One of the panels at this morning’s Summit At Stanford 2010 was “Mobile Monetization - Billions for the Taking.” Speakers were Sunil Verma from Mobclix (ad exchange system on mobile), Anderson Thees from Apontador (LBS leader in Brazil) and Bill Diotte from BroadHop (“air traffic controller for networks”).

Here are our takeaways from the session…

First postulate: it’s a good time to enter the mobile industry because there are a lot of changes in the ecosystem, and, consequently, opportunities. The carriers and service providers lost the first smartphone battle, as Apple and Google are playing by their own rules on their platforms. The good thing is that carriers need to monetize their assets and need partners to optimize them: smart startups are welcome. Also, there is a gap between mobile app and carrier that a startup can fit into: better integration means better user experience, and so, better monetization.

On the developer side, little money is needed to build an app and deliver it to the world: innovation will soon follow as more and more developers are able to launch their apps. Developers need to think about cross-platform development (Blackberry is still number one in the U.S. smartphone segment) as the incremental cost is affordable and can bring nice surprises.

The mobile world is discovering more and more revenue-stream possibilities: freemium and virtual goods, for example. Furthermore, transaction costs are becoming lower (still high though; think about the 30% on the App Store), and micro transactions are now possible. Still, the utility base per use model is missing — it is not yet technically possible because of the network infrastructure.

Anderson Thees from Apontador gave a quick international overview: Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) erosion is huge in emerging countries, but the cost for acquiring customers is still high, so free apps and content is very important for a service provider to attract new users.

Regarding Brazil: mobile data there is still very expensive, so paying for mobile apps is not common — you have to provide a real added value. Anderson noted that Apple’s model is a closed garden, but it’s an alternative to something that is not working in Brazil. As soon as emerging countries have relevant 3G/4G networks, the competition will intensify regarding international competition, both from and to developed countries.

Image via Wikipedia

Until now, the smartphone market has been divided between the main operators, the most blatant example being the agreement between Apple and AT&T. Each brand has its own app ecosystem. More than 300,000 applications will be accessible in the Apple App Store by the end of 2010, and between 50,000 and 75,000 applications will be provided in the Android Market.

Applications are the symbol of the smartphone, but also one of its main values.

For brands that have invested in the mobile app market or want to do so, the breakup of market forces has caused them to multiply applications across platforms. Strategically speaking, smartphones’ individual OS’s maintain control over the attractive and steadily growing market by forcing developers to adapt to a new format for each ecosystem and seeking the consent of the OS owner before an app can hit the market. Apple, Google, Blackberry and Nokia are engaged in a format war that forgets the consumer and constrains brands.

Continue Reading »

While m-commerce is growing, the biggest turn-off to potential customers is poor site design, according to Compete’s quarterly Smartphone Intelligence survey.

Thirty-seven percent of smartphone users have purchased something non-mobile in the last six months. The major obstacle to upping this number is that many sites are broken.

Eight percent of customers who tried to make a mobile purchase were unable to do so. That’s almost one-in-ten potential purchases failing at POS.

Continue Reading »

iPhone sales have doubled during the year and the Apple smartphone has reached 30 percent market share, according to an In-Stat report based on a survey of 4,255 U.S. smartphone users.

iPhone sales have doubled this year, rising from 13.7 million to 24 million in 2009.

At the same time, the smartphone market as a whole doubled, according to the survey, which reports that 39 percent of people polled owned a smartphone.

The competition between Apple and Research in Motion, makers of BlackBerry, is not as sexy as the one between Windows and Macs, but the iPhone continues to cut into Blackberry’s market share, which has fallen to 40 percent, its lowest in two years.

Continue Reading »

Mobile sales dropped in Q1 2009, but smartphone sales surged, according to research firm Gartner.

Global mobile sales dropped 14.5 percent to 269 million units between 2008’s fourth quarter and the first of 2009. Year-over-year sales were down 8.6 percent.

“There were some signs of a recovery in markets such as North America and China, but overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since Gartner began monitoring the market on a quarterly basis in 2001,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner.

Continue Reading »

We know about President Obama’s Blackberry, that he’s the first president 2.0, and there’s great hope he represents a new, greater relationship between the White House and technology. But we’re surprised that tech stories have played such a predominant part in coverage of Obama’s inauguration.

The most visible stories have been about websites receiving record numbers of visitors, with CNN streaming an astounding 18.8 million videos. Akamai says that the inauguration was its 5th most-watched event since it started tracking them in 2005. Akamai also noted a 54 percent hike in worldwide Internet traffic during the inauguration, 60 percent in North America.

Continue Reading »

The third documented mobile phone to make use of Google’s Android operating system will soon be released by Kogan Technologies. Reports in on last Thursday have images of a Blackberry-like configuration with a slick touchscreen and QWERTY-keyboard front, and the oversized analog clock familiar to the Android desktop.

The Australian-owned company is a relatively small consumer electronics maker in Melbourne that also produces LCD televisions, monitors and high-definition cameras, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The company created its first mobile phones based on requests from Kogan customers, and they are being custom made in China. Founder Ruslan Kogan claims that the phones are “very affordable, but feature-packed.”

Continue Reading »

While smartphones are increasingly becoming cost-efficient options for replacing PCs, and while Blackberry and Apple have made the smartphone a lifestyle, competitors are seeing diminishing returns during the recession.

There seems to be a peeling away of the chaff during these tough times. Gartner’s new report focuses on the declining growth of smartphone sales, but their research makes something apparent: iPhones and Blackberries are selling just fine. In fact, sales are surging.

It’s their competitors who are seeing the decline. While overall sales are up this year, they have fallen off earlier 2008 trends. The difference in growth/decline is astounding: Apple is up 327.5 percent, Research in Motion, makers of Blackberry, is up 81.7 percent, and HTC is up 25.9 percent from 2007.

Continue Reading »

Jeff Ventura, spokesperson for the Chief Administrative Office, has a simple reason why the Apple iPhone could someday be the official phone of Congress. He says, “a lot of people want the option to have them.” The CAO, which oversees the communications systems for the House, has begun testing a small number of iPhones within its ranks to see if they are compatible with the working needs of lawmakers and staff. The popular device is famous for its intuitive and pleasurable interface but is still criticized for its touch-screen keyboard and slow data connection.

The CAO will decide whether or not to give members the option of using the phones by this January. Most in the house will probably stay with the nearly 8,200 BlackBerry devices being actively used. If they do decide to switch to the iPhone, they will have to pay for it from the Member’s Representational Allowance. If the expense is determined to be predominantly official, then it may even be reimbursed.

Continue Reading »

Blackberry releases soon its first touchscreen phone, Storm, which should please corporate CrackBerryheads as well as a more consumer market.

Storm is one of the first phones to use haptic technology to make the touchscreen more tactile. “RIM has listened to users who find the iPhone’s glass screen awkward to type on because its virtual buttons provide no tactile feedback. The Storm’s whole screen is backed by springs, and when pressed, it gives under the finger,” said the Associated Press.

Storm has better GPS than the iPhone, but no Wi-Fi. Its camera is also better than iPhone’s, but the multimedia screen is a little smaller at 3.25 inches. You can read and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files, as well as cut and past between programs, even when using the speakerphone. The phone has one gigabyte of memory, and is expandable to 16GBs with microSD cards. The battery provides six hours of talk time, fifteen hours of standby time.

Continue Reading »