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Carnival 97

October 30, 2007 | Be the first to comment

If you follow the mobile market, you should check out the Carnival of the Mobilists. This week’s edition is hosted by VisionMobile.

Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market

This is Broken: October

October 29, 2007 | 1 Comment

PhoneFingers. You know you want them.

Welcome to Skydeck’s monthly roundup of all that’s broken in the cell phone market.

It’s been a bad month for Verizon, what with the Senate hearings, House investigations, and blogstorms about advertising. But they did accomplish something that no one had thought possible: they united both sides of the abortion debate.

The Consumerist highlights some details that you may have missed in your contract: AT&T charges you if the phone you’re calling rings for more than 30 seconds, even if the person you are calling never picks up. And Verizon charges you when their telemarketers call you.

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Posted by: Jason
Categories: ThisIsBroken, Featured

Sprint Will Start Unlocking Phones

October 26, 2007 | 1 Comment

Following a class-action lawsuit, Sprint Nextel has agreed to unlock customers’ phones at the end of their contracts and to activate non-Sprint phones on the network. This will allow consumers to take their handsets from one CDMA network to another. Sprint and Verizon Wireless are the big ones in the US, but Alltel, MetroPCS, and Leap have almost 20 million subscribers between them who are also affected by this — assuming the phone operates on the right frequency bands and that the new carrier agrees to activate the phone (MetroPCS and Leap definitely will).

If true, this is a big departure for Sprint, which had the most restrictions until now. But if Sprint agrees to activate any CDMA handset on its network going forward and Verizon Wireless continues to hold the line, Sprint could benefit from this change, in net adds and lower CPGA.

Data services may not work, but those looking for the cheapest option in the market won’t care that they can’t subscribe to VCast.

AP (link will expire) via Engadget.

Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market, Public Policy

Walt Mossberg Wants Unlocked Phones

October 21, 2007 | Be the first to comment

On the eve of CTIA, Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal and Mike Elgan in PC World both call for more unlocked phones.

Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market, Public Policy

Highlights from the Mobile 2.0 Event

October 17, 2007 | 1 Comment

My first Mobile 2.0 was an overall positive experience. Thank you Mobile Monday and The Open Group.

The organizers of the event, Daniel Appelquist, Mike Rowehl, Rudy de Waele and Peter Vesterbacka, did an excellent job of pulling together a veritable Who’s Who of mobile into an intimate, cohesive, and on-schedule performance. While the venue was standing room only, the approachable setting and laid-back atmosphere of the community allowed me to ‘do business’ while enjoying the whole experience: Productive business networking, a plethora of perspectives on the mobile industry, and the chance to see and meet (in person) the forces that are driving change in our market. For the price, it was a bargain.

Photo by: Rudy de Waele

A number of blogs have done a very nice job of producing a general summary of the event agenda. Instead of that, I’m going to focus on a few highlights and key take-aways, followed with some thoughts for next year’s conference and ideas for improvement.

Highlights:

• User Experience, Usability, and Design panel: “Get rid of the keypads”, Kelly Goto.
  Apple started it, but where does it end? Beyond the incorporation of a touch screen, what are all of the other ways that one can pass information to / from a device (sound, temperature, movement, pressure, distance, object angle, etc). Its time to re-visit this.

• Seams in User Interface: “Identify the seams in a product’s user experience. Where do they need to be? Where should they never be?”, Christian Lindholm
  This has nearly universal application in design, but is underrepresented in the practical application. How close to zero seams can/should a product be?

• The Equation to Go Viral = [Design panel says “If you want consumers to use something, it needs to be on-deck or viral”] + [Rich Wong from Accell Partners and other VCs say “Best investments today are off-deck”]
  The VCs hammered home one point. They believe the best investments are those that don’t rely solely on the carrier, and are off-deck. To make off-deck fly, you need viral, community support.

• Don’t think mobile apps. Think mobile web apps.
  Mobile applications are too difficult to build for the entire variety of existing (and future) devices. In many cases, they also need to be on-deck to fully function, creating an even bigger challenge. Improvements in mobile browsers will reduce these barriers, and offer access to the phones. Think iPhone.
  

• What would you remove today?
  • The distinction between SMS and MMS, Risto Lahdesmaki
  • The cost of data (please!), Christian Lindholm
  • Personal data management, add personal life management, Carlos Domingo
  • The keypad, Kelly Goto

• You can’t live with ‘em, you can’t live without ‘em: On the Emerging Technologies Panel “We need to embrace, not fight the carriers… Don’t fight their data rate plans”. On the VC side, “My goal is to work with people who want to deride the carriers” Voytek Siewierski
  For now, I vote with the VCs. Businesses behave rationally to protect their own interests, and those of their shareholders. The carriers are no different… as the next point shows.

• Sprint’s honest truth: “My company makes $11B in operating profits, and why would we want to share that with the people in this room! … If we started giving this away, our shareholders would have a problem with that… We don’t want to be a dumb pipe” Russ McGuire, Sprint (only major USA carrier that I saw in attendance)
  This shouldn’t be a surprise to any entrepreneur.

• Most interactive presentation: Kyte.tv: It was fast, fun, interactive, and easy to use. It also provided on-going entertainment, by broadcasting the attendees photos and videos in the background. Check it out.
  Kyte’s product is simple, easy to access, and available to use without a formal account. This is a competitive space, but their focus on simplicity will go far.

• One Click. We need to get consumers to a point where they have ‘one-click’ access on their mobile, to the things that they value… this requires an open platform.
  

• Open, open, open. Things are “so closed, people can’t even give failing a shot” Enrique Ortiz, eZee
  We agree, and so do the event’s organizers.

• VC conundrum: The VCs said, “the best investments are off deck… don’t build something that relies completely on the carriers”… but the investments they said they are looking for were quite carrier dependent, including “build an EVNO… Enterprise Virtual Network Operator… to disrupt and improve network offerings to enterprises”.
  Do major corporations really need a middle-man, between them and the carriers? Would the EVNO even work with smaller businesses? We’re skeptics.

• Show me the $. Should I get paid for giving companies (e.g., LinkedIN, Facebook, Google) access to my professional and social networks? Seriously. Someone has to feed the social network hubs.

• Tomi Ahonen kicked things off with flair, presence, and a top-hat. During his engaging keynote, he gave many interesting factoids regarding the advances of web and mobile in progressive Asian nations (e.g., S. Korea) . Two interesting nuggets were:
  • Almost every Korean under 30 is registered in the virtual community of Cyworld
  • Cell phones in Japan are able to translate text real-time via the camera and display it in the user’s language on their mobile device’s screen

• Just the Facts, Please. During his speech, Tomi’s voice over impressed the point that nearly half (44%) of the population of Japan or S. Korea (I can’t remember which) “regularly” or “actively” clicks on mobile ads. He went on to use this to support his arguments for mobile advertising.
  Fine, but the facts need to be true. The slide was that “44% of people have clicked on an interactive mobile ad”. This is VERY different from “actively” click.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, it was a very well organized one-day conference, peppered with industry specialists, and heavy on bloggers, who were oftentimes blogging out loud. It was savvy, down-to-earth, and light hearted, with high-level discussions covering the major topics of today. However, there were a few things that I think could improve the event for next year.

• There was a noticeable lack of hard data, real-life examples, or case-studies used by the speakers and panelists to support what they said or claimed, or to help ground the thoughts they were discussing. By adding these in, generated from their typically vast networks personal experience, it would help the audience to better understand and remember their messages. This thought was also voiced to me independently by two people I met at the event.

• The lobby, lunch, and coffee breaks were some of the highlights, because they helped the attendees address some of the biggest reasons they came: To network for business development, discuss their own ideas, and get feedback. The panels and moderators were well stocked, and did hold the attention of the audience. However, I could help but think… would people prefer to sit and listen for 8 hours, or interact? Maybe next time there could be a combination of the standard panel discussions & keynote speakers, with moderated small group sessions that report back to the group at large.

Posted by: Dan
Categories: Mobile Market

Open iPhone (take two)

October 17, 2007 | 1 Comment

Steve Jobs just announced on the Apple blog that Apple will release an SDK for the iPhone in February, subject to some form of digital signing scheme (like Symbian Signed).

We hope that this isn’t limited to dashboard widgets. We hope that all we have to do to get an application signed is to prove that it is not malicious or harmful to the network (as opposed to getting commercial approval from Apple and/or AT&T). Assuming this is the case, it’s another important step towards open access.

Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market, Phones

Do Barack Obama and Ron Paul supporters have cell phones?

October 15, 2007 | 3 Comments

Presidential primaries are drawing near and pollsters are dialing up homes from New York to Los Angeles to test which way the political wind is blowing. But who is picking up the phone?
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Posted by: Dan
Categories: Mobile Market, Featured

The iPhone for Smart People

October 13, 2007 | Be the first to comment

We saw the HTC poster outside a branch of Phones4Free on Baker Street in London. The iPhone is not yet for sale in the UK, so this is a case of getting your retaliation in first.

Nokia is more subtle.

Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market

Get Ready For More Advertising On Your Cell Phone

October 11, 2007 | 60 Comments

Two of us just received a notice from Verizon Wireless about CPNI. CPNI stands for Customer Proprietary Network Information: our call records, essentially. What numbers we called, how often, how long we spent on the phone, and how much it cost us. (It does not include our own names, numbers, or addresses.)

Verizon wants to share this data with third parties, and of course they need our permission: “you have a right, and we have a duty, under federal and state law, to protect the confidentiality of your CPNI.”

But that duty only goes so far: “Unless you provide us [Verizon Wireless] with notice that you wish to opt out within 30 days of receiving this letter, we will assume that you give the Verizon Companies the right to share your CPNI with the authorized companies as described above.”

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Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market, Public Policy, Featured

ocamljs, OCaml to Javascript compiler

October 11, 2007 | 5 Comments

It can be hard to go back to a conventional language once you’ve enjoyed the freedoms of typed functional programming. That’s why, when we needed to write some Javascript at Skydeck, our first inclination was to find some way around it. Javascript is not such a terrible language—it has higher-order functions at least—but we missed the safety of static type inference and OCaml’s expressive features like variant types and pattern matching. So instead of writing Javascript, we wrote ocamljs, a back end to the OCaml compiler that generates Javascript.

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Posted by: Jake
Categories: Programming, ocaml