PavingWays

Our hosting company (Schlund) informed us about the .mobi time frame:

Sunrise Phase 2 (Trademark Sunrise)
=================================
Start/End: 12 June - 22 September 2006
Duration: at least 2 years, after that yearly renewal

Landrush Phase (Live Registration with increased pricing)
=====================================
Start/End: 26 September - 10 October 2006
Deadline: 26 September 2006
Duration: at least 2 years, after that yearly renewal

Live Phase
==========
Deadline: 11 October 2006
Duration: at least 2 years, after that yearly renewal

For more information see our earlier post.

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

According to Telephia MapQuest Mobile (21.9 %) was the top revenue-generating downloadable mobile application in the first quarter of 2006. In second position came The Weather Channel (5.7 %) and in third the Verizon Superpages 2.0 (5.3 %). Two music applications, Music Choice and Sirius Music, rounded out the top five with revenue shares of 5 % and 4.8 %.

“Local maps/directions and up-to-date weather are well-suited to delivery via mobile phones because they are information needs characterized by immediacy, location-specificity, and time- sensitivity,” said Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President of New Products, Telephia. “Downloadable mobile applications present a significant opportunity for higher ARPU [Average Revenue Per User], with more than 3.3 million mobile consumers downloading these applications during the first quarter of the year.”

(Data does not include revenue for mobile TV and mobile game applications which is reported separately)

Another interesting fact is, that maps/directions applications drive repeat purchase revenue, while entertainment applications claim highest revenue share for first-time purchases:

Maps/Directions and Weather applications are leading in repeat purchases. In contrary, nearly 30 % of first-time purchase revenues were driven by the Entertainment category, with streaming music mobile applications, Music Choice and Sirius Music, securing the highest new purchase revenue share at nearly 9 % and 8 %.

Sources:
http://www.cellular-news.com
http://www.telephia.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

Last month I was sitting in the tube in London and saw an ad about ONSPEED Mobile. I have never heard about ONSPEED Mobile. So I was interested and started researching.

ONSPEED Mobile is a mobile web browser. There is a 14 day free trial, after that you have to pay £ 19.99 per year.
When you request web pages or images via the ONSPEED Mobile browser, it’s sent directly to ONSPEED’s servers where it is then reformated and compressed and then sent direct to your mobile phone. So, the website you visit is an optimised version for your mobile phone (sounds familiar?). The company promises to increase surfing speed by not less than (up to) 10 times and also to reduce the data traffic up to 75%.

The download size of the browser is less than 100KB, but your mobile phone must be Java enabled. You can check out if your mobile phone supports ONSPEED Mobile at http://www.onspeedmobile.com.
(more…)

There are many new mobile services appearing on the web almost everyday. Here on PavingWays we are trying to keep up to date and we will review selected services from time to time. We will start with tiggdo.com.

What is tiggdo?
On tiggdo.com you can create your personal phone’s homepage with services that provide information or news you require. Right now there are already a couple of services available, e.g. RSS feeds, maps, traffic reports, weather, stock quotes, job search etc. For all available services check out the about page on tiggdo.com
tiggdo.com is free to use and if you are an developer, you can ask the tiggdo team to add your service.
(more…)

Following our post about the dotMobi TLD, here are the rules of the dotMobi Switch On! Web Browsing Guides:

1. Mandatory Registrant Rules

- XHTML Mobile Profile
When a dotMobi web site is accessed using a URI consisting only of the second-level domain name or second and third level domain name (e.g. example.mobi, www.example.mobi, de.example.mobi) the response must be encoded in XHTML-MP (zipped .doc) unless the device accessing it is known to support an alternative choice of markup.
(more…)

“Last year, 56 per cent of multimedia phone owners used it to browse their operator’s portal, as opposed to 36 per cent in 2004. Yet those 56 per cent only browsed ‘at least once per month.’ That’s a massive missed opportunity. (source: http://pc.mtld.mobi)

The trend is clear – mobile browsing will increase.
(more…)

So, what is PavingWays? Frankly we’re not quite sure yet, but here’s a quick list of stuff that is probably going to appear on the this page, most probably on the blog section:

• anything that we find interesting about web applications on devices (mostly mobile ones)

Admittedly a short list, but it basically says what this is (going to be) all about.
What this precisely is or will be only time will tell. We know however that we are going to blog about anything, such as articles, press releases, tutorials and conferences in the field on mobile web applications. This can and probably will be divided into core and related technologies and topics, such as XHTML(-MP), CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, SVG and so on.

Devices and browsers themselves are also (going to be) a major topic of course, actually this will be one of the first things we will be looking at: We are planning to create sort of a collaborative mobile browser comparison chart, where we and hopefully a lot of contributors will be collecting their findings on how the many different browsers on the many devices out there are supporting the technologies that are important to us as web developers. We’ll be looking at stuff like AJAX support, but also more basic things, such as how CSS definitions are displayed (if they are at all) or even more basic if a given browser supports XHTML(-MP) at all.

We invite anybody who is interested in these things and especially in this first project of ours to join us and get in touch!

This is the new home of PavingWays - please stay tuned for new content, we’re already working on it.