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Beyond the 3-Minute Call…Business, Entertainment or Cool

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: It is difficult to believe that Apple has reshaped the mobile communications industry with the iPhone but more than 5,000 applications are available for the unit. Every operating system and service provider is now offering their own apps store for their smartphones. It's an outstanding opportunity for small firms to look big.

Beyond the 3-Minute Call…Business, Entertainment or Cool

You can forgive the news reporter who mistook President Obama’s Shaka wave for a sign to call him during the inauguration.

The connected candidate -- who took communications to a whole new level -- would have expected a text message or email…not a call.

Doubt if his new phone number is in the phone book anyway!

Mobile phones have come a long way since Motorola’s Cooper showed off his analogue brick back in 1973. Since then they’ve gotten smaller, cheaper, cuter and more a part of your personal identity…just ask the kids.

They:
- take photos
- check email
- watch videos
- browse the web
- use GPS (like they get lost between home, school)
- download stuff
- listen to music
- take videos
- download ringtones, screensavers
- play games
- text, IM
- make calls…tons and tons of calls

But to us they’re still phones.

Sales have grown steadily (Figure 2).

Some people are so attached to their mobile devices they have to have a couple of them.

Smartphones Emerge
The Blackberry (Crackberry to early addicts) started folks thinking they had their hands on more than just phones back in 2000.

Thanks largely to RIM a new generation, new classification of mobile phones emerged…the smartphone.

That was okay until Apple changed the landscape (Figure 3).

Add Figure 3 here

Ok so Apple isn’t a volume phone leader (Nokia makes more units in a day than Apple sells in a couple of month). But demand has been excellent (Figure 4).

It was so sexy everyone brought out their clone(s).

Palm “unveiled” theirs at CES (Figure 5).

Sorta, kinda cool (of course units won’t ship until June) but they wanted to save what little bit of Palm franchise they had so they used their own OS.

Unless you’re “in the biz” you probably didn’t know – or care -- there were mobile OS options. You know – Symbian, Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS (nope it’s not dead…yet) and loose change cross-platform options.

No one cared until Apple found a secret to making big bucks in the phone industry.

They make a few bucks on the iPhone but that’s chump change.

They sweet talked our kids into using their iPhones with iTunes.

Suddenly they were downloading music, videos, ringtones, you name it.

The AT&T bill went up.

The iTunes bill went up.

Since it’s only a so-so phone, they figured they’d offer other really cool stuff for the device and…BAM!!!

They decided they couldn’t make all the apps themselves – not even Apple people are that smart – they decided “what the h***.”

Open for Business
They opened another online store and offered you apps from other folks…something like five gazillion different ones!

Yeah Apple has to approve them.

Yeah they get a healthy cut from each sale…50 cents here, 50 cents there. Suddenly we’re talking serious bucks!

RIM may have the definitive business smartphone but they saw that Apple had a winner. So they introduced a couple of their own clones of the iPhone (Figure 6).

And their own app store.

Nokia, MS and Google have all opened their own app stores and are busy helping developers offer fun, business packages for everyone’s smartphone.

VCs have set up funds to grab their chunks of the iPhone pie.

People like Amdocs are prepping products so AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and the other carriers can also get more of the revenue.

No one really knows how big the smartphone apps and services business is (yeah wild numbers are thrown around).

You, Phones
Azuki Systems and Informa give us a few hints about the market:

- 78% of Americans own cell phones
- Mobile phone demand to grow 11%
- 23% of all mobile users will use mobile social networks by 2012
- Global handset market will grow 3% this year
- 30% of iPhone 3G buyers switched to AT&T from other carriers
- there were 4 bln mobile subscriptions by year-end ‘08
- Average US mobile subscriber sends 357 SMS messages a month
- Smartphone market grew 52% in 2008
- Global cell phone market grew 11% last year
- 266 mln wireless subscribers in the US by 2013
- Location-based mobile social networking to generate $3.3 bln by 2012
- 40% of all Internet users will have mobile Internet access by 2012
- Only 3% recycle their mobile phones (darn!)
- 165 mln multimedia phones to sell in China by 2011
- 250 mln GPS-enabled phones to sell by 2010
- 34% of US households to use only mobile services by 2011
- 36 mln femtocells to ship by 2012
- 4 mln users to access mobile maps in 2007
- 43 mln US and European users to download mobile maps in 2012
- 45% of mobile connections to be WCDMA HSDPA by 2010
- 52 mln TD-SCDMA subscribers in China by 2011
- 95 mln ultra-mobile devices to sell by 2012
- Cellular capex to reach $23 bln by 2012
- Men spend 458 minutes a month on wireless, women - 453 minutes
- MMS market in Western Europe in 2010
- Mobile fund transfers to generate $8 bln for operators by 2012
- Mobile gaming in Asia-Pacific to reach $18.8 bln by 2011
- Premium mobile content to generate $44 bln in 2011


Ok so even in a tough economy there’s a huge demand (Figure 7).

The great thing about the mobile and connected world is that folks just know more about you.

After all, Google’s Street service shows people where you live (folks aren’t too happy about that sometimes).

Heck, Google even lets you track folks with Latitude (kids aren’t too happy with that one either).

More About You
Harris Interactive using “old fashioned” research found that:
- Young adults are significantly more likely than their older counterparts to own a mobile phone than a landline: among those 18-34, 89% own a cell phone or smart phone, but only 57% have a landline
- Young mobile phone owners are considerably more likely to use their phones for more than just phone calls (74% of adults ages 18-34 versus 20% of those ages 55 and up)
- Young mobile phone owners are likely to feel that their phones have strengthened their personal relationships - 60% of those 18-34 vs. 37% of those ages 35+
- Women are more likely than men to say their phones have strengthened their personal relationships - 66% vs. 60%
- Women are more likely than men to now use their phones to send or receive text messages (38% vs. 33%), and to take/send/receive photos (27% vs. 21%)
- Men are more likely than women to use their phones to check email (12% vs. 7%), access the Internet for something other than search and download (11% vs. 5%), and find information using an internet search engine (9% vs. 6%)

Clone Wars
Fighting off the clones (Figure 8). Apple is readying (according to “reliable sources”) new units like:
- iPhone nano -- $99 starter phone with things like IR, mScan, Near Field Communications (NFC), 2mp camera, GPS and 3G. For under $100 you’ll only get 8GB of storage but come on folks!
- iPhone 2nd Gen -- $499, 32GB storage, still/video camera with zoom, IR, mScan, NFC, music, video, TV and ???

A gazillion more iPhone apps will be introduced and a few hundred million downloads will take place.

The MS, Blackberry, Nokia, Google and carrier stores will be moving their apps to mobile device users.

Forget anything?

Oh yeah…Palm will roll out the Pre mid-year with their really sexy OS.

Just not sure how many developers are going to rush to develop apps for their installed customer base of ….ZERO!

But they do have an infusion of $100 million and a commitment to the platform for the next 10 years.

As Yoda said, “Mmm. Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing. How embarrassing.”

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Article Tags: analogue, crackberry, cross platform, inauguration, iphone, mobile devices, mobile os, news reporter, obama, os options, own os, personal identity, phone book, platform options, play games, s cooper, shaka, smartphone, sorta, text message



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