Welcome. It is a great pleasure to once again host the Carnival of the Mobilists, today Volume #53. The Carnival has grown to become a great weekly event, with the best writing from
Mobilists from all around the world. And this week is no exception. That said, enjoy the carnival! And congratulations to our fellow
Mobilists whose blogs are being considered the top mobility blogs in the blogosphere…
Let's begin…
Patrick Altoft, Mad 4 Mobile Phones
writes about the Impact of the Mobile on Landline Phones. Patrick writes about the current reality where people are using their mobiles as their main phone…. “So many people these days find themselves downsizing their bills to match their budget, and many times these days the landline is the first thing to go.”
All About Symbian Rafe Blandford writes The story behind Sony Ericsson and UIQ Technology an excellent piece on the recent acquisition of UIQ Technology by Sony Ericsson. This acquisition is big news, and Rafe does a great job documenting the history behind it.
Anders Borg on his Abiro – Mobile News writes Wireless M2M now a sizable market, about the fact that the M2M market is much bigger than the ringtone market, yet almost no one knows about it. Anders is correct on this… Machine-to-Machine is not only a sizable market, but it is a huge market. I personally follow this segment and for those embedded folks, you should do the same… M2M is broad, from industrial, to automotive, and monitoring and control…
Andreas Costantinou
of Vision Mobile writes Operators: service-pipes or bit-pipes? which explains why tier-1 operator strategies have failed (including strategies for the killer app, the killer brand, the killer supermarket, the killer segmentation, the killer branded handset, the killer content and the killer service). It also explains why, instead of continuing the one-firm-provides-all strategy, operators should adopt a platform strategy, by linking users with content providers and advertisers. This is a very good piece indeed!
Jason Delport, Paxmodept Blog, writes 3rd Party Mobile Browsers: A Java ME Perspective where he brings up a very important topic to developers: the inconsistency by mobile browsers to properly report user agent headers, which is key to proper over-the-air provisioning automation… I feel the pain.
Jason Devitt, Brash Dot Com, writes Content is the Cup Holder where he covers why carriers care about content for mobile phones. Jason provides metrics and explains why content is important if you are in the business of developing content – a very good piece.
Ajit Jaokar, OpenGardens blog, writes Pipes are so Mobile Web 1.0 … because in a user generated content world, there is no 'un pipe' where he discusses the carrier's concerns about being seen as a pipe… Ajit says “Why should they worry any more about being a pipe in a Mobile Web 2.0 world?”… I agree with Ajit that carriers should not worry, as they are doing what they are best at, enabling communications.
Darla Mack, the Mobile Diva,
writes Nokia N95 – Globally Warrantied or Not? where she brings up an important topic to consumers:
“consumers have a right to know before they shell out that “new item” amount of money.”.
Michael Mace, the Mobile Opportunity blog, writes Symbian unloads UIQ, and the mobile apps situation gets clearer — and uglier where he provides a different view on the acquisition of UIQ by Sony Ericsson. A very good piece by Michael he writes that “we're looking at a minimum of five major OS layers (S60, UIQ, Moto Linux, Microsoft, Qualcomm Brew), plus smaller contenders (Palm OS, RIM). Oh, and don't forget Java. This situation will drive independent software developers insane, because they'll have to rewrite their applications for every phone platform.”. I would like to add that this is a great reason why to decouple the application from the OS, by using strategies such as Java ME and Mobile Web…
On her Xelluar Identify blog
Xen Mendelsohn
writes
Leveraging Ringback Tones Success – Content Best Practice where she covers Cosmote Greece as the first case study of successful Ringback Tone marketing strategies led by mobile operators.
Dennis, Editor of the
Wap Review, writes Mojeo – LBS on any phone where he reviews Mojeo with its support for LBS on any phone. In short, I too believe that zip-code and IP-address location information resolution is sufficient for many applications…
Justin Oberman, MoPocket, writes Pinger: Voicemail To Email (Who Knew) where he reviews Pinger. “With Pinger you send voice messages directly to someone instantly and by that I mean (and by someone I mean someone's email).”
Martin Sauter, the Mobile Society blog,
writes Nokia starts to push 2G barcodes in Paris. Looks like Nokia is starting to get behind 2D bar codes in Europe, and Martin does an excellent job covering this fact. Martin writes “When returning to Paris on Sunday I immediately noticed the new Nokia advertisements plastered all over the city for the Nokia 6280 (3G, Series 40 phone). At the bottom of the ads, a 2D barcode is shown (see picture) and instructions on what to do with it.”. Martin covers a product called MobileTag by a company named Abaxia, and provides his views that “mobile 2D Bar Code Advertising needs the Operator”.
Barry Welford, StayGoLinks, writes 100 Million Websites – How Many To Go? where he covers the Web's growth, including the mobile Web. He concludes that while “strong demand for the mobile Web, regrettably how the size and the growth rate of the Mobile Web compare with the same parameters for the regular Web is still to be determined.”
Ian Wood, Digital Evangelist, writes MoMo London is One year old. Congratulations to all Mobilists in London! I would like to add that Mobile Monday Austin also turned one year old last August. For more information about Mobile Monday, see the Mobile Monday web site.
Next is my own entry on the Mobility Weblog where I cover what should be an important milestone: the
W3C has released Widgets 1.0: Working Draft. It is great to see
Opera Software leading the industry with the definition of the Widgets spec for packaging and scripting and other. It is exactly what is needed with respect to Widgets — order, consistency, a common technical approach.
Wow… what a number of great entries this week, which makes it difficult to choose the favorite entry… Good work Mobilists! The favorite entry this week goes to Andreas Costantinou
of Vision Mobile with his piece Operators: service-pipes or bit-pipes?…
Next carnival is at Judy Breck’s Golden Swamp…
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