Orange Portugal is seventh MNO to launch Tribes
Over the past 5 years I have probably gown down to Lisbon to visit Optimus (and the other Iberian MNOs) on average at least once a year. I always maintained that the Portuguese market and in particular
Optimus were amongst the most advanced in Europe with regard to mobile data services.
This has been verified this week as Optimus have become the seventh MNO in Europe to launch
Tribes on their home portal. They also had some nice things to say about the product in their
Press Release.
Sunday Times gets Tribes
The Sunday Times ran an article featuring Tribes last week. Also includes a rather fetching photograph of yours truly if I say so myself ;-).
The full text is available on the
Times website.
Great mLearning mobile marketing case study
Check out the Burton mobile marketing site by pointing your mobile browser at http://mobile.burton.com . This is very interesting mobile site for two reasons. A) It goes beyond the usual brochureware as it provides downloads they call "trick packs" that enable the user to learn some cool snowboarding tricks. B) The downloads are actually java applications that run on the phone as an mLearning application.
BTW:
Burton is a funky snowboard brand. If you think "Burton" is a high st. menswear brand you are even older and more unhip than I!
Seven things you need to know about i-mode
O2 Ireland launch i-mode on this coming Friday 7th October. Hence I thought it might be worthwhile to share some of my views in i-mode. i-mode is a great opportunity for an advanced operator like 02 to drive mobile content usage forward in Ireland and UK.
1.
In many ways i-mode is not so much a technology , as a business model that provides a standard un-negotiable share to content providers. Granted there are some useful technologies involved in particular the very effective caching within then Access browser - why can't other mobile browsers do this simple task properly. I feel the business model available to content providers is the more important and unique feature. This is in contrast to the current bespoke agreements between content providers and mobile operators that require lengthy negotiation in each case. The i-mode model allows the majority of the subscription fee to be kept by the content provider. The i-mode operator makes all the revenues on data traffic charges with the small share of the subscription acting as an admin fee for billing the mobile customer.
2.
Why did it take so long for UK and Ireland markets to launch i-mode: KPN Netherlands was first i-mode service to launch over 3 years, quickly followed by Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Greece. i-mode services were unique at that time but all European handsets and mobile internet services have since caught up. For example: The i-mode "button" where users could launch mobile internet services by clicking a single button was an important i-mode innovation. However this has since been replicated by all handset manufacturers.
3.
Vodafone Live! claims to have more users in Europe than i-mode. These figures are certainly open to debate as it is very hard to get reliable figures.
4.
You don't necessarily need a special handset for i-mode: i-mode sites now display very well on all modern handsets. Operators still insist on requiring users to buy a special handset. Alatto's
Tribes service makes i-mode work on all handsets today. Not coincidentally the vast majority of i-mode handsets are made by Japanese manufacturers.
5.
O2 Ireland may launch before UK: see preview of real i-mode service about to launch in Ireland below.
6.
"Unofficial" i-mode content generates more revenue for the i-mode mobile operators in Europe. Definition: Unofficial i-mode is un-approved (by the operator) i-mode content that does not require a subscription. In all i-mode empowered countries there are far more unofficial sites than official and this generates more revenue to the operator for the data traffic.
7.
European operators break the i-mode rules: there are several examples. For example i-mode France has an i-mode search facility which is not allowed. Similarly the i-mode business model in Japan allows for 91% revenue share to content provider in the UK it will be 86%.
Alatto's
Tribes service is a patented tool that allows users to easily discover mobile sites (for example unofficial i-mode sites) through a unique toolbar that learns the likes and dislikes of the mobile user. Tribes is fully compatible with i-mode services.
See a very good article from Visiongain on the some risks facing the i-mode launch in UK
here.
