EU Caps Roaming Data Charges

STRASBOURG-In a welcome move from the European Parliament, it was announced yesterday that a law was adopted that will cut by up to 60 percent the price of using a mobile phone to send text messages or download data while outside a home state in the European Union.

Downloading data while roaming will cost a maximum of EUR1.0 per megabyte at the wholesale level compared with about EUR1.68 today. The BBC states that this cap will fall to EUR0.50 by July 2011. The same report adds that the current price cap of EUR0.46 per minute for an outgoing voice call will also fall to EUR0.43 in July, whilst the cap on voice calls received abroad will fall from EUR0.22 today to EUR0.19 in July and EUR0.11 by July 2011.

The caps on data roaming had already been approved by EU telecoms ministers in November last year. The initial proposals to cap data roaming charges were made by EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding. The BBC notes that the idea is not to fix an EU-wide price, but to set a cap below which telecoms firms can compete by offering lower prices while still earning a "reasonable" return.

Data roaming charges have been often cited as a barrier to growth in mobile VAS, such as mobile social networks and location based services, due to the prohibitive cost of accessing these services when beyond national European frontiers.

The regulatory move announced, together with the ongoing trend of cheaper, flat rate mobile data tariffs, will give a further boost to young players in the mobile space to extend their reach beyond their front yard.

Nokia to Close Nokia Mosh-to be included in Nokia Ovi

In today's online Webinar for mobile application publishers, Bill Perry from Nokia confirmed that they would be discontinuing Nokia Mosh and that it, together with Nokia Widsets, would be consolidated into one offering on Nokia Ovi.

Mosh has had a chequered history, being a somewhat misunderstood child of Nokia and accused of harbouring a mixed bag of (low value) applications.

The (re) launch of Ovi is on a substantial scale and is scheduled for May 2009.

It will provide a market for developers to reach over 100m Nokia customers worldwide but it comes with some limitations-small mobile developers will find the listing costs prohibitive (at over $500 a pop, per application, per language supported), given that Nokia will make Java/Symbian certification and validation mandatory.

Pasi Manninen from Ovi commented that Flash and WRT do not require signing, though this will be of little relevance outside of Asia.

Kevin Kelly Highlights Persistence Paradox of Social Networks

Kevin Kelly, who I previously covered in a blog post on his 'The One' vision, recently highlighted on his own site the results of researcher Bernardo Huberman, now at HP Labs of what is defined as the 'Persistence Paradox'.

Apparently:

"People persistently upload content to social media sites, hoping for the highly unlikely outcome of topping the charts and reaching a wide audience. And yet, an analysis of the production histories and success dynamics of 10 million videos from YouTube revealed that the more frequently an individual uploads content the less likely it is that it will reach a success threshold. This paradoxical result is further compounded by the fact that the average quality of submissions does increase with the number of uploads, with the likelihood of success less than that of playing a lottery."

The conclusion suggests that increasing uploads improves quality but not hits.

Unfortunately, the paper does not examine the issue of photo uploads, and any link between number of uploads and user motivation/success in achieving his goals.

Had it done so, it may have offered some useful insights for Facebook, now the world's second largest online repository of photos after ImageShack (with 20bn images). Techcrunch recently reported that it has earmarked $100m to buy servers-with $30m spent this year alone with storage provider NetApp.

All of this just as relevant for pure play mobile social networks though on a lower scale-while uploading of photos from mobile is fairly standard, upload speeds for photos (let alone videos) mean data volumes still remain relatively low.

Mobile Location Services 09, London 12-13 May

LONDON- Now in its 13th edition, Informa's Mobile Location Services 09 conference taking place in London at the Ambassador's Bloomsbury Hotel, is the key event of the year for all those involved with LBS-related services.

The event will look at the current and future state of the LBS market and operators will say their bit on how they are looking to drive up ARPU with new applications.

I will speaking about how to leverage social networking within LBS and strategies for achieving critical mass in community size.

Readers of my blog get a special 25% discount to attend the event so just mail info@mobverge.com or send me a tweet @ricferraro.

GeoMe announces integration with 11870.com API

BARCELONA-GeoMe announces yesterday that it had completed the integration of content from the 11870.com platform within its own Location Based Social Networking beta mobile application.

11870.com is one of Spain's leading online business directories with over 10,000 daily page views and includes reviewer's comments and photos for each listing.

The full text of the press release can be seen by clicking here:

And the winner is...Mendeley @ Plugg Start-up Rally 2009

BRUSSELS- Mendeley took Plugg by a storm and won the Start-Up Rally ahead of 20 other competing outfits from all over Europe with a unanimous vote of confidence from both the jury and the audience.

Rightly so, given that they presented a unique idea, pitched it very clearly and effectively and actually made the revenue model very tangible. The idea behind Mendeley? It is a last.fm for research papers incorporating a recommendation system and acting as a dis-intermediary within the (high priced) academic journal market. You can see the full pitch here.

The audience award went to Myngle, a web-based interactive vehicle for language training with an attractive market and a crisp pitch.

My personal favourite after Mendeley was SofaTutor, a start-up that recruits video-tutors for maths subjects from YouTube and addresses the "digital age" gap present in most schools. It has a clear business model, focused execution (it only does maths tuition) and taps into what is a lucrative public sector (education) that is well ripe for a shake up.

You can read up more details on the start-ups by clicking here

European Entrepreneurship & Social Media @Plugg

BRUSSELS-The first couple of themes from Plugg this morning focused around European Entrepreneurship (and differences with US entrepreneurship) and Social Media.

Inma Martinez , founder of Stradbroke Advisors (and speaker at Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona last summer) marked out three categories of European Entrepreneurship: Clueless, Pirates and Super Bad.

The Clueless category includes entrepreneurs with great ideas but no idea as to how to market them (see Collaborative film making experiment Wreck A Movie and their great trailer www.ironsky.net), the Pirates include entrepreneurs not afraid to break the rules (PirateBay from Sweden was quoted) and the SuperBad includes those with cheeky ideas but not much more.

The key message? It is good to be cheeky and also European Entrepreneurs should focus on product and not on technical excellence.

Jo Caudron from ONE agency stated how the Web 2.0 era has now moved us from a model of media consumption of 'feeding fish to penguins' to a 'birds and the bees' model, where the bee is spreading the word and has the real power in the social environment.

He also emphasized how Web 2.0 companies can make money by understanding that they are dealing not merely with social media but all-encompassing social business, where the social element effectively permeates all parts of traditional business spheres.

Plugg Startup Rally 20 Finalists Announced-include Bubok and Burt

Brussels-The nominees for the Plugg Startup Rally being judged next week in Brussels have been recently announced. The initial 126 companies to apply have been whittled down to just 20 and come from all corners of Europe, from language learning websites, to book writers' online publishing sites (Bubok from Spain), to location based services and semantic advertising.

It is a truly diverse group of start-ups companies, mostly web based, showcasing the fact that innovation hasn't stalled in the current economic climate.

I encourage readers to take a look at the full list here .

The Start-up Rally will add to what is already a compelling agenda for the day, with a focus on entrpreneurship, raising capital (in tough times) and generating revenue

Plugg-Dopplr and Google to present on European innovation

Brussels-Plugg is a one-day conference on March 12th in Brussels with a clear focus on celebrating entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe and raising global awareness for those European start-ups in the Web / Mobile 2.0 field that stand out in the crop.

Plugg aims to provide a hands-on view on what's happening in Europe, what the continent's (dis)advantages are compared to other regions and what the future will hold for its digital industry.

This year, Robin Wauters has assembled a great line-up of speakers, including Mike Butcher from Techcrunch UK, Lisa Sounier from Dopplr and Anil Hansjee from Google.

There is also the Start-up Rally for web and mobile start-ups with European roots where innovative new players can showcase their wares.

The first 3 readers to register via my blog (blog code AW6TZ24U) get 10% off the ticket price-don't miss out!

Notes from Day 3 of MWC-Finding the right (monetisation) strategy for LBS

Barcelona-Day 3 of Mobile World Congress: The 'Finding the Right Strategies for Location Based Services' seminar was all about answering the one key question: 'How does the mobile ecosystem monetise location?'...one year on from this question having been posed at the very same venue, and still no global truth has emerged.

The fact that at this year's seminar, Kurt Lyall from Tom Tom was present is significant. Tom Tom have been one of the few consistent players in the field to successfully monetise location, though not through mobile handsets. Tom Tom's lesson is that customers are willing to pay for (turn-by-turn) navigation and seem willing in the future to pay for search and other location services.

Olivier Laury from Bouygues Telecom was in a difficult spot on the panel: as an operator, he had to defend the punitive charges from roaming when using LBS, a clear brake on further market development. His defence of 'I'll lower my tariffs if my operator counterparty lowers his' is clearly unacceptable, with EU policy likely to continue rigorously attacking operators profit skimming on subscriber roaming.

Charles Morse from Garmin discussed the case of a company they own, Digital Cyclone, that delivers weather reports on their devices in a compelling way and has been very successful. Similiar successful examples of Location-related content whose intrinsic value justfies premium charging included ViaMichelin and Lonely Planet travel content.

The overall lesson? Ultimately the customer must be allowed to choose. Great content will attract customers more than anything else and a revenue model that is likely to work will offer a free basic service supported by ads or a premium ad-free service. The two models can also be combined:in Bouygues Telecom's experience, cross-over rates from basic subscribers to premium are as high as 15%.

Mobile World Congress (MWC) First Impressions

BARCELONA-From the capital of all things mobile (at least for one week), here are my first impressions of Day 1 of the MWC.

Firstly, attendance may have dipped slightly compared to previous years, but nothing like what some observers were expecting. What seems to be the case though, is that fewer company staff are actually on the exhibition stands and more hostesses are left to explain the products on display (sometimes to good effect, see NTT DoCoMo stand and sometimes not so good, see Telefonica stand).

Secondly, emphasis has slipped away slightly from content to once again focus on technology..the insistent talk on convergence in terms of devices seems to have stimulated incumbents in the mobile space out of their lethargy and start dishing out new features or devices at a faster rate.

I was particularly impressed by the new LG Arena 3D interface (a la Linux) though its mere 8GB of inbuilt memory are disappointing.

More and more handsets being showcased come with QWERTY keyboards (no surprise) and in my view, within 2 years the majority of new devices being shipped will all come with this keyboard and/or the hasidic iPhone style one.

More later...

Mobile World Congress (MWC)-Expectations in 2009

BARCELONA-The 2009 edition will be the 3rd MWC I will be attending, but am sure that the flavour of this year's event will be quite distinguishable from that of previous editions.

Last year's MWC was undoubtedly the year with the greatest emphasis on mobile content, with the Content Zone area expanding greatly compared to earlier years. It was also the year which marked the foray of new players in the handset market, such as Asus and Garmin.

This year is seems that the organisers have made a more earnest effort to showcase innovation at the event, with greater floor space dedicated to both local and international mobile start-ups. This is absolutely fundamental, as innovation is unlikely to come from the existing incumbents, who are dragged down by declining revenues, limited credit facilities and unhappy shareholders.

But, the mobile marketplace is a complex ecosystem, and innovation will only flourish if most stakeholders make more than just a token effort to support new ideas. Key to this are the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), whose essential support role has been hankered by a blinkered approach to innovation (we want it, but won't risk anything to get it).

Some signs of change are emerging, with MNOs on the acquisition trail for new concepts they understand (view Zyb's acquisition by Vodafone for example). While this buying-in of innovation is great (it supports many an exit strategy documented in start-up business plans) it doesn't per se do much to support the launch of new, daring services (such as LBSs).

My hope for the MWC this year is to see MNOs recognising that opening up their network to innovative startups is not only commendable, but that it is the only way that they can maintain sustainable growth in the mid to long term and drive new users and greater usage to their increasingly core data package offerings.

GeoMe and IRL announce Partnership

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS and BARCELONA, SPAIN--(Marketwire - January 27, 2009) - In Real Life (IRL), the only presence-based social networking company that adds presence to social networks and social media, and GeoMe, a mobile phone service that allows users to explore, share and connect via messages on a map, announced today the creation of a central platform for location-based social networking services on both mobile phones and the Web. This is the first time a Web-based social network has partnered with a mobile, location-based social network, providing full access privileges across the two communities of users.

The partnership extends the services of the IRL Connect Web-based social networking platform (www.irlconnect.com) to the mobile, as well as brings GeoMe's (www.geo-me.com) expertise in delivering location-based solutions on mobile to the Web. The combined platform features a social network toggle that allows members to seamlessly cross between communities. Both services bring the best of the mobile and Web worlds to users for an optimal social networking experience where they can access and exchange information and find friends online with the least effort, rather than a walled garden format of many of today's mobile social networking services.

"Many competitors focus on mobile and then try to extend their service to the Web by themselves, creating a half-baked Web solution," said Frank Schuil, founder and CEO of IRL. "By allowing aggregation with external parties, such as GeoMe, it is easier to grow our user base and give IRL Connect users the opportunity to explore mobile social networking using the GeoMe platform."

"Both IRL and GeoMe are focused on developing fresh concepts within the context of social networks. By partnering together, we combine resources to reach out to a wider public than would have otherwise been possible," said Ric Ferraro, managing director, GeoMe. "Instead of just aggregating different networks, GeoMe and IRL are sharing our communities openly in order to provide a richer experience for members."

GeoMe is launching its public beta in February 2009. IRL Connect members will be able to access the GeoMe service on mobile and on the Web in Q2 2009.

Vringo Update-Announces Global Partnership with Sony Ericsson

NEW YORK–Jan. 22, 2009—Vringo^TM, the next-generation ringtone pioneer, announced today that its free video ringtone application is being pre-linked on global shipments of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman™ phones and promoted via the manufacturer’s Fun & Downloads portal, introducing Vringo to millions of new users. New Sony Ericsson owners join a thriving community of Symbian, Java and Windows Mobile users who are already experiencing Vringo’s high-quality video ringtones and VringForward™ technology, which lets users send ringtones to friends just by calling.

This partnership with Sony Ericsson, which was established when Vringo took home a prize at last year’s Sony Ericsson Content Awards, is the latest step in Vringo’s continuing push toward global availability and monetization of video ringtones. Recently, Vringo announced partnership deals with mobile carriers in Turkey and France that enable users to download the Vringo application and access content, in some cases on a paid-subscription basis.

“Our partnership with Sony Ericsson is unprecedented,” said Vringo CEO Jon Medved. “In addition to being the first social video ringtone application to be downloadable directly from Sony Ericsson phones, we’re reaching millions of Walkman users—one of the most innovative, media-hungry audiences in the world.”

Vringo’s application, which is also available for a wide variety of Symbian, Java and Windows Mobile devices via www.vringo.com, lets users create or take video, images and slideshows from virtually anywhere, including Vringo’s 4,000-clips-and-counting video ringtone library or the Web, and make them into their personal call signatures.

To access Vringo, Walkman users can find the link prominently displayed in their phone’s Web browser. By clicking the link, users will download the Vringo application to their phones and can immediately begin sharing video ringtones with their phone contacts.

GeoMe in the Press-Mobile LBS Feature Article

BARCELONA- GeoMe was featured in the Economic Section of Sunday 11th January's edition of Avui newspaper, with an article by Jordi Garriga.

The article gives a quick tour of the GeoMe story up to today, from the first prototype developed for the Mobile World Congress in 2008, to the imminent release of the public beta version.

An important differentiating factor of GeoMe from the multitude of me-too applications out there, is the fact that GeoMe does not display people on the map but displays messages instead. That way, privacy of the user is safeguarded.

While GPS on high end phones is set to become a ubiquitous technology, incoporating alternative technologies like CellID will extend the reach of GeoMe to the wider public, especially in the target group of 15-24 year olds.

The full article (in Catalan) is available by clicking here

Vringo-can video ringtones crack the subscription model?

I met Haim Cohen-Mintz from Vringo at the Mobile Web Europe conference in London in September and he exuded a quiet confidence about both the prospects of the Vringo content proposition and its (nicely executed) business model.

True to form, the company has been progressively announcing a number of recent deals in both France and Turkey to provide their video content on deck with various operators.

What is interesting about their deal with Avea in Turkey is that Vringo will break new ground by launching a carrier led video ringtone subscription model. It is interesting because in many ways we are at an inflection point in the traditional models of mobile revenue generation, particularly when it comes to mobile content.

Pure advertising-supported business models are beginning to creak as the need for a balanced revenue mix imposes itself on content providers to both smooth revenues and cashflow as well as to increase the sustainability of revenue generation.

What we also see is increased divergence between the 'mature' mobile markets and the nascent or 'emerging' ones that are characterised by heavy mobile internet penetration. The consumers of the latter market have not 'evolved' from PC web to mobile web, thus do not suffer from the same degree of eyeball saturation.

Traditional revenue models (such as those entirely dependent on advertising) may well work in the emerging markets (at least for a while) but there is little doubting that a new market imperative is beginning to emerge in mature markets. Mass mobile consumers here will develop greater resistance to mobile advertising and since most large players will be slow to adapt, my belief is that nimble startups focused on niche content or niche market segments will have at their grasp interesting revenue opportunities.

Where does this leave Vringo? Vringo innovates in a mature (premium ringtone) market, so should be able to do well for a while. However, the market in mature countries appears to be shrinking, so the focus on emerging markets will be critical in sustaining future revenue growth ceteris paribus.

GeoMe at Living Labs Global Summit in Hamburg

HAMBURG-Organised by Living Labs Global and the Barcelona City Council, this initiative to create a Global Market for Mobility and the growing market opportunities in the Mediterranean Market of 485m citizens, with Barcelona as its prime gateway for innovative business.

GeoMe will be showcasing its application at the event on the 16th of January 2009 and extends a warm invitation to all to come along and take part in the event. This will cover amongst other things:

• The summit's plenary session will provide a compact overview of Living Labs Global and highlight the Mediterranean market and growth opportunities.
• Parallel thematic matchmaking panels will be held to connect international partners, customers and peers in the fields of Design, Media & ICT and Healthcare.
• Matchmaking sessions will start with a panel discussion of respected experts, and lead into a well-structured matchmaking process over lunch and coffee. To understand your offerings, needs and interests, we will follow a structured procedure upon registration and build your personal event experience.
• mWatch: Showcase your innovations and win the Living Labs Global Award.
• An exhibition area will be mounted in the summit, offering you the opportunity to showcase your products, services and solutions.
• Upon registration you can choose to take part in this exposition, from which the participants in the Summit will vote for the most innovative solution. An Award will be presented to the winners, in the form of a one-year Associate Membership in Living Labs Global.

More information can be obtained by clicking here

LeWeb08-Google's Mayer tips Local Search as key opportunity for 2009

PARIS-Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product & User Experience at Google, gave an insightful view on various challenges facing both Google and its competitors in terms of Search.

Marissa pointed out that there is still some way to go to improve search (harking back to a previous interview she had given where she had stated that 90% of the work on search has been completed but that the last 10% was the tricky part).

One area where Google is looking to improve its game is in personalised search, with the recent launch of the Google Search Wiki seeking to test the waters in this area.

Another area, is search through devices other than the PC, notably through a mobile phone and, linked to this,voice-activated search.

Loic le Meur asked Marissa whether she thought any improvements in video search were in the pipeline. She answered that improvements are imminent in detecting voice within video and searching on this. However, graphic recognition (e.g.of a face in a video) is still a few years away partly due to YouTube's success and the proliferation of video content on the web.

Finally, and critically for companies in the LBS space, Marissa stated that "local search is one of the big opportunities in 2009".

LeWeb 08 Paris-Prologue and Photos

PARIS-LeWeb08 managed to pull off a great event in a time of economic uncertainty, and despite the heavy atmosphere associated with the global financial system, it offered rays of hope as well as advice on how to weather the storm.

Many industry heavy hitters, from Marissa Mayer at Google to Marc Simoncini of Meetic, Maurice Levy of Publicis and Martin Varsavsky, serial entrepreneur, gave their take on future plans and opportunities in the market.

Marc Simoncini gave a very entertaining talk on different dating habits he had to consider when launching his service in different countries in Europe.
For example, in Italy, women were not overt in their dating habits as they normally 'had to ask permission from their brother to date' while in Sweden, the Meetic offer of free membership for women was met with a 'why should it be free for us' reaction.

New Nokia N97..but not for Christmas

Nokia used the opportunity of the Nokia World Event in Barcelona on Tuesday 2nd December to announce the release of the much anticipated N97 -the second touchscreen phone by the manufacturer, but this time, unlike the XpressMusic, it comes with an inbuilt QWERTY keyboard. It also has sufficient new features to pack a punch and looks set to carve out its own cult following.

The N97 features integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, which the vendor says will make it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their status and share their 'social location' as well as related pictures or videos. The device supports up to 48GB of storage, including 32GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16GB microSD card.

Sadly for Nokia-philes, the N97 is only expected to begin shipping in the first half of 2009 (at an estimated retail price of €550 before taxes) at which point demand is anticipated to have built up dramatically.