by Mark Jaffe   www.mobilemandala.com

There was a lot of passionate response to the post a few weeks ago “Will Mobile Phones Replace In-Store Retail Salespeople”. Even more reason that these three announcements this week caught my eye:

■  The Aberdeen Group published a report that stated in 2008, the total of digital signage market revenue stood at $766 million and is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2014, growing at a healthy CAGR of 20%.
■  The London Daily Mirror reported according to unnamed sources that Nokia is planning to begin rolling out embedded NFC (near field communications) kits into its entire line of Symbian phones beginning Q3, 2010. The Finnish giant already has NFC in selected handsets, such as the 6216 Classic.
■  Malaysian manufacturer Fonelabs will produce two million low cost (under $100) NFC enabled phones in 2010
What do these three items have to do with retail? First, just as a refresher, Near Field Communication (NFC) is “a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance.” In other words, if you have an NFC enabled phone and opt-in, your mobile phone will be able to communicate with another proximate electronic device automatically.

Yes there is a new entrant in the app space and even in the OS space. Joining Android, iPhone, Windows, Palm’s WebOS, Blackberry, Maemo and not to forget Symbian… Samsung wades into the battle of the OSs. To get a good share in the mobile market Samsung has launched it’s own Linux based mobile OS named “Bada” which means Ocean in Korean.

Professing to be a totally open platform or OS Samsung says that it enables a richer user experience in applications on Samsung ONLY mobile devices and helps developers to create UI rich applications very easily. Samsung says that the design principles of bada aim to deliver simple, intuitive, and innovative user experiences through innovative visual design. Samsung bada includes a next generation UI framework with feature sets and design elements that facilitate leading-edge user interfaces for every bada application.

by Mark Jaffe

Mobile phones have to be one of the best on the spot, at the moment, information retrieval resources of all time.  How many times have you seen disagreements settled immediately, courtesy of a quick iPhone web research query?  Well, it looks like some companies are ready to capitalize upon our penchant for instant research about things that interest us.

Let’s flash back to a recent industry panel where a senior Best Buy executive said “The right information at the point of impulse increases desired consumer’s behavior, sales, profits and customer satisfaction.” That sure sounds like a description of one of Best Buy’s best in-store salespeople helping out customers standing next to the latest electronic gizmo in one of their stores. 

www.asiamobileawards.com

InMobi is nominated for GSMA Asia Mobile Awards 2009, which will be presented at the forthcoming Mobile Asia Congress, Asia’s leading mobile communications event that is set to take place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, November 18th & 19th. InMobi was nominated in the category of Best Mobile Advertising & Marketing.

The aim of the Best Mobile Advertising or Marketing award is to recognize Asian leadership, and showcase ‘hot’ campaigns that are driving the emergence of this new sector.

Nominees for the Asia Mobile Awards are

http://www.admob.com/google

Yes finally it has happened… we have speculated for years exactly when would Google munch AdMob. I guess that they held out till the right time… the $750 million time.

I am personally very excited to see this finally happening. Having worked with AdMob for several years it is great to see a good idea and great execution paying off in the mobile arena. AdMob have really set up a great business and are pleasant to work with. So for me it is a great news to see them joining with Google who has really made forays into the mobile sphere with Android over the past year or two.

Watch a demonstration of applications from the Apple App Store built using Flash technology:

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.*

A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 with prerelease support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year. Sign up to be notified when the beta starts.

Learn more in http://www.adobe.com/iphone/

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman

The source code for the kernel that powers the Symbian OS now officially open sourced under the Eclipse Public License. This was something Nokia pledged to do when it acquired the remaining 52% stake in Symbian early June of 2008.

Early this year, Nokia announced it would be using a GNU/Linux based Maemo for their high end smart phones with Symbian pushed down to serve their mid-range offerings.

Some wise tips on “Designing Mobile Widgets” by Rajesh Lal, Senior Engineer, Nokia shared at 2009 Maemo Summit.

Growing pervasiveness of mobile widgets has created every mobile app designers a challenging role to play within a limited space. Only 1 percent of Mobile Widgets are successful.

What makes some widgets thrive and used by millions, and others with equal functionality bite the dust ?

Rajesh demystified the ‘invisible’ layer below the surface with 10 pragmatic tips, which covered some of the most useful and often ignored standard design principals and the tip & trick to apply them in mobile context.

I read an article this morning that brings home to me the fact that what is happening in the mobie space isn’t anymore just of interest to mobile related business people. I guess it signals a real coming of age.

BBC technology had an article “Battle of the smartphones begins” where they debate the pros and cons of BlackBerry, iPhone and the Pre. Was the Storm 2 or the Pre a possible iPhone killer. Of course for us mobile professionals, geeks or entrepreneurs in this space we read debates all the time like this. For us it is sort of our daily fare… but not so for the common mortal.

I felt that this was a sign that people are getting more and more attuned to the fact that mobile devices and their ecosystem of apps, mobile content and sites is of interest. This seems to me quantitative leap to what happened when Microsoft were battling it out back in the 80s and 90s where most people didn’t really participate in this battle, or even discuss it that much.

Now though people are interested in what is happening… I mean it still has some ways to go but it is becoming a topic of general news.

Research from GetJar, a major independent mobile apps store, indicates that two thirds of downloaders are in the 13 to 24 year old demographic group that is so highly sought after by marketers.

Further, one in three of users downloads at a rate of one new app per day!

In August 2009 GetJar surveyed over 13,000 users worldwide to develop a more detailed look at the the marketing impact of mobile apps.

A quick snapshot of the GetJar respondents:

• 65 per cent were in the 18-34 year old category,

• 81 per cent of respondents were male,

• 61% of consumers we’re downloading content at least 3-4 times a week, and

• 72% of consumers claimed that they are now using mobile Internet more than PC-based Internet.