Please note that beginning of today I will migrate my blogging activity to my new blog.  Please update all of your feed subscriptions and bookmarks to http://blogs.forrester.com/thomas_husson 

 There will be no further posts on this blog. I look forward to continuing the conversations with you at http://blogs.forrester.com/thomas_husson  

You can still follow me via twitter @Thomas_Husson and enjoy reading the archives of this blog (almost of 5 years of thoughts on the mobile industry)

 Thanks.

If you speak Spanish, Enrique Burgos has a good summary of the mobile marketing event that took place with Telefonica and MMA Spain. See here.

“In the past 12 months the mobile industry has seen an unprecedented change in demand. The introduction of world-class devices, in combination with a wide variety of data applications, has brought about a dramatic change in customer behaviour and created an exponential demand on mobile data networks. To put this in context, watching a YouTube video on a smartphone can use the same capacity on the network as sending 500,000 text messages simultaneously.

“We are now aggressively accelerating our network growth programme to ensure we have significant headroom for the future and retain our focus on being number one for customer satisfaction.”

Extracted from a 02 press release

What the ROI of the iPhone for operators: Incremental monthly revenues on data – heavy phone subsidies – growing network costs?

Mobile Marketing: A Strategic Imperative
Wednesday, November 25, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Venue: Telefonica, Distrito C – Edificio Central C/ Ronda de la Comunicación s/n 28050 Madrid

Agenda
10:00-10:30 Coffee and networking time before first presentation.
10:30-11:15 Forrester Research: Senior Analyst Thomas Husson, Making the Most of Mobile Now and in the Coming Years
11:15-11:45 MMA: Salvador Carrillo, Presidente de MMA España and CEO of Mobile Dreams Factory, El marketing y la publicidad móvil en España. Situación actual y perspectivas de futuro11:45-12:00 Networking break
12:00-12:30 Special Guest: Enrique Burgos, El móvil como herramienta de fidelización de clientes
12:30-
1:00 Telefonica: Susana Rodríguez Urgel, On-Line Channels and Mobile Commerce Manager, Mobile Marketing: una REALIDAD para Telefónica

You can register here.

I presented there the recent findings of a new report “Mobile Technographics in Europe” and posted a comment on my Forrester blog post.

For once, I hadn’t really the time to take as many pics as I wanted, but I like the one below:

Le guide lyonnais “Le petit paumé” est présent sur l’iPhone! Un guide qui référence restos et bonnes adresses en tout genre. Une vraie institution lyonnaise avec plusieurs centaines de milliers de lecteurs.

Il y a bientôt 15 ans de ça, j’avais fait partie de l’équipe qui avait lancé la version minitel (très très très en retard pour l’époque)…Souvenirs souvenirs

Bravo à l’équipe!

Par contre je ne suis pas sur de comprendre pourquoi il faut automatiquement être localisé pour accéder au contenus du guide et des critiques. Quelqu’un peut m’éclairer?

In the last few months, a bunch of announcements clearly showed that the convergence between mobile and social computing is gaining traction and attracting the largest stakeholders:

In September 2009, Facebook announced it had passed the 65,000,000 mobile users’ monthly mobile audience mark (which represents around 20% of a global online audience of 3x0M+ users). Bebo, Friendster, MySpace, Orkut also are among the top mobile Web destinations in countries where they have significant online audiences. Twitter partnered with Vodafone and O2 in the UK while offering a mobile VoIP offering with Jajah.

Operators such as Vodafone with its “360” initiative and to a lesser extent Orange with “Social Life” are going one step further than just offering access to social networking sites.

Handset manufacturers are trying to integrate online social experiences in their devices: INQ gained lot of attention with its INQ 1 (see below a pic from a recent trip in Italy) by winning the “handset of the year” award at MWC, while Nokia recently announced a deeper integration of Facebook in the N97, not to mention the Motoblur product.

According to Forrester data, in the UK, 40% of 16/25 years old are either accessing (17%) or interested in accessing social networking (23%) via their mobile phones. Of course, mobile social computing is primarily a youth activity today. However, it has a strong potential to unlock.

Most of the digital revolution has taken place on the PC so far, with the emergence of email, instant messaging, blogs, photo- and video-sharing sites, and social networks. The ubiquitous nature of mobile phones has changed the way we live and communicate. Letters, diaries, address books, and memories have gone digital, while communication with friends, relatives, and colleagues has never involved such a mix of our personal and professional lives. However, mobile phones are not only communication tools. Mobile phones have unique characteristics that will enhance and modify existing PC-based Social Web experiences.

Indeed, mobile social activity is more than just accessing social networking sites while on the go. Mobile phones have the potential to become the hub of Social Computing activities and to be more than just a complement to the PC experience. Mobile phones will increasingly become the glue that holds the social graph together, offering creative tools and immediacy, presence, location, and context when interacting with the real world. The “always on” mobile connected handset frees the Social Web from the chains of the PC and thrusts it into the real world.

As Social Computing is still primarily about social communication, traditional telecom and online players will start fighting to tap into consumers’ social address books. It is too early to say who will win the race: stakeholders have different assets, and uncertainties around business models still exist. In fact, stakeholders have no other choice but to collaborate, as no single player can really own a person’s social graph. They need to balance business opportunities with the need to respect consumers’ privacy concerns by providing them with the tools to manage their digital identities.

Despite massive communication audiences, traditional online giants have failed so far to turn their communication audiences into social audiences — a lesson that traditional telecom stakeholders should bear in mind! Moving away from personal information management (PIM) to fun, exciting social experiences is not an easy game.

I’d be curious to know your thoughts on this nascent and exciting topic. If you want to share your ideas, feel free to comment below.

Beyond the terrific iPhone user-experience, the power of Apple’s marketing and the AppStore’s ecosystem, part of the success is due to Apple’s new business model introduced in July 08. When launching the 3GS, they also announced lots of international (and non-exclusive) deals with operators worldwide and finally accepted to let operators subsidize the device. No doubt there is a huge consumer demand for the iPhone but operators will have to solve a complex equation. It is a little dirty industry secret that many carriers are analyzing the profitability of the iPhone model:

The subsidy is quite high and close to 300 € in many European countries (looking at the difference between the wholesale and the retail price) but the incremental revenues are primarily driven by slightly more expensive voice/data packages (content sold through the App Store do not appear in operators’ P&L), around 10€ / iPhone user / month. Let’s do the math: to recoup the investment, the lifetime customer value has to be over 2,6 years. Of course, the equation is much more complex than that but if you take into consideration that network costs are exploding (just think about the YouTube traffic), it becomes to be challenging.

If you also take into account the product life cycle, the price point will soon be lower and I wouldn’t be surprised to find iPhones at a retail price of 49€ in the coming months (of course you can have them for free but usually for high end voice/data packages). The sur-subsidy was really interesting in the context of an exclusive distribution agreement. Looking at Orange France, they managed to attract the most valuable customers before the regulation authorities imposed a non-exclusive agreement that opened the door for SFR and Bouygues. It is less interesting now to say the least. Operators are thus bound to find the right balance between answering consumer demand and challenging Apple’s growing power by promoting alternatives such as…Android.

New device makers (ACER, ZTE, Huawei and many unknown Chinese sub-contractors) have bold ambitions and want to enter a volume war. To do so, they are likely to rely on the cheapest OS that is also following a volume play to monetize its mobile audiences…Android/Google.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see iPhone-like devices for half or even a third of Apple’s wholesale price. Of course, the brand won’t be there but this might be a game-changer in the years to come.

Bear with me one second. I am not saying Apple’s iPhone won’t continue to overperfom the market, gain significant market share, expand in China and be profitable. The iPhone is probably the best thing that happened to the mobile services’ industry. There’s little doubt that the iPhone has acted as a powerful catalyst for mobile services adoption. The list of brands that have launched iPhone applications is comprehensive and covers many different industries. Apps can offer a truly rich media experience that matches brands’ quality standards and can interact with higher-end consumers that are more likely to buy their services. However, iPhones are not necessarily a panacea:

- iPhone users offer growing but still limited reach in Europe.

- Brands will soon realize that they need more metrics to engage with iPhone consumers. Detailed analytics are critical and the industry will move away from reporting uniquely a number of downloads. What brand should care about is frequency of use and profile of (potential) users.

- Basic commercial rules will apply in the Apple App Store just as in any retail environment. Few applications manage to be really viral and appear in the top 20 apps that drive audiences and revenues; most of them are lost in the back catalog of more than 85,000 applications. To fully promote an application and make the most of the iPhone audience, brands will have to integrate mobile with their digital and offline communication plans and use basic merchandizing tools and promotions.

- Other distribution routes will open up for applications. Replicating Apple’s success is not an easy task, but most mobile stakeholders are strengthening their alternative retail stores.

Also, there is life beyond applications:

- The consumer benefits of mobile applications will diminish over time. The real benefits to consumers of applications are their provision of a richer user experience and the fact that they make the most of the core characteristics of different OSes and handsets, such as cameras and GPS chipsets. If your services do not specifically require these elements, an optimized mobile Web site can deliver benefits just as well. In addition, browser solutions will improve in the coming years and will be better integrated with OS and handset capabilities. For example, they will offer the ability to enter geo-localized information into the browser itself. Html 5, Skyfire and Google Gears are good technology examples of this trend. In addition, mobile websites (call them Webapps if you wish) increasingly support Ajax and Flash (as per Adobe’s recent announcement).

- Mobile Web sites offer wider reach and are less costly to develop. Mobile Internet penetration currently stands at 13% in Western Europe. Growing penetration will increasingly offer direct-to-consumer opportunities. Applications and browser-based solutions are — and will continue to be — complementary rather than competitive.

- SMS offers the only mainstream way to reach consumers.

- Many other technologies exist beyond the mobile Web and SMS

Technologies evolve quicker than one could expect. That’s the reason why brands should start thinking about analyzing the profile of their customers first, define their objectives and strategy and then only decide which technologies to implement.

See this article in mobilemarketer to get my take on this.

See also below my take in French, initially published via servicesmobiles.fr

Telecom Italia a annoncé récemment qu’il lancerait en 2010 un service pour permettre à ses consommateurs d’acheter directement depuis leurs téléphones mobiles de nouveux types de biens et services: tickets de train et de bus, parking, place de spectacles et tickets de concerts, chambres d’hotel….

Ce service utilise non pas un système de paiement sans contact (type NFC) mais une solution basée sur la SIM (Sim Application Toolkit). Cela n’empêche pas par ailleurs TIM de mener un test avec NFC avec la régie des transports de Milan qui devrait avoir lieu d’ici la fin de cette année.

En fait, chaque banque pourra également proposer ces propres solutions de paiement en se raccordant à la plate-forme de Movincom. Ce consortium regroupe près de 650 services développés par diverses sociétés, principalement des transports en commun.

Cette initiative est intéressante à plusieurs titres: elle se base sur une technologie simple disponible auprès du plus grand nombre, elle met en avant des services utiles dans la vie de tous les jours et qui ont un vrai bénéfice en mobilité, elle repose une approche très collaborative avec les différents acteurs du marché.

Pour vraiment permettre l’essor du commerce mobile, il est très pertinent de commencer par des transactions liées au ticketing mobile (transports, parking, spectacles,…). Ce type de transactions sont les plus à même de prendre le relais des contenus numériques (jeux, sonneries…) aujourd’hui achetés sur les portables et de préparer le terrain pour le m-commerce de demain.

Pour installer un nouveau mode de paiement et rivaliser avec le cash (disponible depuis la nuit des temps), il va vraiment falloir éduquer les consommateurs et leur montrer les bénéfices de ce type de solutions. D’autres opérateurs se positionnent comme pionnier sur ce type de services, comme Belgacom en Belgique, où le mobile parking se développe déjà depuis plusieurs années

Well, you don’t need to. These are the TOP 10 best selling devices in Tre Stores (Tre is a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, one of the challengers of Telia Sonera and Telenor in Sweden)

So, yes, the iPhone 3GS is now the best selling device for this operator in September.
Beyond this, here are a few interesting facts:
- USB mobile bb key ranks 2nd (and used to be 1st)
- ACER laptop ranks 9th – a new distribution routes for the likes of HP, Asus and co
- Sony Ericsson perfoms well at home
- Nokia N97 is joining the TOP 10 direclty in the 6th position