Well, I said back in August that I was going to be more consistent in blogging this fall … which proved to be untrue. However, my reason for failing to be more consistent is that business has been good. As far as attempting to be better now I’ll at least give it a try.

One thing I wanted to mention was the Walt Mossberg article this week in the Monday, October 22, 2007, Wall Street Journal. Mossberg took the carriers to task for their collective failure to innovate. He discussed how it took the federal government to break up Ma Bell in order to unleash innovation in the landline business and he points out that some of the same arguments being used now to stifle innovation in the wireless and mobile space were also used then. My hope is that with voices such as his and the collective power of the ‘Net as well as that of large corporations such as Apple, Google and Microsoft we can begin to put more pressure on the carrier strangle-hold on content and applications.

Well, since we’re through the summer and in the back-to-school mode (at least in the U.S.) I figured that I need to be more consistent in my blogging. So it’s back to business as usual …

What’s new on the mobile front? Well, no major new news that I’m aware of has happened recently. Google has committed over $4.5B in the upcoming FCC auction and the rules have been established that while not giving them everything they wanted still promise to provide the “wholesale” option that should help the content and applications space. The iPhone continues to do well and has generated a good deal of development activity. Admob continues to do well and is now on a run rate of over 1B mobile ads served per month. Wurfl and WALL should see a new release in the upcoming weeks that will promise additional capabilities. All in all, growth continues and the market should keep growing!

It’s been awhile since my last post what with the summer and vacations… However, I wanted to comment on the Apple iPhone and what I believe is its continued momentum in opening up the mobile web. While initial sales numbers for the first two days disappointed Wall Street (approximately 150K activations) there have been several excellent examples of iPhone successes.

One article mentioned the iPhone being used by physicians to view heart images … another in the WSJ mentioned how small businesses were able to view normal web-based applications such as NetSuite very easily. Still another mentioned how WiFi use has gone up. All of these point to the iPhone being a watershed moment in the escalation of consumer acceptance of the mobile Web. Hey give Steve Jobs credit … he made browsing the web and viewing information on a mobile device cool!

Well, here it comes … the iPhone. Tomorrow, at 6 p.m. (in all time zones apparently) the Apple iPhone will go on sale. Is this the “Netscape moment” for the mobile Web? It could be. By that I mean the point in time when the broader population gains awareness of the capabilities of this new medium. For those who can remember, Netscape went public, and when it did and the stock price soared on the first day of trading, everyone wondered what was so special about them. Well as everyone has subsequently learned the World Wide Web was the special attribute associated with Netscape.

And it could be that Apple’s blessing of the cell phone space leads to a similar effect for the mobile Web. For all of us who have invested in it let’s certainly hope so.

Last week and into this week we’ve had a good deal of mobile news and most of it I have read from the mainstream press specifically the Wall Street Journal. There was an article about mobile dating recognizing such services as MeetMoi and Zogo and how the immediacy of the experience leverages the mobile environment … an article about IAC/InterActive Corp.’s Ask Mobile GPS service … one about a coalition of wireless entrepeneurs including Virgin Mobile USA and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt’s Frontline Wireless LLC pushing for an “open access” wireless network in the next spectrum auction. Also, an article about a mobile search service from GPShopper LLC called Slifter that allows for you to search for products in retail stores while you’re on the go … and even some others. What all this means to me is that the mainstream media is increasingly becoming aware of the opportunities in mobile content and that the ideas are not considered as far-fetched as they would have been even a year ago.

What’s new this week? Well, reading in the Wall Street Journal today about the D:Digital… conference I took note of the fact that Microsoft is betting on the “not a PC yet neither a laptop or a cellphone” market. Apparently, they are going to release something for hotels and casinos that is called “Surface” or something like that. What’s interesting to me is that Forbes also had an article recently with the current CEO of Intel betting his career on devices in this same space. Also, Palm announced today a device that integrates with your cell phone, yet is separate and distinct.

Does all of this make sense? Yes and no … I believe that consumers and businesses are not necessarily going to pay for multiple “computers-like” devices. However, I do think they will pay for devices that use microprocessors, but provide services that they desire e.g. Apple’s iPOD, Garmin’s navigational devices, etc.

What’s new in mobility this week? Well for me personally I acquired a Samsung SCH-A707 phone this past week in order to hopefully take advantage of Cingular’s 3G HSDPA network. My first impression of the phone is good. I haven’t spent much time with the voice side of it yet so I do not yet have a very good feel for its call quality. However, the browser is a NetFront browser and the mobile web access seems to be pretty good.

In using its mobile web features, it (the device) further underscored (no pun intended) that simplicity is the key to greater user acceptance (of the mobile web) since it took me a couple of minutes to get the symbolic input mode (such as the _ (underscore) key) working. Regarding text input … I’m going to EMPHASIZE that those of us working in the mobile web begin to extoll even greater simplicity in URLs such that http://aryates.mobi/ti_d/dir_index.xhtml for example should not contain anything other than the bare minimum e.g. http://aryates.mobi/tid/index.xhtml. Basically, if you can avoid symbols do so and shorten your directory and page names as much as you can. We all want to be technically accurate and precise, but usability is once again #1 for the mobile web environment.

Interesting news item today … AOL is buying Third Screen Media (per the Wall Street Journal). Why is this significant? Once again it means that the “big fish” believe in the value of the mobile market and particularly the mobile advertising space. Additionally, since the larger players tend to do significant market analysis and research prior to making forays into new markets I believe that this further underscores the reality that the mobile space is becoming financially feasible at all levels.

Just a quick post to begin the week (since I failed to post last week) …
Apparently, Microsoft has just acquired ScreenTonic, a company that serves us banner advertising in the mobile space in Europe. According to the blog where I read this piece of news (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070503-130256), this is their third mobile ad purchase in the last eighteen months. The bottom line … mobile ads are coming and the Goliaths of the content business are preparing for it.

I want to opine a minute this evening about a huge opportunity in mobile that I believe is recognized, yet no one has successfully dominated the space yet … local search. The idea is simple … a service provider, say for example Google, provides keyword targeted advertising within a specific geographic area. Now you might ask what is different about local web search as opposed to local mobile search.

Well, here’s what I think is different and all the more relevant. First, I believe that a local search mobile user is closer to the point of purchase than a potentially browsing local search web user. By definition (because he or she is more ready to buy) this user is more valuable. Second and possibly the most important reason, the universe of people with mobile phones is much larger than the world of people with personal computers. I don’t have exact numbers off the top of my head, but I want to say that mobile subscribers are approaching 2B while PC users remain in the hundreds of millions. The volume numbers here speak for themselves especially in less-developed regions of the world where the mobile web (and local search by default) may be the only solution.