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TELECOMS MARKET RESEARCH STUDIES
Mobile Data Services Markets 2008:
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Design Analysis Nokia WCDMA 2100 MHz Power Amplifier:
June 2008
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Future Mobile Handsets 2007:
November 2007
Mobile Advertising and Marketing:
October 2007
The MVNO Directory:
November 2007
Mobile Internet 2.0 - 2007:
June 2007
Directory of Mobile Network Operators:
May 2007
Strategies for Creating End-User Demand for Mobile Data Services
December 2006
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Home > Market Research > Mobile Content & Apps > Mobile Internet 2.0
Mobile Internet 2.0 notes that in January 2007 there were an estimated 2.7 billion mobile handsets in use around the world, of
which 1 billion were sold during 2006. This is more than three times the number of PCs, and
roughly double the number of fixed landlines in use. And most of these handsets have the
processing power of yesteryear’s PCs.
The wireless sector can no longer be discharged as merely a sub-segment of telecom or a
niche-channel to reach young geeks. It is a market all in its own, both in size and value, and any
service, product, company, brand or entity needs a strategy for its digital, mobile phone-based
presence.
Being absent from the mobile internet should be a conscientious choice, not one
made by neglect, as it might mean giving your competitors the most direct and personal
access to your customers, irregardless of who they are. The connected handset will become a
natural and convenient internet terminal in any situation, including at home. In addition, while
the PC has become an evermore generic appliance sold in supermarkets, the mobile phone is
an expression of one’s personality, a fashion statement, always connected and particularly
addictive, and it is in the pocket of basically every young, urban person around the world.
Berg Insight believes that as technical limitations on mobile terminals and networks dissipate,
user behaviours and business models will in all essential follow the same evolution path for the
mobile internet as they have in the fixed world. The Western mobile Internet user is also a heavy
user of the fixed Internet, shaping behaviour and expectations on services and interfaces.
However, mobile surfing is not a replacement activity for fixed access, but rather a
complementary channel with a different user experience and context.
When the dust settles after the current battle for small screen presence, the users will ultimately
care less whether their host is an internet brand player, a mobile operator or a media company,
as long as the service offers more. Berg Insight believes that the winners on the mobile web
arena will be the players that give the users what they have come to expect from the Internet, i.e.
browsing, e-mail, IM, media and networking, but in addition manage to exploit the inherit
differentiators of surfing-on-the-go - such as instantaneity, personalisation, location, efficiency
in presentation - into added service value, context sensitivity and a superior user experience.
Network operators still have the advantage of owning the relationship to the subscriber and
usually have their name on the first screen image the user sees when turning on the phone, but
Internet players with strong brands and communities to back them up are moving in on
consumers who are used to paying for access and services on different bills. The operators will
have to work hard and exploit their strengths cleverly to remain relevant and not become
faceless access providers with price as main differentiator.
Although Berg Insight believes that any operator trying to keep the mobile user from free
access to his or her favourite sites and applications will loose in the long run, portals will
continue to be relevant as aggregators of contents and services. Berg Insight also predicts that
as in the fixed domain, popular portals, search engines, browsers and communities will fuse to
leave a few mass-market launch pads for the mobile Internet.
One of the most profound impacts of the Internet is that of evolving the mass media consumer
into a peer-to-peer content producer with mobile phones transformed into life recorders,
always connected for immediate upload and distribution. Berg Insight recommends any
Internet player, fix as well as mobile, to consider in what ways its customers can be invited to be
creative and interactive. Any service provider should calculate with, and indeed enable, the
users to find unexpected and creative ways to use the tools provided.
Berg Insight believes that one of the most costly mistakes made by many operators is to set
business users as the first and primary target for technically advanced mobile services.
Today’s corporate mobile internet segment comprises a select elite, and by pricing and
packaging an attractive mass-market product for the corporate segment, the service providers
miss out on most of their potential customers. However, by avoiding the exclusive label and
presenting mobile Internet as the familiar internet on yet another terminal, the immediate
market swells to include Internet users of all ages who are also mobile subscribers, a
magnification by several factors. This does however dictate a shift towards user-friendly data
subscription plans, reasonably priced, non-geeky terminals and intuitive handling.
On the other hand, given the familiarity of Internet services, the addictiveness of
always-connectedness and the status of the portable phone as the personal terminal, there are
few valid excuses to not succeed in migrating the fixed Internet consumer community to
mobile. And the business market will in turn be a relatively effortless high-end dividend in a few
years when today’s youth enters the work market with deeply established mobile habits.
To the Web 2.0 generation, the business customers of tomorrow, mobile Internet is not a
conceptual and futuristic abstraction but an expected staple tool in the infrastructure of their
lives. These days, to not know and keep up with what happens on the mobile scene is an
oversight that no-one, basically irregardless of business, can afford.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Executive summary
1 Mobile web browsing
1.1 Where are we today?
1.1.1 Europe
1.1.2 Japan
1.1.3 Russia
1.1.4 United States
1.2 How to overcome the physical limitations
1.2.1 Creating a web fit for mobile phones: the .mobi domain
1.2.2 Fitting the web into the phone: mobile browsers
1.2.3 Making the web intelligent and adaptable: rich applications
1.3 Mobile search and contents discovery
1.4 Portals: updated or outdated?
1.4.1 Walled garden
1.4.2 Managed gardens and open access portals
1.4.3 Pricing models
1.5 Interactive mobile broadcasting
1.5.1 Technical solutions
1.5.2 Success factors
1.5.3 Examples of services
2 Social networking and user-generated content
2.1 Online community sites - a phenomenon
2.2 Mobile communities - how to make them appealing
2.2.1 Ready-made contents
2.2.2 DIY tools
2.2.3 A sense of competition
2.2.4 Room for creativity
2.3 How to make money from it
2.3.1 Profit sharing with users
2.3.2 Targeted marketing and services
2.3.3 Subscription fees........
2.4 The role of the mobile operator
2.5 Experiences from existing community sites
2.5.1 Revenue shared video sharing: SeeMeTV
2.5.2 Device independent video sharing: Moblr
2.5.3 Ad-based video sharing: Pandora TV
2.5.4 Contents sharing as a marketing channel: Itsmy.com
2.5.5 Social network as a campaign platform: Verizon Wireless "Calling all Bands"
2.5.6 Personal convergent portal: au My Page
2.5.7 Social networking unsuccessfully ported to mobile: MySpace on Helio
2.5.8 Social networking successfully extended to mobile: mixi
2.5.9 Pervasive social networking: Cyworld
3 Mobile e-mail
3.1 Where are we today?
3.2 Different solutions: finding the perfect fit
3.2.1 Nomadic vs. mobile access
3.2.2 Mobile-based e-mail vs. fixed with mobile access
3.2.3 Push vs. pull
3.2.4 Voice-mails
3.2.5 Personalisation
3.2.6 Synchronisation
3.3 Recommendations
3.3.1 E-mail is a core service
3.3.2 Flexibility is key for a segmented market
3.3.3 Pricing should reflect willingness to pay
3.3.4 Value proposition to PC users: here, now, simple and attractive
3.3.5 Consumer segment: Smart, selective delivery essential
3.4 Overview of some widely deployed solutions
3.4.1 Research in Motion
3.4.2 Visto
3.4.3 SEVEN
3.4.4 The Good Technology
3.4.5 Microsoft
3.4.6 Nokia
4 Instant messaging
4.1 A truly novel Internet service
4.1.1 User profile and behaviour
4.1.2 Market overview
4.1.3 Interoperability
4.2 Making IM mobile
4.2.1 Technical challenges
4.2.2 Different approaches
4.2.3 Market overview
4.3 Mobile operator strategies
4.3.1 Threat: Brand value
4.3.2 Threat: VoIP
4.3.3 Weakness: Inter-operability
4.3.4 Weakness: Service ergonomics
4.3.5 Strength: Presence
4.3.6 Opportunity: Localization
4.3.7 Opportunity: Business
4.4 Some current players and their strategies
4.4.1 Verizon Wireless offers multi-service IM client
4.4.2 LG released first ever IM phone but received little interest
4.4.3 Helio includes instant messaging in service plans and phones
4.4.4 3 UK: experiencing a mobile IM boom
4.4.5 Ten gives free and unlimited messaging with all phones
4.4.6 Berggi sells subscription based IM client for dumb mobiles
4.4.7 Yak On, independent IM client for Blackberry handsets
4.4.8 Nimbuzz, IM mobile and mobile VoIP
5 Industry player strategies
5.1 Sprint Nextel: Provider of mobile broadband access
5.2 KDDI: Focusing on portal-based services
5.3 BT: Convergent broadband via the fixed network
5.4 KTF: Letting the subscribers choose Internet brand
5.5 3 UK: From walled garden to flat-fee web access
5.6 Helio: Multimedia MVNO
5.7 Bell Canada: Different Internet portals for different target groups
5.8 SKT: A multitude of specialized mobile portals
5.9 Orange: Mobile broadcasting lured weary subscribers to data
5.10 Blyk: Free services in exchange for ad ogling and customer profiling
5.11 Samsung: Developing Internet brand phones
5.12 Yahoo and Google: Three types of partners
6 Conclusions and recommendations
Glossary
Index
List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Mobile Internet access pricing examples in Europe
Figure 1.2: Top US mobile websites (June 2006)
Figure 1.3: Default mini-browsers used by major handset vendors
Figure 1.4: Examples of user-installable mini-browsers
Figure 1.5: Most popular mobile Internet site categories by country
Figure 1.6: Mobile Internet pricing structure examples
Figure 1.7: NTT DoCoMo’s i-channel services
Figure 1.8: Structure of the NTT DoCoMo i-channel services
Figure 2.1: Comparison of community site and traditional web site usage
Figure 2.2: MySpace on Helio Ocean handset
Figure 3.1: Overview of corporate push e-mail solutions
Figure 3.2: Blackberry devices for Vodafone Germany and Orange France
Figure 3.3: Overview of Microsoft Direct Push Mail Service
Figure 4.1: Verizon Wireless Messaging Packages
Figure 4.2: Buddy Beacon and Google Maps on Helio handsets
Figure 6.1: Orange UK mobile Internet tariffs vs. 3 UK and T-Mobile UK
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