It was inevitable. The youth have been experimenting with mobile internet browsing despite its clunkiness and long before proper data bundles were made available by the cellular networks.

All that has changed now…and will continue to change at a very rapid pace. “More people in the world will have their first interaction with the internet with mobile than with laptop,” said internet co-founder (and Google vice president) Vinton Cerf at a five-day web conference which wrapped up on Friday (April 24, 2009) in Madrid. (ABS-CBN calls it “boom times for mobile”)

There are more than 3.5 billion mobile phones on the planet (4 billion according to this source) and undoubtedly the number of phones with internet browsing capabilities will increase dramatically. The iPhone is the envy of (m)any (a) mobile phone user, but with its elegance comes a price. Most ardent Apple fans will own one (and continue to ridicule people who don’t), but mobile device manufacturers have felt the pressure and similar phones are now popping up all over the show.

“The move to mobile access is very important as mobile devices are the first way that people in developing countries get their first contact with the web,” said one of the inventors of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

Just five percent of Africans currently surf the web, compared to 23 percent of the entire population of the globe, the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union said in a report last month.

The greatest downside of mobile internet has been the difficulty with browsing web pages on the small screens of mobile phones, subsequently dampening consumer demand.

Enter the iPhone (and the Samsung Omnia, Sony-Ericsson Xperia, HTC Touch Pro, Blackberry Storm and many others)

With its touch screen capabilities, the iPhone enabled users to scroll web pages by touching the screen and dragging, while zooming into certain areas by double tapping on the screen. Mobile internet browser, Opera, soon followed suite.

Also fueling the growing appeal of mobile Internet access is the fact that applications and web sites are now being developed just for portable devices and their smaller size.

“One of the most exciting developments is that the Web is going mobile. We can finally access all these things anywhere, anytime,” said Belgian software scientist Robert Cailliau who designed the web with Berners-Lee in 1989.

There is suddenly a huge market opening for mobile web and application developers, undoubtedly spurred on by the iPhone App Store, creating smarter, quicker and more effective ways of connecting to our favourite sites.

More Googlers are excited by the prospect, with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, stating:  “Mobile devices are the most important technology of (them) all.”

These are exciting times, but also poses and enormous gap for businesses to jump in early and grab market share of an already gigantic, yet ever growing, mobile web browsing, “always on, always connected” generation.

Is your business available on mobile?
What are your favourite apps on your phone?

I have just read about a mobile marketing engagement campaign in the UK for a Frozen Foods Brand. Odd, isn’t it? Nevertheless, Bird’s Eye, the frozen food brand secured quite a successful opt-in user base of customers who wanted to learn more about the Bird’s Eye Frozen Food product range via their phone.

It is quite obvious why they chose the mobile phone as communications device, but what has stood out head above shoulders is their innovative approach to the engagement campaign. They printed a unique code on each frozen food package with daily cash prizes as incentive to opt in. Also, at the end of each month, a grand prize is up for grabs where the company will settle the winning customer’s entire mortgage. How outrageous is that?

Nevertheless, bond payment aside, what is profoundly smart is that the company now has the ability to track exactly which product each customer bought simply due to the unique code on each package. Thus, they now have the opportunity to cross sell other products that are of relevance to the particular product. For example they can text to the customer: “We see that you have bought cod fishcakes recently, why don’t you try our new potato waffles with that?”

They also send short recipes for the particular product which, as you can imagine, adds that little extra in value to the customer experience.

The Communities Dominate Brands blog called it a great little simple campaign. Mortgage settlement aside, I couldn’t agree with them more.

[ Whether the 100 000 mobile subscribers signed up for the value adding campaign or a chance at winning a mortgage settlement is still debatable though ]

Bottom line: If you can manage to incentivize your campaigns, why not give mobile engagement marketing a shot?

I have the ability to be rather annoying when it comes to the shape of the future with mobile technology. One of my favourite analogies that I present to most of the people that care enough to listen is that of the Sony Bravia commercial on television a while back. I have said on numerous occasions that I thought it to be one of the best commercials I’ve seen in a long time. In addition to that, I have quoted on a previous blog article of mine, that should the Sony Bravia had a mobile hook to the commercial, with the user being able to order a Bravia by return text message from a number on the television screen, that the sales of the television might have increased dramatically.

The pipedream when I explain it to my friends is a world where mobile networks and our local banks would come to some sort of relationship whereby it is possible for a consumer to use his mobile phone as a purchasing mechanism, much like a credit card.

This was all more than a year ago, and while it seemed to have been a pipedream back then, South Korea has now already advanced to the stage where more than 100,000 people in the country are using mobile phones as purchasing mechanism, varying from credit to debit transactions using multiple technologies for it like bar code reading. Simply by creating a SIM card where banking details and credit card information can be stored, the phone can then be used at checkout points to purchase the item. The user’s account will automatically be debited with the appropriate amount, rendering the actual plastic version credit card as rather useless.

In fact, the credit card facilities in South Korea now include this mobile credit technology as a default into their subscriptions, offering the plastic credit card as an optional extra.

The greatest problem, as explained on the Communities Dominate Brands Blog, is that countries like South Africa still has an entrenched status quo where it seems that the banks are situated in one corner, mobile operators in another, credit card facilities yet again in another and for some reason cannot fathom the idea of merging technologies and expertise to create a more convenient user experience.

I have no doubt that in the nearby future such mergers and relationships will be performed and I quite look forward to the day when I can use my mobile phone for every day purchases.

To prove this many of you would probably acknowledge that nearly a year or two ago it was unimaginable to even suggest writing an entire blog article using nothing else than a mobile phone, which is exactly what I have done. From the recorded voice file, I simply transferred the sound clip to my laptop and have a programme, Dragon’s Naturally Speaking, convert the text that I recorded into written text. The interaction I had to date with my keyboard was to make minor edits and change around some words and sentences.

We are rapidly entering a world where convenience forms the pinnacle of consumer decision making and with a mobile penetration rate in South Africa of close to 90%, the logical progression would most probably be the advancement of mobile technologies in our everyday life.

What are some of the more profound things you use your mobile phone for?

From the Communities Dominate Brand’s Blog it is shown that mobile technology now has 4 billion subscribers. Recognizing that the world has about 6.7 billion people, it means there is a mobile phone subscription now for 60% of the entire planet.

From the Mobile Active Blog, research from Informa indicates that by 2010 half of the planet’s population will have access to the Internet through a mobile device.

From a previous article of mine, where I have also quoted the Communities Dominate Brand Blog, it was shown that there are approximately 1.4 billion Internet users in the world. Compared to about 1.5 billion television sets, newspaper circulation of 480 million, one billion desktops, laptops and netbooks and roughly 1.30 billion e-mail users, one has to wonder why South African businesses still disregard mobile marketing as their primary source of return on marketing investments.

The Mobile active blog asks a very enticing question: Should you make your website mobile?

I would like to rephrase the question: Shouldn’t you make your website mobile?

If you consider the amount of smartphones (mobile phones with Internet, e-mail capacities), and the research results of Informa, together with the up and coming generation of technology users, it seems fairly obvious that the marketing times are changing.

Again, like a stuck record, the question begs why small businesses in particular refrain from adapting mobile marketing practices. Considering the substantially lower input costs, distribution cost and the proven the high returns on campaigns, mobile marketing sounds almost too good to be true.

Now, mommy used to tell you that anything that sounds too good to be true, usually is. But then again, mummy didn’t live in the digital era, did she?

The time has come for businesses to cast away their nappies, grow up, and start conducting business in a mature and intelligent manner.

You can only take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. The mobile marketing society has been leading, in fact predicting, the exponential rise of mobile marketing potential for quite some time.

It is time for businesses to start drinking from the pool of wisdom reality.

Unfortunately, the festive season also goes along with depression, loneliness, desperation and despair. While the majority of people are merrily basking away in the sun, drinking, sharing and laughing with family and friends, there are the selected few that, even with people around, are desperately seeking for some solace.

When we read “the selected few”, the word niche should pop into our heads immediately. During the festive season, there is an opportunity for churches, social services and even welfare to tap into this niche and provide some much needed solace, inspiration and in some cases, life saving services.

[Why churches still don’t keep databases of its flock is possibly still due to the ongoing debate among religions over whose god is real. It’s all about prioritizing isn’t it?]

Pity, because an opt in text message service for people in desperate need of reassurance, faith and guidance during these testing times would actually serve a much greater purpose as the bickering over which of us will actually make it into the pearly gates.

This service could also be categorised to include suicide messaging, either distributing constant support messages or have an actual representative of the church in various areas available on call-out for severe cases where SOS messages are sent in.

Only last week I found myself in a conversation of a person whose friend’s parents were killed in a freak car accident, and while friends and family are there to offer their love and support, it’s often in silence that these people suffer. A message service for people in morning and despair would add much needed solace during a season in which we are to celebrate.

What about fun? Festive ringtones, MMS message templates, jingles and literature could all add additional value to every person’s holidays. I found myself sending fifty text messages this morning to friends, family and clients wishing them the merriest of Christmas. Adding a fun element to the church helps keep the relationship active while we are away.

There are so many opportunities to add value to people’s lives during a time when our peers, our god and our churches are so easily forgotten.

What do you think?

I’m away on vacation and what better way to entertain than to provide you with my “mobile and the holidays” snippets where I’ll explore the world of mobile communications, marketing and value added services that I pick up or conjure up during my vacation.

Getting right into it then. It is my brother’s birthday today and his phone has been ringing off the hook with text messages and congratulatory calls.

One such text message came through from his Medical Aid Service Provider. My immediate reaction was to commend them for the personal connection they have with each of their customers, if only until my brother mentioned that he had signed with another Medical Scheme more than a year ago.

Pity? Bad database management? Or a way to remind my brother that they’re still out there?

What do you think?

$1 000 000 000 000. Say it like you mean it: “One trillion dollars.” The mobile industry is the world’s latest trillion dollar baby. What’s more profound is that it was achieved in slightly more than ten years.

How does it compare?

1. 1. Combined with radio, the broadcasting industry is still nowhere near a trillion dollar industry, only about half of that.
2. 2. Advertising is worth roughly half a trillion dollars, in very round terms.
3. 3. The IT industry? Another half trillion there.
4. 4. Air travel is also in the half trillion dollar range.

Does anything compare?

1. 1. Cars,
2. 2. the global food industry,
3. 3. and believe it or not, the global weapons industry are all trillion dollar businesses.
4. 4. Now add mobile to that list.

Where there’s money, there’s people. And where there’s people, there’s a target audience.

Back in 2001 when I got my first mobile phone, text messaging and calling was the only luxury we had. Mobile content was a pipe dream. However, on the 5th of December 2008, exactly 10 years prior, the first downloadable mobile content was launched, the ringtone. Unbeknown to the world population at large, a booming industry was born that day.

For anyone, any business in whatever shape or size not yet fully convinced that the future of digital marketing starts and ends with mobile, allow me to highlight some examples of this ridiculously growing industry (This is a long post, but you WILL be wow-ed, so bear with me):

• 1. The latest numbers reveal that the total number of unique mobile phone owners is now 3.05 billion (46% of the planet’s population do have a mobile phone, even after we remove the multiple subscriptions).

 

• 2. There are 1.4 billion TV sets in the world. But there are 2 billion mobile phones with a colour screen and at least 2.5G network connectivity, meaning they can display “streaming” ie live TV and video.

 

• 3. Of the four digital camera giants, only Canon and Nikon remain in the camera business, Konica and Minolta no longer exist in the camera market; and the world’s bestselling camera brand, since 2004, has been Nokia. (I have a phone with a 5 megapixel camera)

 

• 4. Music on mobile phones today, at the end of 2008, is passing the 11 billion dollar annual revenue level. When we bear in mind, that the total global music industry is only worth 30 billion dollars - it means that more than one in three dollars spent on music globally, is spent on the mobile phone.

 

• 5. 50 Cents with his smash hit, In da Club, in 2003 earned more as ringtone than all other music formats combined - and most annoyingly of course the Crazy Frog - to the tune of 500 million dollars of global sales of their ringtones and related services in 2005 – that’s one ringtone earning more than all of iTunes’ global sales that year.

 

• 6. A third of the mobile phone subscribers on the planet sends MMS picture messages - that is 1.3 billion people for those who are counting. Comparing that with 1.2 billion active users of email, and suddenly MMS is very interesting indeed. Worldwide, you can reach a larger audience if you put your content (or advertising) on an MMS picture message, than if you put it into email.

 

• 7. This year mobile social media passed $9 billion and next year will easily cross the 10 billion dollar level of annual revenues. From zero to 10 billion dollars in six years. Mobile social networking is by far the fastest-growing billion dollar industry ever. For comparison, the online internet side of social media is three times as old, and still hasn’t passed a billion dollars in total revenues - where most of that is advertising revenues. Mobile social networking sites are making oodles of cash, and many have already become profitable in this very short time.

 

• 8. In the past ten years, mobile content has turned into a global giant industry worth over 71 billion dollars of annual revenues. That is as big as all Hollywood box office revenues, plus all global music revenues, and all videogaming software revenues - put together. Hollywood and music are 100 year old industries. Videogaming is a 30 year old industry. But mobile has already grown bigger than all three, combined, in only ten years.

 

• 9. There are under 500 million newspapers sold daily. There are 900 million personal computers connected to the internet. There are 1.3 billion internet users. And 1.4 billion TV sets. But 1.5 billion people will receive ads on mobile phones this year. How many more will receive them next year?

I have a tip for you today. If you walk down the road and spot a public pay phone, take a picture of it, because, like in Finland, they’ll all be gone pretty soon.

My second tip is to get with the times and comprehend the superpowers of the mobile industry. The future of mankind’s commercial business models will rely on a piece of equipment you will rarely leave home without.

Thank you to Tomi Ahonen for his articles, content which I shamelessly copied and shortened for the convenience of my readers. If there are two articles you have to read before Christmas, it’s these two.

Having been booked off for a recurring lower back problem last week had me in stitches (figuratively) about what mobile communications has to offer businesses. A rap on the knuckles from a rather important client made its way via a colleague of mine and that made me realise a couple of things again.

Your clients aren’t really that bothered by you or your welfare that much. It’s a rather unfortunate realisation and seemingly unfair, but if you do a role reversal, you will come to the conclusion that the shoe fits on either foot.

When your service delivery is excellent, they love you in silence, as it is what they have come to expect of you. When your service is poor, or absent as it was my case, they’ll use their own unique way to make their dissatisfaction heard and often times felt.

Damage control is one thing, a strategy I employed during my time off to assure my client that all will be dealt with as soon as I can manage a vertical position. But damage control implies that damage has occurred already and when one client’s dissatisfaction becomes ten or 100 clients’ that control may well be lost.

Mobile communication platforms and automation adds unique value to your portfolio. It is what secures check up visits to a dentist when his client receives a six month check up reminder on his mobile phone. It is what gets these teething clients to actually commit to the appointment when a simple reply text message schedules a booking.

It is the convenience of being able to purchase electricity from your mobile phone by sending a single text message or transferring money from your accounts when you’re out on holiday, far removed from the hassles of standing in banking queues.

Mobile communications platforms are systems built into your business infrastructure and performs these value added services with little to no thought paid to its existence. The recognition is duly paid on the business end of the supplier-client relationship and secures a hassle free communication channel, recurring business and a wonderful opportunity for cross- and up selling.

Businesses lose clients. That’s the reality of being in business. Luckily, they also gain clients as they go along. In a time where the battle with time becomes tougher, it’s refreshing for consumers to know that they have a couple of things less to worry about.

Mobile communication automation is probably something you can do without. It’s probably not even something that most businesses are considering a priority. But it is something I as a consumer place in high esteem when I come across a supplier that understands my need for effective time management.

And when a supplier understands me, a definite loyalty is born from within.

With the US presidential election now concluded and the world at large coming off a natural post electoral high it is South Africa that’s bracing itself for round number two in 2009. And what massive shoes we have to fill. The Obama 2008 campaign has shown us a couple of things:

1. Being connected in 2008 is critical to the success of any campaign.
2. Addressing the masses through all available media channels on a personal level can secure loyalty.

There is a definite heightened expectation for election 2009 in South Africa. It’s obvious that the broad availability of information and the sheer pace through which this information is delivered to our monitors have underpinned the importance of using electronic communications to spread the word.

Having said that, the DA and the ANC both have been utilizing the internet and mobile channels to gain momentum for a while now, but it is profound how ordinary their efforts appear when compared to the massive global appeal of the US elections.

The IEC have made it that much simpler for people to check whether they are on the voters roll for the upcoming elections in 2009 by either visiting their website and locking in our ID numbers or sending a text message with the ID to receive your status on your phone.

This is great progress considering the reluctance people had to previously go through the efforts to check their status, not to mention voting. There seems to be something like a national surge of responsibility and voting is top of mind of the masses.

Of course, the masses referred to here are those elite few that have the luxury of the internet. Less than 10% of the South African population is connected to the internet, which may or may not explain the IEC’s lack of urgency in getting their website compatible with various web browsers. Regardless, my point in question is whether we’re enabling the already enabled.

While Obama 2008 has shown how the internet could facilitate a ridiculously loyal following, one has to wonder what the respective parties in South Africa have in mind. My mind has been made up to whom my vote will go, but then to be truly honest, I was pretty much born into it. How many of the candidates have made the effort to communicate their message on a more personal level?

It may seem incomprehensible that a candidate should address me personally, but then this is the age of Me, Myself and I. And while the US have an internet penetration level much higher than South Africa, we have the unprecedented advantaged to be one of the highest mobile penetrated markets in the world.

Yet, we haven’t witnessed any form of mobile campaigning that is worth noting. Is that still to come? Our candidates are ready, speeches polished, Windsor knots perfected, but who will they address?

In the mobile phone, the political parties in South Africa have arguably the most valuable tool to swing votes known to man. And while the extravagance of the mobile phone might be slightly diminished compared to the internet, it is by far the biggest reaching communications platform we have to our disposal.

Something to think about the next time you pollute my boulevard with your yellow posters.

Mercedes Benz has recently added to their marketing mechanics by including mobile to its repertoire of value added services. This is another innovative move from another top international brand, one that surely puts a smile on the faces of each of the Benz’s family members, iPhone users, not to mention the agency responsible for this piece of development.

The mobile portal as it is known contains four sections including New Vehicles, Brand World, Entertainment and Service & Contact and it has been joined by additional entertainment platforms such as Mercedes-Benz TV and the music download service Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape.

The range of personalized services is rounded off by a car configurator and information on the technical details of each model offered by the Stuttgart-based automotive brand.

There are a multitude of features to this new development, but I’d rather spare my readers the technical specifications and focus on one rather important question: Why would Mercedes Benz, “the car for the older man”, identify the need to create a mobile internet platform for its fans?

Some of you might rightly argue that Mercedes Benz have become a lot more savvy of late, especially considering their uber cool new C-Class BMW basher, a car that certainly appeals to the more established and young executive market alike. But is mobile marketing pushing the envelope a bit far?

Let’s look at a couple of the core benefits of mobile marketing: Adding value to service delivery, ranging from access within reception areas to the global accessibility and uptake of the device. That’s massive value any which way you look at it. It is also likely to cloud the downsides to any mobile campaign, which is where my skepticism is borne from.

Without having any figures or ROI measurements to my availability, there are a couple of problems I can identify with developing mobile services to complement your brand, more so if you are smaller business and every marketing penny counts.

After the initial hype around the platform, what are the reasonable expectations of sustained usage of the site? If we look at demographics, it’s almost a given that the younger generation appeals much stronger to these types of technological advances and the younger the user, the shorter the attention span or interest.

Yes, it is a cool new addition to my iPhone, but how long does it take before this excitement is filed in the back of my phone’s memory bank and first in line for deletion once I run out of my incredibly large storage space?

Mobile is a strong and effective medium for marketing and brand awareness, but it’s important to keep a clear understanding of the basic needs of your business. It’s sometimes very easy to get carried away with creative campaigns, often lacking longevity, when simple and clear communications would’ve sufficed.

There are two types of businesses:

1. The Mercedes Benz’s with the capital to fill every possible marketing channel with content, regardless of the sustainability of its value add and the purchasing potential of the market it serves.
2. The hundreds of thousands of other businesses that need to focus a lot of time and energy on selecting a channel that reaches the largest possible target audience and ensuring that the campaigns possess the potential to optimally sustain its value.

Make sure you know in which category your business resides.