Virtual Mobile Numbers - Out of Bundle?

I heard something rather worrying yesterday. It seems that some mobile network operators are taking SMS messages to virtual mobile numbers out of bundle.

This means that when someone sends an SMS to a virtual mobile number instead of being deducted from the SMS allowance that comes with their contract, the message is billed on top.

This is not the same as operators charging SMS messages to virtual mobile numbers that look like UK numbers but are actually hosted off-shore, like Tyn-Tec's Isle of Man number range. This is apparently happening to UK mainland numbers from Vodafone, Orange, etc.

This is crazy and very short-sighted, but unfortunately typical.

Over the years ay Esendex we have time and time again convinced our customers to use Virtual Mobile Numbers when communication with their customers via SMS.

Just broadcast to customers and you might as well be shouting at them. Give customers a reply path and you are interacting.

Where virtual mobile numbers differ from shortcodes is that as far as the recipient is concerned they are just like any other mobile number, and, importantly, SMS to them are billed liked any other mobile number.

This means there is very little resistance from the customers to interact. The messages are essentially free and more interaction occurs.

I don't understand why an operator would stand in the way of this.

Interaction = more engaged subscribers = more messages = plan upgrades = higher ARPU

Isn't that how it works?

I've had some brief interactions with operator interconnect teams and based on these experiences I suspect this is where this 'initiative' originated.

There is very much a sense of 'we're not doing it so we're going to do our damndest to spoil it for everyone else', like a petulant school child.

Am I wrong?

I'm trying to like Rummble, I really am

Rummble has real potential to be a mobile location service I would use. The promise of being able to:

1. find out what's good where I am right know
2. add my own views and contribute to the knowledge map

is a tantalising proposition. With Rummble, unfortunately, it still remains just that.

To really succeed, a service like this has to operate from my mobile. If I've got something to say about somewhere, I'm far more likely to be there rather than in front of my PC. I'll be still queueing because I'm in the middle of a bad service experience or (just finished) enjoying whatever I want to share with the world so they can experience it too.

Enter the Rummble iPhone App, perfect device for this. GPS built in, advanced user interface capabilities, fantastic connectivity. Problem is the Rummble app has taken advantage of the first two and assumed the last one.

If you build a mobile app, you can't assume it will be connected to the internet

I've tried a number of times to Rummble on the move now and it's just painful. For a start the start screen takes an age to load, even on my work WiFi connection it's ponderous. Immediately barriers are preventing me from expanding the network of knowledge.

Trying to add a Rummble when you haven't got 5 bars worth of 3G coverage is a joke and has resulted in a number of app crashes. What's really cute is how the app doesn't remember anything you've typed in so you have to go through the whole painful process again. Probably fair to point out that this hasn't crashed on me since the latest update.

I'm in danger of this turning into a rant and that wouldn't be fair at this stage. I've developed enough apps in my time to understand the issues and I'm also a big believer in the concept. There is still time for Rummble to rethink their mobile app architecture.

I believe mobile apps should be built from the ground-up to be able to operate without network coverage. Especially if they're capturing data. Work from that base and make the app synchronise when the connectivity is available.

The key thing Rummble needs is data, it needs to get enough reviews in enough places that I visit to be useful to me. It must allow users to enter these into the app without connectivity. Even if that means creating stubs that I then need to complete when I'm next online, either with the app or on the website.

The really valuable information is in my head right now, allow me to write a comment quickly, get it off my chest. If I can complete the review there and then marvellous, but don't deny me just because my mobile network isn't giving me the coverage the app needs.

I wish Rummble every success, it would be great for a UK company to succeed in this space.

5 mobile services I actually use

Thought I'd collate my current list of mobile services I'm loving or would find life difficult without.

Kizoom

This has been a bookmark in every phone had I've since 2001. This mobile version of the National Rail enquires web site is a must have for any train user in the UK.

SMS

Is on my iPhone dock bar in place of the phone application. Still the original and still the best.

TwitterFon

The best twitter client for the iPhone. Simple and fast, two must haves for any mobile application.

GoogleTalk for BlackBerry

BlackBerry have got push nailed, their platform allows third party apps to raise message alerts and push them into the system inbox. The GoogleTalk IM client embraces this and allows me to maintain conversations wherever I am.

Rummble iPhone App

This is a new one and it's early days but it seems more useful than BrightKite. It allows you to log your location, send status updates and post photos but also to "Rummble" about where you are. If it gets critical mass, this could be a winner.

SMS is the New Black

I caught up with Patrick Smith at the recent Future of Mobile conference. We hadn't bumped into each other for a while and I discovered much had happened, not only had he set up Joshua PR but he'd also started a new blog.

SMS is the New Black is a much needed answer to the fanboy hype surrounding many of today's mobile apps as everyone looks for the next big thing. The key focus is on what mobile apps and services work for Normobs not just technology obsessed geeks.

How refreshing.

Mobile Industry Review Christmas Draw

Don't forget to get involved with the Mobile Industry Review Christmas Draw.

It's a fantastic idea that I'm whole-heartedly behind. Just look at what you can win.

As well as standing the chance of winning you will make a real difference to someone who is in real need.

Now if that's not true Christmas spirit then I'll skip around Market Square, Nottingham in a pink tutu singing "I'm one of Santa's happy little helpers".

Future of Mobile, unfortunately the operators hold the cards

I've been pondering the Future of Mobile conference this week. Many better people have posted on the conference (Helen Keegan, Alan Patrick) but rather than regurgitate the same review, I wanted to share what I felt was the really fundamental issue.

Not, how did Rudy de Waele get Michael Madsen to stand in for his press shots; or even that Rich Miner of Google must have been 12 when his was taken. Check out the FoM home page, it's all there.

More that while the vision espoused by Tomi Ahonen, Jonathan MacDondald, Andrew Grill, et al is all eminently sensible, fundamental logical and absolutely the way forward, it relies on one party to play ball, the network operators.

Problem is they don't like the rules, and anyway it's their ball and actually it's their pitch and if you don't like it you can...

I've worked with the operators for several years now and one thing I have learned is that they're not risk takers. They are very dull utilities, addicted to their existing revenues that leave the risks to other people.

How exciting do networks get? All the 'exciting' stuff is left to the handset vendors. Who, let's face it, are hardly pushing the envelope. Oohh I can get a 8MP camera instead of a 5MP if I get the new Sony Ericcson thingamy-wotsit. Wow guys, you really went wild this time. How did you squeeze those extra 3 million pixels in you crazy things?

I remember an episode of House where he was interviewing new students and he ripped a poor lad apart (he was an actor so it was OK, it wasn't real) for thinking he was so 'out-there' for having a tatoo. House made the point that the real rebels were those guys working all the hours to succeed while the rest of you the students were partying and playing at being rebels. I'm paraphrasing but you get my drift.

Being revolutionary isn't necessarily about bells and whistles or being Web 2.0 or being the new black. It's about pushing on in the face of detractors, staying true to a vision and always adapting and tuning until it works. It often starts slow and builds and builds until it's a freight train that no one can stop.

It's that slow start that operators just don't get, or they're not setup to support. Give them a big presentation, loads of credentials and predictions of millions of pounds of revenue and you might get through the door.

You need a big story to stand a chance of pushing through the next hurdle which is the internal politics. As Rich Miner says of his experience at Orange launching the SPV (I had one, I know how crap it was) political infighting derailed the whole process, as well as Microsoft not being prepared to patch a critical bug for 18 months, and of course it being a pile of crap.

The kinds of changes discussed at FoM require a fundamental shift by the operators. If the vision laid out is to become a reality then the operators have got to open up. Invest in the platforms for the next generation of mobile services. Provide the access points to allow companies, startups and established, to leverage those platforms in ways never imagined.

If they're concerned about haemorrhaging value, it's time to get innovative with the commercial models. With startups, what about taking a stake in the venture. I'm sure many would jump at the opportunity if Vodafone or Telefonica turned round and said we'll support you. Established companies can look at JVs.

The Internet and mobile worlds are converging. The Internet world is looking at the mobile world and trying to work out how to replicate the models. The operators are looking at the Internet world, terrified that they'll go the way of the fixed-line ISPs. Problem is, it's that erosion of value in access that drove the innovation.

I, and I'm sure many other people, have so many things we want to achieve and bring to market. Convincing the operators to let us prove it shouldn't be the hard bit.

The great British iPhone mystery | The Register

This popped up on The Register today, well worth a read.

The great British iPhone mystery | The Register

I've currently got a Nokia E51 so I can do some R&D as well as trying out some of the new mobile apps which all seem to be for Symbian S60. It's a great bit of hardware but the OS is a real pain to use, Nokia really need to pull their fingers out if their to remain at the top of the smartphone market.

Alphanumeric sender restrictions come to Spain

Spanish operators seem to be clamping down on the use of alphanumeric sender aliases. Instead the messages must come with a valid reply-path be it shortcode or MSISDN (standard mobile number).

This is in an attempt to combat SPAM messages being sent to their subscribers. The theory, it would seem, is that if a number is used then the sender can be identified. Allowing the recipient to identify and reply to the sender to unsubscribe from the service.

These kind of restrictions are very broad brush approaches to problems caused by a minority that have a big impact on the majority. I've talked before about these kind of restrictions in Web-sent SMSs now face restrictions. It's puts in an interesting situation.

Many of our customers make heavy use of the facility to brand their messages with their own company or service name. A quick mystery shop round other SMS service providers in Spain reveals that it's business as usual. Alphanumeric senders are fine, they're happy to carry the traffic.

Currently, we have a number of routes into Spain that allow traffic with alphanumeric senders to pass, the messages are received and delivery receipts returned without issue.

That said one of our routes is having issues with alphanumeric senders to one of the Spanish networks. Is this a standard technical issue or this symptomatic of a tightening up of the restrictions?

So do we give the customer what they want while we still can along with everyone or do we self-police our customers and use one of our Spanish virtual mobile numbers for those that don't want the extra cost of having a dedicated number?

The risk if we do the former is that routes get summarily blocked to all traffic rather than just traffic that fall foul of the restrictions because that's pretty much all the operator can do at an interconnect level. This means customers with legitimate messaging have their service disrupted.

However, if we do the latter, we risk losing customers to other service providers who are prepared to carry the traffic.

We're going to put it in the hands of our customers for as long as possible. For those that rely on our service to get the messages through without any potential downtime, we will recommend using our Spanish virtual mobile number service.

We'll just be ready to switch it on for the customers that are happy to risk an alphanumeric alias for the meantime.

"We even hired an expert"

This tickled me. You may be aware that Sprint are launching an iPhone competitor in partnership with Samsung, the Samsung Instinct. It's a big deal for Sprint and interesting one for the rest of the industry to monitor up take by subscribers.

"This is certainly the biggest device that we will launch this year," David Owens, director of product commercialization at Sprint said. "We built it through a partnership with Samsung and even hired an expert to help us with UI design."

Wow they hired an expert. Does that mean the rest of the phone was designed and built by amateurs? There are so many ways to read that last sentence.

Are Symbian and J2ME dead?

The launch of the iPhone and Android SDKs represent a huge leap forward in the opportunities for mobile device application development. The question for me is how do the current incumbents, Symbian and J2ME, react.

I've talked before about my continued disappointment with mobile applications (Mobile Phone Applications, when will they ever take off?). These experiences have been very much routed in the pre iPhone/Android era.

In the Symbian/J2ME world, applications are poorly integrated with the phone, hidden by layers of menus and generally underwhelming. The world according to iPhone/Android has the opportunity for the application to be front and centre, and in Android's case, closely integrated with the phone functions.

The second half of 2008 promises to be a fantastically exciting time for mobile device users. The iPhone has redefined the mobile device and the version 2.0 firmware with its enterprise features will deliver a device that kicks some serious Windows Mobile butt. Can't believe they're on version 6 and it's still an overweight, clunky to use, buggy monstrosity.

Now apps for the iPhone are not going to be without issues. The big one for me is the inability/refusal to allow background processes to run. It stops all sorts of useful features like background data updates and push facilities that would really make it a BlackBerry killer. That said, it's an amazing user interface experience, and as it continues to demonstrate, even without 3G data transfer speeds, iPhones are blazing a trail in mobile web usage. Though I do suspect most of this is on home WiFi networks.

The killer feature for me is the remote update capabilities that are built into the OS. The link to iTunes is critical to the devices operation and this allows Apple to push new updates, including strategy changes, at will. I can't remember the last time I updated the firmware on a Symbian phone.

Android is taking a very different line, an almost completely open platform. Full access to all the device's functions. Now this is really a desktop-like development experience. No-holds barred, access to everything, only constrained by your imagination type environment. Only one thing is missing, handsets. It seems Samsung and HTC are in a race to deliver the first but apparently this won't be until the end of this year! So develop what you like, it 'aint going to be on a device until 2009.

There seems to be a huge opportunity for Nokia to leverage their number 1, by a long way, position in the world handset market and bring something truly powerful and pervasive to the market. Unfortunately it seemed their response was to make it even harder to get Symbian apps on phones. Why Symbian Signed must die gives a good account.

Symbian can push out news stories about how many handsets ship with Symbian, 77.3m Symbian smartphones shipped in 2007 but for me that's 77m handsets that aren't going to run Symbian apps, it's just too difficult for people, especially enterprises.

Apple are treading a very delicate path with the iPhone, keep it exclusive but get it adopted by enterprises. Historically their products haven't been adopted by this segment. If their aspirations are to get the iPhone into the hands of key personnel and in turn those personnel buy a Mac for home instead of a Windows PC then that's probably a huge result.

I'm pretty neutral on Android. Yes it's flexible, yes it's open, but it's a while before before people can actually use it and who knows what will happen then. I do wonder whether there is a bigger play here involving GrandCentral a mobile device, closely integrated with that service could be very disruptive indeed.

Symbian, IMHO, have lost the plot already. They have huge penetration but low usage and no established update process. It's going to take something dramatic from them to enable them to maintain their dominance of the high-end mobile device market.

Web-sent SMSs now face restrictions

Picked this up from my Google Alerts : Web-sent SMSs now face restrictions

Of particular interest was the following paragraph:

The committee has also decided that the service providers must also ensure that the SMSs received by their network from a website would not have India’s country code +91 as the sender party’s address. The code +91 is strictly reserved for messages sent from a mobile phone.

This is definitely one to watch. Esendex don't do a lot of business in India, but markets have a habit of following each other.

As part of a standard service, we allow our customers to change the sender of messages to be their mobile number or a virtual mobile number we provide. Both providing a legitimate reply path for the recipient. If we were providing Indian national mobile numbers, we would be falling foul of this regulation.

To me this looks disturbingly like their following the US approach of requiring all SMS traffic be sent via shortcodes for A2P (Application to Person) traffic. While this is billed as protecting users against SPAM it also serves to stifle the market for innovative services to smaller organisations.

The issue with shortcodes is that they are short and therefore in scarce supply. Long numbers on the other hand a re long and in plentiful supply. The other benefit of long numbers is that the costs of sending to them are the same as any other mobile number. No need for the dreaded 'standard network charges apply' clause on every bit of communication, no need to educate the end=users to prfix their messages with a keyword in order to communicate.

This makes them both accessible and affordable for SMEs who wish to extend the communication mix and bridge between the Internet and telecoms. They can be used for normal communication appointment reminders, server alerts, customer service applications, etc and not just marketing and promotion of large company's services.

As we extend our interconnects around the world, I hear time and time again that 'this operator doesn't like A2P traffic' and 'that operator has restrictions on this kind of traffic'. It's this kind of ill-considered, blanket approach that brings my blood to boiling point. It's so short-sighted, so protectionist without real thought, and so stifling of innovation.

There are 2 weapons against SPAM that are well within the reach of all network operators.

1. Interconnect fee - the operators can setup AA19 agreements with all networks they wish to receive traffic from specifying commercial terms for doing so. If SPAM costs too much, it stops.
2. SPAM filtering - most SMS hubbing companies I speak to these days have robust SPAM filtering to prevent these messages from passing through their hubs and onto the network. Unfortunately, the networks don't seem to be interested.

IMHO The only real growth in SMS volumes are going to be from the A2P arena. Everyone has phones pretty much and I would bet they're going to reach the limit of what they want to text to each other about. Get them texting with applications and the explosive growth days can reign again.

Virtual mobile number based services represent the Long Tail of innovation that can touch everyone. A company sending just 500 messages a month to key stakeholders is not going to revolutionlise traffic but multiply that by 10,000, 100,000 or a million companies all sending their own messages to their own stakeholders and that starts to get significant. Add onto that the replies from the recipients and surely that should be of interest to the networks.

Web 2.0 Expo, swapping Berlin for the Bay Area

I've just been booking travel and accomodation for Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I went to the European version last year in Berlin and it was a bit of an eye opener for me. The venue was pretty poor, both location and internal, but the subjects covered struck many chords with me and work I'm engaged in.

I've spent the last few years focussing on the mobile sector, eschewing Internet and developer conferences in favour of mobile specific affairs like Mobile World Congress and Global Messaging Congress. While these conferences have been fascinating and tedious to various degrees they have always been successful in giving me time to reflect and cogitate on our services, how they fit into the mobile ecosystem and what they should become in future.

Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin made me realise that there is a lot of amazing work being carried by the darlings of the Web 2.0 world that have many parallels with the challenges we face at Esendex. By immersing myself back in to the web world as well, there was a lot that I could learn.

As we continue to grow at the phenomenal rate we have been and evolve our services we come across all sorts of scaling and performance challenges. These definitely rank in the 'nice to have' category of problem but they're no less challenging. Hearing about lessons learned by the likes of Flickr et al. can only help us decide how we continue to stay a few steps ahead of demand in the future.

These new services have also upped the ante when it comes to what an Internet service should be able to provide. Their use of AJAX and REST architectures have provided a rich user experience far beyond where, to be brutally honest, we are right at the moment.

That is changing, we have some exciting new services coming to our customers over the first half of this year that bring us bang up to date. We've spent so much time focusing on making sure our messages get through in a timely fashion we've probably taken our eye off the ball on the front end usability. So there has been a big focus in the development team on making our services richer and easier to use. Obviously I'll fill you in as soon as I can.

I suspect that the Berlin conference did suffer from being smaller than it's American parent, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it works on a bigger scale. There are also worse places to go than San Francisco, not least to get my fix of unbridled, Bay-Side, can-be-done-ness.

Is mobile blogging the answer to blog torpor?

As regular readers will know, I had a bit of a blogging hiatus through December. Truth is I just got out of the habit. I got busy and my blog was the balancing item.

I suspect that this is the case for the vast majority of blogs out there. We start with good intentions but soon the next interesting thing comes along and today's brilliant, can't live without, new toy becomes yesterday's forgotten plaything.

Services like Twitter are designed to disseminate transitory information. I have signed up for an account but I really can't imagine anyone would find my random thoughts of interest, and anyway I can't really be bothered. The good thing about Twitter is if I say something that I subsequently wish I hadn't it doesn't hang around. It's forgotten in the sea of titbits about everyone's lives.

Blogs however are a different story. With their archives and syndication, once you've hit publish, that's it. This certainly makes me consider everything I'm posting and perhaps that's constraining the content and timeliness.

One of the problems with timeliness is access to a computer to make posting possible. By the time you get home, there are umpteen other things to catch up on before writing up the blog post you thought about while on the train, in the car, out at lunch.

In the past I've used my BlackBerry for mobile blogging, sending an email to this blog for editing later. When I remember to do it, it works pretty well, though I end up having to reformat and strip off the rather long (thanks to legislation) company email signature. We've recently launched BlogIt here at Esendex so people without email devices can do the same using just SMS.

While these services help to enable the physical act of blogging as and when the mood strikes I also think they require a bit of an attitude shift. I have to remember that every blog post doesn't have to be a long considered essay, it's perfectly legitimate to post something up as when the feeling takes me.

I probably should be championing mobile blogging via SMS as the answer with us running the BlogIt service, but in reality I'll use a mix of both. It'll depend on the situation at the time, what device I have with me, how long the post is, and whether I want to give it a bit of thought before posting.

The key point is that mobile blogging, be it by SMS or mobile email, gives me that choice. For something to become a habit, it needs to be easily assimilated into your everyday life. I spend a lot of time emailing and texting while on the move so now I can blog just as easily.

Expect to hear more from me.

iPhone is a bit player

Very good article by Ewan at SMSTextNews on why he thinks the iPhone is revolutionary but it hasn't really changed anything and won't do until there's a strategy change from Jobs & Co.

The Apple iPhone will only ever be a bit player. What’s next?

I'm inclined to agree with him. I love the phone, but I'm definitely in the ultra-geek category. 3G support and a lower price point should see them fly of the shelves though.

Still loving my iPhone

I'm pretty notorious for having a very short attention span. I'll jump passionately in to a new service or toy with both feet, love it for a couple of weeks until something else takes my fancy. Julian, as you can see from his derisory comments on : iPhone - Smartphone for the Normob?, has been of the opinion that my iPhone purchase would go the same way.

Well I'm still loving it and the latest updates announced at a MacWorld have made it better. It really is a device that fits into my personal life.

Yes the camera's not great and the data coverage can be irritating but it's so well thought out and put together that I still keep coming back for more. I've even got used to the keyboard.

This year will see a slew of copies from Nokia, LG, Samsung, et al and it'll be really interesting to see how these manifest themselves. I think the challenge for them will be to not try make it backwardly compatible, interface wise, with the rest of their estate.

One of the key reasons the iPhone is such a success is that Apple have taken decisions about how you want to use the device on your behalf. Their team of UI designers have worked out the best way for it to work so you don't have to.

The temptation when developing software is to give user full control, lots of features that they can take advantage of. You never can tell what a user might want to do so make sure you've got your bases covered. The danger with this approach is that you end up with a sea of options that confuse the user rather than empower them.

I liken this to the multiple camera options you get (at least I assume you still do) with Sky Sports coverage. So you can watch Wayne Rooney scratch is rear or John Terry yelling at his team mates while the rest of the game is going on.

This kind of service doesn't appeal to me at all. Why should I make decisions about the best angle when a highly paid (assumption) highly experienced sports TV producer is there to make the decisions for me and make sure I don't miss the best bits.

The iPhone has been a liberating experience for me. Usually with a new device I'm desperate to dive in and configure, load things, try things out and I just end up getting frustrated and ultimately fall out of love with it. Apple's designers have prevented me from doing that while making some great decisions about how the iPhone should be used.

This time I'm using the device in the way it was designed and our relationship is stronger than ever.

Americans don’t get mobile like we do. Yeah right!

Attended a great panel session about the future of mobile messaging titled Enhanced Mobile Messaging: What’s Beyond SMS? I’m going to post separately about the services discussed but in writing it I realised the session had crystallised some feelings I had about what I’d been seeing here.

I really got the impression that feeling a bit disgruntled about being left behind in the whole SMS thing and being seen as laggards by us in Europe, the Americans are determined to be at the forefront of the next wave.

Similar sessions I’ve attend at the couple of Global Messaging Congresses have come up with some similar ideas, but none of these had the clarity of vision or left me with the impression that they were going to happen anytime soon.

Innovation just seems to ooze out of everything IT in the San Francisco Bay area. I found the whole visit quite inspiring for that reason. There is a buzz around, an assumption that the status quo is there challenged.

A key aspect of the approach is to just go out and do it, it might just work. Do it without the carriers first, get traction with real customers and if you get enough of them then it’s a no-brainer for the carriers.

While the US carriers are generally lambasted for their control-freakery and protectionist approach I think they’re in a far better position to make some of these things happen than in Europe. They have complete control over the handsets so if they want to ship a new feature they can make sure it get’s everywhere.

I think we’re in danger of being a bit complacent, viewing our US cousins and their clunky handsets with a misplaced superiority while we stroke our shiny new Nokias.

People use mobile services that help them run their lives. Shiny new handsets quickly lose their lustre.

Steve Ballmer, professional pit-bull

The keynote today was from Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. The first thing that came into my head as he strode out and launched into his speech was that he was one scary man. You could almost see the veins in his temples pumping as he delivered the wireless world according to Microsoft.

This was taken to a new level when he brought out his senior product managers to demonstrate some key software. The only way I can describe their demeanour was petrified.

Forget the jocular atmosphere they were trying to portray. The heavily scripted nature of their exchanges with Steve merely emphasised the terror that was looming, umistakeably behind their eyes.

One of the demos actually went wrong, Live search not returning any results. It must have been expected because quick as a flash a new mobile device appeared with the search results pre-loaded. Odds on that guy being moved to the dull end of the Microsoft product portfolio.

Even Steve Largent president of the CTIA who was chairing this event got in on the act. Apparently he was 'very pumped' about some of the stuff Steve was taking about. If you don't believe me check out the full transcript of the keynote.

As you probably tell there was nothing new, inspirational or earth shattering about this keynote. Facebook man is up tomorrow, let's hope he's going to be disruptive.

Something simple, small and nice on the hip

This is a quote from today from one of the panelists (from Sprint) at a educational session I went to today at the CTIA conference.

What was he talking about?

He was describing a BlackBerry and it was said as he flicked his hip towards his hand.

I was on stitches, until I realised everyone else was nodding sagely. 'Yes', the rest of the audience agreed, 'I can see the new Curve looking great on my hip'.

It's a very different mobile world over here and not just because they keep their mobile phones in belt mounted pouches. The carriers are king, everything goes through them.

People buy their phones from them. Not from intermediary like Carphone Warehose but from the network. In the UK we often choose a handset then choose the network (carrier) that offers the best deal to get that handset, complete reverse here.

The networks also control access to their customers with absolute ruthlessness. All SMS services have to be run through shortcodes, period. Virtual mobile numbers, dynamic sender not a chance, or as I was told by one of the networks tonight.

We're not even listening to business cases, it just 'aint gonna happen.

From a European perspective this is astounding, completely alien. But hey, these are very successful businesses serving the most demanding consumers in the world, right?

Time will show whether the Rest of the World model will eventually prevail. In the meantime while we talk of a global economy, culture really is everything.

A example of great KISS'ing

Don't necessarily want to labour this KISS thing but...

I was chatting tonight to Stuart Godfree of mkodo tonight at the UKTI Mission reception at the British Consulate here and we got onto the subject of SpinVox. It occured to me that it's a fantastic example of a mobile service that has embraced KISS in spades.

It's so simple to use, you just have to be able to talk into a phone to leave a message and receive a text to get the message. Everyone can use it. Perfect.

Hats off to them.

I've touched an iPhone

I know it's not exactly news, but I hadn't had a play with one until today.

I'm in San Francisco for CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment and on my wander round to get my bearings, I happened to find myself in an Apple shop.

It is lovely. Size wize it's bang on. The UI is pretty easy to navigate, made a few mistakes but that's probably more hangups from the Windows and Nokia interfaces I'm used to. The slidy finger thing with pictures, the auto rotating when you move the device around, all very cool.

The feature I was really keen to try was the keyboard, to see how good the iPhone would be as a messaging device. So I clicked on the SMS icon (top-left on the main menu, the most prominent position) and attempted to write a message.

It would appear I don't know where the ends of my thumbs are. I very quickly got very frustrated, constantly having to correct what I was attempting to type. I gave it a few goes but wasn't really improving.

Without any tactile feedback, it's very hard to be accurate. Protuding buttons give your thumbs something to home in on, allowing you to slighty correct before you press the button. With the flat screen approach you don't get that.

I understand that there are trials being undertaken with tactile response from touchscreens. Interesting, but it's going to need to allow you to feel that your in the right place before you press, rather than just letting you know that you've pressed something that you may or may not have wanted to press.

So for me the jury is out. In the European market I feel it my struggle if other people have a similar experience. I would imagine texting is far more important to the target segment in UK, Germany, France, etc. than in the US. Couple with that with the lack of 3G support and my money is on most people waiting for version 2.

But then again, it is lovely.