This has created enough of a stir with their rivals to prompt a referral to the competition regulator. However, now the regulator rules they may continue.

Received wisdom: Only the altnets, the competitive operators, will market these kinds of offers. Naked DSL benefits over the top VoIP players.

My take: If a competitor is successful, most European incumbents are nimble enough to respond by adjusting product strategy to maintain their market position. There is no reason for an operator not to have a home broadband + mobile offer like this as a part of their overall product portfolio.

Plus, if the mobile pricing is sufficiently cheap, and includes enough bundled minutes, then a consumer will see no need to add a home VoIP service to their naked DSL service.

Latest is that the ASA has decided that Apple's iPhone should not be advertised as offering access to all the Internet.

Interesting points:

• There's an implicit assumption here that the Internet = the web. It doesn't. Think about Skype, instant messaging, email applications, iTunes downloads, peer to peer apps, etc. etc.


• Irony is that the iPhone does offer a much greater amount of the Internet and access to more different web sites than any other mobile phone.


• Double irony is that following the same ASA logic, the Mac could not be advertised as offering all the Internet either due to the number of sites that still require Internet Explorer. There is no Mac OS version of IE6 or version 7.


• For similar reasons, and just because they don't run Windows and Internet Explorer, many of the new tiny cheap netbook-class laptops running Linux can't access some websites or some parts of those sites. Will the ASA intervene here too?


• Many of the key sites that require Flash or Java plug-ins do work on the iPhone through specific iPhone applications, or special iPhone websites. Examples: BBC iPlayer; Youtube; Last FM; iTunes shop; Truphone; Palringo; AIM; Remote Desktop; Mocha VNC etc. etc.

My take - the spirit of Apple's advertising was correct.

Here is a pic of the new Nokia N85 just announced by Nokia as "The definitive entertainment package". Indeed, there are quite a few cool features such as:

- 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics (when the N81 it is replacing only had 2MP) with a nice 2.6" OLED screen + 30 fps for video
- 10 pre-loaded N-Gage Games (needless to say this will make a difference in terms of adoption)
- Music playback of 30 hours with dedicated media keys, connection to Nokia Music Store, plus availability to connect to RDS Radio.

Nokia also announces the N79 (replacement of N78) with pretty much the same features but with less memory (4 instead of 8 GB inbox microSD memory card). Both phones are expected to begin shipping in October 2008.

Interestingly N79 and N85 comes with in-built GPS receivers and support for A-GPS. In-built A-GPS providing turn-by-turn navigation - for walking or driving - comes with a three month integrated license. Images can also be geotagged to specific locations and then uploaded directly to Share on Ovi or third party services.

Nokia has made it clear that in a few years time half of its device portfolio will be satnav / GPS enabled and that in 2008 alone it expects to ship 35M SatNav / GPS phones worlwide.

In a report published last week, Jupiter has quantified some of the needs of mobile upgraders (consumers willing to upgrade their mobile phones). "Accessing maps" ranked quite high on the list, actually in 3rd position just after "sharing content" and "listening to music".
Otherwise, it seems like other functionalities are becoming more and more standard and that key differentiation will increasingly come through improved design, aesthetics, and user interfaces. It will also come from both improvements in and smoother integration of existing capabilities.

More information available here.

Satnav GPS is thus one of the few really new functionalities on mobile devices. Well, not necessarily that new when you realize first LBS offerings were launched in early 2000s and that pionneer WayFinder's history (Itinerary Systems at that time) comes back to 1995 when it was created by the former head of R&D at Ericsson's mobile phone division. Conceptually, it has always made a lot of sense to assert that "location is the defining element" in mobile (to reuse Loopt' CEO own words). However, execution has improved dramatically over the last year or so and a range of new services is emerging, not only location-based services (such as turn-by-turn directions, child trackers or traffic alerts) but also existing services improved by the ability to be located.

Jupiter will publish a new report on location-based services in the coming weeks. So if you want to brief me, chat about it or simply let me know your thoughts, please reach out to thusson at jupiterresearch dot com.

However, after a week in the US, I now realize how strong a component mobile has become in the digital communication campaign for Presidential elections. The name of Obama's running mate was to be announced via SMS and there were so many discussions about it in the main press, in the social media space and even in bars, that it made me think of how laggards French candidates have been a year ago. See my post on "Nicolas, Segolene & Francois sont dans un bateau" at that time.

In an interesting point of view in Les Echos, Franck Louvrier (media advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy) draws a comparison between Kennedy in the TV era in 1960 and Obama in today's social networking era. Looking at the number of French politicians' friends on Facebook or MySpace, it seems there is lots of work to be done to reconcile youth with politics...

I would be curious to see some US traffic stats on the mobile Internet in the coming months and the apps to be created. Google has kicked off. See here on Google's official blog.

Reality is they failed to do so until recently despite (too?) early launches at the beginning of the decade. However, drivers are now in place for mobile services to reach critical mass. This new report aims at quantifying the main market trends in Europe with a new set of data with detailled forecast for 17 European countries.

It will soon be followed by 2 new reports: Mobile Messaging Forecast and Mobile Media Forecast. For the first time they will include some activity levels (free audiences) to be able to seize the advertising opportunity as the industry is moving away from a pure paid content approach. We have also included flat-rate adoption rates (for mobile Internet tariff), a key metric to follow now that operators are bundling data options in their pay monthly tariffs (such as Orange with its Origami offering or Vodafone, see here). After voice (per minute), voice packages, SMS per units, SMS options, unlimited SMS bundled into voice, data options, unlimited data packages from 2005 onwards (Web'n'walk, X-series...). Now comes the time of voice+unlimited data and this will be a game changer, even if such a transition will not happen overnight.

The best current mobile applications and devices understand this, and download what content/messages they can as soon as they can. SMS works this way: messages are delivered direct to the handset. Blackberry push email's main benefit is that when a user opens their email, there is no wait while messages download.

This to my mind is the greatest advantage of building a mobile application, rather than a mobile website. Good applications work anywhere, anytime, whatever the network situation, and can use local storage and sync to deliver faster responsiveness than a website.

But Apple has made a strategic decision with the iPhone to target always-on behaviours.

The iPhone's entire design assumes that there is always a fast network connection present, for both the built-in Apple applications, and the bulk of those from the new app store.

Some examples:

• Google Maps (built-in) does not store any map data locally, even if the user has browsed that map before. Effect: the user has to wait for the map to download each time they open Maps, the speed depends on the vagaries of the mobile network. Despite the new GPS chip which works anywhere, the maps application is only usable if there's a data network. So, its usefulness in very rural areas is limited. Alternative approach: Nokia Maps automatically caches map data locally, speeding its responsiveness, saving the operator from unnecessary data transit, and avoiding data costs for the user if roaming abroad.
• Apple's iPhone email only automatically downloads the in box, not other folders, so there's a delay each time a user opens any other folder, and it doesn't work when there's no signal. How long the delay is depends on how many messages and the speed of the data network. With a 2G data connection and 20-30 messages I find it takes at least a minute or two. Similarly, there's no user setting to control how much of a message is downloaded, so routinely users experience partially downloaded messages, even if the iPhone has many Gb free space.
• Apple's new Exchange email support does not allow messages to be moved or deleted if there's no connection. Weirdly, Apple's IMAP support allows it. The experience when I tried to use Exchange email on the tube, above ground where there is patchy coverage, reminded me of the user access control alerts from Vista: the iPhone kept popping up warning messages.
• Sending SMS messages only works when there's a network present, and the iPhone does not auto-retry sending in the background until there's coverage. Effect: I write a message on London's tube where there's no signal and I have to remember to click send when I surface. I've seen the same poor behaviour on Windows Mobile 6. Alternative approach - my Nokia 7110 from 1999, write an SMS, try and send it, fails, but the text stays in the outbox and the phone auto-retries in the background. The SMS gets sent as soon as it's possible.

• Apple Weather app downloads weather each time the app is opened and has no local cache. Effect, doesn't work on London's tube. Slow to launch. No different in experience for the user compared with accessing a bookmark of a mobile website that has been saved to the iPhone home screen.
• Evernote (a great third party application) stores all notes on its servers with no local cache or sync, unlike the PC and Mac versions of Evernote that sync notes between Evernote's cloud and the local computer. Alternative approach - Windows Mobile syncs notes from Outlook to the handheld with a full copy of each note in both places.

• The newspaper applications for iPhone are little more than skinned websites, but which take longer to load than the iPhone's Safari web browser, and still only work with a live mobile data connection. Mobile News, Bloomberg, SFNetNews applications all require a connection to read stories, just like accessing a mobile website in Safari, yet take longer to launch and have a less standard UI as they are all distributed as separate applications. Alternative approach - antique Palm application Avanto Go, enables users to download content to their PDA for offline viewing. More recent Windows Mobile and Symbian versions offer over the air download. Local storage improves the speed to jumping between pages, so people read more, and see more adverts. The New York Times app for iPhone also appears to do this, but it needs a better UI to display when it has finished downloading stories.

If there's no data connection the current iPhone UI repeatedly nags the user to remind them to switch off flight mode (if the user has set it to on), or that there is no data connection if the mobile is "on" but has poor reception. This reminds me of the worst of Vista's user access control pop-ups (which can at least be switched off).

Bottom line - Apple needs to improve the iPhone's ability to operate where there is a slow connection, or when there is no mobile data network present. They need to add automatic local caches to their standard applications, and offer the user a few more settings to manage data roaming, beyond the current blunt on/off. Apple also need to make it easier for third party apps to store and cache data locally as well.

+ Examples of coverage issues:

In-building, 3G signals often don't reach or are weak. In rural areas, mobile networks routinely only offer gprs and sometimes there is no reception at all. Airplanes don't allow cellular radio use. Public transport often lacks good coverage: cellular masts tend to have been positioned along main roads, not along train lines, plus cuttings and tunnels break up the signal. London's tube has no underground mobile coverage whatsoever. If a 3g cell becomes very busy, speeds slow, and the geographical area that 3g covers actually shrinks. Etc. etc.

If a user is moving in a train or a car, there is no guarantee that a good mobile data signal, or any signal, will continue to exist as the user roams between cells and locations. They may start an activity in good coverage and then lose it.

Why build a mobile website? What's the best way of targetting the mobile Internet audience? This is an area we've debated extensively at Jupiter over the last year.

• Should the mobile web be separate from [PC] web sites?
• Should companies build mobile applications/widgets or should they build mobile websites, or both?
• What determines what tactics organisations should follow? Type of content or service, geography, or whether they seek a mass audience or a carefully chosen niche target segment?

The w3 alludes to this, but the main web standards body doesn't face the "why the web on mobile" issue head on.

Here's my take on why marketers need to ensure their organisations build mobile websites, in addition to whatever applications they develop:

• Websites enable marketers and publishers to target the broadest share of the mobile audience. Every modern handset has some form of browser, every modern smartphone has a web browser. Building one application will limit its the audience to one of the many different operating systems in use (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile Pro, WM Standard, Symbian S60, Symbian UIQ, Google Android, Java, etc.).
• Building websites is relatively cheap. Existing web staff, web tools, expertise, and equipment can be deployed. Often a few site designs will deliver content to all smartphones. To reach such a wide audience an organisation would have to build multiple versions of the application, most likely from the ground up, similar to writing software for the Mac and Windows. Building those applications requires many completely separate full software development projects. Maintainenance costs are also much higher again due to the multiplicity of handset platforms.
• Leverages normal PC website traffic which can be easily diverted to a mobile version. iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile users are already visiting PC websites but finding an uneven experience. This is a ready source of traffic that organisations should embrace.
• Are more compatible with email newsletter links. If a publisher or marketer is maintaining user engagement through email newsletters with links to full articles, a mobile website ensures that these links are successfully delivered when a user clicks on them on their Blackberry or other phone. Linking from an email message to content within a specific phone application is hard to do, and to my knowledge impossible to do in a standards, universally-compatible with all handsets way.
• Provides universally-compatible landing pages for mobile advertising campaigns, which can then link to the rest of an advertisers' mobile website. If a mobile advertiser wishes to solicit requests for follow-up information, they have two options: trigger a SMS-based interaction (as Blyk favour), or link to a mobile website. SMS is a completely universally compatible tool but is purely text-based. Mobile websites enable a richer experience suitable for branding.
• Enables marketers to get to market fast, test the water, learn, and then re-plan and build the case for a bigger budget. Mobile websites are quick to develop, as well as being cheap.

The "One Web" position is contained in the W3's just published guidelines for building mobile web sites, Mobile Web Best Practices. It's a good read and is full of common sense tips all collected into one neat place. While it's aimed at actual website builders as it's lucidly written most of the mandates are easy for marketers and strategists to understand, and should be appled to normal websites too to maximise usability. A few examples:

• Keep website addresses short.
• Do not use pop-ups / unders.
• Limit [page] content to what the user has requested [only].
• Avoid free text entry where possible.
• Provide pre-selected default values where possible.

So, a lot of interesting news around mobile video today. Our research confirms the waning to flat consumer interest in mobile video. At the same time, interest and consumption of video online has never been higher. People want to time-shift, place-shift, catch-up on what they've missed on TV and see UGC among other types. Certainly a PC offers a different experience than a handheld, but on a plane ... an iPhone-sized experience, I think, is a very good one. OneSeg seems to have hit on a winning experience with free service on a terrestrial network, DRM-free, and time-shifting by allowing consumers to record video on their devices. Ok, so they haven't exactly identified a revenue stream, but they have figured out how to get consumers to watch.