TALK TO THE HAND: THE FUTURE OF MOBILE PUBLISHING - PART 1

The mobile revolution is upon us and Gen Y is moving fast to adopt everything mobile as fast as it appears. Us poor old Gen Xers are desperately trying to understand this fascination with mobile but haven't really gotten beyond the understanding of why anyone would want to use such a slow, frustrating and fiddly technology like mobile internet. The advent of Blackberry push email has certainly opened a new mobile communication channel and SMS is as strong as ever but the whole shebang just seems to be so disconnected.

The carriers are trying to own all their respective bits of turf not allowing the other kids to play there, mobile internet needs to be logged onto which is tedious at best and nobody seems to have cracked a decent browsing interface yet. Browsing itself harks me back to the days of 56K dialup, then when I get my phone bill after surfing all those off-deck sites and suddenly paying $4 per message for love match SMS seems like a bargain.

So why the enthusiasm in mobile? The potential is incredible. The advent of the iphone and the innovation it has spurred with the likes of the Android mobile operating system by Google and the accelerated R&D path of the Blackberry has basically changed the path in which mobile computing and communication will evolve. Miniturisation is no longer the goal, getting the user experience right and making the device useful and fun is the trick. The iphone and its competitors have proven this, and once it is here the 3G mobile experience will be well on its way to being somewhere near useful.



We have all used SMS, some of you have probably even browsed pages on the mobile internet. You have migrated your news reading habits from press to web and are possibly just starting to get used to the idea of getting all of your news together in an RSS reader.

These technologies are just part of an exciting evolution in communications to the next level of mobile. As mobile internet goes 3G, data transmission gets faster, devices get easier to use, web applications become integrated with mobile and the overall cost of data gets lower, the natural progression will be that more and more you will consume your information on mobile devices.

There are many questions for the publishing and adverting world and I will try to answer a few of these questions for you in an informative way.

What does mobile publishing look like?

Mobile publishing in the future will mean that as soon as the story leaves the publishers fingertips the story will be consumed by users. I call this instantaneous publication a content absorption.

A new platform is evolving that will enable this kind of communication. The platform will exist as an instantaneous multi-directional publishing platform and I saw it first on Gossip Girl. In case you are wondering, Gossip Girl is my wife's favourite new US TV showing on Fox 8, it has a kind of 90210 meets Sex in the City vibe. The narrating character is called Gossip Girl who runs a gossip blog of the same name. In the latest episode the heroine is snapped by a sneaky passer by purchasing a pregnancy kit. The story instantly arrives on the blog site and alerts are then sent out to all of the subscribers by SMS and the gossip is spread.



The story is published instantly from the author to the reader who can then respond back with comments. This is publishing in real time and this level of interactivity can only work with mobile. This level of instantaneousness is currently experienced on twitter but its just one way and with just text. But the promise is there...

Users are getting more and more savvy to what their mobile devices are capable of. In a recent UK consumer study by Yell.com Mobile 49% of mobile users were interested in trying mobile search and 72% would choose to use mobile web for practical, information services.

Here are the top five functionality requests as extracted from the study

1. Maps/directions and local information
2. Email and instant messenger
3. Banking
4. Transport information
5. News and sports

From this we can see there is a high demand for information services on mobile devices especially by users likely to take up 3G services. Design and aesthetics are exchanged in favour of speed and usability.

People do not need tons of graphics and superfluous navigation on mobile, they need to be able to receive, share and interact with information that is relevant to them. The best way to do this is by initiating the distribution of the information from the web. People can find good quality and useful content quickly, and for nothing, and then send it to themselves or share it. People want information mobile for different reasons. It has to be useful when they need something, entertaining when they don't and give them something cool to show their friends when they are being social. If they can link quickly to the content they want and share it easily with people it makes the experience that much more useful..

I have many times tried to show a friend something on my web-enabled phone but it just takes so long the experience leaves me frustrated. Anyone who has tried to look up information on their phone while cheating at a trivia night will know the pain.

If I could just have a link directly to the information I want, it would make the process much less painful. All of these services are available now in some form in some part of the world however the take up of these services is slow to say the least.

What is slowing the development of this technology?



There are three main reasons that mobile services have been slow to take off.

1. Cost - browsing off-deck mobile sites incurs data charges from the carrier. These charges lay outside the normal cap plans and many people have been getting a shock after seeing their bills when they have started to play with mobile internet and email.
2. Speed - 3G is better than GPRS but is still slow.
3. Usability- Phone usability in general is terrible, accessing the internet requires logging on which is slow and typing in URL's with predictive texting is a nightmare.

These three impediments are about to be lifted with the introduction of cheaper and faster mobile broadband through 3G and the development of more user friendly mobile devices such as the iPhone. We believe that by the end of this year the acceleration by people using this technology will be extremely steep. With Google releasing the Android operating system which is basically iPhone for the rest. We will see an evolution in smart phones that will allow all of the technologies we have talked about to become reality.

There has been a lot of press in Australia recently about consumer usage of mobile internet based on studies done by Sony Erricson and the University of Adelaide. Check out the following link for more information.

Most Aussies don't use expensive mobile web
The survey, released by Sony Ericsson and 3 mobile, revealed that 91 per cent of respondents don't use their phone for accessing the internet, believing it costs too much or offers a poor user experience.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23536956-5014109,00.html

Mobile web 'commonplace' within a year
RESEARCH tracking Australians' propensity to use their mobile phones to access the internet indicates use of the mobile internet will be commonplace within a year.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,,23553152-15306,00.html

In part 2... How are marketers and advertisers going to benefit?

posted by Brad Down at 4/08/2008 10:01:00 AM