The MoPR Blog

Google looks over shoulder after Nokia Symbian buyout. Big news this week with Nokia taking control of Symbian. Nokia is riding on the hopes of increasing the sales of mobile phones while boosting revenues from its wireless web services.  According to InfoWorld Daily’s Tom Sullivan, the move could damper Google’s Android. Still wondering what this means to the industry? Read “Seven things you need to know about Nokia-Symbian deal.”

If you think your broadband is slow, you’re probably right. Enter InternetforEveryone.org led by the FCC [?!] that wants universal access to high-speed, broadband Internet throughout the US. Thirty-five percent of homes with less than $50,000 in annual income have a high-speed Internet connection in the U.S. Moreover, nearly 20 million Americans live in areas that are not served by a single broadband provider; tens of millions more live in places where there is just a single choice for high-speed Internet service.

We’re in Awe: 15-Year-Old Girl Sends 15,000 Text Messages A Month. According to WEWS in Cleveland, a 15-year-old Ohio girl discovered her true talent recently – the ability to crank out 15,000 text messages in a month and keep an 3.0 GPA- all under a 9:00 p.m. curfew. According to WEWS, she didn’t realize how many text messages she sent every month until she went to the cell phone store to get her phone fixed.

“I just don’t look. I guess I had the phone a long time and I just know where the buttons are and I just hit them,” said the speed texter.

Mobile coupons finally a reality? According to MediaPost, Yahoo! is teaming with Coupons Inc. to offer mobile coupons through its Yahoo! Mobile service. The initiative would “create a national platform for large brand advertisers to distribute mobile coupons, which so far have mostly been tested only in local markets or niche categories.”

Mobile coupons, says the article, will rely on solely electronic means, such as a secure bar code system allowing shoppers to swipe mobile devices at the point of sale to get discounts or special offers.
Distribution of the coupons would involve different methods, such as e-mail, banner ads, SMS text-messaging and apps on Yahoo!’s mobile portal.

McMobile McMarketing. The Mobile Marketing Association newsletter landed in our mailbox this week. A mix of industry news, trends and upcoming events, the newsletter is always an informative read. Our favorite section is successful case studies of mobile marketing in action, such as a recent story on McDonalds and its use of SMS in Germany.

Via the SMS Lounge, McDonald’s invited customers to text their information which then registered them at their local McDonald’s. In the following months, users received a mobile voucher directly from the restaurant onto their phone every two weeks. The coupons – embedded in code – could be redeemed by scanning them at the restaurant.

Since its launch in July 2007, more than 10,000 participants have used SMS service. This first of its kind mobile couponing pilot achieved response rates up to 29% throughout Germany according to the MMA. Using SMS and mobile technologies to extend and build your brand is something we can get behind!

Wind Charged Cell Phones. Folks toting mobile phones to this year’s Glastonbury Festival 2008 in the UK later this week will have a free and green way to recharge their phones thanks to a charging station being set up at the festival by Orange. Measuring more than 7 meters tall, the free-standing recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour. It’s actually the next iteration of a portable wind charger Orange tested out at last year’s festival through a partnership with Gotwind and will serve as a trial for using renewable energy sources on a larger scale at future festivals. Orange expects the recharge pod will charge thousands of mobile phones over the course of the three-day festival. [See Grace's post for more on Gotwind.]

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable Tec Expo is the industry’s biggest engineering show boasting more than 10,000 attendees with over 20 workshops and 400+ exhibits.   All levels of cable technology are represented at the show and this year will be no exception.

Hot trends to watch for at this year’s expo:

1. DOCSIS- Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is the wildly successful cable modem standard that has enabled cable operators to sign on more broadband subs than telcos with DSL.  DOCSIS 3.0 is the latest iteration of the standard and promises to dramatically increase the data rates cable operators can offer subs, enabling a whole new generation of broadband services. At Cable-Tec, DOCIS topics range from troubleshooting, 3.0 deployment strategies and proactive network maintenance.
2. Bandwidth, bandwidth and more bandwidth- It’s all about delivering the most content WITHOUT increasing bandwidth.  This year’s expo will hold sessions discussing the issues associated with troubleshooting today’s “optically rich and expanding bandwidth.”And if you want to see a live demo of a product aimed specifically at maximizing bandwidth, stop by RGB Networks booth #2327.  RGB will be demonstrating their Dynamic Bandwidth Manager (DBM) which enables the delivery of 50 percent more Video-On-Demand (VOD) programs per 6 MHz channel without requiring additional bandwidth.
3. Switched Digital Video- Also known as SDV, Switched Digital Video will be another hot topic at this year’s expo. Topics include SDV gearing up for migration to unicast as well as SDV quality monitoring.Want to see a live demo of SDV monitoring? Check out Mixed Signals booth #623.  On display will be Sentry Edge, the latest product from Mixed Signals that enables operators to ensure they provide subscribers with a high-quality and continuous viewing experience as they rollout SDV and expand their VOD deployments.

Visit our virtual mobility museum. Do you dig mobile and wireless technology like we do? Do you enjoy history? If you do then you’ll get a kick out of our Museum of Mobility History (MuMoH) we launched a couple of weeks ago.

The museum is both a physical collection of mobility firsts — first-ever portable computer, first-ever PDA, first-ever handheld electronic game — as well as a virtual collection.

Check out our blog and feel free to join our wiki community.

Mobile users want smart and sexy. A recent survey by J.D. Power and Associates reveals that the average price paid for a handset has increased by $9 over the past six months. It also says the number of consumers who reported receiving their phones for free dropped to 33%, up from 36% a year ago. The increase, says J.D. Power, is attributed to more users buying more expensive smartphones.

In the same study, consumers were also asked for the reason behind their choice of handset model. Of the top three reasons given, ‘style’ was the criteria cited by 41% of respondents, coming ahead of ‘received for free’ (25%) and ‘ease of use’ (23%). This also happens to be one of Melissa’s personal mantras – “fashion before function”!

Google and Yahoo! still top mobile searchers. According to Nielsen Mobile Google and Yahoo! are the overall leaders in mobile searching. Google leads in mobile Internet search provider share followed by Yahoo!, together accounting for 79% of the mobile Internet search market.

At 9.0 searches per month, Google users search more frequently than users of any other mobile Internet search provider.  Yahoo! is the third most frequently-used provider, with Yahoo! users searching 6.7 times per month on average.

44% of Google users rated their satisfaction with mobile Internet search between 8 to 10 on a 10-point scale, compared to 40% of Yahoo! searchers.

White space equals more ad dollars? digital SIDEBAR is launching a mobile ad platform that delivers interactive ads through the white space in mobile phones. The service will be piloted before going public according to MarketingVOX.

“White space” represents the space not used to make a call: the screen that appears when a user is dialing, the hang-up screen, or the time between sending and receiving a text message.

Ads are targeted by age, gender, interests, use pattern, day and time and can include links to games or other media. Content may be forwarded to other customers, says MarketingVOX.

Cool site of the week. Meeting a buddy for a beer across town? Want to pick someplace in between? Fire up your browser or in our case, an iPhone, and check this out.  Mezzoman – Meet in the Middle is a simple but elegant solution for selecting a middle ground for meeting-up. Enter your address and your friend’s address – and even choose the type of place [Italian? Indian? A movie? A pub?] and you’ll get an address and location of someplace “in the middle.” They have a Facebook app as well.