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Anticipate Future Trends in Mobile Internet Usage - Focus on the Web 2.0 Impact

Posted on: Tuesday, 5 June 2007, 06:00 CDT

Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the worldwide telecommunication industry is now available to its catalogue.

Mobile Internet 2.0

http://www.reportlinker.com/p049465/mobile-internet.html

Mobile Internet 2.0 is a comprehensive report analysing the extension of Internet and Web 2.0 into the wireless domain from a global perspective. This strategic research report provides you with 120 pages of unique business intelligence and expert commentary on which to base your business decisions.

This report will allow you to:

Understand the dynamics of the combination of Web 2.0 and mobile handsets.

Anticipate future trends in mobile Internet usage.

Learn about the most successful mobile Internet services in Japan and South Korea.

Recognise the key barriers against using handsets for accessing the Internet in the Western markets.

Comprehend the changing roles for different players in the value chain.

Identify the optimal strategy for your company in the mobile Internet space.

This report answers the following questions:

What are the latest trends in mobile Internet usage in Europe, North America and the Far east?

How is the experience of browsing, Internet search and content discovery best transferred to mobile handsets?

How can social networking communities be brought to the mobile environment?

Why has not mobile e-mail usage taken off among Western consumers?

How should mobile operators position themselves in the IM value chain?

What strategies for mobilizing the Internet are currently employed by leading network operators and Internet industry players?

What will be the key success factors for the leading players on the mobile Internet of tomorrow?

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. The publisher 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. The publisher 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 the publisher 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. The publisher 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. The publisher 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.

The publisher 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.

Table of content

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

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Source: Business Wire

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