dotMobi

Trends we're seeing for the mobile Internet industry

As the dotMobi team prepares to set off on a suite of industry events over the next six weeks -- from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, to ICANN in Mexico and CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas -- we've been discussing trends we're seeing for the mobile Internet industry in the year ahead.

While our developer and domain initiatives have stimulated mobile content deployment with more than one million registered .mobi names, we expect smaller businesses to lead the growth of the mobile Web as development costs decrease and more consumers become aware of the possibilities of their mobile phones.

Thanks to sophisticated -- yet simple to use -- development tools and the growth of mobile Web-friendly phones, we think smaller businesses will look to mobile as an effective, affordable channel for marketing their goods and services.

New, low-cost tools and services designed for the small-to-medium business (SMB) market will mean more SMBs will promote their products and services to the rapidly emerging "mobile Internet consumer."

We're so sure about SMBs taking advantage of the mobile Web that we've just put together a new, free eBook for SMBs on using mobile for marketing, called -- pretty straightforwardly, I say -- "Marketing Your Small Business on the Mobile Web."

Banking: The Surprise Mobile Vertical

Over the past two years of the .mobi domain, many of the first "verticals" that went mobile have not been a surprise because of the nature of their industries: travel (priceline.mobi), hotels (hilton.mobi), transportation (amtrak.mobi, sas.mobi, thalys.mobi) and dining (zagat.mobi).

However, the one industry that caught me unawares in terms of popularity has been banking and finance. Bank of America (bofa.mobi) is the probably the most active in promoting its .mobi site, but there are dozens of others around the world from lacaixa.mobi to deutsche-bank.mobi to usaa.mobi. It proves out a point that we discovered in the study we conducted with AKQA earlier this year: people are most interested in utility in their mobile sites. They're not against entertainment like games and ringtones, but rather that they see a mobile phone primarily as an way to help simplify the day-to-day administration of their lives.

The reason I'm mentioning this because of a press release dotMobi issued yesterday saying that California-based ClairMail has added DeviceAtlas to their service offerings.

ClairMail is a business-to-business company that builds mobile versions of existing banking sites, giving banks “transactional” mobile sites that tie into their back-end systems. Their customers include Alerus Financial, City Bank (Texas), 1st National Bank of Scotia, and Cascade Bank (Washington State). Now with the addition of DeviceAtlas to their platform, they can offer “device aware” mobile sites to their customers. And with that, we're sure to see the banking market continue to flourish as a prime space for mobile users.

Are there verticals you've seen going .mobi that have been a surprise to you? Let us know in the comments section.

Improved site building goodness: site.mobi goes 3.0

If you've purchased .mobi domains but haven't gotten around to putting content on them, I think you'll be interested in the just-released verison 3.0 of site.mobi.

site.mobi 3.0 has a batch of new features that will make building your sites even easier and will help you monetize those sites once they're live. Among the most interesting new features are Google AdSense and AdMob for mobile advertising, PayPal and Google Checkout for mobile commerce and mobile RSS for content syndication.

site.mobi also now has SMS and email invitations so you can tell your clients and customers, friends and family, that your .mobi site is live. And be sure to let us know about it, too, for consideration in the dotMobi site showcase.

BTW - Did you notice our newest investor?

Last week at CTIA the CEO and President of Visa, John Philip Coghlan delivered the keynote.  Stating that the concept of turning the cell phone into a credit or debit card, is "inevitable", he announced Visa's investment in dotMobi.  Visa now joins thirteen other companies as the latest investor in dotMobi. 

If you glance at the names, Visa stands out as being the only one not traditionally associated with the mobile space.   And its a welcome addition! Why? it simply underlines that dotmobi is not just relevant to a select group of "mobile" companies, but rather to a larger base of companies, who see mobile as a the next iteration of the Internet and not simply as a technology.

At the same time that the announcement was made, the dotmobi team was split across the Atlantic. Part of our team, including our CTO and our development team were attending CTIA, while I attended ICANN in Lisbon along with the rest of the sales and operations team.  (That is, where we finally were able to watch the announcement on YouTube.)  Though we have been somewhat understated about this announcement and have simply posted the release on our site, we strongly believe this is huge news. 

As evidenced by the reaction of one of our channel partners at ICANN upon hearing the news: "With these level of (investors) companies ... mobile commerce is bound to happen".  We certainly hope so, and now we are well positioned thanks to our latest investor.   

Mobile ad space heats up with the entrance of Nokia!

The mobile ad space is heating up. Nokia's entrance is significant, as they enter the fray with traditional players such as Google, MS, and Yahoo as well as smaller but nimble start-ups such as Admob.

It also confirms some of the predictions about the promise of mobile advertising.  It shows they recognize the opportunity and want to build on their brand and leverage their market power building services connecting operators, advertisers and publishers.  And they figure they are at the nexus of it all.

What they announced yesterday was two services. First, the Nokia Ad Service: a fully managed service for advertisers to do targeted advertising on mobile services and applications. The second was the Nokia Advertising Connector, which is a private label service.  What is cool about the connector is that it selects and then feeds to the device text, visual, audio or video ads -- depending on the user's context.

The services have already had some favorable pilots but will not be commercially available till later on this year.  The question is will operators see them as a good alternative to the traditional players, or will they see this as a potential threat long term given the power of the brand. 

Overall though, this is a great sign.  More competition from players small and large will mean content providers will increasingly have a means to monetize their content.  We are working to get tools in their hands to help them build that content.  After all, without enough good content, there won't be much out there to "monetize."

Hat-tip: Mobile Entertainment.

TBL And "Why dotMobi?"

Well... Paul Knag thinks dotMobi is a scam. We've addressed much of those claims before (and even dedicated a section to it), so we can agree to disagree here.

Citing this article, though, Knag points out a longstanding criticism of dotMobi from Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, which we've never addressed here.

Tim Berners-Lee’s criticism was that existing content should be smart enough to recognize device being used and that we should not fragment the web into mainstream content and content for small screens.

In an ideal world, the client-side device type would direct the type of page served, but that is not how things have evolved.

The fact is the majority of the 80 plus million sites across the web do not work well on mobile devices and do not detect device type before redirecting you. So, mobile operators and service providers (as major competitors) formed dotMobi to address the need for a usable and reliable mobile content.

The data also shows that mobile users look for different kinds of information from their mobile devices than on a PC. This is why dotMobi suggests a site with mobile-relevant but lighter-weight content. A registrant can put up whatever content they like; we only mandate that it comply with three simple rules to work well on mobile devices -- XHTML, no frames, and no "www". The unique ability dotMobi has to enforce those rules, per our contract with ICANN, makes it effective in a way no other TLD is.

dotMobi as a new TLD provides a service-marked mobile internet. And that is based on solid open industry standards, not marketing hype.

Mobile advertising- just how far is it?

On August 27th, International Herald Tribune's Eric Pfanner  ran a story titled "On Advertising: pitching Via cell".  

This was a good summary piece about the developments in mobile advertising, the trend not only in text based advertising but the emergence of banner ads on the mobile Internet.  It cites operators such as France Telecom's Orange and Hutchison's "3"  who have started to sell banner ads on their portals. Moreover, it states "Analysts acknowledge that forecasts for the growth of mobile marketing and advertising are just educated guesses, but Jupiter Research sees a €700 million, or $895 million, market in Western Europe by 2010, up from less than €100 million now. Ovum, a telecommunications consultancy, forecasts a $1.3 billion U.S. market by 2010".

I am typically cautious of market figures quoted out to 2010, after all who in 1985 could forecast the growth of a new media called the Internet?.  However, here are a few undeniable trends

1. There are four times as many cellphones as there are PCs in the world today.  More and more people - in the developed as well as developing areas of the world - have and use Internet connectivity via their mobile phones.
2. The mobile phone is becoming faster, more data enabled, cheaper and more affordable (It certainly is now more so than a PC)
3. The mobile phone is what a very interesting research project at Nokia calls part of your "core mobile essentials," meaning you do not leave your home without your money, keys, and your mobile phone.  That is the one piece of equipment that is with us at all times.  Key takeaway: This channel can not only reach you at all times, but can make information time, location, and context relevant!
4. In an increasingly mobile world, the mobile phone is or will shortly be the communicator and the computing platform of choice.  (Side note: Remember the palm PDAs, and how interestingly enough they morphed into the Treo line? Now phones not only embed computing capability, but also entertainment such as built-in mp3 players..)

So why wouldn't advertisers salivate over the opportunity to build a direct channel to the customer?  We will see SMS based advertising morph onto on-line based ads.  Why? Although SMS ads have proliferated, they are very niche, fragmented-by-nature (some short codes work in some markets and not others, and put the burden of remembering the short code, as well as the desired text, on the consumer. 

I am sure organizations such as the AMA, as well as a few trials and errors will show that targeted, opt-in ads that promise to subsidize or pay for a service in return for viewing ads will emerge as the way to go.  Are the figures correct? That's immaterial for now, its the trends that are correct. What will change the forecast figures are: how soon the AMA as well as the industry can develop ad standards as well as acceptable advertising tactics that are not only respectful of privacy but also deliver real value to the customer.

Some interesting reactions to the piece:

Daniel Applequist

You may ask why, as a technologist, I am so excited about the prospect of mobile advertising? Well -- look at it this way: advertising is the engine that is powering innovation in companies like Yahoo! and Google right now.

Jill Stover

Should libraries be thinking about delivering their services via mobile devices?  You betchya!  In fact, some librarians are already dipping their toes into these promising waters.

How Many Payment Systems Are Needed For Mobile Content?

It absolutely makes no sense that only a few closed payment systems exist for mobile content providers today. The lack of multiple mobile payment options is having a deading effect on the growth of mobile content. 

Wheter I am a businessman in the Internet or offline world, I simply pick the local bank that gives me the best rates for my merchant account.  Then, my ecommerce software or point-of-sale system integrates my preferred payment provider into my business. 

It will be very important in the coming year to look for new and open developments in the arena of mobile payments.  Today, the few closed systems are retarding the growth of mobile content.  The coming entrance of Paypal and other solutions will be a welcome entrance into the world of mobile payments.