The Future of Mobile
I am excited and encourage to read people like Seth Godin pontificate about the future of mobile. As a company, we have invested a lot of time and resources into providing mobile solutions and think that the industry will only continue to grow. I do disagree slightly in what Mr. Godin considers the problem with mobile. I think the real problem is the carriers (Cingular, Sprint, Verizon, etc) desire to keep customer support calls to a minimum.
They only provide limited handsets and make it difficult for marketers to get extraordinary use cases out because of their concerns about customer complaints. Due to their stringent processes, in the US it can take 8 - 12 weeks to get a Common Short Code provisioned but yet they require that all commercial related SMS comes from a short code. I understand the concern of SPAM on their network but they need to find a happy medium if they want it to succeed as a viable channel.
May 15th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
It seems like an overly simplistic approach to me. I think we all still need to figure out where the phone ends and where the “mobile” begins. Take a look at digital cameras, traditional “walkmans”, iPods, etc. When you hit the right chord people buy it. My Sony Ericsson, for example (and I have no relationship with Sony Ericsson what’s so ever!) is a great camera, an mp3 player i use in the gym AND a very good mobile phone. I love the fact it’s more then a phone.
May 19th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Yes and no… I think it is important to realize that “mobile” can mean many different things to many different people. As you aptly point out, it can mean text messages to cell phones, but it can also mean photos, podcasts, movies, music, and more. It is more of a concept of locational independence than a product. But in order to do this there must be a way to communicate. Eventually that may simply be IP, like it is with the internet. But in the meantime, with many devices that do not support IP, and with signals that are not always strong enough everywhere to provide constant connection, there needs to be a mechanism, a protocol to communicate asynchronously. For now that protocol is SMS. It is the mobile Lungua Franca. But it can be used so much further than it is today. Just look at how RSS and blogs have taken HTTP and XML to create a new deliverable… and then how podcasts have taken those base deliverables and used them to accomplish so much more. The same could be done with SMS, allowing every device to consume in a way appropriate to it, based on how it interprets the content. Sorry, soap-boxing there for a moment… But to Josh’s point, in order for this to happen, or in order for current SMS contests and campaigns to really be effective, things need to get easier and faster. The world is getting smaller every day. Markets are getting smarter every day. We all need to be able to adapt, react, and innovate quickly. 8-12 weeks (or more) to plan a communication is a model that has to, and will change.
November 17th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
While engineers and technologists continue to focus on the challanges of interoperability and a uniform approach to getting things done faster and more efficiently, I am personally intrigued by the evolving conceit of mobile as a distribution platform. As niche communities grow with increasing regularity online, the manner in which those groups can migrate unique aspects of their common experience to mobile devices represents a very intriguing market opportunity.
Gay mobile, urban mobile, mobile for the car enthusiast and mobile for the sports fan are all examples of content that is an extension of an experience that can be cultivated in the real world or online and then given an added level of interactivity through mobile. That isn’t to say that a platform should be built on one particular vertical (see the failure of ESPN mobile as an obivous example) but rather that any community with a strong identity can augment its experience through the staples of mobile functionality that exist today including SMS, games, mobile blogging, mobile podcasts, ringtones, etc.
The growth of niche mobile offerings will ensure a robust growth for a market sector that seems to be stuck on auto-pilot.
My company Medialicious.TV is trying to lead the charge in finding new ways to create unique experiences for communities that do not fit the label of “general market”.
December 8th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Does anyone care to opine on what will happen (and when) to mobile marketing as we know it once most phones have email and internet functionality available and active at inexpensive price? Eg, what if everyone had a blackberry with internet browser? Will mobile marketing just become an extension of internet marketing?