Mobile Point View by Paul Ruppert

Carnival of the Mobilists #135: Olympics of the Mobilists !

Greetings fellow Mobilistas and welcome to Mobile Point View for this week's Carnival of the Mobilists, the 135th of the weekly series. 

I'm pleased to have the Carnival of the Mobilists stop by for it's fourth visit since I started blogging a year ago, Welcome to new and old visitors. It is starting to feel like family is visiting, short enough to make it interesting, not too long to make it a drag, especially on short notice! 

Being on the cusp of the Beijing Olympics  "things" are a little summer slow so lets try to jazz it up with some scintilating mobile subjects. You be the judge of this week's gathering. 

Stepping first into the sand pit and volleying into what's closest to my fan base---SMS messaging. C. Enrique Ortiz at About Mobility in "SMS 5 year Outlook"reviews a recent research study by ABI Research, which projects that SMS specifically will capture 83% of all mobile messaging revenues through 2013. He power spikes recent web commentary on the not surprising once and future Emperor of messaging--SMS.              

Coming off a week of fundraising for his new venture, Justin Oberman at MoPocket, in "Get Pulled Over without a headset?" provides proof positive of local state constabulary pulling over handsfree violators, and has found a vendor providing gratis hands-free headsets to those caught in the police dragnet.

Barbarba Ballard at Little Spring Design asks: "So what does 'full web browser' mean anyways?" Asserting that if every last bit of the standard is 100% supported, what can one expect with "trigger scripts"  and whether touch functionality, e.g. iPhone, is forging new assumptions for mobile web developers.

Dame Judy Breck of Goldenswamp, in "On line R U really Reading?" triple jumps into the debate on whether adoloescents--and presumably others--are really "reading" while on line or whether the network of ideas and knowledge on mobile web is actually something much more.

Chetan Sharma, at Always on Real-Time Access in "Revisiting 2008 Predictions" hurdles a mid-year review of his survey of 2008 predictions by mobile insiders. Head on over to AoRTA and see which has the highest probability based on the wisdom of this select mob. BTW--also check out Chetan's book, "Mobile Advertising: Supercharge your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market" which is the best in class covering the mobile advertising and marketing segment

Over at Mobile Messaging 2.0 (where I've recently been tapped to be to be the Managing Editor), new contributor Tarek Abu-Esber in "Moblogging 2.0?" covers the convergence of blogging & mobile and how two companies, Spinvox and Moblog are leading the charge.

Vision Mobile via Venessa Measom, sprints across the tape with the relaease of Vision Mobile's  Industry Atlas wall chart which is a who’s who in the mobile handset industry. Quite informative overview of handset design, hardware, software, SIMS, content and services.

Making the turn to more technical events, Malcolm Lithgow at SmartDreaming in "Usability Comparo: Nokia 6220 Classic vs Sony Ericsson G700/G900" compares and contrasts S60 (as found on the Nokia 6220 Classic) vs. UIQ 3 (as on the G700/G900 twins) from a usability perspective.  Supposedly the Nokia's ('fantastic') feature set contains serious flaws that undermine its superiority, and S60 and UIQ 3 have numerous differences.

Ajit Jaokar at Open Gardens in "E-28 off the shelf hardware running Android" covers the impact of open source and Android platforms on handset vendors, which is a follow up to an earlier post challenging the comparison of mobile ecosystems and operating systems.

And finishing strong at the turn, Ofir Leitner, at NextGenMoco, in "Battle of the Mobile Platform" provides a cautionary developer's tale on the recent shift in emphasis in developing to new platforms such as Android--see above--and the peril in abandoning developing for more established platforms such as J2ME. Couldn't agree more with his simple premise on a complex topic...and by looks of the many comments he's touched a hot nerve in the mobile developers' sphere.

That crosses the tape and it looks like everyone is heading home after this week's CoM. Don't forget to visit the show when CoM # 136 convenes next week at Allabout iPhone.  And about women's volley ball--I lived in Beijing across from Chaoyang Park in 2005. Chaoyang Park is the Olympics Volley ball venue. Wish I could be there for the next two weeks--as does my 12 yr old son whose hormones have kicked in this summer--that's his choice pic for this week. OVer the next two weeks, put down that phone and pick up a flat screen and watch out for China's Chen Xue of the women's BVB team. 19 yrs old, 6'3" of lithesome power with an over the net killer spike. A sleeper who will emerge at the Olympics especially if she medals. Thanks for the visit!!

 

Carnival of the Mobilists # 118 is here!

This week's 118th edition of Carnival of the Mobilists is dealt to Mobile Point View, on the heels of CTIA from Las Vegas. I'm pleased to host this week's gathering of all those--including yours truly--emerging from the haze of a week of playing, partying, partaking, praying for, and prestidigitating mobile deals at CTIA in Las Vegas.

The mobile world divinied inspiration while surviving the neon campfire of the Vegas strip with elements of rankings, checking, betting, calling, folding, flirting, raising, and bluffing all while still on the show floor. So follow the dealer playas,  Live from Vegas baby, it's COM #118!

This was my all in bet to have the best hand of CTIA coverage in the mobile world, and my wager has payed off with no fixed limit raises from those contributors who attended CTIA and those who didn't. Thanks to all who contribute to CoM 118 here at Mobilepointview.

Dealer opens with the door card dealt to Jamie Wells at Mobilestance.com, which presents the CITA winners of "The Swaggies" - their clever homage to those unimportant conference freebies and neglected art form of awareness artistry, which inevitably decorates corporate cubicles and children's bedrooms spanning the globe.  [BTW, my best swag scores at CTIA: an iPod nano from Telcordia and DVD boxed set of Ocean's 11,12, & 13 from Nokia. Mucho gracias!]   Great idea Jamie, score some sponsors and make this a regular event for all the major conferences...Jamie, you recieve my recognition as the The Ace of Diamonds submission for this week's CoM for the most innovative take on the common place at a cellular convention.

Chetan Sharma of Always on Real Time Access AORTA shows a gut shot straight with his "CTIA Roundup" covering Mobile's implied odds against any downturn in the economy and covering practically every facet of the industry at CTIA. And, if you haven't read it, join the crowd and get Chetan's new book, "Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market." Even for insider readers it is clearly the best overview and most current coverage of the mobile advertising opportunity.

The dealer's choice is at Mobile Messaging 2.0 where there's video from Airwide Solution's media event covering Mobile Advertising. Your's truly, Paul Ruppert leads a round table discussion on mobile social networking with additional contributions from Tullio Siragusa of M3Mob, Simeon Coney of Adaptive Mobile and John Puterbaugh of Nellymoser.

Nellymoser's same John Puterbaugh flips the flop card at Mobile 2.0 and Emerging Mobile Media  Services in his "Between a place and some location", where he provides a great analysis of what constitutes same same within a mobile context--plus he graciously mentioned me in his post--Tip of the hat thanks, John.

GoMo News submits a video interview of Evryx Technologies VP of Marketing Dan Dato from GoMo's CTIA News on Wheels. Evryx' SnapNow solution was a finalist in the CTIA Emerging Technology competition--it enables your mobile phone's camera to link to the mobile internet via a click of the shutter. I saw the solution in practice: A) it works  B) pretty kewl.

With the river card, in "SMS Globalization & Growth",  (moi) Paul Ruppert interviews Sybase 365 CEO Marty Beard here at Mobile Point View. In this podcast conversation Marty covers the importance of Sybase 365 in the mobile messaging value chain, including routing over 10 billion SMS per month through the Sybase365 network, Sybase365's foray into mobile banking and commerce, plus Sybase365's innovation R&D in text messaging.

From off the casino floor, come the non-CTIA related posts, including Mike Mace at Mobile Opportunity, who covers research out takes from Rubicon's survey of iPhone users like the date bait factor and where people carry the iPhone in "Some other things you didn't know about the iPhone."

Tomi Ahonen from the Communities Dominate Blog, in Mobile advertising evolving: User-distributed ads, User-created ads, User-priced ads, addresses the obstacles, realities and opportunities of user generated, created and priced mobile advertising.

Vero Pepperrell, Community Gal at Taptology, provides "20 Great Resources for Designers & Developers of Websites", providing a laundry list of valuable touch points for developers seeking both the science and the art behind mobile website design.

Andrew Grill of the eponymic Andrewgrill.com in "Location Based Services Applications Round up & Review", throws a scare card in his review of location based social network applications and examines location enabled mobile applications appearing this year - could this be the long awaited start of mainstream location based services?

Barbara Ballard of Little Springs Design, specializes in the tell (user behavior in poker or mobile) with The Future of Content Adaptation regarding mobile sites. Long tail, money and the semantic web all have parts to play in her hand, so check out her contribution to the pot. 

C. Enrique Ortiz raising the eponymic sites to #2, cenriqueortiz.com, in "Phone Program helps break Communication Barriers"--CEO relays the value and power of Edioma's Edigo software, a telephone translator service which targets the needs of Spanish speakers who require instant translator services, available through their mobiles. 

Ajit Jaokar writes how "Personalization is not a substitute for critical Mass" at Opengardensblog. Ajit takes up the contrarian view against the buzz of pesonalization in mobile versus the ease of monitization power in critical mass. Spot on Ajit.

Dennis Bournique of Wapreview.com in "WIND Italy - Great Deal for Travelers" breaks down his experience as a pre-paid SIM user on WIND during his trip to Italy last week (D, sounds like you fell into the right portal at the Venetian in Vegas)

Ray at Money Blue Book, under the category of frugal tech, covers how you can shave your cell phone costs in "Employee & Student Discounts for your Cell Phone Service."  After a week of opulent illusion in Las Vegas, we all need to be a little frugal with our airtime. And at the wire, Alfie Dennen at Alfie's Blog covers 118118's Ask Anything Service posited against Textperts in the UK.

Don't forget to leave a Toke (tip) in the form of a subscription or a link for the dealer as you depart the gaming area.

And...seems like the group Zanex is wearing off, so let's call this a wrap from CTIA in Las Vegas & CoM #118. Thanks for visiting MobilePointView. Debi Jones at Mobilejones.com hosts next week's CoM #119. Send your submissions for next week's CoM to: mobilists at gmail dot com.

Carnival of the Mobilists # 105

Mobile Point View welcomes all the Mobilists spanning the globe to 2008's first Carnival of the Mobilists!

The last visit by the Carnival of the Mobilists to Mobile Point View was back in the heat of August when everyone was either cuttin' or catchin' waves. Like the fresh renewal of a New Year our contributors are boldly embracing topics of the mobile-sphere. The coverage is all over the mobile map--not surprising-since most of the world has been at rest the past fortnight with no hot buzz going. So like they do in Finland jump into the ice water, then get warmed up with the topics of the week. As host let me first toast all those who've contributed this week with a quick shot glass of Maotai , GANBEI, through my own submission...Mt. Everest Calling.

Being the first post of the year, I knew somebody was going to lead with predictions, and the starter is Rudy De Waele at M-Trends.Org who goes out on a limb in Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008. Admirably, Rudy encourages you to check out his prognostication powers and look at his 2007 predictions as well. Pretty sound analysis of the probable trends this year from my point view--although I think he missed one, which I'll address in a later post this week with my own predictions at Mobile Messaaging 2.0.

Chetan Sharma at Always on Real-Time Access takes on the same task in Mobile Industry Predictions 2008. Chetan's twist is that he surveyed his consulting clients to compile their perspectives in framing his views--very clever delegation of duties there, mate. Now class, let's compare and contrast Rudy's and Chetan's perspectives.... 

Martin Sauter of Mobile Society in Let's Prepare for 3GSM / Mobile World Congress, provides a practical initiative in preparation for the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. He's opened a Wiki to share information about events and parties (always critically needed), job offers, apartments, etc. Great idea Martin, I've already posted an event I'm hosting introducing the "Mobile Barometer." If you contributed to the CoM last year and are going to Barcelona, this is the place to set up those meet and greet meetings. See you there!

Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity declares his choice for the Mobile Device of 2007. Taking a partially contrarian view he outlines his criteria for the best mobile device and determines it to be....Check it out for the surprising cliff hanger conclusion.

John Puterbaugh of Nellymoser addresses the buzztopic of last year, social networks and mobility in Mobile 2.0 - The Social Web meets Mobility by shaking the foundation of Mobile 2.0 by boldly proposing his own definition of Mobile 2.0 in the context of Actant Networks, a thorough argument shfting the focus and purpose of Mobile 2.0.

Judy Breck of GoldenSwamp shows off her new and improved site, very kewl--love the bubbles, with A Phone with a Browser is Knowledge in My Pocket, covering the seemingly lost opportunity for educators to WAKE UP, smell the mobile browser effect brewing and embrace the educational power of the mobile phone in their students' pockets.

C. Enrique Ortiz provides a short wrap up of Mobile Payments News Stories of 2007. Having myself just completed a consultancy for a company centered on mobile transactions, CEO recognizes that 2008 will be time for traction in transactions and I agree.

Ajit Jaokar of OpenGardens debates Open Source vs Open Standards-Complementing or Competing?, a bits and bytes approach on how to address these issues. Way over the horizon for this commercially focused guy, but nonetheless interesting. Guest blogger, Frederik Ademar, at Vision Mobile Forum, explains how proxies are making an increasingly important contribution to the mobile web in Boosting Internet in Mobile - The Return of the Browser Proxies. Clearly the heady-ist contributions of the week.

Russell Shaw at Mobile Messaging 2.0, covers off the balance between personal liberties while texting balanced by the risk of your behavior against community safety in his "New Washington State Texting While Driving Law Strikes the Right Balance". Staying with the role of policy makers impacting mobile, Ben Whitaker of Masabists in "Did the NSA put a back door in our mobile security?" explains why we need to be aware of mobile key security and its potential threats by "big brother" as well as "little brothers" lurking outhere.

James Cooper of mjelly feels Ringtones have finally gotten sufficiently settled in the culture to issue the Top 10 Ring Tones of All Time. I'm shocked to find James excluded my ringtone, The Man from UNCLE theme, from his list. Jarkko Aho of BrandMobilePhones.com takes on Nokia for their subtle subordination of their own core brand message in Nokia No More Connecting People. Continuing with the Nokie theme, Tom Hanna at TamS 60 relays why it is irrelevant that Nokia's NGage platform is late to market in Nokia NGage Delayed-Why it Doesn't Matter

Andrew Grill explains why It's Not Just Privacy Concerns Preventing Mobile Advertising from Taking Off, addressing the convergence of LBS, advertising and Zone Detection in mobile phones.

Wow, no dearth of topics for the auspicious date of 1-7-08. Double 8's!! Best wishes for renewal and prosperity in 2008 and for visiting Mobile Point View. 

Next week's CoM # 106 will be hosted by Xen Mendelsohn, whose insight of the mobile avatar sparkles, at Xellular Identify, http://www.xellular.net/. Visit her on the 14th. You can also post to CoM by sending your contribution to mobilists at googlemail dot com.

Visit again soon or subscribe to Mobile Point View.

Mobile Social Networking & Ancient Talking Cultures

Oral is the core of Communications

The New York Times reported on Dec. 2nd on how the collective buzz of profile-surfing, messaging and “friending,”  which drives social networking services, seems to be tapping into our "ancient" forms of oral communication.

"The growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Second Life has thrust many of us into a new world where we make “friends” with people we barely know, scrawl messages on each other’s walls and project our identities using totem-like visual symbols. “Orality is the base of all human experience,” says Lance Strate, a communications professor at Fordham University and devoted MySpace user. He says he is convinced that the popularity of social networks stems from their appeal to deep-seated, prehistoric patterns of human communication. “We evolved with speech,” he says. “We didn’t evolve with writing.”

Talking is the "New Black"

Clearly there are common parallels between online social networks and tribal societies. In the collective behavior of profile surfing, messaging, establishing and posting friends ("friending") there is a new assertion of old communicating styles and patterns. The argument is that social networks now fueled by the internet have arisen from the desire to express oneself in a more "talking" format than "writing." Blogs, comments, UGC video and the one liners they fuel via channels such as Twitter and Facebook are the new "talking."

I believe mobile communications are the ultimate access point for communications between humans, and these findings just fuel the argument that eventually mobile messaging and mobile voice are going to be both access points and channel for the social networking portals. That is where the industry will be migrating.

Flat Cloud Archietecture

The power of a short, asynchronous “snack” length communication has made text the dominant format. It taps into these same ancient needs we have as human beings and is a natural extension to the communicaiton style emerging from net social networks. Seems technology today with its instant communications, isn't that different from jungle drums, smoke signals, or cave paintings buried deep in our cerebellum.

Now with the onset of social networks, and the Times' reflection of this research, these social networks will drive a sea change in architecture as well. Why? Because a flat, open architecture will be driven by the need/demand for access by adjacent segment offerings seeking to directly link to the messaging networks, and by definition voice as well. The carriers’ control of a "hub and spoke" architecture will be subject to assault. Q:What are the adjacent segments? A:Social networks.

Access demand by these social networks, driven by our "ancient oral communications" style will be only the first attack on the operators to open up access to application providers, content developers, handset manufacturers and adjacent web communities such as social networks–all as a result of the continuing demand of humans to be "heard" as the Times' article implies. The entire communications ecosystem will seek access, which will be the primary driver of change. In fact, this is already happening through the initial developments of the “mobile internet.” 

“If you examine the Web through the lens of orality, you can’t help but see it everywhere,” says Irwin Chen in the Times article. Chen is a design instructor at Parsons School of Design who is developing a new course to explore the emergence of oral culture online. “Orality is participatory, interactive, communal and focused on the present. The Web is all of these things.”

Look to Mobile for the future of Oral Cultures

Well, that's not that surprising to those of us in the mobile communications field. The mobile web will be even more of an accelerant for social networks, since an "oral culture" unites people into groups. Oral cultures means more than just talking--there are strong social dynamics at work.

“In tribal cultures, your identity is completely wrapped up in the question of how people know you,” he says. “When you look at Facebook, you can see the same pattern at work: people projecting their identities by demonstrating their relationships to each other. You define yourself in terms of who your   friends are.”

Well, we already see that in research on the mobile address book. Notwithstanding hundreds ( or thousands ) of connections in a mobile address book, we tend to communicate with the same core 10 to 20 people. Seems our "oral tradition" and tribal history caps out at that size based survival needs as an individual and as a group. This Darwinian scaled group size may be the optimal comfort level we seek.

Mobile is the Nuclear Access Point

With over 3.3 billion mobile users (probably more since in "ancient Africa" the average number of user per handset exceeds 1.0) establishing "oral communication" as the trend of convergence between social networks. "orality" and mobility, for both channel and access points, will only increase. The mobile phone will eventually be the "nuclear access point" for all communications, tethered web, and unteathered web or over the air.  Read the Times' article here.

OK. Now its your turn. What do you think of the prospects of Social Networking affecting will affect mobile communications? Do you think there's a connection here, or I'm just muddled minded? What do you think of the academic take on the commercial supply demand reaction of communications and social sub cultures? Comments are very welcome, let's get it on!

Carnival of the Mobilists #101

CoM is hosted this week at Martin Sauter's Mobile Technology page. It is the CoM's 101st week reflecting the growing mobile ecosystem.

I especially like Martin's personal contribution covering how mobile infrastructure providers such as Nokia, Nortel, Alcatel and Ericsson are now appearing on You Tube. Shouldn't be too surprised since such marketing to the social web is the new vanguard in all B2B sales, and something I plan on writing about in the future.  Oh, I've contributed a post there as well. Check it out. 

China's Foes Gain in Mobile Market

In the 1840s an English writer famously observed that "If we could only persuade every person in China to lengthen his shirttail by a foot, we could keep the mills of Lancashire working round the clock." Shirts are a ubiquitous item for consumers, and the same phenomenon is occurring now in China's mobile handset market. The globe's mobile view point is to pursue the same 19th century dream of sales in China through 21st century means. The law of big numbers and gains from incremental shares has attracted international firms to enter the Chinese mobile market all along the value chain from handsets, through infrastructure and application providers.

More than 71 million mobile phone handsets were sold in China in the first half of 2007, a 25% rise from 2006 sales. The mobile market may be cooling but is hardly in "S" curve phase with volume sales growth decelerating as compared to same periods in 2005 and 2006.

First half year earnings for China Mobile indicate US$5 billion in revenues, a 25.7% rise year on year from '06, off a commensurate 21.6% in revenues. Simple reasons include a) continued growth of China's economy, (b) increasing mobile penetration (see a),(c) expansion of mobile value added services, (d) increase in basic voice usage. 

Has China's mobile market evolved to a more developed market pattern?  Perhaps. China's mobile handset market is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few key manufacturers--all foreign. Nokia, Motorola and Samsung accounted for 61.4% of the overall mobile phone market in the first half of 2007, up almost 9% year-on-year, according to figures from CCID Consulting. Nokia and Motorola both saw a notable rise in their market shares -- their combined share rose almost 10% -- and some argue the driver of this is both companies launching major initiatives in the low-end mobile phone market in the first half of 2007. Lenovo, the only Chinese company in the top five trails in fourth place, with a 5.7% share, slightly ahead of Sony Ericsson's 4.9% share.

Nokia and Motorola accounted for 57% of the market of mobile phones priced between 500 yuan (appx. US$66)  and 700 yuan (appx. US$92). Their share of the mobile phone market priced under 500 yuan reached a high of 70%.

According to the report, there is some weakness on the revenue side. While volume sales growth is still healthy, revenue growth is less robust because of reducing handset prices. Revenues rose just 5.5% year-on-year to 85bn (appx. US$ 12 billion) yuan in the first half of 2007.

Notwithstanding the large market share of the Foreign Foes, China's mobile handset manufacturers such as Bird, will continue to make quality gains and improve on innovation. It's just a matter of time that they start looking to enter off shore markets.

If a western mobile company is not there now, they should be making plans to get there soon...I can help. I've got good guanxi.

Carnival of the Mobilists #86

The Carnival of the Mobilists rolls into its founders' space at MobHappy this week. Visit and view mobile point and perspectives edited by Carlo Longino. 

Mobile Point View Hosts Carnival of the Mobilists #85

Mobile Point View hosts the Carnival for the first time. Aweh my bru! (Welcome!) It's vacation time around the Mobilists' world so let's head to to the beach...Pick up a snowcone and fries down on the boardwalk, open your umbrella, spread your towel--those of you from the upper crust slip into your cabanna (no worries, this ain't no Redneck Riviera)--and join some of the best global mobile content, comments and community of opinion influencers surfing the web as they gather to thrash on Mobile Point View's beachbreak.

Tide's rolling in, thankfully the line up's a zoo today, so grab a stepdeck and catch the first wave focusing on the consumer with "Isn't it time we put the customer at the centre of the mobile data value chain: A new value chain for the Mobile data industry" by Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens. Hang ten and stick with consumer dudes by ridding the barrel of Abhishek Tiwari's coverage of the impending Google Phone in "First Free Mobile, Now Free Phones!" a follow up to his post last week at CoM #84, with cool pics brah. Here comes a righthander and Judy Breck at iCommons.org, "Sprint Ahead for Learning", where she covers a missed opportunity by Sprint to highlight the learning power of mobile. Rightous words, Jude. Darla Mack, aka Mobile Diva, feels caught inside between content providers and carriers' ability to universally render games to handsets with "Is it Me or is EA Mobile Just Not Getting it?"  C. Enrique Ortiz from ...about Mobility, provides this week's Utopic Post: "The Dimension of Space & Movement in Mobile Applications" covering mobile gyroscopic inertia measures...shaka boggas submision.

Carve into the combo swell from Pocket Picks where Casper Field shoots the pier on both sides of the pond by speculating whether the UK will deregulate spectrum in "FCC Opens up Portion of US Airwaves: Will OFCom do the same in the UK?". Doubling back to Fraser MacInnes also at Pocket Picks who covers Apple's maneuvering for ad driven music services before UK regulators in "Ad-funded iTunes for our great grand-children?" And finally Pocket Picks' Chris Leonard covers how "Nokia Opens its first design centre in India."

Riding a Cnoid, Denis at WAP Review asks "Do Transcoders and the iPhone Make the Mobile Web Obsolete?" illuminating how full web browsers are affecting mobile technology. All bathemetry to me, brah. Debi Jones dials us in with a podcast interview at MobileMessaging2.0 covering Mobile Social Networking in "MoSoSo Experts Panel: MOKO, Twitter, Juice Caster" where she chats with Nick Desai of Juice Wireless, Biz Stone of Twitter & Paul Gruber of Loop Mobile. Paul Lamb of SmartMobs, does the final drop in "Smart Shopping Mobs" addressing consumer swarming buying behavior and how businesses are reacting to this phenomenon.

Dudes, the tide is rolling out! The next CoM hosts are Carlo Longino and Russell Buckley at MobHappy. Put out the bonfire, pack out the trash and all you mobile mobsters drop in at Carlo's & Russell's casa or at another weekly Carnival. All participants writing about mobile are welcome - these are public beaches.  Thanks for the mullering-free visit and throwin' serious heat today! Joller rager--we're dunzo. 

To submit a post from your blog send your entry to: mobilists at gmail.com. More about how to enter and the advantages (waves of traffic!) you get from being in the Carnival here. Once you meet the "3 Post to Host" requirement, you qualify to host and bring the best mobile bloggers to your website. You can also submit your entry through BlogCarnival using their carnival submission form. 

With thanks to Riptionary!

Best of the Best: Mobilists #84

The CoM is hosted for the first time this week at MobileMessaging2.0.  These messaging experts recognize the birthday of the SMS center, and how it has significantly impacted the communications industry in the broadest of ways. Featured blogs include my own "Untold Text Stories: SMS in Iraq."  which was deemed the best of the week by this week's host and editor, Debi Jones of MobileJones! ! Be sure to visit MM2 and settle in for the Best of the Best Mobilists on the web.

Untold Text Stories: SMS in IRAQ

One of the untold text stories I've been privy to is the amount of SMS that flows out of Iraq into destinations around the world and the success of texting in the Iraqi mobile market. Untold, since in 2005 I was being interviewed by FORTUNE and The Wall Street Journal on the market dynamics of SMS into and out of Iraq. Why the stories were eventually “spiked" is pure speculation since at the time the drive by media swarmed around the difficulty of the war and it's influencing the mid-term US Congressional elections. Explanations from both reporters were never forthcoming.

This was a "good news" story. It reflected the power of messaging to immediately connect far off families and friends with those on the frontline of battle, as well as the developing story of how telephony poor Iraq was able to swiftly launch mobile communications for its citizens. It illuminated how the natural need to touch with text blossomed in a country even in a very difficult commercial environment.

Here's the story. Back then I was responsible for the international P&L for the globe's leading SMS services provider to mobile operators. My job was to enable and harvest the world's SMS operator traffic flows. As part of a weekly call with my global staff I reviewed traffic patterns into and out of over 300+ mobile operators in 140 countries. In the fall of 2005 an interesting pattern caught my eye. 

At the point of the 2003 invasion fixed line density in Iraq was among the lowest in the world with only 3% of the country's 25 million people having access to a telephone line. Soon after Sadaam fell, the Iraq Development Program issued 3 mobile operator licenses to Iraqna (means “our Iraq”) owned by Egypt's Orascom, Atheer MTC of Kuwait, and Asiacell, part of the Middle Eastern mobile conglomerate Wataniya. A considerable investment had been made by these companies, estimated at the time to be US$1.5 billion within 12 months, as well as an additional $250 million by Iraq's Ministry of Communications. 

Mobile communications was the fastest growing sector in Iraq, and had become one of the "most significant markets" according to Ali al-Dahwi, CEO of MTC's Atheer. From all the numbers, mobile telephones were the only thing that was working well there, even in the face of significant security challenges including kidnapped employees, towers bombed, storefronts shot up and a huge security budget—relayed to me by an Iraqna executive to be up to four guards for each employee. There obviously was money to be made since they were still hanging around.

They made the right call. Demand for mobile phones began to soar. By 2005 Iraq’s nascent mobile market was already half the size of Egypt’s, despite Iraq’s population being only one-third of the size, and Egypt having a 10 year start.

I had successfully landed Iraqna as a customer when it launched since it was owned by Egypt’s Orascom which was already one of my customers. Upon initially launching we provided both in-country and international SMS interoperability for the fledgling Iraqna, and therefore had a complete picture of it’s message flows. It was astounding.

Iraq became our fastest growing SMS market in the Middle East. With over 1.5 million subscribers, over 20% of the messaging traffic was flowing into and from the US. At one point in the second month it spiked at over 40% of all SMS traffic. 20,000 SMS messages a day were being exchanged between the US and Iraq. In its first quarter overall growth was 400%. By January of 2006 Iraq’s traffic to the US was 22% of its total and was running at 1.2 million messages a month, or 40,000 SMS a day. At the time, the average cost of a mobile voice call to the US was 25 US cents per minute. An SMS cost 12 cents per message. Although the operators did not have a wide range of connectivity then the Top 10 SMS destinations for Iraq were:   

1) US
2) Syria
3) Yemen
4) Fiji
5) UK
6) Palestine
7) Macedonia
8) Germany
9) Sudan
10) Thailand

Iraq was in the top 10 originations and destinations for US operators by January 2006:

Into the US                                  From US
Mexico                                        Mexico
Philippines                                   Philippines
UK                                                UK
Ireland                                         Germany
Germany                                      Australia
New Zealand                                 Ireland
Ecuador                                        New Zealand
Australia                                       China
Iraq                                              Iraq

The question that goes begging is who was driving all this traffic between the Iraqi operators and these destinations? Here’s an educated guess:
1) US Military members
2) Coalition Forces
3) Foreign Workers in Iraq
4) Contractors
5) US Government
6) NGOs in Iraq
7) Iraqis to friends and family abroad
8) Commercially driven messages—e.g., “call me at X so we can relay the details”
9) Insurgent/terrorist SMS communications. If they are calling the US and using the web, they are utilizing SMS text, too.  [Q: If the US National Security Agency and the UK’s MI-6 can monitor voice calls, can they monitor SMS? A: Absolutely, they can.]

Today, Iraq has become an ignored mobile success story. From 2005 to 2007 it has had a growth rate over 600% going from 1.4 million subscribers to over 9 million with a third of its population now benefiting from direct access to telecommunications. Mobile market privatization in Iraq has catapulted it to being the second most competitive market in the Middle East according The Arab Advisors group.  Iraqna alone is expected to reap over US$500 million in revenues this year. Not a bad four year track record.                                   Now its a story told.