaporframes
  • "Apple would make more money if they know I wanted them to contact me by MMS & phone, rather than email"
• Advertising with people not to them

Full presentation available online

Jonathan is on twitter and has a blog.

Future of Mobile 08: 6x6 UK Bloggers Perspectives

6 UK mobile-related bloggers stood up to give their perspective on the industry at the moment. The general consensus seemed to be “it’s sh*t”! This session is when the conference really started to come alive.

Andrew Grill (london calling)

• Permission, Privacy, Preference
• Gigafone: permission and preference-based ads when incoming calls received
• I’m not convinced how many people will fill in preference profile unless they’re offered long-term monetary rewards like Blyk…

Vero Pepperrell (thatcanadiangirl)

Why Community Matters

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: futureofmobile fom)

• Make community into your evangelists
• Respect
  • Let your staff be a part of your brand
  • Take your time
  • Let your users talk
• Responsibility
  • Be willing to educate, not dictate your users’ choices
  • Honesty & transparency
• Reputation
  • Virtuous circle
• Your users will be talking about you somewhere — listen to them
• Ensure your support email doesn’t fall on deaf ears
• Feedback is sometimes great but sometimes hurts — you have to be able to listen

Helen Keegan (technokitten)

• Why there is no future to mobile…
• Must change the way that we’re going
  • Stop talking about technology
    • It doesn’t matter — needs to reliable, fast, affordable, relevant
    • Rowntree foundation: Mobile phone is essential to modern living
  • Stop silly data tariffs
    • Where is the 1p a minute tariff (up to max of £12.99 a month)
    • Having no contract is a big deal
  • Stop making apps for geeks & promobs
    • My sister has just about changed her ringtone on Nokia 3310
    • My brother has a RAZR — it’s a huge embarrassment to me
    • My dad has sent me an SMS once and it was empty
    • My nieces love their mobiles but they don’t have a contract
  • Stop the culture gap
    • web / mobile
    • operators / mobile developers
    • Mobile internet is here today — not worth less ‘cos it’s not full fat
  • Stop being obsessed with Western world
    • Most users will not be in US, UK or even in Europe
  • Don’t forget that the phone is primarily a communication device
    • Personal, precious
    • Our access to the outside world, friends, families, colleagues
    • Don’t abuse it
    • Make it simple

James Whatley (whatleydude)

• Hired by mippin as Product Manager / Customer Champion for a year
• Learnt that there wasn’t enough customer testing
• Must consider hiring people straight out of university
  • They know how to do stuff on their mobiles without even thinking
• 29 on Friday and he’s the youngest person at SpinVox
• “Give something back and they will give a hell of lot back to you”

Jemima Kiss (Guardian)

• Impatient for mobile
• Sort out bill shock — it’s really boring

Ewen MacLeod (mobile industry review)

• Changed SMS Text News to Mobile Industry Review
• Got a new Nokia N95 8Gb from T-Mobile as an upgrade
  • Does not connect to data!! What’s the point!
• Wanted to show off Google Maps on Blackberry when arriving at Gare du Nord
  • Fail! Did not connect
  • (Don’t mind about paying roaming charges)

MomoLondon: NFC

This was a great Mobile Monday — interesting presentations followed by a captivating panel discussion, and even better mingling over drinks! I arrived late, caught the end of the first presentation and only started blogging by the second one. Nevertheless, NFC really gets people’s juices going! Shame we’ve been stuck in the trial phase for four years…

Claire Maslen — Head of NFC, O2 Telefonica

Claire gave a good overview of the O2 NFC Trial, as reported in the Evening Standard by the headline “9 out of 10 people would like an Oyster phone!”

• 500 O2 customers with a Nokia 6131 NFC for 6 months
  • Oyster
  • Barclaycard Visa
  • Access control at the O2
  • One use case of smart posters
• O2 owned the customer data
• “Agency said at the end that this was the most compelling evidence they had seen for rolling out a new technology”

Oyster integration

• Worked with Transys and TfL for the Oyster card implementation
• 87% said that Oyster in their phone would drive their decision to buy a mobile phone — interesting to mobile operators

Barclaycard Paywave

• less people than Oyster said they were interested, but then Paywave is not common usage yet
• more efficient for retailers than cash but only 47% said they’d be interested in going further

Other results

• Were people happy to leave their homes with just their phone?
• Customers initially complained that 6131 was too low-end, but realised that applications were what was useful (perhaps they felt that Series 40 is a better interface than Series 60?)
  • However, it’s not one size fits all
• People were happy with using stored value without a PIN

How can we add more value?

• put a loyalty card in it
• do more smart posters — didn’t have enough to really try it out
  • only use case was touching a Tutankhamun poster
  • got a mobile internet page about the exhibition with a link to the TfL mobile site

Panel discussion, led by Dan Appelquist

• John Hill, MD, IBridge — involved with Oyster since original design
• James Anderson, Mastercard Worldwide — product development in mobile centre of excellence
• Steve Griffiths, MD, iconmobile — built Visa wallet
• Victoria Richardson, Head of Marketing, Proxama
• Claire Maslen, Head of NFC, O2 Telefonica

Where are the contactless readers?

• CM: Visa will be rolling out 25,000 in London before Christmas
• JA: Mastercard recently announced 37m devices (mainly cards), 100K+ locations
  • Currently ahead of the pace of chip&pin
  • The pace of innovation always takes longer than people expect…

What about security? Esp. MiFare vulnerability

• JH: nothing is 100% safe, but it will be a relatively safe environment
• JA: group at Mastercard called “payment systems integrity” — this is not one of the issues that’s keeping them awake at night
  • There’s lots of systems behind the scenes that keep the system effective
  • There’s a trust element with smart posters — who are you trusting?

What about the long tail of third parties?

• VR: some excellent examples of NFC in enterprise for building security — using the phone as the reader and wristbands/tags as ID
• SG: area we’re focussing on is the experience beyond the touch — I’ve just made a payment, what can do with that opportunity
  • discovery — suddenly made much more straightforward
  • attach a fitness service to a health product — e.g. touch a product in a supermarket
  • opportunity in combining transaction data with mobile — but do we trust the operator to look after that properly
• JA: what’s immediately around us is disproportionately interesting than stuff on the other side of the street — there’s a big opportunity in the intersection of mobile internet content and specific locations
  • e.g in NYC at South Street Sea Port there’s a great big poster with the history, but it talks about something going to happen in 2005… There were loads of restaurants etc around but a great big poster couldn’t tell me about them

What’s the rollout going to look like and what are the blockers?

• CM: O2 Wallet — consumer; NFC — tech
  • very active in NFC area in the enterprise
  • still no idea when they’re going to launch a commercial service

What about the developing world?

• Vodafone Paysa? system in Afghanistan & Kenya
• JA: Paypass has a 20 country roll-out strategy in developed nations
  • Paypass on mobile will follow that…
  • May be opportunities when you make a mobile into a micro-POS, but not primary focus

Deutsche Bahn are rolling out active phone for travel…

• JA: NFC is flexible — can plug in either as active mobile terminal and passive tag, or active reader and passive card. Consumer experience is good in both cases.

Simon Cavell Mi-Pay: Transport or Retail only markets big enough — how would you sell to Tesco?

• JA: time saved, seconds per transaction, etc.
• VR: transportation systems across the UK have very clear mandates to release across the UK
• CM: 11m contactless cards outside of London in UK
• JH: not quite a mandate to release
  • almost all of contactless cards are being used as flash passes as there aren’t readers on the buses…
  • transport operators driven by cost reduction

Simon Rockman: my parents’ fireworks shop currently pays 1.75% on credit card transactions. What would retailers be charged for O2 Wallet?

• CM: we’re not after the transaction revenue
  • O2 would get extra money on initial purchase of device (device would be more expensive)
  • when NFC goes onto the SIM, the manufacturer cost goes down — device just needs an aerial
  • O2 would have to buy bigger SIMs — that’s just what they do as an operator
• SM: major block is receipt — it takes too long to produce
• JA: consumers do want to spend large amounts on their phones
  • right now under our rules, it’s for low value transactions
  • but it’s in the roadmap to go for larger values

When will the handsets appear?

• CM: will not launch without a choice of handsets (three or four)
  • we are talking to all tier one manufacturers
  • analysts are talking up 2012…
  • Olympic year will put pressure on people to innovate

What about switching handsets or operators? How do you handle switching transport operator credit, credit card contracts, etc.?

• CM: hugely complex
  • O2 Wallet is all about giving everyone their brand presence
  • Applications on the SIM — can kill remotely
  • O2 has asked all operators (UK MNO Taskforce) to get around table to discuss portability
• JH: for Barclaycard OnePulse, spent 5% of time talking about technology, 95% talking about moving to and from Oyster
  • there’s a customer management issue that no one has dealt with — what happens when someone loses their phone with six applications on it?
• CM: first person that people phone is their operator

Who will pay?

• CM: know that B2C will erode over time, therefore are focussing on building B2B business model
  • Banks, etc like the fact that they can deliver more information to the consumer
• JA: try to think “what’s the next move that my organisation can take?”
• SG: there will be a huge amount of rich data available from the intersection of transport, wallet & other transactions
  • the question will be how to monetise it?

Is there an equivalent for the iPhone App Store for NFC Apps? Is there space for the lone developer?

• VR: Definitely space around smart posters
• JA: don’t quite see the analogy — service discovery will take place in physical world, not electronic

Why do we need this perfect information? The information currently available is ignored by agencies etc…

• SG: operators have now decided that they’re sitting on goldmines of customer data
  • what we really need is filters, so that data is relevant at the time
  • if I tap on a poster, I get take to different data than you do
  • with all that data, can actually deliver advertising that doesn’t feel like it — actually a useful service
• Neil Garner, Proxama: Add a twist — rate what you get
  • then start to build up user generated content

What advantage is there over an Oyster card stuck to your phone?

• VR: scalability — can have multiple cards in your the phone
  • have someone to manage your wallet
  • get marketing ability — receive WAP Push events
• JH: a simple common app is top up — over the air
  • especially if you live in South London where there are less terminals
  • also benefits TfL — they need less infrastructure

---

Next event on October 29th — opening registrations tomorrow

November will be a little bit different — even more fun and a little more zany than usual

December: Mobile Social Networking

January: no topic decided yet…

MomoLondon: Mobile Advertising

Tonight’s Mobile Monday London was themed on Mobile Advertising. There were presentations from Mindshare, Vodafone, Admob and Bango, plus the usual panel discussion.

The overall feel of the evening was that mobile advertising is possible and a reasonably attractive target, but that companies were not yet spending particular amounts of money purchasing advertising space.

I spoke with Simon Maddox afterwards, and he had the same impression — Spoken have Bango ads and are not getting a very wide variety of advertisers. We have the same issue with 4th Screen adverts on Kizoom.mobi.

Vodafone — Shan Henderson

Some crucial quotes:

• “There isn’t too much of an appetite at the moment … for all these different criteria”
• “Money follows measurement in media”
• “We’re at the early adoption stage at the moment, with smallish budgets — but don’t confuse these early budgets with commitment”
• We need metrics in order to plan and measure performance, with express intention to drive further spend
  • Vodafone is working as part of the GSMA Metrics Study

Vodafone work with Yahoo to make it easier for people to buy ad space (using the Yahoo ad serving infrastructure)

Admob — Russell Buckley (MD, Europe)

• 24 billions ads since started (now 2.5 billion every month)
  • of which slightly under 200m per month are served in UK
• AdMob now have a large range of companies advertising with them
  • US is slightly ahead of UK in terms of advertising revenue available
• WAP Push now supported by 90% of admob requests
• “It’s what happens after the click that’s the most important”

Russell’s personal blog: http://www.mobhappy.com

Bango - Ray Anderson (CEO)

Some other mobile ad services:

• mads
• amobee
• mkhoj

Operator portal search with paid-for results led to increase in ad purchasers revenue

“It’s all about measurement” — want to measure unique visitors, which is difficult on mobile

Showed sample screen of Bango Analytics — seemed to be targeted at people who run campaigns via Bango.

He suggests that you collect the phone number and permission to send further information, so that you can encourage people to come back later.

Panel Session

When will the GSMA Metrics study come to fruition?

• Later this year

When will ad spends grow from big companies?

• Claire: We have to convince them…
• Reuters: Can target advertising to smart phones & iPhone

Do operators plan to put advertising on transcoded pages?

• Vodafone: being discussed internally, but no decisions been made as yet

When will location-based advertising happen?

• Russell: not now — even if possible, advertising content would be very difficult to put together
  • small local businesses would be very expensive to sign up
  • large franchises don’t get enough of a cut from a voucher
• Claire: what is the action after the ad? No infrastructure in place yet.

Where is the ad space inventory available? Existing brands or new ones?

• Russell: new ones have more traffic
• Voda: new ones may be only specific people generating lots of traffic
• Claire: Desparate Housewives — drove people to WAP site at end of show
• Reuters: have to avoid getting mobile adverts being shown on PC, and vice versa

Should the customer pay for advert downloads?

• Russell: Fixed rate data costs drive ad revenue
• Claire: there’s a lot of work to be done to explain

Future events

• 2nd June: Future of Mobile Applications

  • Panel session: BBC, Fjord, etc
  • looking for sponsors

• 14th July: as yet unknown…