Annoucements

BREW 2007: Cardless SIMs on Sprint Nextel

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The BREW conference is underway in San Diego, CA. The attendance is strong and there are lots of applications which deliver “media”. My first observation at the conference was the following. The phrase mobile content is last year’s color, and now, all is media. Ringtones, wallpapers, logos, text messages, pictures, and of course, video are all media.

Brian Finnerty, director of devices at Sprint Nextel, reached the top of the escalator just as I walked up to it. I took the opportunity to ask him a question or two.

me: “Sprint has always been known as the carrier with the coolest phones. Why didn’t Sprint land the iPhone?”

Brian: “They didn’t ask us. Apple wanted a GSM carrier so they could launch worldwide, or internationally.”

me: “What about SIM cards for CDMA carriers? Will Sprint have SIM cards in the near future?”

Brian: “We are deploying SIM technology without the card.”

me: “When?”

Brian: “It’s working on the phone I have in my pocket, right now.”

me: “Can I see that?”

Brian: “No.”

me: “When will Sprint release it?”

Brian: “In August.”

Nextel phones use SIM cards, and the new cardless SIM solution may be one benefit that can be credited to the merger. From a consumer perspective the benefit of having a card module is the ability to move it from one phone to another or change network operators by popping in a new SIM card to an existing device. It’s unclear what the consumer benefit will be for Sprint’s cardless SIM.

conferences

BREW Conference 2007

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brew conference 07

The BREW Conference 2007 will take place next week in sunny San Diego, CA. I’m attending portions of the conference and would be happy to meet with anyone interested in chatting about mobile applications, companies that would like to brief me for publication at Mobile Messaging 2.0, or would participate in a podcast interview. Email me at mojo @ thisdomain or text to +1 619 804 1268. P.S. I do not answer calls unidentified by or blocking caller id.

Brew

BREW Conference 2007

Published by:

brew conference 07

The BREW Conference 2007 will take place next week in sunny San Diego, CA. I’m attending portions of the conference and would be happy to meet with anyone interested in chatting about mobile applications, companies that would like to brief me for publication at Mobile Messaging 2.0, or would participate in a podcast interview. Email me at mojo @ thisdomain or text to +1 619 804 1268. P.S. I do not answer calls unidentified by or blocking caller id.

Annoucements

BREW Conference 2007

Published by:

brew conference 07

The BREW Conference 2007 will take place next week in sunny San Diego, CA. I’m attending portions of the conference and would be happy to meet with anyone interested in chatting about mobile applications, companies that would like to brief me for publication at Mobile Messaging 2.0, or would participate in a podcast interview. Email me at mojo @ thisdomain or text to +1 619 804 1268. P.S. I do not answer calls unidentified by or blocking caller id.

Analysis

India loves to talk on mobile phones

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The Economic Times reports that Indian talk-time on mobile phones has reached a high of 461 minutes per month per subscriber. Indians are the most talkative nationality in the Asia-Pacific region out chatting the largest mobile market, China with 450 million subscribers, by 150 to 240 minutes.

The world’s four largest mobile markets are China, US, India and Russia. When it comes to usage, India with 166 million subscribers is second only to the US where the average American spends 838 minutes per month talking on their mobile phones. Russia with the fourth largest subscriber base logged a mere 88 minutes per month. China falls in the middle with China Mobile reporting usage of 303 mintues per month and China Unicom at 220 mintues.

Some of the variance in talk-time is easily explained by the assoicated tariffs. For example, voice charges in India average $.02 per minute with about $.01 per SMS making it one of the world’s cheapest mobile markets. India, also, adheres to the calling party pays and free inbound SMS schemes familiar to Europeans. Callers and receivers both pay in the US, but subscribers purchase flat rate buckets of minutes on both postpaid and prepaid plans many of which, now, include unlimited SMS. Contrast these subscriber friendlier plans with Russia where voice calls average $.20 per minute within a city and $.27 per minute from, say, Moscow to St. Petersburg. Also, both inbound and outbound calls are charged. Clearly, price matters.

India’s low tariff market is also a low penetration market. Although, growth rates are soring with 68% subscriber increase from March of 2006 to March 2007 according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi. And with the India mobile market forecasted to triple in the next four years, heavy weights like Vodafone are betting big on talkative Indians.

mobile-phones

India loves to talk on mobile phones

Published by:

The Economic Times reports that Indian talk-time on mobile phones has reached a high of 461 minutes per month per subscriber. Indians are the most talkative nationality in the Asia-Pacific region out chatting the largest mobile market, China with 450 million subscribers, by 150 to 240 minutes.

The world’s four largest mobile markets are China, US, India and Russia. When it comes to usage, India with 166 million subscribers is second only to the US where the average American spends 838 minutes per month talking on their mobile phones. Russia with the fourth largest subscriber base logged a mere 88 minutes per month. China falls in the middle with China Mobile reporting usage of 303 mintues per month and China Unicom at 220 mintues.

Some of the variance in talk-time is easily explained by the assoicated tariffs. For example, voice charges in India average $.02 per minute with about $.01 per SMS making it one of the world’s cheapest mobile markets. India, also, adheres to the calling party pays and free inbound SMS schemes familiar to Europeans. Callers and receivers both pay in the US, but subscribers purchase flat rate buckets of minutes on both postpaid and prepaid plans many of which, now, include unlimited SMS. Contrast these subscriber friendlier plans with Russia where voice calls average $.20 per minute within a city and $.27 per minute from, say, Moscow to St. Petersburg. Also, both inbound and outbound calls are charged. Clearly, price matters.

India’s low tariff market is also a low penetration market. Although, growth rates are soring with 68% subscriber increase from March of 2006 to March 2007 according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi. And with the India mobile market forecasted to triple in the next four years, heavy weights like Vodafone are betting big on talkative Indians.

Annoucements

Relaunch

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Please excuse the dust. mobilejones.com is in the process of relaunching. Will take a while to get everything put together properly. Meanwhile, check out some excellent writing on mobile messaging and related topics at www.mobilemessaging2.com

operatorcarrier

CTIA 2008 with Social Media Sizzle

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In less than a week, CTIA 2008 kicks off in Las Vegas. The conference is self-proclaimed as the largest wireless conference in the world. Some might argue that “the conference formally known as 3GSM” is bigger. I’m not sure. What I can say for sure is that the big boys from the wireless industry are getting together in the desert, and this uptight overly formalized event needs a big dose of Social Media.

CTIA is an organization primarily representing the America’s carriers by a bevy of lobbyists and lawyers. It isn’t the free wheeling environment of SXSW, and certainly not the event where social media practitioners preach to the converted. All of which I believe makes it the idea event to go all out with social media and indy production. So, next week in Las Vegas Bena Roberts, founder and chief editor of the awesome blog GoMo News and I, as the newly appointed US Editor for GoMo will bring a compelling social media experience to the conference.

We kick off with an invitation only party Sunday night, March 30th at the Hard Rock Cafe to unveil our mobile video broadcast studio. An RV brightly marked will cruise up to the Las Vegas Conference Center and pick up our interviewees who will be whisked away from the saturated towers serving the CC. We’ll set up to stream from the RV and go live with a variety of pioneering people and innovative companies along side the big brands that fuel mobile content and services.

Watch GoMo News for all the up to date information on where and how to watch the broadcasts. The Sprint EDVO Rev. A network with it’s 1.8MB upload capability will provide the bandwidth we need and a couple of Nokia N95s will be the video capture devices. How are we using N95s on a CDMA network? I’ll reveal that during the week. In addition, Flixwagon is a sponsor of GoMo News on Wheels! and will be used as the service to stream from the device, store the videos and alert Twitterfollowers or Flixwagon fans that a new video is LIVE.

The interviews and product demos are designed to be informative and conversational. Our audience will be invited to join in with their own questions through chat during the broadcast. We want to encourage respectful participation and exchange. Ask your own questions, and I’ll pass along as many as I can. As a preview, Tuesday, April 1st between 9:15 and 9:30 AM I’m interviewing Louis Libin, who serves as Chairman, Political Conventions Communications Committee. The Committee is responsible for coordinating all the wireless users for the Democratic and Republican Presidentials Conventions and events surrounding the conventions. The users include the broadcasters, Law Enforcement, the organizing committees and others.

We start March 30th approximately 9PM Mountain Daylight Time, MDT, (GMT -7). See you there.

We are grateful to GoMo News on Wheels! sponsors: Flixwagon, mPulse, MCN, and Smaato. And to the GoMo News Blender sponsor JumpTap.

travel

Traveling to SF Again

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Off to the city once again.  I’ll be in SF until this weekend, and am open to meeting up with mobilists, startups with mobile product(s) and social media types.  You know who you are.  Drop me a email, txt or leave an comment here.

Also, looking for recommendations on getting video from the N95 to the web – preferably over Wi-Fi.  What are you using?

I’ll have another announcement in the next day or so.  Watch this space, or my twitter home /mojosd.