Month: April 2009

Recently, Tomi Ahonen wrote a post over at Forum Oxford about an idea he had how to make use of mobile phones and SMS for engaging customers while the store is closed. I liked the idea very much so I thought I'd share it with you here and give you my thoughts on top. Here's the short version, for the details click on the link above:

Instead of just passively advertising through a shopping window, actively engage your customers with an interactive contest via the mobile phone. Tomi uses a jewelry and watch shop as an example. Here's how the contest would work: Advertise a specific watch, e.g. via an animation (several pictures, some text, etc.) on a computer screen. Tomi likes 007, so in his example it's the villain's watch of the latest Bond movie from Swatch, worth around 100 euros. Engage customers with a contest for the watch by asking them to guess the serial number on the back of the watch. The feedback channel is, of course,  SMS. Simple, convenient, and everybody these days has a phone in their pocket. The PC that runs the advertisement has a mobile phone connected to it so the SMS is received in near real time and feedback can be shown directly to the person who's decided to take part in the contest. Close to the finish date, you can engage customers who have responded by informing them via SMS that the contest is about to be closed and that they can check who's won on the (mobile) web page of the store, generating further interaction with the customer.

Personally, I think it's a great idea! Not only do you engage your customers, but at the same time you can find out how effective your window advertising is. In the thread to the original post, it's been pointed out that you probably can't make money with it with short code SMSes, the setup is just too expensive. But I think the point of the exercise is not to generate cash with the campaign directly but to engage with the customer and thus increase sales.

So I think the biggest obstacle is how to convince shop owners to invest in such an advertising scheme. After all, the (embedded) PC, the mobile and the software to track responses and do some data mining won't come for free and shop owners are usually not in the IT business. But I think that young and tech-savvy shop owners could very well grasp the idea and see an opportunity beyond advertisements in newspapers, etc. Some might even have enthusiastic geek friends that could put the pieces of the puzzle together for them.

Great idea, Tomi, let's see if somebody takes it up and works on a product!

This week, the Carnvial of the Mobilists has stopped over at Chetan Sharma's Always On Real-Time Access Blog. Chetan, a book author and analyst himself noticed that a lot of people contributing to the Carnival are also book authors and he put together the pictures of the people and their books at the top of the post. Interesting self-reaction when you see your own picture and book on a web page without prior announcement 🙂 Lots of great stuff on mobile there, so head over and enjoy!

In a previous post I've discussed my thoughts on how the announcement of Nokia to deeply integrate Skype into the N97 goes beyond the current 3rd party integration of VoIP, IM and presence. Mobile Network Operators of course would like to offer similar functionality and are thus not so happy about the competition. In addition, they are having a difficult time with it for the moment, as their competitive offer with the Rich Communication Suite (RCS), which is based on IMS, is still nowhere announced to actually make it into upcoming phone models.

When we look a bit into the future, however, I think network operators can make a compelling offer by combining a couple of elements which can't be matched easily by Internet based companies:

Embedding VoIP, IM and Presence in the Connected Home Network

In essence, the connected home network approach ties computers, TV, media storage, audio, etc. via Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable together and makes any content available on any other device. The crown is to also tie in the mobile phone / smartphone, which can then be used in cellular networks and via Wi-Fi or a Femtocell in the home network to offload traffic and to interact with the home network devices. Stack on that remote access to your data via cellular and you've got a truly connected home, a truly connected user and less dependency on data store in the cloud.

In this context, RCS makes a lot of sense and adds a lot of value. While roaming outside, RCS uses the cellular network for IM, presence, picture sharing, etc.. While at home, the Wi-Fi network takes over. The big benefit: Just one way (i.e. one phone number) under which you can be reached. The open point here is that I am not yet quite sure if the the mobile device can also to the IMS network via the users Wi-Fi home network or if a Femto is required for that. But at least with the Femto, that's something Internet based companies struggle with, there's always a 'media break' between the VoIP implementation and the default telephony stack in the mobile.

A big issue for RCS is how to create a critical mass so IM and presence. Here, I think it is necessary to have a gateway to other IM services such as Yahoo's or Microsoft's. An interesting approach, as it is not the Internet companies that go to operators but where operators go to Internet companies for the cooperation. It's been done before.

A lot of work ahead for operators. But I guess the embedded Skype client won't be that last word on the subject in its first incarnation, either.

This year at the Mobile World Congress, Nokia and Skype announced a cooperation that would bring Skype functionality to the Nokia N97. At the time I took notice of it but thought, well, I've already got instant messaging clients on my Nokia phone including presence and the partnership between Skype and network operator 3 has also brought Skype voice communication, or at least a special flavour of it, to mobile phones. So why the fuzz?

Well, I think it could be the deep integration of it all. According to the press release, Skype will not only be a third party program on the side but it will be integrated with other applications on the phone, especially the phonebook. According to the press release, Skype functionality such as presence and instant messaging will be embedded into the phonebook. Further I assume that since the press release mentions that Skype voice calls will be enabled over 3G and Wi-Fi, 'real' Skype Voice over IP calls (rather than the circuit switched approach used with '3') can be made directly from the phonebook as well.

It may sound trivial but I think such an integration would be very compelling to users. I and some other people I know have been using the built in SIP stack of (most) Nseries devices for some time now and very much value the deep integration into the overall functionality. SIP VoIP calls can be made from the phonebook or directly by typing in the phone number and selecting "Internet Call" instead of just pressing the green button. The phones can even be configured to always use SIP and only fall back to cellular when the selected network for SIP is not available. Very powerful as the SIP stack automatically activates itself once the phone detects the network(s) that have been configured for VoIP use (e.g. the Wi-Fi network at home). Hopefully, we will find the same deep integration of Skype with all its features. That would really distinguish it from current third party solutions which are always a bit on the side and require "specialized handling" that only few normobs (normal mobile users) would put up with. If all this happens, well, we'll see.

Also very important: Skype already has a critical mass, i.e. millions of users out there that already use it on a PC. An invaluable asset that is absolutely necessary to start such a service. Another things that speaks for Skype vs. other solutions (such as SIP) is the easy configuration: Only the username and password is required, plus maybe a selection of the networks over which you would like to use it. That's it. Compared to that, manually configuring the SIP stack is a black art.

Some Mobile operators have let it known that they are not very happy to see this happening. They argue that it will bite into their current business model and future opportunities. So, the first response was often that they would block it. But I think that would merely delay the process, if at all. I would be surprised if Apple, Google and others aren't already working on similar things. Also, I think some operators will make no attempt of blocking it, so people who would like to use the functionality would go there. But why block it? If people want to use it over the cellular network, they need a data subscription, which earns the operator money as well. So I am not convinced they wouldn't benefit from this as well.

Another approach for mobile operators could of course be to offer similar functionality. Not so simple, but not impossible, especially in combination with "connected home networking". More on that in a follow up post.

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted over at "mjelly mobile 2.0". As always, a great assortment of posts on mobility from all around the world. I agree with the host, Vero's post over at the Taptu blog on Gravity, the new S60 Twitter Client, is especially noteworthy. So without further ado, I recommend to head over and enjoy!