Carphone Warehouse ignores mobile internet
The Carphone Warehouse in conjunction with the LSE has published a
free survey of 16,000 people in the UK on mobile usage. I think while there are some useful data therein, I think it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this survey is more to generate tabloid headlines like "Half of young adult phone users have sent or received a sexually explicit text" and associated PR, rather than scientific research.
In some ways surveys like this are more interesting in what they leave out and how they phrase the questions rather than the results themselves. For example there is not a single mention of the words "browsing" or "WAP" in the report. The fact that the "internet" as used in the survey , refers to desktop browsing should give our industry cause for concern. The Carphone Warehouse who sell thousands of handsets a day doesn't even consider mobile internet as a topic in a survey subtitled "How mobile phones change the way we live".
First UGC Mobile portal
Check out
MyNumo , as far as I know the first mobile content site populated only with user generated content.
Anyone can use the onsite tools to create their own ringtones and wallpapers. The content can then be uploaded and sold. Appears only possible to sell in the US and Canada at present. Ringtones/Wallpapers sell for $2.00 and Videos $2.99 but I can't see what portion is distributed to the owner in the Help/Faq section.
I don't believe UGC will generate more revenues than commercial content , but where do you draw the line between the two? Crazy Frog started as a [nasty] little UGC project in many ways.
A major leap forward in HCI
If you ever doubted how useful and relevant academic research can be for GUI and usability development have a look at this
research from NYU HCI group:
Worth watching all the way through. If you are stuck for time look from from around 2 minutes and 30 seconds for one minute.
Now let's work to develop a mobile equivalent. The desktop world has been trapped in the box of windows/Mac type HCI for well over twenty years. It is perhaps time to move on. In the same way mobile handsets have been trapped within rocker type controls and predictive text. There is always a better way and we should never stop (I know it's a cliche but it's through) thinking outside the proverbial b.
At last - Google MOBILE adwords
Having tested the water in Japan since April Google has finally made mobile Adwords available to all. It will be very interesting to see if Google can build if the critical mass and dominate the mobile advertising space. I don't believe this expansion of market dominance into mobile is necessarily as inevitable as one might think.
See an extract from the Google adwords help section below:
How do I create a mobile ad?
To create a new mobile ad in one of your existing Ad Groups, follow these steps:
1. Log in to your AdWords account.
2. Click the campaign that contains the Ad Group in which you will create a mobile text ad.
3. Click the appropriate Ad Group.
4. Click the Create New Mobile Text Ad link at the top of your keyword table. Enter your new ad title, description line, Display URL, and Destination URL as needed.
5. Click Save Changes.
Was this information helpful?
