Small Business Labs

Cell Phones, Market Data and Rural Farmers

The New York Times reports on a new service from Reuters called Market Light, which provides pricing information for rural farmers in India via cell phone text messages.  From the article:

"Reuters has dispatched about 60 market reporters to the region to report on the going price for, say, oranges or onions, and to package the data into a text message that is sent to subscribers."

The service is for profit and Reuters is treating it like any other new business.  Key quote from the article:

"The brass at Reuters has approved money to operate Market Light for three years.  After three years, “it will be either a very healthy business, or it won’t exist,” said Amanda West, head of Reuters Innovation."

Better access to price and market data can greatly improve the efficiency of small businesses and small farmers in developing countries.  The article discusses one study on this topic and more information can be found at our post The Economist and NY Times on Mobility.

Disclosure:  We've done work for Reuters in the last year.   

M:Metrics and Business Week on Mobile Internet Usage

The research firm M:Metrics released a study showing that the average U.S. smartphone owner spends more than 4.5 hours per month browsing the Internet.  Interesting press release quote:

"Among smartphone users in the United States, mobile browsing has increased 89 percent year over year, and pageviews have increased 127 percent. Consumption is quickly evolving from brief transactions, such as checking the weather or flight status, to time-intensive interaction with mobile Web sites—even without an iPhone.”

The top 5 mobile sites in terms of time spent are Craigslist, eBay, MySpace, Facebook and the Go Network (Disney).  It is interesting that online commerce and online social networking are the two leading applications in terms of time spent.

Business Week covers this data and other data in a story called Welcome to the Weekend Web.   The article discusses how mobile computing usage tends to increase on weekends.  A lot of the increase in usage is due to cell phone users looking for local content.  Interesting quote onCraig's List:

Many swarm Craigslist, the local classified ad site. In March, users spent more time on Craigslist than on any other site. "Very few Web sites are inherently local; ours is the exception," says Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. When it comes to sites visited from a PC, Yahoo! (YHOO) properties hold the No. 1 spot, while Craigslist is way down in ninth place, according to researcher comScore Media Metrix.

Mobile computing is proving to be location oriented.  This means mobile consumers are increasingly using the mobile Internet access to to find out information on local goods and services.  Small businesses who serve local markets need to aware of this trend.

Mobile Phone/Computing Round Up

Lots of interesting recent articles and information on mobile phones, mobile devices and mobile computing.  Way too much to post on.  Here are the ones I found most interesting:

1.  Mobile phone sales continue to grow.  According to Strategy Analytics there were 290 million cellphones shipped in Q1 of 2008. 

2.  Marketing Charts (great site, BTW) has a post on IDC's Q1 cell phone sales number.  They say 291.6 million were shipped.  They also have market share numbers by major vendor.  Nokia leads with almost 40% of the market.  They also have a recent post on mobile display advertising.

3.  These sales numbers are likely why movie director Spike Lee and Nokia are teaming up to make movies designed to be viewed on cell phones.  According to an article in the NY Timess this is an experiment for both Lee and Nokia.  Quote from the article on why they are doing this:

"The project is an experiment for Mr. Lee, but it is also a way for Nokia to promote its wares. Cellphone companies are all trying to position their products not just as devices for talking, but as multimedia devices that can play music, search the Web and capture video."

4.  More from Strategy Analytics.  They are forecasting that consumers and advertisers will spend $102 billion on mobile media in 2012.

5.  Good article on News.com about the linkages between mobile and cloud computing.  This is something we've posted on in the past and continue to research.  Our current research is focused the impact of the combination of mobile computing, cloud computing and the local internet will have on small business.

6.  Gizmag has a review of the HTC Shift, which is an ultra compact mobile computing device.   It is a great example of one of the many mobile computing device form factors competing for consumer acceptance.

7.  A little older (March) but something I missed is Forrester's forecast that European mobile internet usage will surge over the next 5 years.

8.  The BBC says Cuban cell phone use is expanding due to Raul Castro easing restrictions.

9.  Korea is a leading edge market for cell phones, so it is always worth seeing what is going on there.  According to Telecoms Korea half of all cell phones on the market in that in country in 2011 will have touch screens.

10.  The LocalMobileSearch blog has a post on the increase in mobile phone only housholds.  It is up to roughly 12% in the U.S.  Meanwhile, the percentage of of land line only households is down to 16%.  The data is from the Center for Disease Control, which I find an interesting source.  I think Twitter is much more detrimental to health than cell phones. 

The growth of mobile computing was the top technology trend for 2008 on our Consensus 2008 Technology Trends list and also on our 2008 Top 10 Small Business Trends list.  The vast amount of coverage this sector gets shows just how quickly computing is going mobile. 

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.

iPhone Users and Mobile Internet Devices

Rubicon Consulting has released a study on iPhone users.  It is quite interesting and the detailed study is free (nice marketing move by Rubicon).  Some key points from the study:

• iPhone users are very satisfied
• email is the #1 mobile internet iPhone application
• the iPhone increases mobile browsing

A key point from the study is that 25% of iPhone users say they use the iPhone as a replacement for their notebook PC.  This is something I consistently hear from iPhone users. 

Interestingly enough, this report was released roughly the same time Intel was talking about their efforts to enable a broad range of mobile internet devices, or MIDs.  Click here to see their video showing people using MIDs, which appear to be bigger than smartphones and smaller than notebook PCs.   They also have videos on this page talking about their new mobile processor, which they call Atom. 

The mobile internet was our #1 consensus technology trend for 2008.  It was also on our list of key small business trends for 2008.  The continuing success of the iPhone as a mobile computing platform and the release of a new mobile computing chipset by Intel continue to reinforce the growing importance of mobile computing. 

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.

Garmin to Combine Cell Phone, Search and Navigation

Lots of mobile computing news this week.  Navigation system company Garmin's Nuivphone is getting a lot of attention.  While details are bit a sketchy, it is expected to be released in the fall and combines navigation, local search and a cell phone. 

While there are a number of navigation ad ons for cell phones, I think this will be the first mobile device specifically designed to combine these features and functions. 

The localmobilesearch blog has more on this. 

Google's Eric Schmidt on Mobile Computing

Reuters has an article called "Google CEO Bullish on Mobile Web Advertising" covering Google CEO Eric Schmidt's remarks at the World Economic Forum.  Key quote:

"The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution", Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Friday."

Obviously Schmidt has a vested interest in location-based mobile advertising happening, but we do agree with him and believe location based services and advertising will have a major impact on many small businesses.  Our research report on the Connected World of Entrepreneurs covers this in more detail. 

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.