Came across this article and felt that if you are considering a mobile strategy it is definitely one you should read!

Although, I do think that they got some of this wrong.  RWD ( Responsive Web Design) is definitely not as expensive as you build one and it is part of the same site, where as you need to pay extra depending on the business model for MWD  ( Mobile Web Design) as a running cost unless you host yourself.

Also, designing for mobile needs…. If you know what you are doing with mobile, then its straight forward.

I think responsive web design is probably better long term

Over the course of the last several years, Apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry and even Symbian paved the way for the strong value proposition of the optimized mobile experience for brands, publishers, developers and content creators. The closed App Store ecosystem created a business model for these App owners to make money in a way never before possible within the “Walled-Garden” environment of the Mobile Operators.  These solutions were driven by Device side owner of the business (Apple, Google, RIM and others) and the day AT&T “drank the poison pill” and let Apple have full control, set into motion a unique new mobile world order that changed the position of the Carriers.  However, the caveat to these closed Application marketplaces has been the ability for discovery and marketability of Applications- a problem sorted out in the internet world with Google search

Today, many have seen HTML5 the next big hope in the future of the Application business.  As most of the mobile browsers today house-Webkit (the open source mobile safari browser).  The promise of an Application solution that can work from the browser across all the devices is an exciting possibility.  This evolution is moving fast and it is being driven by Google and in my opinion part of the grand master plan for domination. Google has been using HTML5 to make a compelling case for device-specific views (the same website but mobile or online depending on the screen size.  The strength in an Application world driven by HTML5 is that it lives by the same discovery guidelines of the internet and there is no question this is the strength of Google or the Online Market leaders.

Just this last week, was a big day for HTML5.  Facebook made a big announcement around their initiatives for HTML5 Apps as part of their mobile framework.  Since the launch of the iPhone and the iPad, all eyes have been on the HTML5 evolution vs. Flash as well as the development of mobile web apps vs. native apps.  Even though there has been some time before the fragmentation settles, it looks like we are now at a turning point for a stronger evolution of HTML5 Apps in the ecosystem.

So is this the chance that Carriers are waiting for? AT&T seems to be pushing big for the evolution of HTML5 (Link to other article).  DoCoMo did a great job over the last decade with building out a dedicated mobile web framework called “iMode” that had a separate parsing and billing mechanism for both official and non-official sites with Carrier billing.  This type of structure would work with the HTML5 opportunity, giving strength in the Carriers ability to have an Application marketplace across all devices by pushing the requirements in the Handset manufacturer’s Browser.  However, Facebook is embarking now on a similar strategy via the web and ubiquitous across all handsets.  So if the carriers attempt to engage in this strategy, there is a strong opportunity for them across all of their own devices sold, but they will need to move fast and with some elements of differentiation.  Google and Facebook are coming strong from economies of scale and extending their strong user base to mobile.  The question remains whether an internet-based HTML5 Application marketplace run by Google, Facebook that crosses all carriers and handsets vs. one driven by a Carriers that only reaches just their family of handsets,  going to be compelling enough for web developers? . Carriers may need to think out-of-box and build more mobile cross-channel media relationships ( such as the TV, Radio, Agency, News, Retail) to give them a potential content and commerce position tied to their existing strengths of billing, pre-packaging, location based services, mobile wallet and point-of-sale marketing awareness.

( Some reference Articles)

InfoWorld May 11, 2011-  HTML5 not yet solving the Mobile Dev problem

IntoMobile June 18, 2011- AT&T creates a HTML5 dev center in Israel

Wallstreet Journal  Jan 5, 2011-  AT&T plans to create the most advanced HTML5 toolkit

I saw this article below on TechCrunch and had to comment about this as it relates to a mobile strategy.  Since WAP arrived in the early part of the last decade across mobile devices, 10′s of companies have offered the ability to create mobile websites.  Companies like Netbiscuits, Mofuse, Mippin and a variety of others.  Nokia was a leader in the full-HTML browser, but Apple did a great job in the execution of delivering a full website to mobile devices.  The Flash problem has not gone away with mobile access on iPhones, as well as the horizontal form of content that requires users to squeeze and reform it to read, but with the advances of browsers accessing the same website makes the experience across social links and search very friendly for immediate access and sharing of that content for users.  Vertical form of the exact same website is the most optimum solution for mobile in my mind, but the same site to mobile is critical.

The loophole of accessing content from subscription services on devices will only be extenuated via the ubiquitous ability to share links from platform to platform with a consistent user experience.  That is why the new generation mobile websites need to be link-compatible ( a process called Deep-link matching ) so that no matter what the device is, the access to content is achievable.

For any mobile website that I recommend it is important that all the links match up between the website content and the mobile view of the mobile experience.  Mobile versions of websites that have this compatibility will be better in sharing and accessing content.

For most of my clients, I have found that from 5% to 20% of the hits on the mobile web properties is from just basic Google search and not from traditional mobile marketing of using SMS to spread links or even mobile banner ads.  Making sure your site is mobile friendly with links so that you are visible to end-users from PC based click-throughs or mobile click-throughs is very important for your mobile strategy.

NYtimes has done a great job with deep link matching, but it seems like it was done manually.  I am curious if NYTimes moving forward will keep these links available for mobile on these subscription services to enable users on mobile to actually access the content.

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Via Techcrunch

The Google Loophole Has Become The Facebook/Twitter Loophole

There are a lot of interesting angles to the news this morning about The New York Times’ new paywall. Top news will remain free, a set number of articles for all users will remain free, there will be different pricing tiers for different devices, NYT is fine with giving Apple a 30 percent cut, etc, etc. But to me, the most interesting aspect is only mentioned brieflyabout halfway down the NYT announcement article: all those who come to the New York Times via Facebook or Twitter will be allowed to read for free. There will be no limit to this.

Up until now, we’ve seen paywall enthusiasts like The Wall Street Journal offer such loopholes. But they’ve done so via Google. It’s a trick that most web-savvy news consumers know. Is a WSJ article behind a paywall? Just Google the title of it. Click on the resulting link and boom, free access to the entire thing. No questions asked. This new NYT model is taking that idea and flipping it.

The Google loophole will still be in play — but only for five articles a day. It’s not clear how they’re going to monitor this (cookies? logins?), but let’s assume for now that somehow they’ll be able to in an effective way. For most readers, the five article limit will likely be more than enough. But that’s not the important thing. What’s interesting is that the NYT appears to be saying two things. First, this action says that spreading virally on social networks like Twitter and Facebook is more important to them than the resulting traffic from Google. And second, this is a strategic bet that they likely believe will result in the most vocal people on the web being less pissed off.

Paywalls are not easy. For proof, look at well, just about every site that has ever tried to implement one. The barrier is always met with huge backlash. But much of that backlash often comes from the savvy readers who had been used to getting at the content for free on the web. NYT seems to be betting here that these users are the same ones that now rely on Twitter and Facebook for their news discovery. And they will be unaffected.

Is that the right bet? Maybe, or maybe not. Facebook has around 600 million users now. Twitter has another 150 million plus. These are mainstream services that extend far beyond the early adopters. But even if this move goes beyond the vocal users and into the mainstream population that might otherwise be willing to pay, at the very least, it will still mean less overall backlash.

And it’s yet another sign of a changing of the guard on the web from Google to Facebook and Twitter. It will arguably be easier to find all the NYT content for free via Twitter search than it was via Google search. At the very least, it will be more obvious. And the social filters of Twitter and Facebook will have people sharing only the best articles that you’re likely going to want to read anyway.

Meanwhile, the other side of the bet is that those coming in from Google are probably more likely to pay if asked nicely every once in a while. You know, the more mainstream and perhaps slightly older and less tech-savvy audience. The people who may actually pay.

The main point? If you’re reading this post, you’re unlikely to be affected by the NYT paywall because you probably came here from Facebook or Twitter — the two key players in the new social loophole.

Google announced today that this free calling from the U.S. to anywhere in the States and Canada would be extended through all of 2011! (Back in August, it said it wouldn’t charge for those calls “for at least the rest of the year”-Liz Gannes “All Things Digital”)

2010 was a good year for Google and Android.  Besides the fact that the media coverage seemed more pro-Android than Apple  ( iPhone4 Antenna problems, Apples lack of variety (  the white version was not even launched) , and the constant push that Apple is not closed) they did get amazing growth and start to become the dominant player in the Smartphone market in North America.   We started to see even Android Devices being given away for Free with basic data plans making  it clear that in 2011 Android will eat quickly into the feature phone market and continue in that dominance mode as just the smartphone being the status-quo.

So to add some nice icing to the cake, not only did they use the momentum to thier advantage with the Google-to-Google Free  talk services as in Skype-to-Skype calls for Free, but they just make a defining blow to the Carriers by now offering a Google-to-Land line Free service.   This has in someways even has trumped Skype that has offered a low-cost service, but not completely free.  Skype charges pennies.minute  for this service that makes it cheap and addictive to end-users ( including myself that has been enjoying and using it over the years).

In my mind this is a big Wow.  Make the Operating System Free, Make the Calls all Free, Make all their content and services  Free, make the Wifi Networks Free and focus on building up local advertising and targeting.  Google did have some great patents in the Pay-per-Call for merchants, so with this Free service of users calling shops and making reservations is even more incentivised when Free…

With their power and position making everything Free is definitely a disrupter to this market where competition between companies is difficult without the economies of scale of Google and their Ad network network as well.   It is going to be interesting to see how Carriers respond to this when more and more users are leveraging Wifi for their data connections and calling as well.

I have been watching the trends of Twitter Applications, Browsers and Platforms over the last couple of months and this type of segmentation and convergence had emerged.

First of all, what has excited me and what I have been waiting for over the last year has been an application that handles automatic translation.

Given the fact that I speak both Japanese and English and have business in both Asia and here in North America, I have wanted to build a consistent cross-border  following on twitter.  I found that with the existing Twitter platform, the only way to do this is with two-accounts.  With my existing account, when I tweet in Japanese, I loose followers.  When I tweet in English, I have a hard time growing Japanese followers.

I mentioned this concept to the Digital Garage folks last February when I was in Japan, but they all laughed.  About a year ago during a Breakfast in Vancouver, Jeff Pulver ( Founder of 140conf.com, serial entrepreneur and VOIP visionary)  and I had a lot of fun with this by cutting segments from Google translate into twitter to go back and forth between English and Twitter.  Even when Jeff started to Tweet in Hebrew, he saw how this took conversations to the next level and really touched individuals on the other end.  I can not stop thinking of the smile on his face when he said ” This is amazing”. So this is really the state of now when we see the auto-translation of different languages for different countries or multi-lingual translations.

When I saw the announcement in April by Hootsuite I felt like they were really listening to the customer; as there must had been lots others like me with the same predicament.  In my mind this is a big move by the Hootsuite folks in their attempt  at this and even though we have not yet seen this capability on Facebook,  MARK MY WORDS….. This is going to be one of the most important features for them with their 500M users in the coming months.  If they do not buy Hootsuite, then they will do this timeselves by the end of the year.

Given the fact I would like to Tweet in both English and Japanese simultaneously,  I really thought this would be a feature that Twitter would release to the market.  Given that Google is so strong in language tools, and Google has a terrific product ( Google Translate), I was pretty sure we would see this from our friends at Google first. Even thought this would get quickly integrated into Google Buzz so that it scaled.   English language schools  have grown from the cottage industry base to a core part of  Japanese society.  With the growth of iPhone and Android devices cross-border,  I am sure this type of feature is going to be more and more important.

What we have seen is that our friends in Vancouver ( Hootsuite) have really looked to market differentiation with these translation tools.  It only makes sense as Vancouver is one of those multilingual communities, and even here in Canada most people have adopted the two-language way ( English, French).

This is what the Hootsuite folks have to say:

Need more ways to socialize? Seeking zen-like efficiency? Start by updating HootSuite for iPhone to clear your mind and make your social media experience more enjoyable. This update adds full localization in four languages to go along with the recently-released translation tools. Both are designed to help marketers, socializers, and internationalists understand the vibe about their brand, industry, and interests from all over the globe. Additionally, the release includes a kit full of new tools to help you stay on top of multiple social streams — and share the best parts with remarkable efficiency.  All the features are available in both the Lite (no-cost) and Full ($2.99 USD) versions of HootSuite for iPhone.

This may be a risky strategy for Hootsuite as unless they can get clients on both sides of the pond ( meaning that in order to really use the multilingual features, but send and received need a Hootsuite client) Twitter will just copy and improve on this. When Twitter does release its interfaces to support multilingual capabilities, where will this leave Hootsuite?

Secondly, when it comes to integration we are seeing many companies bring in all the different feeds into there Applications. Fring just announced with much success their Video-Call capability for mobile, Seesmic continues to be “Switzerland” with all of the different Feed integrations.  I have just been waiting for them to make the product opensource or open API’s… as we have started to see more of with Tweetdeck and the Buzz API.

So where does this leave us?  As Twitter sits in the middle of it all, it makes me wonder if Twitter has just become a proprietary TCP/IP-like bit pipe?   They made the move to build there user experiences by buying the Application company Atebits most recently, but they are in a  good position being in the middle.

The wildcard in this evolution in my mind is now the Browser.   So lastly, I must say that the convergence that starts to get interesting is now what Plug-ins and what enablers we start to see in the browser as it also has become a standalone application in its own right. Opera released its application for the iPhone and in weeks we have seen Millions of downloads.  They have developed a widget framework that has been adapted by several of the carriers now to promote services, application and advertising revenue from the Widgets.  JIL ( Joint Innovation Lab – Softbank, Verizon, China Mobile and Vodafone) have actively been starting to promote the cross border opportunities with widgets through there entire network of devices as a core driver for developers, but the fact still remains that over 50% of developers are now focued on iPhone Applications.

Opera has positioned themselves very nicely in this Application game and it is going to be interesting what the next big moves are?  Will Opera be aquired as part of the JV of JIL? Will Facebook buy Opera? or will we see the integration of Twitter and all these applications into Opera?  or will we see Opera buy Hootsuite?

The fact remains that in the Application space there is a lot of convergence going on.  What we have not heard much of these days for advanced integrated apps is Google.  They did have their flagship Google I/O conference several weeks back and it is exciting to see that they are really driving HTML5.  As HTML5 expands this gets very interesting from the standpoint of Application convergence.  Where will this all go with HTML5 ( See my next post)

Based on the latest stats on the  market share published by Gartner of the different device manufacturers and platforms, it is clear that Nokia, Apple and Google all have similar momentum and are growing quite steadily.  Today about 20+% of the entire market is based on Smartphones and it has been published that by 2012 more then 50% of the US  Market will be Smart phones.     From all the media, one would think that iPhone and Android would be overtaking Nokia and that Android would be overtaking Apple.   From the extrapolated data, the growth along the same line for the last year shows this is not the case.  Nokia, Apple and Google all seem to have similar growth paths.  As we do know there are more and more devices choosing Android as the platform, there is some strong momentum in the Android camp that is positive accelloration of device penetration.

With this all said, one of the biggest problems Nokia has is in its Market Share in North America.  Nokia has almost become invisible to developers and users of smartphones, and there is a risk that if Nokia does not make some positive inroads here, the effects could be critical.

What is also interesting is that RIM does not seem to have the growth curve like Nokia, Apple and Google ( NAG).  Again through the extrapolation of the growth lines of the different companies,  Apple should pass RIM in Q1 2011, and Android should pass RIM in Q1 2013.  Given this is still 3 years away, it shows RIM strong position today and an opportunity to change this course.  Depending on how Apple releases product through other carriers and its iPhone 4.0 release in the next several weeks, we may even see Apple pass RIM by the end of the year.

During Q1 of this Year, Nokia maintained it leadership in position and scale. The Company added close to 13M new device sales since 1 year earlier.  That is ramping up over 1M new units to ship per month or increasing the volume shipped of 33,000 per day.  For Nokia this is the increase per day, where as Google is shipping in its entirety 100,ooo Units per day.  This is  quite a big change as well, since at CTIA in March they announced the 60,000 Units per day.

As for Smartphone sales,  Symbian still leads the pack as 2.5X greater then the next player- RIM, 3x greater then Apple (iPhone) and 5x greater then Google ( Android).  The volumes for Symbian continue to show phenomenal growth even though the total market share went from 49% down to 44%.

It seems like this week was a key milestone for the HTML5 world. Google opened our Friday morning with an example of HTML5 Game ( PacMan) being added to the Google logo of search.  With approx 2B searches a day, this shows the scalability of having an active game embedded just as there was once a static logo.  Did Google pay for the rights of Pacman for the day? My wife thought her PC was attacked by a Virus!  Today was a great day for the progress of the web.

The Google I/O ( Input/Output) or ( Innovation/Openness) Conference was a great success in bringing more transparency and openness to web standards, and with the announcement of opening VP8 to the world as a royalty free licence ( I did not see the word perpetual???).  They launched Google TV, Music Streaming for the Android platform, and a wide variety of new announcements surrounding the Chrome App Store.  As for Wave, it has now moved from the closed invite only option that makes it very difficult to have a social network to being officially launched.

Yahoo announced the launch of a new class of interactive mobile display ads leveraging HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript technologies.  Yahoo stated that traditional static banners across the top and bottom of the mobile device screen were not optimal  and with–the new format promises to solve those issues via rich media content optimized for next-generation HTML5-based browsers. Yahoo Mobile product marketing staffers Mandar Shinde and Calvin Hung stated that this will enable  ”creative executions of interactive advertisements” on the Y! Mobile Blog.

Yahoo will launch its first interactive display campaign  with Paramounts and DreamWorks Animation release Shrek Forever After. “Going forward you can expect to see more ads that are tailored to the way people use mobile or that take advantage of particular attributes of mobile devices,” Shinde and Hung add. ”For example, we know users like to ‘content snack’ on mobile and ads that offer video or creative interactivity can be very successful.”

Now Adobe…. With all the chatter back and forth between Apple, iPad and the release of Flash, you think that Flash was the lifeline of Adobe.  Looking at this revenue breakdown of the company, it is clear that Flash is only a small part of the overall revenue strategy of Adobe.  What was very assuring is that now with HTML5 being the next coding platform for the Web, everybody is working together…

HTML5 aims to eliminate the need for web plug-ins like Adobe Flash. Instead, the functionality of Adobe’s Flash platform will be available right in the code of the web.)

The gradual elimination of Flash sounds like a bad thing for Adobe, but it’s actually not a huge problem. From a revenue perspective, Flash only accounted for 7% of the company’s revenue in fiscal 2009, or $231.2 million, according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard.

While losing a revenue source is never a good thing, the widespread adoption of HTML5 can actually be good for Adobe. The company is introducing a bunch of tools for web developers to make HTML5 sites. Its Dreamweaver software, in particular, is getting an update to help web designers. There’s no reason that Adobe couldn’t even built an “export to HTML5″ command in Flash. As HTML5 grows, Adobe can offer new tools, and thus drive revenue growth.

Both Flash and Dreamweaver are part of Adobe’s core business — “Creative Solutions” — which generated half of Adobe’s revenue last quarter.

It is amazing that couple of years ago, Google was a search engine company with a great business model around advertising.  As they grew, so did their products and services.   From the vision of ” organizing all of the worlds information to make it readily available” to now a Media company with their fingers on everything as they transformed into to a major media company with several hundreds of products all free powered by advertising.   In a funny video released recently by  Time.com’s Odd Todd , you can get a good laugh over all of the value of these products, that are free, but in Beta.  Google has been a key player in the foundation of the web as we know it.

Chris Anderson talks about the Free-Conomy in this session at the Commonwealth Club about how to leverage free to build and grow a business in the digital economy. Google clearly had the vision and prowess to leverage this philosophy and become the giant we all know and love.

….But now, Google is getting into the hardware business.  We all thought that they would enter the mobile space with Android only based the software model of opensource and free, but somewhere along the line their complete strategy and vision seemed to change dramatically with the launch of Nexus One.

Moving from free open source API’s and software to the pains of managing inventory ( PCB’s. LCD’s, Batteries, etc)  and building products is quite a different animal and business.   I originally thought that the purpose of Google’s journey surrounding the Nexus One was one of creating a reference platform for them to build and develop what they believed was the ultimate mobile device in order to better serve their efforts around the building the best Android platform possible, but now the gPad?

We all wonder that when something goes up, it must come down… and this Nexus One to the gPad example reminded  me of the old Jewish folktale from the Wise Men of Chelm called “Ruined by a pair of shoelaces”. Is entering the hardware business and chasing after Apple, Nokia and Rim the first step to getting to over abundant and completely getting out of control? It at least made me think about it, and even though there is a long way to go in the evolution of media, why now to become a hardware player?

Strangely, but lots of panic from all the app developers today, when @Ev on the corporate blog announced the acquisition of Tweetie’s owner Atebits.  To me this is clearly an obvious direction and it could only be predicted.  In reality it should not really affect app developers as it is a very similar model to Google and syndication.  Think of all those websites that are powered by Google-Search?  It is like Google having a search engine without all the different types of its own end-user experiences to build and test out their business?  They need to best understand and support the end-user first and foremost.  The Web2.0 world already established the model for syndication, and it would be the kiss of death if either Google or Twitter stopped offering api’s for developers and publishers to syndicate and let the vertical world evolve.

However, the differences between Google and Twitter is that Google is an advertising company and Twitter was just growing larger and larger as a bit-pipe. Google was once in the similar situation and added advertising as the balance to only building out a user-base in the beginning.  In order for Twitter to start to build up its advertising business ( which will probably be the next announcement) required them to have the ability to test and launch it first through their own properties…. hence Tweetie.   It is like Google not having a tool-bar strategy to test cookies, etc…  This is my reasoning why the Tweetie client will be free and just called Twitter.  They needed this kind of product to test and build the best user-experiences to surround their product and build out all the API’s for syndication.  Now especially advertising.

I am bullish on the fact this acquisition took place at this time, and it looks like Twitter is really coming together to potentially be  the next Real-Time Search and Real-time advertising engine that links to mobile.  They now have a platform to test and evolve as a free app…..

So in my mind the Twitter+Tweetie is basically Twoogle.

I saw this today and thought is was another fun example of Analog meet Digital. Published in Yanko Design about Google Envelopes, students from Syracuse University came up with this concept of automating your email to work with the main mail system in Envelopes that are actually maps that have the route of how the actual Envelop will travel.  We forget about 20 years ago we were sending letters to our friends instead of the real-time messaging of them. Just in one generation we have shifted from an analog experience to a digital one.  Going back to the analog one could be quite nostalgic for more meaningful delivery of messages in all the clutter of a crowded digital mailbox.