GoMo Mobile Search News

New Year new search box

This is just a short note to wish you a very Happy New Year and to highlight our new custom search box.

On the right under our advertisers we have a new custom search box that finds all content from GoMo News, msearchblog, BKI Media and provides an all round better search experience.

Blogdigger at the top of the page is ideal for recent news but archived news is better found with the custom search box.

Enjoy!

Zeetoo gets investment from Spanish VC firm Nauta Capital

Rating: Go! Zeetoo

by Bena Roberts

The mobile gaming joystick company Zeetoo powered by the all star female guru Beth Marcus (who has also been a guest blogger on GoMo News) has won EUR 4.7 million in investment. Nauta lead the investment with Commonwealth Ventures and Egan Capital.

No ads, but we love celebrities

Rating: a slap in the Facebook?

By Annie Turner

According to The Guardian, a British newspaper, social networking site Badoo has the UK in its sights. Badoo is different from other social networks in that it guarantees to be ad-free – recognising that lots of inveterate social networkers have almost a rabid dislike of advertising – oh yes, and to corner the celebrity market.

Badoo was recently rated second on Google’s "fastest rising" - in its annual report based on the most popular web searches; behind the iPhone and ahead of everyone else, including Facebook.

How does it make money? Members can pay as USD 1/EUR 1/GBP 1 to have their profile moved to the top of a rolling rota, using a function called Rise Up. Or as The Guardian put it, “in a blend of Digg and a Reuters ticker – that all users can see.”

O2's iPhone stats make gripping reading

Rating: EDGE device shows the way for mobile data
by Tony Dennis

Right at the start of the Festive Season, O2's incoming CEO for Europe – Matthew Key – decided it would be a jolly good idea to pass on some very interesting statistics to the FT. Considering the significant picture they painted of data usage by O2's customerbase, you'll forgive me for revisiting them here.

Key revealed that an impressive 60 per cent of the iPhone users O2 has acquired were sending and receiving more than 25 MB of data per month. By comparison less than1.8 per cent of O2's other contract customers did the same.

If you ever wanted evidence of the iPhone's ability to provide easy web surfing and easy access to email, well, here it is. 

mInfo and Xiaoi deliver natural language mobile search to Chinese instant messenger users

Rating: Xia, oi.

Mobile Search provider mInfo and Incesoft have announced a partnership to bring conversational search to Chinese MSN instant messenger users.

Conversational search?

Vimplecom runs mobile advertising campaign

Rating: Source: Michael Novikov
http://www.admin.spb.ru/eng/publications/index.html

The Beeline brand in Russia form Vimplecom has launched a mobile advertising campaign with (wait for it) Coke. Well, Fanta to be exact.

Mobile Predictions 2008: Mobile Advertising, Search and Barcodes

1. The way in which data is consumed on mobile will finally change and advertising fuelled models will start to make a more aggressive impact.

2. Mobile Search branded players will still be “the face” of mobile operator portals at the start of the year – but by Q4 portals will change to accommodate the white label model – where brands results are brokered not headlining.

Five Mobile Search Predictions for 2008

1. The battle for large white label operator search solutions will start.

2. White label brands will be stretched globally to fulfil global search deployments for mobile portals in several countries with many different languages. This will create more separation in the white label market reducing the number of white label mobile search leaders to only two.

Seasons Greetings from GoMo News

Rating: Thank-you

It has been am amazing, stressful, sometimes tearful, but “worth every minute of it” year for GoMo News.

We are making some huge changes in 2008 but our focus on the best new areas in the market remain – mobile search, mobile advertising and marketing, barcodes, idle screen and browsers.

I would like to thank everyone that has blogged on GoMo News this year and everyone that has read GoMo News.

Bena, Annie, Tony and Tony wish all of you success in 2008.

Wanted: an independent content watchdog

Rating: should the industry be watching itself?
by Tony Dennis

I suppose it might be a tad hypercritical to criticise one industry in the UK – the mobile content industry – for self-regulation when you've spent most of your life working in another industry – publishing – which is adamant that self-regulation works.
But I'm going to do it anyway. What has sparked this particular diatribe is a trawl through the latest adjudications from Phonepay Plus – which most surfers will know better as the body formerly known as ICSTIS. Who did it fine most? Only one of the captains of our very own industry – Mblox.

Yahoo! Japan deploys white label mobile search from MCN Mobile Content Networks

Rating: Uta Search on mobile for music

by Bena Roberts

AOL claimed to have one of the unique mobile content ringtone searches with its partnership with Thumbplay. UpSnap has launched a mobile content podcast search. Google is creating its own mobile content search – but its seems as though it’s Yahoo! Japan with the Trump Card.

Old folks need better UIs not special designs

Rating: Nobody buys 'Keep-it-simple' handsets
by Tony Dennis

At this time of year, it's common to hear that old chestnut – "Handsets are far too complicated these days. All I actually want is something to make and receive calls with." Hence the operators respond to this by commissioning handsets that boast unbelievable battery life figures and sport very few buttons.
So, do people go out and purchase such handsets in their thousands? It's my firm belief that they don't. I'd argue that such handsets don't sell well. It's a UI problem not so much a design problem.

 

Google gets a Double Click Christmas present

Rating: ahhh!

by Bena Roberts

After months and months The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has cleared Google’s acquisition of advertising company DoubleClick. Google announced in April 2007 a
definitive agreement to acquire the company for $3.1 billion in cash
from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along
with JMI Equity and management.

Mobile Advertising 2007 hit or miss?

Rating: wind vs hot air?

By Bena Roberts

2007 was a year dominated by Google and the iPhone. iPhone fever reached fever pitch and Google gphone rumours overwhelmed the media. However, one year on – it’s the iPhone that is in the winning seat and Android seems to be a bit of a let down in wishes, wants and aspirations of Google lovers out there.

Mobile Advertising The way we were in 2007 part 2

Rating: Here are advertising advertising highlights for the second half of the year.

Top five mobile advertising stories in July 2007
Apptera raises USD 9 million for in-call mobile advertising
http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/06/apptera-raises-.html

Mobile Visual search to decorate the Christmas Tree

Rating: Mobile Acuity wins most innovative crimbo card

I have received hundreds, nope thousands of e-cards this year but this one tops the bill. Its from Mobile Acuity and it comes with a message asking to help "add some sparkle to our Christmas Tree".

Mobile Advertising 2007 The way we were part 1

Rating: 2007 is best described as the year of the “hiccup”

By Bena Roberts

What does the year of the “hiccup” mean?

Basically no eathquakes, lots of takeovers, even more confusion on what consumers actually want and suddenly mobile advertising becomes every operators’ wet dream.

I have compiled some lists of the hottest stories on Mobile Advertising in 2007. This first set from January to June show how it was mobile Gaming that took the first half of the year by storm. Proximity marketing seems to have failed and local search and voice search never peaked either.

Foreca.mobi launched

Rating: “snow is falling”

by Bena Roberts

The Finnish weather service company that also is on Nokia’s Widsets widget portfolio has launched a new free mobile internet weather service called foreca.mobi.

Viable advertising strategies? Google and Nokia?

Rating: Written by Bena Roberts published in magazine the Wireless Business Reveiw

**sorry its been quiet today - my son had an operation this morning. But in the spirit of good reading - I am attaching an article that was published in the Wireless Business Review in a regular feature that I write called Cutting Edge. This article is on mobile advertising. I have just finished one that has just been published on Mobile Transcoding and for the Mobile World Congress the Cutting Edge issue will be on Mobile Barcodes**

Download to read here:

Download Cuttingedgegooglenokia.pdf

Published with permission of WBR Editor Peter Purton

Mobile Advertising two ends playing agains the middle? BKI Media Analysis 2.0

Rating: The Mobile 2.0 Analyst out now

**The Mobile 2.0 Analyst is now saved as BKI Media Analysis in our new portal.
Why?
Because we are putting an end to the differentiation between Search, Barcodes and Advertising and creating an analysis eco-system that we can update immediately and not merely at the end of the month**

Mobile advertising: two ends playing against the middle

There’s a lot of bumping and barging going on between the advertising industry, the online social networking world and mobile – with concomitant damage.

Tensions grow between communities, brands and operators

Mobile operators took a step towards disintermediation when the signed up Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (GYM) to handle search for them. Users don’t care about Google courtesy of Vodafone, say, they just know it’s good old Google like at their PC.

UGC is not an instant, cheap fix for mobile communities

One of the first and longest lasting UGC businesses is teletext chat, set up in Germany in 2001 by Minick. The RTL and Vox channels (part of the RTL Group) generate around 200,000 premium rate messages daily. Senders are charged EUR

Adding voice, search and advertising business models to Second Life – now we’re talking

Social networking is flourishing and mobile advertising is mushrooming, but neither are making anything like as much as they could and should. The business models for social networking and mobile advertising are unsophisticated, at best.

The wholesale MVNO market – why applications, not voice, are king

Companies like Medio Systems and FAST that had relationships with the failed US MVNO Amp’d Mobile will know how risky the MVNO market is. Nevertheless, mobile operators remain eager to conquer the MVNO space, recognising that there is much as yet untapped potential. Most recently Deutsche Telekom announced that its goal is to target the MVNO market with wholesale solutions.

View from the top: Jonathan Bulkeley CEO Scanbuy, on mobile barcodes

The mobile barcode market is red hot, but arrogance, confusion and bitterness between players are creating a negative environment for the uptake and monetisation of the services. Barcode/tagging should be a killer app – if it survives the war of attrition raging over patents.

Next month: Decktrade Mobile Advertising campaign analysis

Buy now or learn more at BKI Media

MetroPCS Customers get savings with Cellfire Mobile Coupons

Rating: metro coupons on cellfire

MetroPCS Communications has teamed up with Cellfire to launch mobile coupon discount offers.

MetroPCS?
MetroPCS is a Dallas based mobile communications provider. Its offers flat rate monthly mobile fees based on the monthly fees not number of minutes used. It has about 3.6 million subscribers.

Bouygues pilots Miyowa’s MoveAD for mobile instant messaging

Rating: dynamic duo?

Miyowa?
Miyowa is an instant messaging provider passed in France. Its won a number of deployments in the past year focusing on interoperable IM services for mobile operators.

Social Network VelvetPuffin becomes Trugo

Rating : good news the company took my advice see original post here

Hot off the email!

Dear VelvetPuffin User,

MVNO Schwarzfunk re-born in Germany

Rating: its all about the sock

I saw a one liner on Telecom Paper saying Azzurro Investment re-invests in Schwarzfunk to target the youth mobile market.
My brain started ticked and I used to write loads on uBoot and Schwarzfunk in Austria and Germany when I was a pure industry analyst.

Operators must get more proactive over data charges

Rating: $2,100 phone bills are counter-productive
by Tony Dennis

I knew it would be tempting fate to write about the misfortune of a fellow hack - Chris Anderson of Wired magazine – who apparently ran up a bill of $2,100 using his iPhone in China.
This huge data tab wasn't created by surfing the net but by downloading emails every ten minutes. Nonetheless, it is symptomatic of the attitude still taken towards mobile data by operators and applies equally well to other data services besides email. The general public hasn't got a clue how much these things cost because operators persist in pricing data in bundles of megabytes.

MC2 Mobile Codes Consortium convinces OMA and GSMA to drive mobile marketing using 2D barcodes

Rating: MC2, OMA, GSMA, 2D? Drowning in acronyms

MC2?
The MC2 is the Mobile Codes Consortium. It’s a cross industry group created by NeoMedia and Gavitec to enforce a global adoption of mobile marketing using 2D barcodes? Other founders and members of the MC2 are: Publicis Groupe, Hewlett-Packard, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Nokia, Qualcomm and Telefonica/O2.

FeedM8 launches Web-Alerts.com

Rating: one company tries to sex up feeds

However you look at it – RSS and feeds are boring. But FeedM8 is octopussing around to grow its business. It now has launched a service called Web-Alerts.com. With this consumers enter the address of any website or RSS feed – then they will get a text when the site has been updated. The text will also contain a link to the mobile site where the full story is.

Radio station Antenne Bayern implements conVisual interactive radio services

Rating: does anyone want visual radio?

Call me dim, but when I put my headphones or the radio on it is for back ground music. I don’t want to interact with the radio. I do want to have a shower, eat, lounge around or dance around the living room. Watching is not on the agenda. If I wanted to watch or interact I would put the TV on.

But be it for me to contest the merits of such as service. Antenne Bayern is to implement interactive mobile radio services from conVisual.

T-Mobile and 3 create Britain's largest 3G network

Rating: two of the worst networks in the UK combine - maybe this time two wrongs will make a right

3 UK and T-Mobile (UK) have signed an agreement to combine their 3G access networks in a ground-breaking collaboration that will lead to almost complete population coverage for 3G services across Britain by the end of 2008 with significant fill in and improvement to dense urban in-building coverage in 2009. As the world's largest known active 3G network sharing agreement, this will significantly increase both operators' 3G network quality and coverage, accelerate the provision of new high-speed mobile broadband services and deliver substantial cost savings as well as environmental benefits.

Tiny increase in AdMob funds equates to leaner gomonews.mobi site

Rating: faster than a speeding bullet

Well, I nearly had a heart attack when I checked out my AdMob account for the first time in about ten days. I had hit the (wait for it)

Mobile messages to surpass 2 trillion in 2008

Rating: Mobile messaging is hot

As the popularity of mobile messaging services continue to grow, Gartner, Inc. forecasts 2.3 trillion
messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages. Mobile messaging revenue across major markets will grow 15.7 percent in 2008
to $60.2 billion, up from $52 billion in 2007.

3 Skypephone international rollout

Rating: Skype me

Skype might not be making much money with an ARPU of about EUR 0.75 and about 170 million customers but that might change with its partnership with 3. 3 has now rolled out the Skypephone in Sweden, Denmark and Austria.

I haven’t seen the Skype phone in the UK, but I did test it in a shop in Australia. It was an attractive light weight white design and available for AUS 129. There was a huge promotion in Australia for the Skype phone and it was prominently pushed in the shop window of every store.

Telekomunikacja Polska signed a preliminary share purchase agreement for the sale of Ditel S.A.

Rating: local search Poland

Yesterday, Telekomunikacja Polska signed an agreement with European Directories Group for the sale of 100% of Ditel S.A. shares. The company belongs to TP Group and is a publisher of White and Yellow Pages in Poland.

The sale of Ditel shares is a new step in the execution of the TP Group strategy for the years 2008-2010, announced in July 2007, in the area of optimizing the TP Group's scope of operations. Value of the potential transaction, on an Enterprise Value basis, is EUR 20 million.

Neomedia vs Scanbuy or simply a mushrooming mobile barcode market?

Rating: dear me

By Bena Roberts

The mobile barcode market is still in infancy. The core players in my eyes so far are NeoMedia, Scanbuy and Abaxia. But this is not the end; it is not even the beginning. As I write my industry analysis on NeoMedia vs Scanbuy – a slow realisation has hit me.

The realisation is that what ever the big vendors are doing, smaller guys, operators, pop bands and government agencies are already embracing the fresh, young; but innovative new market.
For the analysis, I thought I would do a small overview of barcode deployments and then it hit me. There is no such thing as a small overview. The barcode market is growing in all directions and the only way to keep up is to run.

Madhouse launches Madsmart SME advertising

Rating: m.m.m.mad

by Bena Roberts

Chinese mobile advertising network Madhouse has launched Madsmart which it says is a contextual ad network for Chinese SME’s.

Features include click to call, visual optimisation, click fraud prevention and competitive CPM or CPC pricing models.

Celcom Malaysia aims to grow content revenue

Rating: Source: http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_d73d2901-cb73c03a-38d46000-c2903a60

Celcom in Malyasia’s CEO Datuk Seri Shzalli Ramly states that Celcom aims to push mobile content in the next few years and drive up content revenues by 30%. Celcom currently has 460,000 3G customers and a total of 6.7 million subscribers.

Mobile Posse receives USD 10 million in VC cash

Rating: the idle screen posse

The idle screen mobile advertising provider that Annie wasn’t too impressed about (see here) but I was OK about (see here) gets USD 10 million series B from Softbank Capital, Court Square Ventures, Coumbia Capital and individual investors.

The MVNO market boom, boom, BUST

Rating: hmmm

By Bena Roberts

Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) only control a tiny proportion of the voice or data market. Their introduction into the mobile environment was initially feared because their influence was strong. Virgin was an early mover and its success spiked dread into mobile operators’ hearts. However; apart from Virgin all MVNO’s in the market seem to be underperforming, deceased or finding it hard to find their feet.

GoMo News welcomes new sponsor webitpr

Rating: webit pr, baby

We are overjoyed that webitpr will be sponsoring GoMo News Press section for the next six months.

The realwire banner is available on the submissions page: http://pushingthebarrier.typepad.com/pushing_the_barrier/pressreleases.html

Webitpr is an online press release delivery company that collates and monitors all responses, blogs and press from the release.

Thank-you webitpr Adam Parker and Jonathan Dolby for supporting GoMo News.

Global Mobile Congress and GoMo News

GoMo News is delighted to be media partners (once again) with the Mobile World Congress.
Bena is honoured to be one of the judges for the Global Mobile Awards and Annie will be providing editorial for the Mobile World Congress daily paper.
We are delighted to be working with the GSMA; Barcelona 2008 is the place to be and meetings are being arranged already.

Microsoft buys Multimap

Rating: another map in the wall?

By Bena Roberts

I fear GoMo News is the only blog in town that doesn’t have an orgasm at the word maps at the moment. From Nokia and Navteq to Google Maps to MapQuest and now Microsoft Multimap – this is all getting a bit boring.

Mobile barcodes @ OMA World Part II

Rating: Ah, Gowan. Start another technical committee
by Tony Dennis

As I mentioned previously, the whole mobile barcode sector is riddled with incompatibilities. So what's the industry's typical reaction? You've got it, somebody founds yet another specialist technical forum.

In this case it has turned out to be the Mobile Codes Consortium – which somehow gets abbreviated to MC². Anyway, the conspirators have put together a web site here which aims to encourage others to join in.

But what's really missing is an industry accepted standard. Which is exactly what the OMA is capable of producing.

Mobile barcodes explained at OMA World bar

Rating: Gavitec and Nokia throw some light on the subject
by Tony Dennis

 

A chance encounter at the OMA World cocktail party last night has helped me enormously in trying to fathom exactly was is going on the UK – as opposed to Japan – with 2D and 3D barcodes.

I ran into Dr Frank Muller from Gavitec who then introduced me to Torulf Jernstrom from Nokia. Both are experts on this subject.
The barcode's potential is self-evident. For example, a barcode can contain a complex mobile internet URL that can easily be read with a cameraphone. And, voilà, you have thousands of mobile phones surfing to the same site.

Kwiry mobile phone reminders

Rating: where am I?

by Bena Roberts

Kwiry is a new start up offering personal reminders on mobile or email. It will work like a mobile billboard that reads - take a look at or call so and so etc.

Call Genie pays USD 5.75 for Phone Spots

Rating: Directory phone search

by Bena Roberts

Call Genie a company that supplies voice-enabled phone directory searches is to buy PhoneSpots. PhoneSpots provides (you guessed it) advertising and mobile content delivery.

Moving forward monetization is essential so audio adverts or content ads in the voice directory services (IVR) is expected.
God help us.

mTransactions Affinity Mobile MADE and Trumpet Mobile

Rating: MADE for mTransfers, mPayments and mWallet

By Bena Roberts

Affinity Mobile a company that provides mobile financial services has announced a Mobile Application Delivery Enablement (MADE) platform.

Helio YouTube

Rating: u need an iPhone