Small Business Labs

The Economist and NY Times on Mobility

The Economist has a special section on mobility and the new nomadism.  The section is 14 pages long, and covers a wide range of topics related to cell phones and mobile computing and how they are impacting business and society.  Excellent coverage on how the new mobility is changing work locations and office environments.  Lots of discussions of working at "third places" like coffee shops, and the increase in working from home. 

If the Economist article is not enough reading for you, the NY Times Magazine has an 8 page article called Can the Cell Phone Help End Global Poverty.  Great quote on the growth of cell phones:

"...it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000."

One of the major points of the article is cell phones are fundamentally changing the economies of many developing countries.  From the article:

"Today, there are more than 3.3 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, which means that there are at least three billion people who don’t own cellphones, the bulk of them to be found in Africa and Asia. Even the smallest improvements in efficiency, amplified across those additional three billion people, could reshape the global economy in ways that we are just beginning to understand."

The growing impact of mobility, cell phones and mobile computing are hard to overestimate.

Location Based Services Round Up

Lots of news around location based services:

1.  Yahoo announced a new location based services product called Fire Eagle.  From their website:

"Fire Eagle is a new service designed to make it safe and easy to build and use location-aware applications and services. It's a place where users can store and manage information about their current location that trusted apps and sites can update or access."

Basically, users input their location and that triggers location services.  The advantage of this is approach is it provides strong user privacy controls.  For more on this see Giga Om or the ReadWriteWeb post. 

2.  BBC on the Rise and Rise of GPS Mobile: article covering GPS and location based services.  Says that Nokia alone will ship 35 million GPS equiped cell phones in 2008. 

3.  Gartner says mobile commerce is starting to take off.

4.  Gartner also says location based services will grow 170% in 2008.

5.  Gartner also says (busy folks) that mobile phone sales were 1.15 billion in 2007.

Articles on the Growth of Location Based Services

The World Mobile Congress recently took place and Business Week and the Financial Times each have several articles on mobile computing and location based services.  Business Week has a special section on the Congress, and the Financial Times has several articles.  Both report that location based services are expected to grow substantially in coming years.  Key quote from the Financial Times:

"Analysts at Gartner expect location to become a mainstream mobile application within two to five years. They see the market growing from 16m users in 2007, to 43.2m in 2008 and 300m by 2011.  Revenues from location services are similarly ex-pected to grow from $485.1m in 2007 to $8bn in 2011."

Location based services are going to become mainstream over the next 2-3 years.  Customers are increasingly going to be equiped with full mobile Internet access and tools for quickly finding detailed information on local providers of goods and services.  This will obviously have a big impact on many small businesses.

The Connection Between Mobile and Cloud Computing

Last week I spent a day at a large corporation's internal mobile marketing workshop.  At the workshop one of the topics was the future of mobile marketing and mobile commerce.  We spent a lot of time talking about mobile computing form factors, new display technologies, software standards, advertising formats and more powerful mobile chipsets.  We also talked a lot about the iPhone and its impact on mobile computing.

We didn't talk much about cloud computing, but thinking about the day we should have.  I agree that the iPhone fundamentally changed cell phone design for the better.  But I also think the fixed cost data plan, although expensive, is a key reason for the iPhone success.  Combined with the iPhone's very nice mobile browser and UI, the fixed cost data plan allows users full cloud access for zero marginal cost.  This is a major reason why iPhone users use the Internet so much. 

The NY Times also points to cloud access as one reason why Amazon's Kindle may be the first successful digital, portable electronic reader.  Key quote:

"books and other content can be loaded wirelessly, from just about anywhere in the United States, using the high-speed EVDO network from Sprint.

This may turn out to be a red-letter day in the history of convenience — our age’s equivalent of that magical moment FedEx introduced next-day delivery and people asked, “How was life possible before this?”"

Going forward other cell phone and mobile device makers will copy and even enhance many of Apple's design innovations.  This will definitely improve mobile computing.  But as the cloud gets more powerful, network bandwidth expands, and data access gets cheaper, the mobile form factor will be increasingly focused on UI and ease of use.  Local storage and processor power will become increasingly less important because data and computations will reside elsewhere. 

Apple's new Air seems to anticipate this world.  It is a mobile device that assumes your data and information are accessible through the cloud.  Making that assumption allowed Apple to create a really thin notebook and a really cool user experience. 

These are two self-reinforcing trends.  The better the cloud the better the mobile computing experience - and vice versa.  Google, Apple and Amazon seem to see this, and all are designing products for a combined mobile/cloud world.

Small businesses need to keep up with both mobile and cloud computing.  Important in their own right, together they will drive the adoption of location based services. 

The Consumer Electronics Show - Mobile Devices and Location Services

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was in Las Vegas last week.  I spent a couple of days there talking to companies and visiting exhibits.  We believe mobile computing and location services are going to have a huge impact on small business, so one of my primary goals was to see what was new in these areas.  Two things struck me:

1.  Automotive navigation systems are rapidly moving from just providing maps and directions to also providing deep local content -  Lots of innovation in the automotive navigation space, with most of the innovation around adding location based services.  Navi systems are increasingly providing detailed information on local businesses as well as directions. 

The device making the most waves is the Dash, which is expected to ship in Q1 of this year and is already in beta.  It provides 2 way Interenet access and a wide range of location information and content.  It also provides updates on the speeds of other Dash equipped cars giving a much more accurate view of traffic conditions (at least in areas where there are enough Dash equipped cars).

Automotive Design Line magazine has a nice article on this trend, and we cover in it more detail in our Future of Small Business technology forecast report.  The growing impact of cars as mobile computing devices is way underestimated in my opinion. 

2.  Mobile computing was a major focus of this show - While a lot of press went to giant TV's and systems for getting video and Internet access connected to the living room TV, mobile computing was a clear major show focus.  Lots of new cell phones, notebooks, sub notebooks and new hand held and mobile computing devices.  Again, Internet access and location based services were the main driver. 

Too much in this area to cover in this blog.  If you are interested in details on CES and mobile devices take a look at CNET, Engadget or Gizmodo. 

The bottom line is local, location based services are going to rapidly become mainstream over the next 2 years.  Customers are increasingly going to be equiped with full mobile Internet access and tools for quickly finding detailed information on local providers of goods and services.  This trend is being driven both by the mobile device companies and by Google and Yahoo who are rapidly improving their local search capabilities.  For more on local search in 2008, take a look at Local SEO's 2008 Local Search predictions.

Cars as Mobile Computing Platforms

I'm at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.  One of the areas I'm spending time at is the automotive section of the show.  MSNBC has a great article on CES and autos and Newsweek also covers cars in their article on CES.  Key quote from MSNBC:

"The Consumer Electronics Association projects that sales of electronic gear for automobiles will exceed $12 billion this year, having doubled over the last five years."

Navigation and GPS systems are driving (bad pun intended) the growth of auto electronics:

"Music and entertainment technology has made up the bulk of in-car products, but the fastest growth is in GPS and video navigation; 2007 sales are projected to be up 41 percent to seize nearly a quarter of all car technology sales, the CEA said."

Auto electronics are going play a key role in the local web and location based services.  Small businesses need to be aware of the growth of navigation systems and their impact on local commerce.

Nokia Acquires Navteq - Location Based Services the Driver

Nolia announced they are acquiring digital map company NavTeq for $8.1 billion.  Here is Navteq's company descripton from their website:

"NAVTEQ digital map data offers accuracy, detail, reliability, and flexibility. Continuously updated to maintain its freshness and precision, NAVTEQ digital map data not only enables door-to-door routing throughout Europe and North America, it contains millions of Points of Interest (POIs), making it easy to locate everything from restaurants to hospitals and gas stations. You’ll find NAVTEQ data onboard most navigation-enabled vehicles produced in North America and Europe and on all the top Internet navigation sites."

Normally I wouldn't post on a big company acquiring another big company.  But the reason Nokia is spending a robust (and dilutive) 12x Navteq's revenues is the opportunity to participate more deeply in location based services.  Key quote on Nokia's acquisition reasons:

Nokia's President and Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said "location-based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia's Internet services strategy. The acquisition of Navteq is another step toward Nokia becoming a leading player in this space."

Location based services are going to be increasingly important to small businesses (see our forecast report "The Connected World of Entrepreneurs" for more on this topic).  Nokia's acquisition of Navteq is another example of how important locaton based services have become.

Walk Score, Location Based Services and Sustainable Living

Online location based services is a rapidly growing category.  Many of these layer data onto maps to create new and useful tools and applications.  Walk Score is a great example of this trend, and it also leverages the trend towards sustainable living and life practices.  Description of Walk Score from the website:

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

While Walk Score is currently focused on how a location relates to local services, over time they easily could add location relative to trails, bike paths, open spaces, etc. 

From a small business perspective, Walk Score is another example of local information becoming increasingly available and useable.  As the local web matures there will be increasing amounts of information on local small businesses and their products and services.  Local business transparency will increase, and new opportunities for local marketing will emerge. 

Online User Reviews and Staples

In follow-on to our post on Wal-Mart and online user reviews, Staples recenly announced they too will be supporting online user reviews.  They are working with PowerReviews.  Quote from Staples in the PowerReviews press release:

"Staples is always looking for ways to make it easy for our customers, and we see product reviews as a key step in making their buying experience faster and better informed..."

As we've said in prior posts, user reviews will continue to expand both in number and coverage, and will increasingly include small business goods and services - especially as the local web expands and location based services become more common.

NBC, The Local Web and Small Business

Interesting post on the Lost Remote blog on NBC affiliate WCAU's launch of a local website called "DigPhilly.com", and NBC's plan going forward to target local niche markets.  Key quote from NBC affiliate head John Wallace:

“You’ll see a big change in the focus on local, in terms of our digital strategy,” he says. “It’s our intent to have a bigger presence in niche communities and get away from general news.”

DigPhilly has very high production values, and covers a lot of ground.  Think Myspace meets Yahoo meets eBay for Philadelphia. The site has lots of reviews of local businesses, and lots of opportunities for users to add their reviews and comments on local businesses.  They also seem to have an editorial plan to feature interesting local businesses.  They currently feature a local handbag company. 

Lost remote also has a previous post on why TV stations should aggresively pursue local internet opportunities.  The same logic holds true for local newspapers and radio stations, and the same logic is why there are so many local and hyperlocal (neighborhood) web start-ups.  Simply put, the local web is too big a business opportunity not to happen.

As the local web matures there will be increasing amounts of information on local small businesses, their products and services, and their pricing.  Local business transparency will increase, and new opportunities for local business marketing will emerge. 

Disclosure: I've worked with both NBC and their parent company GE in the last year.  I've had no involvement with WCAU or DigPhilly.com.