PavingWays

Recently, Opera released its interesting and insightful “State of the Mobile Web” report. In this report, Opera analyzed the traffic of more than 44 million cumulative Opera Mini users worldwide.

Opera Mini: the world’s most popular mobile browser

Since its worldwide launch in 2006, Opera Mini has become the world’s most popular mobile web browser with millions of users and billions of page views:

Social Networking Services drive mobile web usage worldwide

Interestingly, almost 40% of all visited web pages with Opera Mini were social networking services. In the US, South Africa and Indonesia even more than 60% of the user were visiting these services with their mobile devices. That shows social networking services are very popular worldwide.

Top 10 Sites in the US, India, South Africa, UK and Germany

You can find more information and the whole report here: http://www.opera.com/mobile_report

Wizzl, a Dutch company, is preparing to launch its all-in-one virtual phone. Users (”Wizzlers”) can talk, chat, have direct access to live TV, Internet radio and web games. Or as written on their website:

“Wizzl has developed free communication software which will allow its users (’Wizzlers’) to make free voice and video calls over the internet, and calls to local and international phones and mobiles from only 1.5 Eurocents per minute. And it doesn’t stop there; with Wizzl’s all-in-one virtual phone, Wizzlers will have direct access to live TV, internet radio stations and the most popular web games around. Personal photographs, music and videos will also be at users’ fingertips.”

The official (worldwide) launch will be at GamePlay, the largest game event of the Benelux, between 23 and 25 Nov. 2007.

You can test their (Windows) software on your desktop PC here: http://www.wizzl.com/intl/en/download. First-time downloaders get up to 10 minutes of free calling time to landlines and mobile phones across the world. Wizzler-to-Wizzler voice and video calls are completely free of charge. “The current beta version works on desktops and laptops only. In the very near future, Wizzl will also be available for mobile phones.”

Sources:
http://www.wizzl.com
http://www.gameplay.nl

I read an interesting article on us.blognation.com about mywaves, a mobile video service. mywaves was founded at the end of 2006, is led by a team that includes veterans from Yahoo, Napster, Danger, PayPal and TiVo and is financially backed by Menlo Ventures.The Sunnyvale, California based company revealed some quite impressive numbers. mywaves reported 1.25 million visitors per month. Honestly, I didn’t know that there is already such a big market for mobile video out there. According to their press release they got an average of 4 visits per month per individual. These visits lasted an average of 20 minutes.

How does it work?
First you have to sign-up for the service. Then you can discover, choose and personalize your on-the-go entertainment on their website that will be automatically delivered and updated to your mobile phone. mywaves also sends text messages alerting you about content updates in their channels. The service is free and works globally across all 3G, EDGE, BREW and EV-DO carriers as well as most video-capable mobile phones.

Marketing
In May 2007 they announced their partnership with Admob to enable click-to-video advertisements for AdMob advertisers.In July 2007 mywaves announced that Alltel Wireless will be the first North American carrier who launches mywaves service allowing Alltel customer to watch videos from their phone for 3.99 USD per month. Customers can easily download the application from their phone via the Alltel Axcess Shop and customize the content.

Sources:
http://www.mywaves.comhttp://us.blognation.com

The latest research from Telephia shows that around 4 % of U.K. mobile users have uploaded content created on their mobile phones to social networking sites, video and picture sharing sites, blogs and personal web pages.

Still, uploading content from mobile phones is not yet mainstream, probably because of the still expensive data plans for using the mobile web. But Telephia says it is already ranking close to watching mobile video in popularity. An interesting fact is also that users are finding ways to send their content even to sites that do not yet offer a facility to upload direct from mobile phones. That shows the strong demand mobile and should be integrated into social networking services.

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In recent years online social networks have experienced huge growth. Typically sites like Facebook.com or MySpace.com have been a place for the younger demographic in society to express personal interests and information. The report “Social Networking: Finding Friends Online“ from InStat describes these networks as “virtual social structures consisting of individuals that are connected through various social familiarities, geographies, business connections, or common interests”. In short: social networking sites are a great place for self promotion.

But with tragedies like the tragedy at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007 it began to show that online social networking sites have become more important than just promoting yourself. They became a public place to mourn the loss.

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On April 16, 2007 Nokia announced their S60 platform would support widgets in subsequent releases. This means, using their WebKit based browser under the hood, newer phones (S60 3rd ed. with Feature Pack 2) will have support for those small applications, mostly serving not more than a single purpose (e.g. show the weather or an RSS feed) that are well known on the desktop since a couple of years now.

In preparation to my talk at this year’s XTech conference I want to point out some important things related to this announcement. I think widgets on (mobile) devices are a major step in the right direction and I feel the mobile web can finally get the boost it so desperately was waiting for since a couple of years now. “The Ubiquitous Web” is this year’s XTech topic - I feel the mobile web will become ubiquitous pretty soon…This article can be seen as a primer to my talk at XTech: Ajax on mobile devices — making mobile web apps ubiquitous.

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Today Steve Jobs unveiled the long-anticipated iPhone to the public. We gotta say this thing is amazing! Featuring a new input method called “Multi-touch”, which allows you to use several fingers at once to input “gestures”, the phone also features Wi-Fi (and EDGE) along with a version of Apple’s web browser Safari - this is possible, because the phone’s operating system is MAC OS X!

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On Friday, November 17th, we were at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, which is a nice and impressive complex of buildings. We were at building one, the Microsoft conference center (pic below). The event started pretty early with an extensive breakfast buffet and the usual networking.
What was different though was the crowd of attendees: more formal and not as “geeky” as what we had experienced in former events. It was also harder to get in touch with other people than before, probably because everybody seemed to be really keen on talking to the VCs and the representatives from the other big companies (cf. title).

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What is the current level of usage and consumer interest for data services?

What is important to consumers, both for mobile and voice services?

What implications can be drawn from usage differences between segments, geographies or even between the distinct customer bases of operators and device manufacturers?

These questions were examined in the 2005 A.T.Kearney Mobinet study, which is an assessment of global consumer trends in mobile usage. By interviewing mobile users in 21 countries the company researched the degree to which consumers are adopting mobile data services.

Mobile phones - only for making phone calls?

Nearly 60% of the customers expect to use their mobile phone to make the majority of their calls over the next year. Only 4% of consumers expect to use VoIP for the majority of their calls next year. Alarmingly a significant number of consumers are not convinced that their mobile operator should offer anything more than basic voice service. The majority (80%) of the 65-year olds (or older) reject data services compared to 25% of the under 24-year olds. Probably one reason for this is, that older people are more afraid of new technologies/services.
Another important aspect is the price. 70% of mobile phone users see the price as the primary factor in choosing operator.

What is the current level of usage and consumer interest for data services?

Because the penetration of data-enabled, multimedia phones has increased to 53%, more consumers across all age groups are adopting mobile data services. Most of them (56%) use it (more…)

Today I read an interesting post on http://www.mobileburn.com. China Mobile has outranked Vodafone as the world’s largest mobile phone operator. It is really surprising, because Vodafone serves the worldwide market and China Mobile only the Chinese market. Latest figures indicate that China Mobile serves 200 million customers - Vodafone “only” 186.8 million.

This just shows us how big the Chinese market is and how many opportunities it offers. Analysts are predicting that China Mobile will expand their business overseas in the next few years.

Source:
http://www.mobileburn.com

Nintendo has finally announced the launch of the Opera web browser for the DS on October 6, 2006. In Japan the browser powered by Opera is already available (since July 24, 2006).

Taking advantage of the DS’ built-in Wi-Fi capabilities the browser allows the user to access the full internet, incl. webmail, online shops or secure bank websites. The browser will be sold as an optional DS card. Users simply insert the card into the Wi-Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens. Users will also be able to apply an optional filter (provided by Astaro) that will block inappropriate content for underage surfers. The recommended retail price is around £30 / 40 Euros.

Take a look at the video review: http://www.gizmodo.com
or check out “Tips & Tricks” how to use the DS browser: http://www.opera.com

Sources:
http://www.nintendo-europe.com
http://www.opera.com

The number of mobile phone subscriptions in Germany has increased: For the first time there are more mobile phones than residents. 82.8 million mobile phones are currently registered. Most Germans have 2 or even 3 mobile phones. And the trend continues: in Italy there are also more mobile phones than people: 120 phones per 100 Italians.

It would be interesting to know what kind of mobile phones people are using and how WAP 2.0 devices are distributed amongst the whole 83 million in Germany.

Source: http://www.rtl2.de