Hold on to your neck - Escape the noise with Neckmike

We all use our mobile phones in more and more places and know how annoying it is when you cannot have a normal conversation because of noise from the background or environment whether at work or out driving or boating. Here's the perfect solution. Neckmike (r) from http://www.neckmike.com and http://www.bikeman.se

Neckmike started in 2004 by the inventor Bo Franzen has successfully been selling the latest product version the GSM Neckmike since 2007. The concept behind the product is simple but very efficient, use a neck band with dual "neck" microphones and two noise and shockwave blocking earplugs and you have handy small product to use with your mobile phone wherever you go. I met Bo and checked the product out at the Mobile Focus 2008 event in Stockholm last week. I have used similar design earplugs on shooting ranges and going hunting in USA so I know they work.

See the demo video by Bo and you will understand directly what it is and does for you.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

MobileFocus2008 - Pictures from Exhibitor area of Mobile Media Companies

Stay tuned for more updates about select exhibitor companies from Thomas Lidforss International about this Mobile Focus 2008 Mobile Media event.

MobileFocus2008 - LociLoci does mobile social networking without the need for GPS

The Swedish startup Lociloci has started with an interesting twist, do mobile social networking with location services without the need for using GPS. Their philosophy is that a lot people have or may have concerns about having GPS set to enabled in their phones all the time. So, they have started offering location based networking where you can leave GPS set to off. Since keeping track of where your friends are when you need to know precisely where works well in particular in cities where the cell sites are small, I think the quality of this social networking site is OK.

Lociloci will also soon integrate with Blogger, tumblr, facebook and twitter.

The company behind Lociloci, is XYZ Technology AB has offices in Stockholm and Boston and works as a technology and services provider to any company that wants to use and get a neworking and location services platform.

I also met with a good friend of mine, Mary Larson who works for this company now.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Learn about new rules for your media rights by Twobirds

”New rules for media rights” by Helene Miksche, Senior Legal Counsel, Bird&Bird http://www.twobirds.com/

Helene gave an overview of different activities going with the EU countries to harmonize the media rights' rules across the borders. As an example STIM the old community which collectively distributes based on rights can no longer work exclusively in Sweden, againt EU rules.

International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies, CISAC, http://www.cisac.org/ has recently come up with a new agreement from July 2008 which you have to follow. Not very entusiastic readings unless you are a lawyer. Bird & Bird has good information on the company website, so help yourself to a better understanding of media rights.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - 4G will make media providers the new mobile operators

“4G enables media providers to become mobile operators” by Reidar Mouhleb, ZTE

Reidar emphasized ZTE's deep involvement in all infrastructure technology areas and their end-to-end solutions for an all-IP network with Software Defined Radios (SDR) for LTE.

He also believes the rollout and deployment for LTE will be easier than people think, reflecting back to mid 90s with GSM/GPRS data access where the big differences in network existed between circuit switched telephony equipment and packet data IP products made everything a lot more difficult. GPRS once
deployed became obsolete and upgraded to EDGE and then in parallel 3G was deployed. HSDPA as add-on, then quickly HSUPA, the now being deployed HSPA infrastructure. So conclusion was LTE will come faster than people think. LTE chipsets in 2009 and later next year the first mobile devices with new LTE chipsets.

It is interesting to see both ZTE and Huawei have such a big presence in the "Silicon Valley of Sweden", Kista more or less across the street from Ericsson.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - The LTE revolution, mobile multi-media nirvana

“The LTE-revolution” by Mr. X (oops, forgot to write down his name)

Ericsson presented their views on LTE (Long Term Evolution standard):

• Wider pipe
• Flat architecture
• Focus on self optimization and self configuration services in network

Overall goal: Lower the TCO and better radio spectrum flexibility

Converge the LTE/HSPA and LTE/CDMA paths to provide infrastructure that works anywhere in the world. This is a requirement in the present standardization work for release of 3GPP R8

Major operators around the world on board for this strategy; Verizon Wireless, China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone

For those readers that need a technology update, see the Agilent presentation.

LTE Protocol Primer

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: protocol agilent)

Ericsson did not say one word about WiMax, they are clearly pushing for LTE as soon as possible. They are also targeting mobile 150 Mbit/s as a technical goal. I cannot wait until I can get my hands on such a mobile phone.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Mobile phone, your personal media center

“Mobilen, det personliga navet i mediavärlden” by SonyEricsson.

I missed this presentation also, heard they presented your mobile phone (or as some people say here in Sweden "nallen" Swedish for your presented the mobile as the driver andlittle "teddy bear") as the king for your personal media. I know after some discussions that SonyEricsson likes a lot the Adobe Open Screen Project and they are also working a lot on Android, so I would not be surprised to see next year some drastically new mobile phones coming out, if SonyEricsson just can improve their financial results. I have also got the impression that SonyEricsson is kind of losing its interest in Symbian as a platform. My bet is we will see more Windows Mobile and new Android phones and support for Adobe services.

The flagship model X1 has already been sold out in Sweden.

SonyEricsson has also an interesting concept with the Xperia panels open developers, you can customize Xperia phone models by designing your own panels. Will be interesting to see how well this concept will be picked up.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Simplifying the mobile internet media

“Simplifying the mobile internet media” by James Pearce, Vice President, CTO DotMobi, http://mtld.mobi/



I missed this presentation, got stuck discussing with several vendors in the exhibition area. I know all the important companies are sponsoring dotMobi, primarily to simplify the creation of mobile friendly sites and the awareness for everybody with a website what it meas to deliver the best possible user experience on a mobile phone. The best information about dotMobi is the following TypePad blog;

http://dotmobi.typepad.com/






I myself use MoFuse, they make it extremely easy to create a dotmobi website. See, http://tlidforss.mofuse.mobi





More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Get Flashy with Flash and new channels for rich mobile multi-media

”Flash in your mobile - channel for a rich multi-media massmarket” by Michael Berman Telenor/Mobilstart and Patrik Nilsson, Adobe

They presented launch of new Rich Internet Applications (RIA) applications and quick snapshot of the history, how we got here;

PS -> PDF -> Flash -> Air (flash/XML/HTML)

Adobe has created an Open Screen Project to promote Adobe Air among other tools (the Creative Suite, CS4 Master Collection is the "Gold" standard to go for). The open Screen Project includes most chip vendors, Verizon Wireless and SonyEricsson among other companies.

Mobilstart is heavily using Adobe applications and together Michael and Patrik showed a really good live demo of verious news (http://www.svd.se http://www.dn.se), weather and sports sites displayed on a mobile phone. Adobe is pushing hard to get away from todays environment where you have to develop mobile phone applications (very time consuming and expensive in the mobile phone developer environment today, with too many phones and too many OS environments). You should also not having to think like a computer user navigating between applications all the time.

Mobilstart by Telenor is offering gateway services for content providers that work with all mobile operators in Sweden, free to sign up and test drive.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - iPhone changed the rules for mobile internet

”iPhone and the changed rules of the game for mobile internet” by Ulrika Steg, Product Manager Consumer markets, TeliaSonera

Ulrika presented the impact from the Launch of the iPhone.

• 28% more data traffic in their 3G network after 1 week, since 160% more data traffic
• Most iPhone users browse outside their portal (the way it should have been everywhere from day 1 when internet access was possible on a mobile phone!) vs. non-iPhone users
• User cost control important
• iPhone users feel they have internet in a pocket
• 80% of buyers men under age 35 and half live in big cities (I think this also depends on the fact that in big cities you do have 3G coverage, I know a friend of mine living out in the country in northern Sweden and as he put it, "you have to climb up in a f%%%ing tree to get phone access")

The good thing about the iPhone launch, it forced the mobile operators to start thinking about how to offer value priced "flat-fee like" data plans. Telia has come up with pretty good plans so far, at the expense of higher price for the phone. The Metro daily paper actually made up a plan, buy cheap Ryan Air tickets, fly to Rome Italy in the morning, buy the iPhone, fly back home and you save a lot of money. But this is just the beginning of smart touch phones with turbo 3G access, more phones have just been introduced and more competition from Tele2, Telenor and 3 will mean better and better data plans. It will be interesting to see what happens here in Sweden when the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone starts selling at the 279 Euro price for an unlocked phone.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Social networking goes mobile, here's comes the ink, INQ Mobile

“Social networking goes mobile” by Ashley Benigno, INQ Mobile and Hutchison, Mobile Futures Strategist

Ashley presented the new company INQ Mobile http://www.inqmobile.com/ sponsored by 3, http://www.three.co.uk/

They have a "INQ OS" kind of platform which is Qualcomm Brew based with a simple but efficient UI for the new INQ phones. Speed and simplicity of pre-integrated apps into the new device makes the use almost instant. They have followed the concept, press a button or one click and the service in question should work right away without delay.

The INQ phone is based on the previously developed SkypePhone S2. The phone has one click access to Facebook, MySpace, Skype and 3's portal.

"Internet communicators that anyone can use" is their slogan. I like this concept with a model for a "cheap" phone, easy one touch access to the most commonly used services. INQ mobile's approach is not to compete with smartphones which they consider too expensive for a big mass market but still provide "cheap" easy access to internet services.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Media goes mobile, views from Yankee Group

"Media goes mobile” presented by Declan Lonergan, Yankee Group, Vice President, Head of research
YankeeGroup (YG)

Declan used statistics and experiences from Vodafone in UK.

Voda UK most searched;

1. Facebook
2. Bebo
3. eBay
4. Windows Live

Voda UK most visited;

1. Facebook
2. Google
3. BBC
4. MSN
5. Bebo
6. SonyEricsson
7. Yahoo
8. MySpace
9. Windows Live

Mobile universe vs. Advertising universe? - complementary values and crossover activities, mobile greatest attribute is combo of personalization and ubiquity.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Experiences, conclusions from Mobile-TV

”Experiences and conclusions from mobile TV trials” presented by Stefan Vlachos - Viasat head of mobile TV
http://www.viasat.se/Mobil-tv (side note: the company home page does not work properly in my IE7 browser)

MTG - ViaSatToGo service is available to Tele2 customers, http://www.tele2.se/

About 30 channels right now.

What people say they are going to use and what they do use is the complete opposite;

Here's what they do use:

1. Entertainment 80%
2. Sports
3. Music
4. Kids stuff
5. News

Of the 30 channels, most people use the scheduled areas/channels not on demand views

What is the value of mobile-TV?
-mobisodes - no
-made for mobile - no
-where and when
-why

Conclusion: value of mobile TV - it's your personal TV

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - New TV-habits demand a new TV service

”New TV-habits demand a new TV service” presented by Johan Wahlberg, web strategist at SVT, http://www.svt.se/

Johan presented the views on TV from a mobile point of view.

What is the mobile from a TV point of view?

• an internet channel
• short and fresh info
• on demand

Limitations due to price, phones,

Mass market eventually with a potential for

• interactivity
• always on consumers

Requirements:

• flat fee reasonably priced needed
• again Johan pointed out the UI ease of use a must

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Your daily newspaper goes mobile

”The Daily Newspaper goes mobile" - presented by Jan Helin, Aftonbladet, chief editor and publisher, http://www.aftonbladet.se

Jan started by presenting his views on use of mobile phones in Japan. Another interesting comment about the philosophy at Aftonbladet internet, use your gut feeling and decide to do something even if you are not quite sure it will be a big hit. This was the case for introducing scannable tags in the printed newspaper, the "beetagg" project.

Reflections from Japan;

• Simple media business model in Japan
• Too complex and expensive business model for content providers here in Sweden
• UI simplicity, press a button and the service works
• Low flat fee broadband

The "Beetagg project";

Introduce the use of tags for printed media used to get a direct connection with your readers. Importance of taking a strategic decision to go even if you don't know where you will end up

Results;

1. Worlds first paper with a moving image - use tag click on phone ad in paper and get a video on phone
2. Makes an paper article longer - see pictures from an event
3. Have a dialog with the readers - vote on a question
4. Service personalized to your needs - get the updated news for an item
5. Customer clubs and ad solutions - just started this part of the project

What is a "Beetagg"?

Beetagg from Connvision is used for coding, QR and Datamatrix not good enough quality (to use on daily newspaper paper quality), the reader can also as an open solution reader, read these other two open standards. Support is there for secure solutions also where you can verify that use user e.g. only can click once and participate in a survey or buy something.

Some user statistics after the introduction day:

• 45k clients downloaded of which 8k iPhone
• 100 - 1k clicks per tag

Sony, ICA, PhoneHouse leading commercial partners. All Swedes and Swedish companies on the directory website http://www.hitta.se have a tag

Connvision Sweden has a site for design of your own tags for web/blog, see http://www.beetagg.se/

UPDATE: Aftonbladet awarded "the Gold Mobile 2008 (Guldmobilen)" for this project.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/tagga/article3715093.ab

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Is mobile content revolution here? Views from Norway

Mikal Rohde, Schibsted, Head of mobile busines, Schibsted Corp. presented, ”Is the content revolution for mobile phones a reality now?”

Mikal represented views from Norway. He started his career with marketing at Netcom, GSM mobile operator in Norway.

Opinions from Mikal:

• The value UIs and ease of use for a user
• Walled garden is a dead concept
• flat-fee reasonably priced data is needed
• more ad paid services
• internet with mobility
• 20k iPhones represents about 50% of all internet traffic vs 5M other phones

UI friendly is the key to success, even the new Nokia's are too hard to use still

Google's strategy with Android+Chrome+AdWords = key indication of a driving direction for the future

Use all advantages of knowing about the user to build useful services, quality on ads needed. The next big wave is ads on the mobile internet and by 2011 $12.8B market according to Gartner group.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Learning from Asia's mobile market for your future

Benjamin Joffe, CEO +8* and founder Mobile Monday Beijing presented “The invisible media revolution: learning from Asia's mobile futures”

Benjamin Joffe founded http://www.plus8star.com +8* is a cross marketing company focusing on China-Korea-Japan markets.

Benjamin presented mainly views on China, Korea and Japan mobile markets and users.

The World-wide mobile market is 3.3B users, of that

• Asia 40%
• ROW 12%
• North America 8%
• Latin and South America 11%
• Europe 29%

The 3G market is >70% in Korea and Japan. In Japan more than $1B market for mobile music.

The mobile TV market is >30% in Korea and Japan. 70% of all phones are TV enabled.

D2 Communications, a mobile marketing firm says the mobile ads market is $700M, ads are using QR coded ads.

Blyk an ad sponsored UK MVNO operator is e.g. targetting 15-25 year old people, free phone service plus about 200 SMS per month. http://www.blyk.co.uk/

Good examples of money making mobile services in Asia:

Mobile auctions MobaOku (DeNA) in Japan has $7.4B m-commerce in Japan.
http://www.dena.jp/en/services/ecommerce.html#mbok

Mobile books example 2M books sold (of one book) for about 8 Euro apiece. Benjamin also stated, one major reason for good penetration of mobile commerce in Japan is that they introduced a flat fee data plans already back in 2004.

The last example concerns Mobile SNS (social networking). In a sharp contrast to almost everywhere else in the world, in Japan, Korea and China, social networking services are profitable including the mobile version.

Good examples;

The mobile social networking site mbga in Japan has 10M users with communities of games. http://www.mbga.jp/.pc/

The mobile social networking site mixi in Japan http://mixi.jp/ has 10M users

The mobile social networking QQ in China http://qq.com/ has 50M mobile users and 520M USD in revenue with 87% coming from users.

The mobile social networking site cyworld in Korea http://www.cyworld.com/cymain/index.asp has 6M users where 80% of revenue coming from users.

Finally, Asia is getting a mobile lifestyle infrastructure, use of 3G plus flat-fee data means media drives mobile services, devices and indirectly need for infrastructure.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Who will drive mobile media?

"Media companies and mobile operators - Who will drive mobile media?"
Morris Packer from Bonnier AB, responsible for mobile media presented



Who is driving the media? - Mobile media is "the media"
http://www.bonnier.com/Default.aspx?epslanguage=EN-GB

Morris presented a story about the first 5k days of the web and it is all about the economy stupid quoting Bill Clinton". Morris also used an example; They ran an ad for Spotify the music streaming service offering 4k free invites in the daily paper Expressen, http://www.expressen.se , the give away invites offer disappeared right away.

User generated content is also a key driver, an example, the Bambuser company allows everybody with a 3G camera/video phone to become a reporter and get the news streamed via http://bambuser.com
Bambuser is used for - online streaming TV from this event

Mobile broadband, blogs, twitter and streaming are changing how elections are done. Just see what happened in USA for the 2008 election.

• Mobile media is driven by the users
• Bluetooth used for peer communications between users (kids who don’t have internet service on their phones) for videoclips
• Email has become a service for old people
• Multimedia and live streaming for new generation of users
• Consumers are the new media creators

Another little story, you have to remind people nowadays to call 112 (in US 911) to report an accident before, you send in a video clip to the newspaper.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Introduction and Mobil magasinet

Introduction to the MobileFocus2008 event by Linus Brohult, chief editor Mobil magazine. http://www.mobilbusiness.se

Linus talked briefly about the big rise, finally in mobile data by quoting info from TeliaSonera who has reported a 430% growth. This gives though a skewed impression, most of that growth has come from the USB dongles for "Turbo 3G" laptop modems but later we could see that statistics from TeliaSonera's introduction of iPhone.

Mobil Business is also publishing a very good mobile phone and services magazine. Interesting to see that they just like most PC Magazines started performance benchmark testing to get score values for both performance as well as real live test on battery lifetime. Battery lifetime varies wildly on 3G phone from just under 3h to over 8hrs. Good to know if you are hunting for a useful phone for continuous internet use. Recent issue includes good tests of all new (except BlackBerry Storm) 3G touch phones.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Mobile Media is King - Summary

The Mobile Focus 2008 event took place on Nov. 6, at Kista Science Tower, Stockholm, http://www.sciencetower.com/

A quick summary of this event can be summed up as 3 "musts" and some marketing and technology tidbits.

• Ease of use a must
• Flat data plan at a "reasonable price" a must
• Easy content monetization models a must
• Adobe Air mobiles and INQ OS vs. Apple OSX, Google Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian
• Big belief in LTE with a faster time to market than earlier technologies
• Nokia "Yes We Can" be better than Apple, Google and Microsoft
• Self publishing, Social networking Services (SNS) and media publishers will drive markets
• Mobile media will the driver
• Mobile TV is personal TVBridging paper and mobile media

Details from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International.