OK, so the hysteria has somewhat calmed down. The reviewers are indeed mostly raving, but I can’t help being puzzled. The iPhone is supposed to change the industry, yet it uses yesterday’s technology.

1. EDGE is a different name for horrible browsing experience. The only equivalent I can think of is a scooter engine trying to pull a Rolls Royce.

2. Side-loading only? you mean I need to connect my phone to the PC again? wasn’t it all about mobility?

3. Camera without zooming? Are we back in 2003 and nobody told me?

Hats off the Apple and Jobs. Their marketing strategy belongs in the MBA hall of fame. I am sure the iPhone will be a great phone, eventually. Right now it’s a good looking iPod that gets you stuck with one mobile operator for 2 years.

      

Stuart O’brien reports that Groove Mobile is launching a direct D2C full track download service. The service will be based on the technology Groove has developed for SonyBMG and Vodafone UK will be the first to offer the service as a channel. Groove is busy recruiting additional labels and operator channels. From what I understand, Groove licenses the music and the operator agrees to put the service “on deck”, meaning that data charges will not be added to the full track purchase price.

This business model is significant in a number of ways.

From a user perspective the new service eliminates the hated hidden costs. As O’Brien reports, “Groove’s agreement with Vodafone means it can wrap the cost of the data up into the price of a £1.29 or £1.50 track, charged using premium SMS.” This is a key parameter; Evidence shows users won’t pay twice - for data and for content - it’s either one or the other.

The second significant factor is the fact Groove is moving up in value chain. From an enabler (Sprint, 3) to a service provider. In a perfect world, this is where companies like Groove should be - between the content provider and the operator, but as a service. This structure is key to user satisfaction, content richness and competitive pricing. Let’s hope other operators follow in the footsteps of Vodafone UK.

      

Ok, so the hot news are cooliing off and we all had a chance to check out Mobile YouTube by now. It’s time to call the Jury back in and get an interim verdict. My first impression of the service was awesome. It looked good, worked well on my 3G Nokia E61. Sure, the content is handpicked and handicapped, but it’s still a good start. The main issue I had with it was with the fact it’s still not working well on too many operators and devices.

Itay Gissin discussed Mobile YouTube in our HooQs blog this morning and tried to understand whether it’s just a mobile version of the “Internet YouTube” or the other way around - a new “YouTube approach” to mobile media.  His conclusion, with which I agree, is that it’s a bit of both.

Starting with the good news. The most refreshing element of the new service is that it is Internet based and operator independent. In other words, it gives on deck portals a well deserved kick in the butt:

“Good news - No client needed, just come and get it with any Internet 3G phone! That’s exactly what this industry needed for a long time - an Internet giant meaning business & leveraging the Web’s open model on the mobile industry. Most other Internet content players view the operators as the “plug number” in their broken revenue model, trying to sell OPC (Other People’s Content) in traditional content models, overlooking the end-consumer reluctance to pay premium for content mobility.“

These are indeed great news and such that will help drive the industry much faster. After all, everyone looks at Google and YouTube when it comes to taking risks these days. Operators have realized by now they need to channel Internet content and not reinvent it, and such a move from such a significant player definetely helps drive the point. There are a couple of hard core issues though.

The first one is availability. Mobile YouTube is streaming based, a decision that can be probably attributed to legal caution. The video files are transcoded to 3GP format which means no iPhone, Windows Mobile or Blackberry. Streaming video is not a trivial end user feature and is still dependent on operator practices, proper device configuration and overall device support. Sticking to streaming video means that roughly 2 out of 3 potential 3G users are out of the game, without them even understanding why. The 3GP format is less of an issue and I expect YouTube to cover those other formats soon enough.

The second issue is the content itself. On the Internet, YouTube is a key media website, fitting well in the rich user environment. On mobile, users need better reasons to enter, not to say stick to a mobile portal. Mobile video is a different experience than Internet video. It involves more difficult navigation and has a price tag associated with it. The secret sauce of a successful mobile portal is made up of easy access and versatile content - variable sources, credible news, mobile use cases and so forth. YouTube is a part of that, but cannot cover the basic need by itself. As Itay summarizes:

“When I am on my mobile, I normally have a minute. Maybe two. The only way I will choose to go on the internet is if I know I am 2-3 clicks away from something that will Hook me up, and will be unique & forward-worthy. For that to happen, content sources will have to be much more varied than a YouTube. A community system will have to be working for me - Scouring the web, fetching content, filtering it for mobile consumption, connecting me with peers’ content, and more.”

Couldn’t agree more.

      

Remember I promised that I would keep DeGardener clean from work stuff?

I lied.

The official HooQs blog is up. Take a look!  My latest post is about the LG Prada and the iPhone going head to head. Try getting it on your mobile and tell me what you think.

      

I spent the week in Monaco at MEM2007. From the personal perspective it was a very exciting show, after all, first time HOOQs was on display. From that perspective we had an excellent show - great feedback and lots of users and leads. We have work cut out for us, but the good news is that the market is HOT! The need for personalized, open, operator independent web to mobile services is all over the place and is welcomed by users, operators, content providers, analysts and bloggers.

MEM2007 is not really a classic exhibition, it’s more of a conference. Participation is nearly exclusive to industry insiders and the tracks, therefore, are very professional. To a start-up-ist, these represent rare opportunities to take a 30,000 feet view and collect some insights that extend beyond the daily challenges. My own personal climax was not a single industry lecture or panel, even though all were very interesting at their own merit. To me, the most insightful session was a focus group with 10 different teenagers. These young adults were gathered from different countries - Australia, England, France, Italy, Finland, Germany - and were all surveyed about their digital lives. Here is some of what they told us:

1. The key elements teenagers look for in their mobile phones is appearance. Then come ability to play music, quality of camera and feature richness. 

2. Nokia is the most popular handset brand. Out of the 10 participants, 5 had Nokias, 2 had Samsungs, 2 had LGs (Chocolate) and 1 had a Sony Ericsson. 7 out of 10 devices were 3G.

3. They don’t do mobile clients - only 1 participant ever downloaded a mobile application. A game. Used it a couple of times and ditched it.

4. Teenagers are smart shoppers. They don’t mind paying for Internet content, but hate buying stuff they can easily find for free. In other words, they will not buy songs for 3 Euros a pop. Contrary to popular belief, they buy a lot of CDs in addition to downloading free music. They know how to manage their music collection and how to get their favorite music on their mobile device.

5. On they other hand, all participants testified they would gladly buy new content if only they could find it easily. All participants agreed that the mobile operator portals are close to impossible to navigate through.

6. On top, the differences between operators and handsets make it impossible for users to share experiences. Not tracks or clips - pure information about where and how to find them!

7. They things they on their handsets are better Internet browsing and memory. They really don’t get why MP3 and Video enabled phones come with such little memory.

8. They don’t mind advertising if it makes content free. They are already used to online ant TV advertising, why object to mobile ads?

9. They all tried Google on their mobile and didn’t like it. The mobile experience does not provide anything close to the internet experience.

10. They don’t do MMS. All of them tried and all of them claim that “it doesn’t work”.

11. If they had to give up their TV, Mobile Phone or PC, 9 out of 10 would give up their TV (the only other answer was PC). None would let go of their mobile phone.

These young adults were not screaming in a vacuum. It was great to hear executives from operators presenting plans to further breakdown their walled gardens and push flat data rates. It seems like it’s only a question of price points now. This is music to the ears of user centric service providers. To me, however, getting the bartenders in front of our booth excited and HooQed was most rewarding than anything!

      

My day job has become my all-around-the-day job lately as you can tell from the lack of recent writing.  Well, the reason why is now out in beta!

HooQs is a user centric web to mobile service. You can search, create, save and share internet media with mobile phones.  Your personal media is aggregated in channels which we call HooQs. HooQs can be saved, managed, sent to mobile phones around the world and of course, enjoyed. Registration is optional, however as a user you get your own internet rich media portal tailored to your own personal taste.

Since the whole idea is to get personal, my own favorite HooQs at the moment are Paris Hilton in Jail, Vintage TV Commercials, Best of Monty Python and Computer Game Nostalgia.  My full HooQ board can be found here.

So get HooQed but be gentle, Beta means Beta! We do promise to do our best to continuously improve and personally I would more than welcome your feedback and comments! 

HooQs is best used on a 3G phone.

      

CTIA fueled some significant mobile news this week as Google, Nokia and Yahoo are about to crash helmets over the next mobile killer app.

Google has made a couple of significant steps this week. The more significant announcement came on Monday, as a strategic deal with LG was announced. Mike Evant reports that Google and LG will preinstall Google Maps, Gmail and Blogger on a wide variety of LG phones, making it a no brainer for carriers to ship and for users to try.

In addition, YouTube will be launching a mobile site as soon as the exclusivity period with Verizon Wireless expires. Unlike the Verizon version which is client based, the mobile YouTube will be WAP based. It will be interesting to see how YouTube deals with video streaming issues across different carriers, networks and devices. All in all a “two punch strategy”, Google for text and YouTube for video, could end up being very effective.

Nokia has not kept quiet. Unwired view is telling us about Nokia’s patent bound semantic visual search engine, screen shots and further explanation of the search process is provided. Katie Fehrenbacher speculates about the natural synergy with Nokia’s camera phones and if half the rumors are true, Google will soon have to go back to protecting home turf, at least when it comes to search innovation.

Yahoo has not kept silent and may very well be making the most concrete steps to date. The introduction of Mobile OneSearch is a promising mass market step, taking search to every internet enabled phone. Yahoo already offers Yahoo Go, the full blown Yahoo experience, to the high end, and together with OneSearch a comprehensive strategy seems to be forming. 

These seemingly little steps are very significant for a number of reasons. Such proactive steps by handset manufacturers and web titans take the carriers further out of the “next killer app” equation. In addition, these provide indication that search, rich content discovery and messaging are the areas where the leading players look for the next killer app. Search has never been carrier territory and carriers have struggled with putting together winning propositions around content. On the other hand carriers do make a lot of money from content and tons of money from messaging. The battle over who owns what asset is definitely not over, but this time, I believe, the space is mature enough to focus on the criteria for splitting the larger pie rather than fighting over who gets to burn it.

      

MacNN reports that “iPhone makes rare appearance at CTIA - Apple’s iPhone has surfaced in the public eye after a long absence”. Have we all gone insane? I mean, I wrote a poem about it but even that can be excused as a ‘momentary lapse of reason’ driven by the peer pressure that surrounds the digiworld we live in.

A few months passed and I thought we all kicked our hangovers by now. There are still open issues such as battery power, touch screen usability, price, quality of service (no one really knows) etc.

When you encounter a beautiful craft for the first time you tend to ignore the obvious impediments and focus on the romantic and the fantastic. That’s great. Then we should snap out. That is what separates the “men from the boys”. The responsible adult can get excited but also keep realistic.

I found this hilarious widget on apples website - the sasquatch news tracker. If you haven’t snapped out of it yet I this one is for you. Never miss a public appearance, a mysterious unveiling, a behind the scenes glimpse…ooooh

having said that…I still want one badly

      

GigaOM reports that Symbian is about to announce a significant upgrade to its operating system on Monday at CTIA. According to ABI Research, Symbian held a commanding 73% market share of the loosely defined Smart-phone market in 2006, resulting in about 50 Million shipments. 

Improvements include battery and memory management, camera and multimedia enhancements and the introduction of transparent and automatic roaming between WiFi and 3G. MobHappy brings the full details.

The upgrade is very significant for a number of reasons. Symbian is reaching out of the Smartphone niche. The multimedia boost, for example, is clearly a consumer focus. Push email and Voip are communication apps and not “business apps” anymore. Symbian is slowly but surely building an attractive and real consumer position, realizing that the higher end market would pay a little more for high quality feature phone.

The introduction of transparent WiFi - 3G roaming is even more significant. While full handset OEM support is needed, this has the potential of making operator independent mobile internet actually usable. Very few users actually bother with switching networks on an ongoing basis. Making the switch automatic would not only reduce costs for the end user, it would also break a wide open hole in the walled garden. And this does not only apply to browsing but to the very core - phone calls. Now, I don’t see Mobile VOIP going mainstream very soon, but I definitely see a gradual uptake, mostly by the cream of the crop from an operator point of view - the travelling professionals.  

How will Operators deal with this? Good question. So far everybody’s happy with the containment of Symbian devices as “Smartphones”. It makes it easy for everyone to avoid a clash. Some operators force vendors to take off the WiFi feature for now (Cingular and Nokia E62 for example). Some put a more constructive focus on upgrading their 3G networks. In any case, it’s all a prelude to the unavoidable reshuffle of the mobile universe.