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

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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

MomoLondon: Web vs Apps

I couldn’t make tonight’s Mobile Monday on location, so I thought I’d post my delayed notes from last time’s debate on Web vs Apps.

It was a lively session with both sides arguing strongly, though (unfortunately?) sometimes for the other side! The team members started by taking turns in giving short presentations — notably all of team web had slides (including beautiful ones from Bryan as usual) whereas all of team apps had decided just to talk.

Team web ended up with the audience vote (just!), but personally I thought team apps had the better argument. Yes, there are billions more mobile devices out there that can access web sites rather than have apps, but as we’ve seen (and as even Tomi Ahonen has been repeatedly caught out by) slick user experience drives mobile devices more than anything else. Web sites are great for finding stuff — but people don’t keep coming back to the same web site like they do to a favourite, well-designed app. And the skew in stats that we’ve seen since the iPhone came out (iPhones and similar devices punch way above their weight in usage compared to number of devices) applies even more for apps vs web sites. In his 5 minute presentation, Mauricio put up some Flirtomatic stats saying that they made about three times as much revenue from mobile web as from apps, but then revealed that their iPhone app provided 11% of revenue from 0.8% of sessions!

Anyway, enough ranting… Here’s my usual semi-structured notes:

Panel

Chaired by Leila Makki

Team Apps

• Sam Machin — Geek at O2
• Alex Watson — Head of App Development at Dennis Publishing
• Rebecca Pate — Mobile Product Owner at Tesco.com

Team Web

• Bryan Rieger — yiibu
• Cait Roberts — MePlease
• Mauricio Reyes — QA for Flirtomatic

5 min presentations

Each team member made their own presentation, but my notes have all the points mixed together. Viji Pathy has posted a pretty comprehensive report of the session on the Mobile Monday blog that gives a bit more detail on the presentations side.

• Discoverability
  • App store pre-installed
  • Browse, search, one-click install
  • Web is about information — apps are about utility
• Building a mobile web app is not just about knowing HTML and CSS with a bit of Javascript
  • Easy to get very bad results on mobile
• Numbers: 77% of 6.8 billion people have access to a mobile device (5.3 billion)
  • only 100 million iPhones (only 2.015%)
  • for 1/3 of population internet access is only via mobile
  • the other devices are mostly “feature phones”
  • but this is not an argument for web vs native… since many of the feature phones either have limited mobile web, or else support native apps!
• Linkability — if you don’t have the app installed, sending someone direct content doesn’t work so well
  • this is Tim Berners-Lee’s fear, but apps can integrate with a web-based backend (e.g. instagram) and app stores themselves can be web-enabled
• Non-technical people actually don’t understand what a website is…
  • Big successful web sites are understandable on a human level: eBay/Amazon are shops; Facebook is the pub
  • Similarly, apps are a more human thing — you get a nice shiny icon
  • The blank browser scares many people
• AW: When you get the iPad, it’s totally useless until you put apps on it
• From content perspective: Google prioritises quantity of content, whereas apps can highlight small limited quality
  • For example, instagram has many less features than flickr but has grown to 5 million users very rapidly
• Flirtomatic — iPhone native has 11% revenue from 0.8% sessions…
  • and Mauricio is on Team Web…?
• At Tesco, have seen that mobile web used for research but not for re-use and habitual long-term usage
  • app use encouraged by push notifications and widgets
• 1 in 4 mobile searches in the US are on Google Voice search
• Mobile web seems to be doing well for mail order & delivery shopping sites — searchable content with larger payments
• Tesco made money back from iPhone app in less than a week
• Targeting mobile devices: build it and see who comes, then target appropriately

Summing up — pro apps

• Tangibility
• Ownership & engagement
• Native apps are faster
• Using hardware
• Lots of web browsers available, but are they ever going to be your customers?

Summing up — pro web

• Don’t just target the rich west — reach beyond
• Discoverability for apps can be one of the biggest problems

Q & A

• What about using web apps on a long flight?
  • Not really
  • but this is possible now
• Hard stuff: two-way voice with echo cancellation etc?
  • Not in a web app
• Fragmentation of web browsers?
  • Design your site appropriately: it depends on who you want to target, but it’s still a larger number than just iPhone apps
  • e.g. target a touch-enabled mobile site and get both iPhone and Android at once
• Mobile social
  • Good example of having both a mobile web and native strategy
  • e.g. Facebook native users add photos more; web users add quick status updates
• Mobile ads — is there a problem keeping competition away from apps?
  • Tesco doesn’t have external ads in their apps
  • The end-user wants the curated experience…
• Testing across multiple devices?
  • AW: It’s a problem for mobile computers — they don’t work some of the time…
  • AW: Apps are a reliable experience
  • The mobile web is no better and sometimes harder
• Apps are good for some things and webapps are good for others… It’s like asking a carpenter which is the better tool: a hammer or a saw?
• Monetisation?
  • Not for web games… yet
  • Flirtomatic has in-app purchases of virtual currency, but it’s a whole range of transaction
• How do costs compare for native vs web?
  • It depends… You can spend more or less on each
  • Tesco: cost seems quite similar — especially since mobile dev has to be optimised for various devices
• App-store owners take a cut; will it be the same for web?
  • probably — billing partners will always take a cut…
• Will it be a digital divide between those who have apps and those that don’t?
  • Some people just don’t want apps on their phone — e.g. mother has a binatone phone with big buttons and doesn’t even use a mouse
  • There’s just a time lag to the rest of the world
• What about lock-ins?
  • By choosing HTML, your development environment is free from manufacturer tie-ins
  • However, by choosing HTML, you play into the hands of Google making things free, operator content filtering etc.
• Mobile web currently over-promises and under-delivers, but we’re all hedging our bets as mobile web catches up…?
  • Panel: yes!
  • BR: mobile web is catching up very fast, and depending on your business may already be a better bet
• How do you find where your customers are?
  • Analyse the web browsers of your mailshot emails

Notices

• BlackBerry Developer Day coming up on 24th June

• UCL have a course in Making money from Mobile

• Future Mobile Monday events:

  • 4th July — Vision Mobile state of developer nation

MomoLondon: What have operators done for you lately?

Not quite as snappy and energetic as last month’s event, but still a good evening. I think tonight was missing some demos or video examples to get the crowd excited before the panel session. As it was, it took until the last few questions before we got to the nitty gritty.

O2 Litmus

James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus

James Parton gave a polished presentation about O2 Litmus with lots of pithy quotes. Some examples:

O2’s feedback from the developer community about what was wanted from an operator:

1. get out of the way
2. be transparent and honest
3. show me how to make some money

“Developers can get their app in front of customers in 18 minutes, not 18 months”

“The customer API is the real value”: refine ideas with feedback from real customers

The benefits of O2 Litmus: developers have access to customers; and customers get a voice, early access and rewards.

Operators and Operands, a Love Story

Terence Eden

Terence wanted to get across the network effect — the killer app of a mobile communication device being the people with whom you communicate.

He started by scaling up from the iPhone, selling 20 million worldwide so far. Quite a few people in the audience had one, unsurprisingly. But the largest selling phone across all operators in the UK is the Nokia 6300 — basic mobile web & Java apps only, but used mainly for talking and text. Scaling up still further, the Nokia 1100 sells more than any other phone worldwide, and its greatest feature is a built-in torch!

Operators exist to generate the network effect. The network effect is the real power. What operators really want is for people to say, “I enjoy using my phone, I want to use it more.”

To a certain point, I agree with him. Until you have a certain number of devices in the market, the most important thing is getting people to use more devices. However, we’re long past that in Europe. The latest stats from the UN say that Europe has 111% penetration of mobile devices. That’s more devices than people.

Once you have a network, it’s time to think about how to leverage it more than how to grow it. Treating connectivity as a given has led to most of the exciting and new services and business models of the recent years. Google Docs, Dropbox, Twitter — they don’t exist to encourage people to use the internet; they only exist because everyone is already on the internet.

That’s an area where the iPhone has stormed ahead in mobile. It assumes you’re connected and moves beyond that. Nokia is still stuck on helping you to connect.

Panel

• Chair: Anna Gudmundson, Ad.IQ
• James Parton, O2 Litmus
• Steve Wolkak, Betavine
• Jo Rabin, dotMobi
  • investors include Google, Symbian, Microsoft, etc
• David Wood, Symbian

How did Betavine begin?

• Engaging those outside of your workplace (now called crowdsourcing)
• Thinking of ways that we could encourage the developer community to move towards mobile
• Any application uploaded to Betavine.net visible on portal in Germany, Spain, UK and South Africa

Where’s it going next?

• Direct feedback from developer community
• Feedback from Vodafone
• Things that the team think are fun
  • at the moment, looking at emerging markets

What is the dotMobi business model?

• We derive revenue from domain sales, development software and services

Which apps get cherry-picked from O2 Litmus?

• We use “endorsements” — not just downloads, but feedback on forums etc
• Not just O2 staff that make the decision, but real customers
• Once app is endorsed, then

Why would you develop on Symbian?

• Since open sourced, trying to encourage a wider community
• Now want to make developers have a great experience so that the platform as widely used as possible

Why is there fragmentation across operators?

• JP: fairly happy if a developer joins O2, works with customers to develop an app, then leaves and sells the app on Orange or Voda
  • customers have had the experience, which is what counts
  • challenge to JP to make Litmus a place to stay, but of course it won’t be exclusive
  • Litmus is part of the marketing strategy — not led by the tech department
• DW: if you allow customers the freedom to move away, they’re more likely to come to you in the first place
• JP & SW: we meet up for coffee, it’s all good :-)

The iPhone question: How are you planning to get more user-centred design into your process?

• DW: Set up four councils, including one on UI. This one has been disappointing — no take up from members of Symbian Foundation.
  • but can you really design an interface by committee
• SW: put up betavine.mobi on redesignme.com for suggestions, but appreciate that iPhone was driven by one man’s vision
• JR: iPhone was executed well on all axes. Interestingly it was a vertically-oriented experience that didn’t have a parallel in the existing mobile landscape…

That sounds good, but what about reality? Isn’t there a £1000 fee to have a game listed on O2 Active?

• JP: Direct access to real customers from self-registration on Litmus
  • I sit here as an operator and know that we’ve screwed things up previously
• SW: Again, you can upload an app and see it on portal

What is customer experience?

• JP: Selecting customers who have all you can eat data service and latest phones
  • No point selecting customers just for numbers’ sake

What about app discovery?

• DW: Symbian won’t be running an App Store, will be running a warehouse that can be queried by lots of different app stores
• SW: From portal: Home > Mobile Apps > Free Apps
• JP: Don’t need to be a member to browse the catalogue, just to download

Do operators have a role in educating the market and if so, how? (Patrick from GetJar)

• Terence Eden: Putting apps front an centre on Vodafone Live. Homepage Beta is encouraging people to upload web widgets.
• JP: Not going to be placing TV ads — too broad. Instead targeting specific customer segments

How much money is actually going to developers?

• JP: we paid our first developer last week!
• Terence Eden: it’s all very well providing you with a connection to our customers, but what you really want is a connection to their wallet!
• JP: really want to create incentives for customers — Mob4Hire doing that

How many customers are you seeing?

• JP: email campaign to a selective audience: normal open rate is 10%, but 27% rate for Litmus email
  • typical market survey 5,000 customers, and already well in excess of that

How do you expect to protect your customers against viruses?

• JP: moderators check submissions for viruses
• SW: betavine the same

Clarify going from free to paid:

• JP: within Litmus, you can sell at different price points. While in Litmus, you can control that
  • if you want to go outside Litmus (to 260 million Telefonica customers) you still have to talk to O2 commercial team

Jo Rabin’s wishlist

• What I’d really like to see is a way of monetize mobile web services rather than apps

Announcements:

• April’s event: how to finance your business during a credit crunch…
  • Not on a Monday and in the middle of April
• May: mobile marketing/media

O2 Litmus launch

I went to the launch of O2 Litmus on Friday — in the form of a hack day at the O2. It was interesting to see an operator directly running a hack day. Usually they’re involved as the supporting acts in a semi-official way, like Vodafone Betavine supporting OverTheAir. The guys at O2 did a reasonable job — finding people via twitter and other events and providing solid wifi and lots of power supplies. They didn’t leave quite enough time for the hacking though, allowing too much time for O2 Litmus partners to advertise their wares in the morning.

O2 Litmus itself seems like a good proposition in business terms — the same 30/70 revenue split as the Apple App Store; a system to let developers test apps with early adopters before releasing them into the wild; and money coming through to developers just 5 weeks after purchases. O2 are also trying to support app development through their partners, providing testing and business development support.

There are a couple of pieces missing, however. One great advantage of the Apple App Store is the ease of download — one click and the app automatically downloads to your iPhone and appears in your home screen. This is much harder for general phones at large — not only do you have to make sure you’ve got the right build for your phone (a problem that Apple has avoided for now by just having one platform), but you then have to figure out your phone’s weird and wonderful download experience. Do I really want to install something that my phone tells me could be a security risk? Do I want to install it in Games or Applications? And now it’s downloaded, where did it go? (Nokia Series 60, I’m talking to you here…)

At the moment, O2 Litmus requires a separate application and description for each build, with no provision for combining builds with automatic detection, and no support for external hosting either. I suggested that they consider allowing URLs for downloads and they seemed interested — this also opens the door to web apps instead of downloadable apps. They might also consider partnering with one of the companies who make a point of providing effective provisioning systems — like Paxmodept, GetJar or even ourselves.

The other piece that is missing is direct access to the store from the phone. O2 say they will email their early adopters in a few weeks to get them involved in the web site, but even those who do will not have the ability to see what their friends are doing and download the same thing. Spreading applications virally requires immediate access to the app as and when you see someone else using it. Miss the moment and the viral effect dies. The iPhone provides the App Store on the device itself to help with this — it’s not the easiest solution but at least it’s possible. Since J2ME apps make sharing apps intentionally hard (security to stop people sharing paid-for games…), O2 need to provide some access to Litmus from their phones.

As I mentioned above, the hacking competition itself was a little rushed — we only had about 3 hours to get something ready. As a result most of the entries were screenshot prototypes and sometimes not even that. I started putting together a simple J2ME version of our iPhone MyRail Lite app but NetBeans wasn’t behaving itself. Instead I made a paper prototype integrating MyRail Lite with twitter so that you can meet friends on the train and as they arrive:

Share your train journeys on twitter with myRail Lite on iPhone. Click the Tweet button on your departure, select your destination and carriage and it will send a tweet for you. Also see which train your friends are on and track them as they go.

The idea caught the attention of the judges (I imagine it was the idea rather than my sketched interface!) and I won second prize — 30 hours on DeviceAnywhere.

Here’s my full notes from the day if you want a bit more detail:

Why Litmus?

• Came to the conclusion about a year ago that O2 is quite difficult to do business with…
  • Just like the other network operators! Except O2 hasn’t had a developer program recently.
• Enabling O2 customer base to test apps and feedback
• Developers can test apps and get feedback
  • Can control how many customers can download it and test it out
• Developers can also put apps on sale directly
  • O2 take 30% cut of sales — exactly the same as the Apple App Store
• Plans to incentive customers to get involved
  • Any customer that has tested your app will get the app for free when you go commercial
  • So controlling numbers of testers is crucial
• O2 Marketing will monitor forums & feedback and launch popular apps into main customer base
• Money comes through to developers after five weeks

Litmus Tools

• O2 APIs
  • Connection Status API
  • Location API
• Supporting services:
  • DeviceAnywhere — remote device testing
  • Rackspace — hosting
  • Segala — expert testing

Mobile Social Networks — Ewan Spence

Poking from your mobile

• Involved in running Wubud — still in stealth mode
  • 100% focus on mobile, but with web client too, linking to other social networks
• itsmy.com makes money from users buying widgets
• facebook 0.3% CPM…

Mobile Developers Dilemma — Paul Golding

Slides available online

• Still has his Source O2 badge from O2’s previous developer outreach programme
• Expert member of MIDP3 group
• Chief app architect for Motorola in 90s
• What should you build?
  • Open APIs
  • Involve a community to build weight & momentum
  • Provide service & support
• Mobile UX: should exploit context
• Use microformats — if there isn’t a suitable one then invent one!
• Jitterbug — successful phone for old people in US
• Social Business Model: share ideas with frenemies
  • Share the risk
  • Exploit mashups
  • Create or be part of an ecosystem, so that even if people click out of your app, they haven’t left the ecosystem and are therefore more likely to come back
• Paul’s 9 year-old son is an iPhone developer :-)
• Growth areas:
  • Enterprise social software
  • Services to support SOHO users

Inspiring New Ways of Design and Development — Anthony Ribot

Slides available online

As usual, Anthony gave a good presentation on mobile design. The Ribot guys were on a lucky streak on Friday, winning both a Sony Ericsson C905 in the raffle and coming first in the hacking competition with a proposed mashup of dopplr and your phone address book — find out who’s in town and then call them straight away. Well done guys!

• The user-centred developer is a new type of role that should exist
  • Should develop with the user in mind
  • Not a role for every developer
• Clients from web medium come with a long list of 15 features
  • We tell them we’ll only implement the top 3 items, or even just the top 1
• Data-snacking is the most common experience on mobile
  • 30-60 seconds experience — small snippets of info
• Important to re-use the learnt behaviours of the device
  • Makes the first experience of the app that much better
• Mobile not about making things smaller!
  • Must take in context of use and figure out what the user actually wants to do
  • Cameron Moll: Mobile Web Design book
• It’s all about the subtleties
  • e.g. working around the 3G icon on Nokia devices — Opera Mini indents the page title
• Try and make the experience support reward-based design
  • e.g. Opera Mini (again) — right arrow does clever things based on context
• Dealing with diversity
  • Use statistics (e.g. admob) to work out top 5 handsets for your target audience
• Use rapid prototyping
  • The sooner you can get something tangible in your users’ hands, the better
  • Paper prototyping is good, but having something real is so much better
  • Finding that there’s less application stuff and more motion
    • Harder to describe in paper prototypes and screenshots
  • Tools available:
    • Flash (lite v3)
    • XHTML + CSS
    • Nokia Web Runtime
    • Silverlight (coming to Windows Mobile early next year, Symbian & Apple targeted too)
    • Dashcode

Partner adverts

We then had presentations from Rackspace, NAVTEQ, DeviceAnywhere, Mob4Hire and Segala.com. These were interesting in parts, but generally not much more than we could have got from flyers — a bit of a waste of time when the audience was mainly developers. We know what hosting is, thank you.

Rackspace — Matt ???

• 2600 employees (40-50 in London)
• growing about 50% year on year
• have “positive churn” (1.5%)
• 24/7 live “fanatical” support

NAVTEQ — Tony Hand & Mimmis Olsson

• 80 new devices launched with GPS in H1 2008
• 74m GPS phone devices sold in EMEA next year
  • 55m smart phones, others feature phones
• NAVTEQ Network for Developers
  • Online developer community
  • Includes sample map data
• NAVTEQ Connections Web Portal
  • matchmaking, promotion
• 6th year of NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge
  • 2009 prizes include cash, tool & data licenses and handsets
• O2 segments:
  • Ambitious Status Seekers
  • Frenetic Families
  • Fun Loving Socialisers

DeviceAnywhere — Leila Modarres

We use DeviceAnywhere for testing our JavaME apps (such as the National Express East Coast Timetable to Mobile) and find it very effective. I didn't take many notes on this session as I already know how it works. Go see their site if you want further details.

• Screens only turn on when the device is in use
• Will hand out 30 free hours today
  • I won them!

Mob4hire — Paul Poutanen

• Mobile developers can leverage the value of existing handsets to test for other developers
  • Earn money on mob4hire…
• Developers can use Litmus system to take advantage of 25,000 early adopter customer base on mob4hire
• Roadmap:
  • Certified testers
  • Remote emulation — competing with deviceanywhere (using LogMeIn)
  • Coder4Hire
  • Market research — localisation etc.

Segala.com — Paul Walsh

• Expert testing services

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

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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…