It is hard to believe that we are almost half way through the year, and as always, much has happened in the industry.  The iPhone has reached newer and greater levels of popularity and has entered entirely new markets.  MMS and Mobile Marketing have continued to take on steam, witness the rollout of Nike’s new PhotoID campaign that allows consumers to snap pictures of colors they’d like to purchase Nike athletic shoes in.  With all these developments, there is certainly no shortage of mobile industry information to discuss, but in this issue we’ll try to scratch the surface on a couple of key issues:  the value of data on wireless devices, the role of Web 2.0 on the handset and a bit of information on some important regions that we’ve not touched on in previous issues. 

In this newsletter you’ll be given a front row seat to a roundtable that Airwide recently convened that discussed the topic of Web 2.0’s role on the handset.  The attendees of the roundtable included executives from leading organizations, including Virgin Mobile, JumpTap, Nellymoser, The Mobile Marketing Association, W3C and many others and you’ll be able to hear and read their thoughts on important issues such as social networking, semantic web, location-based services, privacy, the role of operators vs. brands in mobile advertising and more.

Airwide has also highlighted increasing security concerns that center around the rising value of data on wireless devices. Our latest newsletter features Airwide’s three-pronged strategy that allows operators to protect themselves and their subscribers from privacy and information loss threats due to lost or stolen handsets.

Finally, we will give you insight into some of the current and future trends in the Latin American mobile messaging market.

There’s much more for you in this issue of our newsletter, including some first hand information from the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog at www.mobilemessaging2.com.

IN THIS ISSUE

Web 2.0 Hits the Handset

Airwide recently brought together 40 executives and bloggers from Virgin Mobile, Movial, M3Mobile JumpTap, Mobilico, and other leading companies to wrestle with the upside and issues around mobile social networking, semantic web, location-based services, privacy, the role of operators vs. brands in mobile advertising, and more. The event, “Web 2.0 Hits the Handset,” was sponsored by Airwide Solutions and produced in collaboration with the Mobile Messaging 2.0 group blog. Visit the microsite to view videos of the event. Highlights from the videos and event include:

• The search for better search is on – time and screen space is at premium when search goes mobile – semantic web, with the promise of a faster route to what consumers are really trying to find, may be the answer.
• Carriers need to do more with their data riches – or miss the advertising train. They have metrics and intelligence on what subscribers read, purchase, and where we go. Carriers’ seat at the advertising table will depend on how effectively they share consumer data with third party vendors, brands and publishers.
• He who best enables consumer publishing wins – Mobile needs to be true to the ideal of why we’re here – the read/write web. The handset must be turned into a self-publishing device to share information in new ways – bridging screen-to-screen behavior with face-to-face behavior.
• Mobile ads a consumer loves? 100% advertising supported models are testing consumers’ threshold for advertising vs. paying mobile services
• Parents don’t get a hall pass when it comes to protection – no amount of techno wizardry or the best intentions of carriers and social networks will substitute for good old fashion paying attention and weighing in by parents to control access, information and security. And parents should stop passing down the most primitive handsets to the youngest family members – they don’t have the latest protection built into them and can put information and young users at risk.

Present at the round table were Kaj Hagros and Jay Seaton of Airwide Solutions; John Styers of Moblico; Laura Marriott of the Mobile Marketing Association; Steve Bratt of the W3C; Wade Vesey of Movial, Andy Miller of Quattro Wireless; Dominick Tolli of Virgin Mobile USA; Jonathan Steuer of Iconoculture; John Puterbaugh of Nellymoser; Jason DeWitt of Skydeck; Tullio Siragusa of M3Mobile; Mickey Alam Khan of Mobile Marketer, Paran Johar of JumpTap; Rudy de Waele of m-trends; and many others.

For event images and video podcasts of this event visit the CTIA 2008 microsite.

Value of Data on Wireless Devices on the Rise, Leads to Increase in Theft and Security Concerns Worldwide

Airwide Solutions forecasts significant mobile security threats will escalate due to the ballooning usage of smartphones and the increasing value of information stored on these popular devices. In conjunction with this projection, Airwide has outlined a three-pronged strategy for operators to protect themselves and their subscribers from privacy and information loss threats due to lost or stolen handsets.

Our three-pronged strategy includes key steps mobile operators can implement to protect their subscribers’ valuable information in the event that a device is lost or stolen:

• Deploy technology such as an Equipment Identity Register (EIR) which allows a phone to be instantly disabled on the network once it is reported stolen.
• Deploy technology that can lock and wipe data from stolen smartphones.
• Be sure that these two technologies are integrated so that after the initial theft report the EIR will also trigger wiping and locking the phone to prevent further use.

Handset theft has become a growing problem globally, with 800,000* phones reported stolen in the UK in 2006 and 600,000* in the same year in the United States. An increasing percentage of these lost handsets are smartphones, putting subscribers at risk of losing not only contact information but sensitive company information and personal data such as social security numbers, PIN codes, passwords, bank account information, company financial data and other proprietary information. Other at-risk content includes information about contacts like birthdates, access to highly personal data on social networking sites like Facebook, and invaluable pictures and videos taken on the mobile device.

“Protecting subscribers from theft or loss of the device will be one of the most important features operators can offer in the coming years,” says Jay Seaton, CMO for Airwide, “With significant increases in the use of smartphones, subscribers and companies will need guarantees that if the handset is lost or stolen, the valuable data within will be protect and secured.”

To download a white paper on this topic, visit the resources section in our website.

The Mobile Mesh Needs a Disaster

Source: Ewan Spence - June 16, 2008

Want to look into the future of disasters - the so called ‘big ones,’ because while mobile phones are useful in ‘personal emergencies,’ it’s going to be in the large scale disasters that your smartphone could make the difference. At least, with some forward planning.

To a certain extent, mobile phones are already “emergency aware.” By that I don’t mean they’re constantly on the lookout for danger, like some sort of Finnish Knight Rider, but that they have systems in place that become useful in an emergency. The primary one for me, is that no matter what model of phone, even if the key-lock is on, then the emergency number (be it 911, 112, or 911) should still work - there’s no need to try to work out what the key-lock release is. They won’t even care what network they can find; you’re not network locked for an emergency call - if the signal can get through, through it goes.

The problem as I see it, is the reliance of the mobile phone on one thing. The network. Because in a major disaster (let’s pick the “it’s going to happen at some point” earthquake on the San Andreas fault as an example), there’s going to be a lack of power, and a lot of infrastructure damage. Do you think that the network cell towers are going to be around to carry the mobile signals from the handset?

Yet a mobile handset is both a receiver and a transmitter - and there are going to be times when that’s all you have in the disaster area. Traditionally, mobile phones are going to be useless (beyond the ability to take some pretty gruesome pictures). which is a shame, because communication is vital in these situations. If phones could literally piggyback on each other, chaining calls together like some demented Arpanet of mobile voice calls, then these little computers suddenly become a lot more useful in our scenario.

With the inclusion of Wi-Fi on many models perhaps that medium, rather than the GSM frequencies will act as the common carrier - although the range is far more limited than the radio circuitry for cellular calls.

I doubt we’d ever see anything like this on a regular mass market phone, but if Google Android takes off, and you get a bundle of handsets with re-write able firmware, I wouldn’t be surprised if (a) we see a Mesh Network using a mix of cellular and wifi hotspots spring up, and (b) it won’t really be noticed outside geek circles until something horribly big in the Bay Area. So if you start hearing of a strange underground phone network early next year, with no contract, no ties, but not quite 99.99% reliability, you know what’s happening.

Visit the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog >>

Product Spotlight: AirGate Version 5.0

Airwide Solutions is proud to announce version 5.0 of our award winning AirGate products. AirGate is an advanced application and traffic management platform for rapid delivery of third-party applications and value-added services across multiple delivery channels – SMS, MMS, WAP and the Web. The latest version reduces the time to launch innovative services from days to minutes and enables operators to define new business models and easily adapt to changing technology.

AirGate 5.0 helps carry lap into new revenue opportunities by incorporating network and subscriber intelligence (like content preferences, presence and location) with mobile applications and content to create highly contextual and relevant services. AirGate, which recently received the Gold Award for Innovation at the Mobile Advertising and Marketing Awards (MAMAs), is the industry’s only gateway that provides the flexible business logic necessary to easily integrate with a variety of network resources, ranging from billing and ad insertion systems to location servers and device capability databases, and expose those capabilities to applications, yielding exponentially more powerful, appealing and sticky revenue-generating services.

For more information about the AirGate family of gateways, please visit our website under the products group.

Regional Spotlight: Latin America

It is somewhat difficult to group the diverse and varied wireless markets of North, Central and South under the one heading of ‘The Americas” as the mobile market in this region is as diverse as the many countries that comprise the territory.

There are certainly similarities between the Americas, not the least of which is competition among both carriers and technology. We see evidence of this competition especially in countries like Brazil where the transition from CDMA to GSM has been difficult, and has somewhat delayed the overall uptake of mobile services.

While mobile penetration in the US still leads the region, hovering around 85%, the figure in other countries is rapidly growing, with Brazil growing to more than 60% by the end of 2007. In Latin America prepaid is overwhelmingly the payment method of choice across, contrasted in the US and Canada with the reverse being true. Overall, operators will find many and varied growth opportunities in the Americas although these opportunities are highly country-specific.

Brazil Outlook

Brazil is the fifth largest mobile market in the world and holds more than a third of the total number of mobile handsets across all of Latin America, the market is still full of potential with only 63% penetration by the end of 2007.

But, with price sensitivity so high in Brazil and 60-85% of revenue still from prepaid, increasing revenue is a challenge. There are concerns about the future growth of mobile communications given Brazil’s sluggish GDP growth and the low average income of its workers, which could give rise to early market saturation.

Historically, Brazil had some 40 carriers, although following massive consolidation on four carriers, Vivo, TIM, Claro and Oi now hold 91% of the market. Following a turbulent couple of years since the change from CDMA technology to 3G, carriers have been preoccupied and this has resulted in the uptake of mobile services being slower than expected.

The here and now

With few services outside of voice and SMS gaining much traction, concepts such as unified communications are yet to reach in Brazil. Voice takes the lion’s share of total market in Brazil, holding 89% with SMS coming in second place at 9.25%. Mobile IM, email and video conferencing each take a quarter of a percent of the total mobile communications market with MMS holding a healthier share at 1%.

Trends and forecasts

The total share of voice in the mobile communications market does not suffer as much as many countries in Brazil with a modest decline of only 3.15% over the next five years. SMS accounts for about half of this share with MMS, mobile IM, emailing and video conferencing accounting for the remaining share in small increments of less than one percent.

What’s hot

Mobile music is set to make the biggest gains in popularity over the next five years with user generated content, mobile payments and social networking hot on its heels.

In contrast to many markets, and although relatively untouched at present, SMS and MMS marketing are expected to surge over the next few years, as are services such as SMS voting. As it stands, Brazilians tend to read their incoming text messages and do not perceive unsolicited text to be spam.

Mexico Outlook

Mexico has not suffered the same issues of consolidation and transition to GSM as some of its neighbors and as such, the main carriers have been relatively unobstructed in their development of mobile communications services. Although the greatest numbers of mobile users are prepaid, ARPU is quite healthy and SMS has proved to be extremely popular with children and young adults.

Whilst the market for mobile payments remains strong in Mexico, other activities such as downloading ringtones, playing games and sending photos are not as popular as in many other parts of the world.

Mexico shows a robust and sustainable-growth market. The youth market is fast becoming the focus for mobile operators and service providers as teenagers in Mexico report that they see no difference between mobile phone contact and face to face contact.

The here and now

Voice takes the greatest share of the total mobile communications market, accounting for 88%. SMS’s popularity is still strong, however, and at present, it accounts for 8.25% of the total market in Mexico. With unified communications making almost no traction in Mexico, the remaining segments of the market leave MMS with a 1% share, mobile email with a 2%, mobile IM with a 0.5% share and mobile video conferencing beginning to emerge with a 0.25% share of the total market.

Trends and forecasts

The market share of various communications methods looks to be relatively stable over the next five years with little change. Where there is change, it will be at the expense of voice communications which make room for an increased share of consumers using SMS and MMS.

Although mobile video conferencing share of the market looks set to quadruple over the next five years, its total share remains modest at just 1%.

What’s hot

The trend in popularity of services like user generated content and social networking is closely aligned with its neighbor, the US, and both see a huge jump in popularity over the coming years. But, where the US sees a decline in popularity in the uptake of SMS and MMS marketing, the story is quite the opposite in Mexico, where popularity is expected to rise significantly.

Music gaming will also see a rise in popularity over the next five years as will SMS voting, mobile search and mobile internet.

In fact, it seems that only ringtones will see a downturn in popularity as every other sector in the Mexico market sees steady growth in popularity.

For a full version of this document visit our resources area and download the global messaging barometer whitepaper.