Mobile Phones and Kids

Brandon Baker has just completed his graduation thesis about the role and potential effects that the mobile phone use in "hero" shows in Japan has on children.

While each of the major operators here have rolled out phones, and service plans geared specifically towards children, this paper suggests that children actually should not be given a fully-equipped mobile phone until they are at least 16 years old. Additionally, this paper concludes that mobile businesses must take a more vigilant role in their efforts to profit from the "youth" market, as the negative consequences that mobile phone usage has upon children seems to far outweigh the benefits.

If this latest news from Spain (thanks to Brandon for the update on this!) isn't enough to convince you of the seriousness of this issue, please read through Brandon's entire thesis for a long list of other instances in which mobile phones have led to serious threats to children.

If you agree with the conclusions of this paper then, I believe that it's time for everyone within the wireless ecosystem to begin to carefully reconsider how we are approaching the issue of children and mobile phones.

The Mobile Consumer Lab will be taking this on as one of our initiatives in the Fall 2008 semester, and are hoping that these efforts will lead to more effective rules and guidelines for how all of us approach the issue of children's usage of mobile phones.

Nokai (Symbian) vs. Google (Android/OHA)

In our report published last year about Google Android and the Wireless Ecosystem, the excitement that we felt in our Lab about this effort was the fact that Google seemed to be the only company who was in the correct position to truly spark a robust Wireless Ecosystem similar to what has already been created in Japan. The argument that was made in this report was that because Google's revenues would be derived from advertisements placed within Mobile Internet content, that it was within their best interests to have the most compelling mobile content and services developed upon Android.

On Tuesday, things have become even more interesting. Nokia has just purchased the remaining shares of Symbian, created the Symbian Foundation and will make the entire Symbian "platform" available for free for all Foundation members. Symbian will therefore be open source.

While media reports appear to be extremely positive about this move, some questions we'll be discussing in the lab next semester will be:
1) How such a move truly influences the "ecosystem" that exists for content and service developers?
2) Will end-users truly benefit from this move, or is this just a competitive move to thwart Android and the OHA?
3) Can Android truly compete now that Symbian is Open Source?

We will continue to watch how this story unfolds, irrespective of how things evolve, it is clear that Open Source holds one of the keys to the future of the Wireless Ecosystem.

Japan's iPhone - A Portal to the World?

The world continues to be "lit up" by the iPhone, and the latest news that the 3G version will soon be launching in Japan ( correctly called by Lars and the team at Wireless Watch Japan), the question that keeps being launched our way is "does this really matter?"

Japan is a market that accounts for less than 3% of the world's total mobile subscribers, but generates 19% of the world's total data revenues, and stripping data communications revenues (like SMS and mobile messaging) out of this equation, 36% of global mobile internet revenues. All of this without the iPhone.

So the prospects that the iPhone will spark further usage of mobile internet content and services in Japan seems to be a little far-fetched. But where the iPhone is likely to make it's greatest impact is bringing the Japanese market more closely in line with other markets around the world.

As Japan has spent nearly a decade separated from the rest of the world in terms of mobile internet usage and adoption, the iPhone may turn into the great equalizer. Exactly the right platform to begin to help the most successful content, services and applications gain the global attention that they deserve. And at the same time, create a platform for future innovations that may help the world catch up to Japan's levels of mobile internet usage.

So while the overall impact in terms of total sales may not impress the analysts, something more subtle, but potentially more important to the future of the mobile internet may be underway. Although I believe that Google's Android is a more blatant attempt to make Japan's overall ecosystem model relevant around the world, the iPhone may also go a very long way in bringing an entirely new level of collaborative innovation between Japan and the rest of the world.

The Path to mPayments

In this new video from TellLabs experts from Japan (including our friends Marco Koeder from CyberMedia and Christopher Billich from Infinita) discuss the importance of mPayments and mCommerce, as well as the roadmap for how such applications should be implemented.

The work of our mPayments team in the lab this year has actually identified some more fundamental issues that are outlined in this video however. While this video briefly outlines mobile banking in South Africa, actually our research team has concluded that the linkage between mobile finance and mobile payments is of fundamental importance to the future of mobile-based payment solutions.

We will be following up with a full report from our mPayments team later this month, and we are also hoping to conduct an mPayments workshop in Tokyo in July. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available!

Brand new Google Reader for iPhone

Here is interesting news about mobile browser for iPhone. Mobile Safari, can it be comparable with Opera's mobile browser?

The article is here:

Brand new Google Reader for iPhone

Monday, May 12, 2008 by dolapo

Mobile web browsers have come a long way since we first introduced an XHTML version of Reader back in 2006. For example, iPhone and iPod Touch owners know how powerful having a full-featured browser is. We on the Reader team are heavy mobile Safari users. Sometimes we use it to kill time, other times for answering important questions that come up during brunch: What is Tyrol's first name? How is maple butter made? How do you sweeten rhubarb for sangria? What is John Gruber saying now? For questions like the last one, we of course use Reader to keep up with our subscriptions.

To make our (and your) Reader iPhone experience better, we wanted to really take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. Today we're releasing a new beta version of Reader designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.

This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you've used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it's a very fast way to power through your reading list.

Since it's still in beta, we're not going to automatically send you to it, so bookmark the site so that you don't forget the address (http://www.google.com/reader/i/). We love getting feedback from users, so let us know what you think in our discussion group or the other channels.

Cloud Computing - It's for real

Norio Murakami, President of Google Japan was just here on campus yesterday. And one of his major points during his presentation was the coming reality of "Cloud Computing," or having services and applications resident on the network rather than our own devices.

He also said that Google is not competing with Microsoft or Yahoo! or anyone else for that matter, as they were moving forward towards realizing this "Cloud Computing" future.

This is in line with the latest article in Wired Magazine about Amazon.com and their Cloud Computing efforts.

Now here's a question. If PCs will become thin clients that link into this "cloud," won't mobile devices take this same path? Instead of rushing to develop or create the next best application for individual devices, it seems like the better bet is to design for the cloud.

2008 - The Year of MVS (Mobile Visual Search)?

KDDI just announced today that it will launch a new "visual" search capability this Spring. With this technology, KDDI subscribers with these phones will be able to use their camera to take a photograph of something (this article mentions things such as CD covers or Wine bottle labels) and immediately get search results related to these objects.

The engine behind this search tool is a company out of the U.S. called Evolution Robotics and its ViPR object recognition software. A demo of this software running on the iPhone shows how you can take photos of different things and get search results returned via email.

Earlier this week, our friends over at Wireless Watch Japan clued us into a new Google Android GPS Application that allows users to have a computer-mediated mapping and navigation services available through Android-enabled mobile phones.

These, and the many other related solutions that I haven't mentioned are truly amazing, and suggest that in the near future we will see a number of attempts to use the mobile phone as a bridge between the "real world" and digital information related to it.

But beyond the hype, I'm very interested in seeing how these new technologies can and will be used by mobile consumers. Are these recent announcements true harbingers of the future, or will they lead to consumer apathy and confusion?

Today's announcement from KDDI, Bandai and Evolution Robotics suggests that it will only be a matter of a little more time before we get some initial answers to these questions. But in order to succeed, the user interface must be extremely elegant, the database overly robust, and the value of such services versus competing technologies must be clearly communicated.

Will this be the future? Let me know what you think!