Interesting statistic posted over at Mobile Analyst Watch stating that 2006 will not be the year of HSDPA (which I always screw up and call HSPDA for obvious reflex reasons).

It’s making me feel a little better about choosing EvDO. But I really want to see HSDPA take off since there is better international deployment of it. (Actually, does anyone know a non-US location with EVDO?)

Just some market research I came across regarding OTA music downloads. I can’t claim for or against their numbers, but there aren’t any poor assumptions in the report, so it’s as reasonable a guess as any.

JOURNAL NAME- Online Reporter
NUMBER 453
BOOK INFORMATION- Newsletter
PUBLICATION DATE- 2005-07-23
PP 11(1)
DOCUMENT TYPE- Brief Article
COPYRIGHT- COPYRIGHT 2005 Rider Research, Inc.
ISSN- 1364-7113
AVAILABILITY NOTE- THIS IS THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE- FULL TEXT
TARGET AUDIENCE- Trade
GEOGRAPHICAL AREA- United States

LEAD PARAGRAPH- Full-song downloads to mobile devices present one of the largest opportunities to help grow the wireless data industry, according to IDC. The market researcher expects full-track music downloads in the US to reach $1.2 billion in revenue by 2009, with more than 50 million mobile users doing the downloading. ; 258

Full-song downloads to mobile devices present one of the largest opportunities to help grow the wireless data industry, according to IDC. The market researcher expects full-track music downloads in the US to reach $1.2 billion in revenue by 2009, with more than 50 million mobile users doing the downloading.
Despite all the media “buzz” surrounding over-the-air (OTA) full-track mobile music downloads via 2.5G and 3G networks, the market is still in its infancy–and has yet to even launch in the US. Before it can take off and fulfill IDC’s expectations, the emerging wireless music market has to overcome a number of key challenges, including:

–The lack of available handsets and 3G networks

–Digital rights management (DRM) complexity

–Competition from incumbent services

–Business pricing models and practices

“IDC believes that online and wireless music services may represent the music industry’s best long-term prospects for reversing decline and promoting growth, and that these new services will ultimately be the future of recorded music distribution,” said Susan Kevorkian, a senior research analyst in IDC’s consumer markets practice.

Full-track downloads aren’t the only way the wireless industry will make money from music, however. According to IDC, the mobile operators have the opportunity to bundle a variety of other services with the full-length songs, and can also offer a number of ways to download and purchase the music. The bundles can include the likes of ringtones, ringback tones, music videos, concert alerts and song identification services. The operators can also not only a la carte downloads, but subscription services as well.

OK, I’m a little late to the party here, but I recently made my first Skype call from a mobile phone to a desktop and want to comment on the experience.

So the reason this little technology leap took so long for me, is that I’ve had T-Mobile since…. well… since they were Voicestream. I finally got sick of the reception and switched to Verizon after I couldn’t check my email for 80% of a recent trip around the Northeast.

I looked at Cingular - I want GSM for international use. But their 3G network is just not there yet. Verizon has coverage all over with EVDO, and I really wanted to know what ubiquitous high speed data would do to my mobile data use. So I decided to go with Verizon and just use a prepaid SIM with my Sidekick when I go international.

[Side note - I realized again how much I love the Sidekick on a recent trip to Taiwan. I was in a cab and wondering how much (or if at all) to tip. So I whipped out the phone, logged into AIM and asked a friend. It worked perfectly. Feeling so connected when so far away from home is where this personal tech really leaves its mark on me.]

So there I was with a Treo 700w and an unlimited EvDO plan, and I needed a first test. It had to be Skype.

I gave Brian a call on his desktop. It just worked. About a 1 second delay, like I get over DSL usually. No messing about. No Josh Wink “Higher State of Consciousness” pitch-invariant time stretch effect on his voice. Just Skype as I’m used to using it.

This is with 2/5 bars of signal.

After that, I went all out. Streaming 128kbps radio, Japanese TV, MSN Virtual Earth (like Google Local for S60, but works in Windows Mobile), and of course Bloglines reading.

So I’m late. But I’m happy. Who knows, I may switch over to Cingular if they pull their 3G plans together. I’m keeping my eyes peeled. From now on, whoever has the highest speed data with solid coverage gets my business - even if I have to break my contract. But my trusty prepaid Sidekick will always be there for my international adventures.

Is it me, or is there a burst of chatter about mobile advertising recently? I swear we started looking into it as a company before it became the hot topic du jour! Anyway, here’s some more things that have come our way:

First, I’m sure you’ve all seen Russ’ Post about AdMob. That had to come sooner or later. But it’s a good thing - we can certainly use them as an ad source for mobile apps instead of trying to figure out a way to do something like that ourselves, or relying more on subscription models.

Adding to the feasibility of that service is a statistic published in the Jan 16 New York Times:

Thomas J. Burgess, the chief executive of Third Screen, said his customers’ mobile ad budgets had risen from an average of $20,000 for a campaign a year ago to $150,000 to $250,000 today. He said the company had just signed its largest deal ever, a $1.6 million contract for a one-year campaign with an entertainment industry advertiser that he declined to name.

One reason for growing interest in cellphone ads, Mr. Burgess said, is the relatively high rate at which customers click on banner ads on mobile screens. The click-through rate is around 4 percent on phones, compared with 1 percent on the Internet, he said.

4 percent versus 1. That’s huge…. if it’s true. Though if you’re dealing with mobile pages with less content on them, the ad has a higher presence ratio than on the web. Plus, people haven’t programmed themselves to filter them out while reading a mobile page yet.

Last but not least is a post on PhoneScoop regarding video ads on your cellphone. The aim is possibly to reduce your subscription rate by subsidizing with ads. Not a bad thing IMHO as long as it’s not invasive. I don’t want “can you hear me now?” ads popping up in the middle of a call. But oddly enough, I wouldn’t mind Terry Tate doing so.

They also mention wanting to strive towards location-based ads integrating with this. Again, if not invasive, my privacy alarm doesn’t go off at all with this. Though my privacy alarm is a bit liberal for most people - as long as you don’t know when I’m in the bathroom, I’m probably cool with it.

So here we go into the new world of mobile ads. I never thought I’d say it, but I really feel like this is an enabling technology for smaller developers who want to make great applications for mobile devices and still get paid.

But am I the only one? Oliver Starr for one, is livid about it:

Great. Just what we want. Not only are advertisers excited about interrupting us via the most personal communications device we access, but proving that they know exactly where we are at the same time, thus violating our privacy too. What‚’s next? A sample of new ‚papier de toilette‚ while I‚’m in the loo at a restaurant? I can see it now - not only will they be tracking our every move, but street teams will be sent to physically follow the most demographically desirable ‚victims‚ to offer real time sampling of products that coincide with the travels of the poor fellows unlucky enough to be labled ‚PRIME CUSTOMERS‚.

Ouch. Yeah, that’s a totally valid way to look at it if it is executed poorly. I’m sticking to my guns though. Sure you’ll get the unscrupulous ad campaigns that try to be invasive. But customers are carriers’ lifeblood - so they have to keep them happy to a certain degree. All browsers have pop-up blockers now, and carriers will have to put similar safeguards in place to force ads to behave. It will be sorted out - really - I have faith.

Speaking of mobile advertising, here comes the Goog with tech(? maybe more like a non-original idea) that will let you dial an advertiser’s phone number with one click.

Google looking to patent single-click dialing for advertisers
By Colin Gibbs (from RCR)
Jan 11, 2006

ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Google Inc. is working to patent a wireless marketing method that would allow users to dial an advertiser’s phone number with a single click, according to a U.S. Patent & Trademark Office application published last week.
The document, which was cited last week on the blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by the Sea, outlines a mobile marketing strategy that delivers advertisements that include clickable phone numbers.

“The present invention concerns adapting an online ad environment to make ads more useful for devices with call functionality, and/or a limited ability to render Web pages in a manner more satisfying to a user‚, such as mobile phones for example,” according to the document. “When such an ad is selected (e.g., via a button click), instead of loading a document (e.g., Web page) for rendering, a telephone number associated with the ad by an advertiser is automatically dialed.”

A Google representative was not immediately available to comment.

The application highlights the increasingly cut-throat mobile search and marketing space, where more than a half dozen firms are seeking to gain a foothold. Internet giants America Online Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc., Google and Yahoo Inc. are lumbering onto the wireless playground, where smaller companies including 4INFO, Free411.com, InfoSpace Inc., Interchange Corp. and JumpTap Inc. are already fighting to be the carriers’-and the consumers’-provider of choice.

While many mobile search-and-marketing services are similar, several players are heading in different directions to establish a business model. InfoSpace hopes to generate revenues from every call a consumer makes using their offering, while JumpTap is looking to partner with carriers to replicate established Internet-search models similar to Google’s AdWords.

How Google’s proposed marketing method is worthy of a patent is unclear, however. Many text message search services already include links to phone numbers that users can dial with a single click.

I thought I’d share a little synopsis of a patent search on mobile advertising that we recently conducted. This is a pretty hot topic (or at least it will become one), since people consider their cell phones a temple of sorts - any spam or unwanted communications are looked at as a mortal sin. But at the same time, as we want to bring data services to mobile devices and find new ways of monetizing them, some form of advertising has to be considered - especially if we want to make them independent of carriers. Most of these are not issued patents, just PCT’s. So treat ‘em as prior art, kids.

I’ve included the patent titles and numbers here if you want to check them out on USPTO.gov.

Some of the patents we found were focused on trying to make the basic phone services cheaper for the consumer by incorporating advertising.

[2005045721/WO-A1 Service System and Mobile Communication Terminal For Free Using of Data Communication] wants to let you send free messages, and have adverts piggybacked on each one you send. The goal is to create a messaging service that is at least partly funded through ads rather than carrier fees.

Similarly, [20020085027/US-A1 Method for displaying advertisement using short message service in a portable mobile terminal] wants to make your calling rates cheaper by sending and storing ads on the phone via SMS. Those ads would be displayed before and during phone calls, etc.

[01477918/EP-A2 Advertising method using mobile terminal, mobile terminal advertising system and mobile terminal] Check out the abstract for this one: “A user displays the advertising contents on the display unit in the rear face and the like of the portable telephone in public places and the like so as to advertise the contents to a third party. The advertiser shares a part of the communication fee for compensating the user for displaying the advertisement.” They specify a “rear face”, which I guess means a screen facing away from your head when you talk. Sort of like a mini-billboard.

Anyone thinking about flash banner ads yet? If this doesn’t have flash ad written all over it, I don’t know what does:

[2005025252/WO-A2 Method and System for Distributing Data to Mobile Devices]

Embodiments of the invention are concerned with a method and a system for distributing mobile applications, in particular to aspects of receiving, processing and displaying advertisements on mobile terminals. In. one aspect, embodiments provide a data visualization method for use in visualizing data on a mobile terminal, the mobile terminal comprising a display area and being adapted to receive process data comprising an executable process, the method comprising the steps of: arranging for the mobile terminal to receive a visualization request from the process; arranging for the mobile terminal to select data in accordance with the visualization request; and arranging for the mobile terminal to perform a visualization process in which the selected data are displayed in the display area, in which execution of at least part of the executable process is paused until the visualization process has been completed. Thus with embodiments of the invention mobile terminals are configured to process an executable process which makes calls for data to be displayed to the user of the terminal. Preferably the data to be displayed are retrieved from a store of advertisement data, and are selected in dependence on a characteristic relating to preferences of the user. In at least one embodiment, the executable process is a game and the game is paused for the purposes of displaying these selected data when the game reaches a particular level. In another embodiment the executable process might be a news relaying application configured to retrieve and display news stories.

[2005101863/WO-A2 System and Method for the Distribution of Advertising and Associated Coupons Via Mobile Media Platforms] envisions the world being enhanced with bluetooth-sent coupons and offers. These would pop up on your mobile device while you are in the context of the coupon being sent.

Here are some patents incorporating location into advertising:

[2003005267/WO-A1 Method for Off-Line Matching Advertisement to Mobile Terminal Bearer Locating in Specific Area]

[20030115098/US-A1 Advertisement system and method] Gotta love that title.

Well there’s some more, but these were the most fun to write about. Please feel free to share ones that you’ve found as well.