Gartner Forecasts Money Transfer, LBS to Dominate in 2012

Posted: Friday, November 20, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Market Survey

By Jason Ankeny

Money transfer applications, location-based services and mobile search will reign among the top 10 mobile application categories of 2012 according to a new forecast issued by market research firm Gartner. Basing its predictions on each app category's projected revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration, Gartner anticipates that most consumers will use no more than five mobile applications at a time, with most opportunities coming from niche market apps.

"Consumer mobile applications and services are no longer the prerogative of mobile carriers," said Gartner research director Sandy Shen in a prepared statement. "The increasing consumer interest in smartphones, the participation of Internet players in the mobile space, and the emergence of application stores and cross-industry services are reducing the dominance of mobile carriers. Each player will influence how the application is delivered and experienced by consumers, who ultimately vote with their attention and spending power."

Money transfer ranks No. 1 on Gartner's 2012 hit parade, contending the service's lower costs, speed and overall convenience boast strong appeal to users in developing markets. Gartner believes the LBS user base will grow from 96 million worldwide in 2009 to 526 million in 2012, crediting its ability to meet a range of needs spanning from productivity and goal fulfillment to social networking and entertainment--mobile search, meanwhile, is listed third due to its dramatic impact on technology innovation and industry revenue.

Fourth on the list: Mobile browsing--according to Gartner, browsers will be available on about 80 percent of handsets shipping in 2012, compared to 60 percent of devices in 2009. Mobile health monitoring is fifth, followed in descending order by mobile payment, NFC, mobile advertising, instant messaging and mobile music. [FierceMobileContent]

More Challenges Ahead of Fixed-mobile Convergence

Posted: Thursday, November 12, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Business Analysis

By Claudio Castelli, Senior Analyst

Ovum’s research shows that there is currently little integration between the services available for the different users’ profiles. Most companies struggle with separate fixed and mobile devices, independent infrastructures and separate voice-mail systems. However, these companies want more integration of their mobility services to support the growing mobile workforce with better productivity, simplified management and save cost through an integrated approach.

Enterprises will choose either integrate all the parts of this puzzle themselves or outsource the challenge by picking a one-stop shop. However, even the latter option requires that many decisions be made. Furthermore, there is a wide range of suppliers approaching enterprises with their offerings. Enterprises can turn to a traditional systems integrator (SI), a vendor, a network service provider or pick the best-of-breed offering and integrate the services themselves — or even a combination of these. For most enterprises the migration from legacy telephony technology to an integrated collaboration environment will normally occur in several steps. A multi-vendor environment will initially be the norm, and system integration is a key part of this transition.

Cost is a key decision factor in any enterprise communication project. Enterprises with a significant long-term investment in communication systems will rely as much as possible on their existing infrastructure. Reutilizing existing components might result in lower entry costs and less deployment complexity. Furthermore, users will be more familiar with some of the functionalities, requiring less effort in education and business customization. We expect that larger enterprises with recent investments in communication systems will use their existing premise solutions as a basis to integrate their fixed and mobile services. Established relations with SIs and UC vendors are likely to be the starting point.

We believe that enterprises will also start to evaluate their suppliers’ approach to cloud capabilities. Telcos are developing next-generation networks (NGNs) that will support integrated services. The advantage for enterprises is that the hosted approach can avoid up-front capital investment and brings the flexibility they need to respond quickly to market pressures. This allows them to pay as they grow or reduce their operations when business gets tough. However, most of the offerings are still in the early days and larger enterprises might think it’s too risky to have their communications locked in with a single provider and will prefer to retain management and control a little longer. /PR-Ovum

Google Scoops Mobile Advertising Pioneer

Posted: Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Business Analysis

By Eden Zoller, Principal Analyst

Google is set to buy mobile advertising network specialist AdMob in an all-stock deal valued at $750 million – a deal that shows how serious Google is about being a top player in this space. The acquisition is a good fit: Google needs to strengthen its hand in mobile display advertising, where Admob is already a strong player (particularly in serving ads on Google’s Android platform and also the iPhone). AdMob, although well established and respected, needed a strong partner and funds for future growth.

A deal that should bring benefits to both sides

Google is getting stronger in mobile search but lacks a strong foothold in mobile display advertising. AdMob reportedly serves more than 8.5 billion mobile banner and text ads per month across a publisher network of 15,000 mobile websites and applications in 160 countries. AdMob, which was set up in 2006, has a strong track record of campaigns with leading brands.

One of the things we’ve always liked about AdMob is its spirit of constant improvement. It has put a lot of effort into improving the targeting capabilities of its platform. AdMob publishes regular metrics for different aspects of its mobile advertising network – advertising traffic requests by region, country and device type. It was one of the first companies to launch a unit to handle ads for the iPhone platform in July 2008, followed by a similar unit dedicated to the Google Android device platform in February 2009.

AdMob ripe for acquisition
We marked AdMob as a hot acquisition target in our March 2009 report Mobile advertising players: ones to watch. AdMob is privately held and only reveals limited financial detail. It is well funded (investors include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners) and when it received a third round in October 2008 it stated that it had achieved positive cash-flow results. This is good for a company barely out of start-up mode, but what AdMob needs for future growth is the resources and scale to compete against larger players in mobile advertising such as Microsoft and Nokia. There are also clear benefits for AdMob in becoming part of a group with a platform that offers a larger set of capabilities to advertisers and publishers. The Google acquisition provides all of this, along with a strong sales team infrastructure and relationships.

Careful integration is key to future success
This kind of acquisition strategy is not new for Google. In December 2007 it bought DoubleClick to strengthen its position in display advertising. The thinking behind the AdMob deal is similar. What will be important to its success is how carefully Google integrates AdMob into its sprawling business. For example, how will AdMob sit alongside AdSense for Mobile, which was set up in June 2009 in a bid to improve Google’s push into mobile display ads?

AdMob has a stronger track record in mobile so this might not be too much of an issue. We hope Google does not turn AdMob into a vehicle to drive ad sales only on the Android platform. The key selling point of AdMob has been its willingness to serve ads across a wide range of device platforms, enabling advertisers to reach the broadest base possible and one of the reasons why AdMob has one of the largest mobile ad networks in the business. /PR-Ovum

PayPal Opens Payments Platform to Developers

Posted: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Mobile Payments, PayPal

By Jason Ankeny

Online payment solutions provider PayPal announced its decision to open its PayPal X global platform to developers, unveiling a series of new APIs as well as a mobile SDK to embed payments directly into iPhone applications.

According to PayPal, developers can now build person-to-person solutions or business-to-business payment applications on their platform of choice, whether it's a mobile device or a social networking site. Developers can also take a cut or distribute funds from PayPal payments as they happen, and can enable buyers to send money to several people in one payment. The mobile SDK--scheduled to launch in the first half of 2010--will enable developers to integrate PayPal services into mobile apps so that consumers can purchase physical goods; PayPal adds that funds will be transferred in a matter of seconds.

New capabilities and enhancements for PayPal's Adaptive Payments APIs include currency conversion for international purchases, Pay Anyone (enabling financial and other institutions to allow customers to send money when logged in to their bank accounts, regardless of whether the customer has a PayPal account) and pre-approvals (giving developers the flexibility to create reusable payments agreements between buyers and sellers). A new developer portal, X.com, promises all the information developers need to create applications built with PayPal X. PayPal now boasts more than 78 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies worldwide. [FierceDeveloper]

Strategies for The success of Mobile Search

Posted: Saturday, October 24, 2009
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Business Analysis

With a growing appetite for mobile applications, services, and content, consumers and business users will be looking to mobile search to streamline their information/content access and retrieval.

“Unfortunately, there is little ‘joy of use’ in the current mobile search user experience”, said Sarah Burnett, Ovum Senior Analyst, based in London. With a growing appetite for mobile content, consumers and business users will be looking to mobile search for information or content access and retrieval. Given the rapid evolution of mobile devices and networks in recent years, they would be justified in thinking that mobile search would provide slick interfaces and accurate results. But in most cases they would be disappointed. While search on the Internet has revolutionised how we access information, the same is not true of mobile search. This is still in its infancy, and the typical user experience leaves much to be desired.

Burnett said, “Vendors and content providers have to recognise that people interact with their mobile phones in very different ways than they do their PCs. The interaction is dictated by the tiny screen, typically awkward keypad and limited on-screen navigation. Given these constraints, navigating a long list of search results is hardly user-friendly”.

“Mobile search should deliver answers, not links”, advised Mark Blowers, Ovum Principal Analyst. There is more to mobile search than just browsing. In mobile devices there is an increased need for accuracy, relevancy and contextual results. This is not to say that PC users do not require the same, but on a PC it is much easier to create an advanced search query that improves the probability of getting the right answer. The need for a simple and easy user interface and user-friendly results is amplified in a mobile device. Already, mobile search tools such as Taptu only list sites that are optimised for mobile viewing. As more people switch to mobiles for web access, site sponsors will see their hits decline unless they provide better mobile support.

Google and Yahoo have begun to offer location-tailored results. Given their Internet search presence, it is not surprising that they are two of the leading players in the mobile search market – helped by alliances with mobile service providers that place them as preferred search solutions on web-enabled handsets. Their solutions are optimised for mobile use and, to facilitate speed of delivery, URL and search suggestions appear as you type. Another vendor, Apple, provides a good example of how successful location-based search applications can be – there are many offerings within Apple’s App Store that use the handset’s location to provide details of local facilities (such as restaurants) and other tailored information.

“The giants of PC-based search will be difficult to topple. Small technology companies will continue to create niche mobile search applications, but brand recognition and deep research & development pockets make existing market leaders obvious favourites in the race for mobile search queries and, ultimately, the associated advertising revenues”, concluded Blowers. PR-Ovum