dotMobi

Android and the Open Handset Alliance

Unless you've been down a mine all week, you'll have seen that Google, one of our investors, announced a new mobile software platform this week. It's called Android and the announcement also revealed the creation of the Open Handset Alliance.

Since we at dotMobi also constitute a mobile consortium of sorts, we thought it would be worthwhile talking about it a little. Certainly there are many facets to making the mobile web experience the success it deserves to be, and so the OHA is very welcome to the party.

The most amazing thing about this announcement was that a 34-company deal was kept so secret. But to be honest, after months of speculation, the rest wasn’t as surprising. The project has even kept the Android name, that of company that Google acquired back in 2005 to start the project.

To dotMobi followers, the big question is how well Android will help the growth and acceptance of the mobile web. Certainly it is set, like the iPhone, to increase the industry buzz and interest around the making the internet a truly mobile medium.

It will be important to see how it will be welcomed by the developers and owners of content, and of course, whether it is set to be a platform that also hits mainstream consumer consciousness, as the iPhone has done.

Whilst OHA plays the "Open" card very strongly, the addition of any new platform into the mobile space creates waves of new diversity, which are not necessarily a good thing in the short term. Nothing becomes de-facto overnight.

Of course, in the longer term, if Android becomes a dominant platform, then diversity diminishes and user experience will increase. (Think of the operating system homogeneity in the PC world, and the relative ease that brings to developers). But that would have to come at the expense of other, dominant market players - many of whom are notably absent from the OHA, and to be fair already have fairly open platforms of their own.

While Google has been able to position itself as a leader in the Internet space – despite what many originally thought was coming to that party a bit too late – there's too much at stake in the mobile world for ubiquity and uniformity to happen overnight, or even smoothly. This dynamic of device diversity is a very particular curse for the mobile space. And, incidentally, why we've been working so hard on mitigating it with our device database initiatives.

So the announcement was interesting and positive. We await further progress with great excitement.

dotMobi: One Year Later

First of all, hello to everyone. My first blog marks a special occasion in the life of dotMobi.

September 26 was the one-year anniversary of .mobi’s public availability. Although work started well before that date, that day was the public announcement that dotMobi was no longer a concept, idea or project. It was real. And one year later, there are 700,000 names registered with millions of pages of mobile content behind them, plus a slew of free tools for bringing content to the mobile web content like dev.mobi, ready.mobi, site.mobi and the dotMobi Web Developer Guide.  Much progress made, but much, much more to go!

Today, dotMobi’s challenge is to grow what was launched a year ago. Over the next two quarters, dotMobi will focus on growing mobile services for developers, designers and enterprises with the launch of key products like our device database and search services.

Another challenge for dotMobi is helping more and more brands bring their presence to the mobile web. Recently, we’ve seen strong brands like Wachovia, ESPN, Zagat and Disney bringing mobile properties to the .mobi domain. We’ve also seen innovative business models like MobilePropertySites.com, Zinadoo and dozens of other travel, automobile & media sites basing their services on the advantages of the .mobi domain.

I promise that there is much more to come.  This coming year is going to be an exciting one as we all help bring the mobile web to the mainstream … and I'm including every reader of this blog in that.

I know you have an interest in the success of the mobile web. If you have domains, use site.mobi to build content. Create mobile social networks with your friends using Zinadoo. If you have friends in businesses, introduce them to the benefits of the .mobi domain. Advertising works. PR works. But word of mouth will always be the most important way to reach a mass audience because it’s supported by your credibility and enthusiasm.  You have had and will have a big hand in impacting the growth of dotMobi, so thank you for your support in the past, and thank you for working beside us to build the future.

I'm already excited to think about a year from now, when we’ll be looking back at everything the dotMobi community has accomplished together over these next 12 months. I promise it will be exciting for you as well.

Weather is #1 in USA

M:Metrics recently released a study that showed “weather” as the top genre of news and information accessed by mobile subscribers in the United States. And that was before the good news dotMobi issued this week about The Weather Channel becoming the first brand to secure rights to a premium .mobi domain via an RFP process. I’m sure that mobile users are now going to be visiting weather.mobi on a regular basis. The site is already live, looks terrific and works exactly as it should ... it’s a pleasure to use. Soon, it will be advertised on TWC’s PC-based site, so be on the lookout.

Here is a photo of (left) Louis Gump, vice president of mobile at The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCi), and Neil Edwards, CEO of dotMobi, when the agreement was finalized.

By the way, another interesting part of that M:Metrics report is that sports information –- especially football / soccer -– is the number one choice of Europeans. Otherwise, the US and Europe are more or less on a par with what they visit; for example, “news” is in the number two spot in both the United States and Europe. As the mobile internet breaks outside of the walled gardens, I suspect you’ll be seeing more variety among the most visited mobile information. By the way, if you’re European, be sure to visit espn.mobi or kicker.mobi. The former is the well-known sports brand while the latter is a German-language site dedicated exclusively to football.

And before the questions come rolling in ... the other names that dotMobi made available under this inaugural process –- ringtones, news and sports –- will not be awarded right now. Although proposals were submitted for these domains, the focus on how they would be developed for content was not as strong as these names deserve. Like all of the domains on the dotMobi Premium Names list, they will be made available once again through an equitable distribution process. But in the meantime, be sure to bookmark weather.mobi on your mobiles.

- Vance Hedderel, Dir. of PR & Communications

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.   

The "Go Mobile" Program -- What, How, And Why

Today we announced the "Go Mobile!" program for our channel partners.  This program is the culmination of months of work aimed at helping businesses and individuals create mobile optimized content, easily and cost effectively. 

Here is how:

1) Any individual or business can now use the Mobile Ready Tool to see just how optimized for mobile their site content is.  If you are the CEO of a big company, you might want to know what is the overall score and what are the costs you impose on your customers, if they were to access your site via a mobile phone.  On the other hand, your in house web development team would be interested in knowing exactly how the site performed in each of the 28 separate tests done.  Let me emphasize that this is free to use and in the public domain for all content owners.  Go ahead and test a few of the dotMobi showcase sites as a comparison.

2) Web developers now have one centralized forum; http://dev.mobi -- again, free to join and use -- to share information, participate in forums/blogs/polls, have access to open source tools and get FREE on-line training.  Up to now, there has been some excellent developer forums available, however, their focus has been quite specialized, e.g. development issues related to a specific mobile phone manufacturer or for a specific application suite.  Again this is what dotMobi is about: proposing an open, standards-based platform, sharing knowledge across the mobile eco-system and making available valuable resources for free in the public domain.

3) Many businesses already have access via their registrar to a tool that helps them create a mobile optimized site that is already .mobi compliant.  GoDaddy, the largest provider in the US for example has a tool called "Website Tonight®".  As of last count more than 15 separate well-known resellers had announced a tool of this kind all based on the dotMobi content development style guide.  To ensure all resellers have access to these tools, we will soon announce a free tool that enables anyone to create a mobile optimized site that is guaranteed to be .mobi compliant.  No coding experience of any kind required!  If you can upload a picture, or copy and paste... you will be able to use it. 

We have long maintained that the growth of the Internet on Mobile is highly dependant on how easily content providers of any kind ( large and small) are able to create and update relevant local content.  Availability, ease of use and cost of content creation tools (in this case, FREE) is a key motivator in convincing the majority, not just the early minority.

4) Lastly, we have provided our channel partners marketing incentives to push out to these tools to their customer base.

The "Go Mobile!" program is another step in continuing to deliver on the promises of an open and mobile Internet.

dotMobi Goes Back To China

Neil Edwards, the CEO of dotMobi, and I recently made another trip to China.  If you recall, we made our first trip there to meet our partners China DNS and HiChina.  We also did a press conference to introduce dotMobi to the market, not as yet another domain name, but rather a standards based approach to accelerate mobile content for the Chinese consumer.  (Recall that China has over 100 million Internet subscribers and over 450 million mobile subscribers.) 

We talked about the development tools that we plan to offer.  The press conference was held on December 8 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Beijing and was attended, not only by our registrar partners,  but also by more than 40 members of the press.

Stan Zhang, the CEO of HiChina  spoke about the results of his campaign and especially about the fact that the focus is on content. (Btw, he practices what he preaches; he has his own company's .mobi site up and running.)

Jiang Qun, the CEO of ChinaDNS also spoke in support of dotMobi and his company's focus around mobile initiatives.

Edwards Sang -- the CEO of 7234, whose company will soon be focusing on selling .mobi -- reiterated the emphasis on mobile content and the value of dotMobi's cooperation in providing open source tools to help the local market.

So what was the message that we delivered? Well this time we came back, having fulfilled some promises we had made the last time.

1. For one thing, we have hired Adrian Lui in China to work directly with our partners on the ground, the dotMobi Developer Forum and the Mobile Ready Tool.  The Mobile Ready Tool will be localized in Chinese by early part of this year, so developers and content managers all over China can determine how mobile ready their existing sites are. 
2. We unveiled the beta version of the Mobile Ready Tool
3. We also announced that we will bring sponsor a contest to highlight and reward the best and most compelling Chinese language dotMobi sites.
4. And last, we announced that there are working at least three additional registrar partners to be able to serve the market better.

We also held separate meetings with analysts and technical press to cover them in depth on the details of the announcements.  It was a hectic week,punctuated by meetings with  technical and development companies as well as our own registrar partners.  The major news of that week was the annoucement that 3G licenses were going to be available for operators to bid on.  I have heard figures as varied as 10 to 26% refering to the percentage of Chinese operator revenues derived from data sales.  If true, its certainly higher than the average figure cited bu GSMA of 5% (strip out SMS, which accounts for 2-3%, and you are left with precious few).  So undoubtedly the operators have to map out plans on how to make the money invested in the 3G license and infrastructure pay out.  Naturally we had some interesting meetings around the very same subject with operators as well. 

China is a long-term market, and a few trips and meetings will certainly not accomplish the aim of realizing the potential it has. So far, we have been consistent -- listening and trying to understand the nuances of the market (culture, regulation, language, needs, mobile players, etc) and delivering solutions based on that input.  Thankfully, so far at least we have made some headway.

All-you-can-eat Mobile Internet Access Comes to the UK

Lots of press and commentary was generated today by 3's X-Series announcement: 3 is moving to an all-you-can-eat mobile Internet access model. As they put it, "X-Series customers will only pay a flat access fee on top of their basic subscription and then what’s free to use on the internet should be free to use on mobile broadband."

That's terrific news. As Neil Edwards, dotMobi's CEO, put it, "3 proved they're a leader in the mobile Internet space when they co-founded the .mobi domain. I believe this pricing model will actively encourge the growth of the Internet on mobiles, which is a positive development for consumers because it will incent developers to bring more mobile content online. The all-you-can-eat mobile Internet access model is bound to prove itself successful in the UK, just as it did with PC-based broadband connections."

I'm equally excited to see 3 leverage their high-speed network to bring the mobile Internet one step closer to general usage.

Good show, 3!

General Registration Begins

Today, dotMobi launched its general registration period and thousands of domains were purchased. But it's not just about the numbers for us, it's about seeing more and more people embracing the mobile internet. As you have may seen in this announcement (DOC), many of our registrars are making free tools available so that buyers can build .mobi-compliant sites, and those sites are coming online daily. Two of our favorites are businessweek.mobi and cnnmoney.mobi. Not only do these sites deliver what users have said they want -- information that's quick to download and easy to digest -- but their owners are putting their marketing behind .mobi.

It's great to see category leaders become thought leaders; they've done their homework and understand that the mobile internet is a new way to reach their audience. Being able to deliver news to the one device that people usually have with them at all times should be a "no brainer," but it's always a bit difficult to make the first step -- and that's why I find these two sites exciting. And I admit it's cool to see the ads from BusinessWeek and CNNMoney in magazines because it shows that both of these media companies are ready to show their customers the way forward for communications.

Prophetic Words Back In 1995 | The Outlook For An Open Internet

Recently dotMobi was criticized in the media by Verizon.  Somewhat oddly, the spokesperson sought for these comments was an Associate General Counsel whose responsibilities are not content nor growth of a mobile channel, but rather protection of Verizon's IP and trademark -- in other words, minimizing risk and ensuring the status quo.

As I thought about the reaction, I cannot say I am surprised.  There are a few operators, Verizon being one, that have simply not embraced the idea that the Internet has been an open system and that interoperability (not walled gardens) ensure growth.  But then again, many players try to keep the status quo if they feel an open Internet and consumer choice represents a risk to their present interests.

A few days ago, someone brought to my attention the following 1995 article in Wired magazine.  Remember 1995?  Internet was in its infancy and the then power player "AOL" was a closed and proprietary network.  Read the whole article here if you want or, read the exerpt after the jump, and draw your own parallel between 2006 and the proprietary walled gardens (and the state of denial) at AOL.

Oh.. how far we've come.

South Africa: Who Will Take Up The Challenge?

I came across this post about the lack of .mobi penetration in South Africa. The writer, Andrew Mercer, asks rhetorically "What's wrong guys not interested in marketing to the 20 million SA cell phone users?"

Why am I interested? Well to be frank, Africa and South Africa in particular have been a special interest of mine (see my earlier post).  In a continent and specifically a country where mobile ownership oustrips PCs and where savvy businesses are already using mobile and even text messaging to market their services, how long will it take before this market is deemed important enough to invest in? 

I long to see a South African ICANN and dotMobi accredited registrar!  I would love to see a hosting provider that offers low-cost .mobi site creation tools. (GoDaddy [PDF], Hostway and Dotster -- three of the biggest registrars -- announced their free web enablement tools for .mobi registrants in the last week.)  And last but not least, I would love to see the carriers announce wallet-friendly data plans to the consumers to encourage this next wave of the Internet.  There is no reason why Africa should lag behind.

If you want to be among the first in this marker, contact us and I will make sure you have the tools to properly market to this vibrant and underserved market.