Men Still Gab-a-Lot, But Women Catching Up
By Rhonda Wickham
For six years, AT&T has used Father's Day as the launch point for the release of its wireless phone trend study. For those six years, males dominated the study and the June holiday seemed all too apropos. However, after seeing this year's results, the operator may very well want to move it to Mother's Day or perhaps even kids day for future releases.
After six years of men using significantly more minutes than women on average, the difference this year has narrowed to only 5 minutes of average talk time. According to the survey of approximately 1,000 users, men average 458 minutes of monthly wireless phone usage, and women averaged 453 minutes. By contrast, in 2002, men logged an average of almost 200 more minutes of talk time than women.
The survey results also reveal that nearly half (45%) of wireless subscribers use the text- messaging features on their devices and 44% use the camera feature. A smaller percentage (17%) play games on their devices while 11% access wireless e-mail. Women use the gaming, camera and text-messaging features more frequently, and men use wireless e-mail and Internet access more frequently than women.
Overall, both sexes continue to use cell phones more than home phones by an average of 61 minutes. Women, on average, spend more time on home phones than men; women talk for 532 minutes compared with only 237 minutes for men. The survey also reveals that women use wireless phones more than men to talk with friends and family, but men use their phones more for business conversations.
The national survey of 1,006 qualified adult wireless user respondents (50% men and 50% women) was conducted for AT&T by International Communications Research in May 2007. Click here for AT&T's annual Father's Day poll. (pdf file)
MOBILE MUSIC
Sony Ericsson Adopts Gracenote's Platform
By Rhonda Wickham
In Emeryville, Calif., Gracenote has quietly gone about its business of taking media from the recording industry and working with digital media devices and applications to deliver an improved experience for the consumer. In fact, the company powers such services as Apple iTunes and Yahoo! Music Jukebox. It has also worked behind the scenes in the mobile space with KDDI, KTF and Samsung. In fact, the company may be more familiar by its former name CDDB. Don't recognize that name either? Well, that may be about to change with the company's recent agreement with Sony Ericsson.
Recently, the Gracenote unveiled its Mobile Music Platform, and this week, Sony Ericsson agreed to be the first to deploy it globally. The platform combines products and services for simple content search and discovery, music recognition and playlisting, as well as allow for easy movement of music between a PC application, online music store and a mobile device. The platform will power mobile music search and discovery services on all of the handset maker's music-enabled handsets, beginning with the newest Walkman models W910, W960 and the K850 Cyber-shot phone.
Part of the evolving music experience is that users' music libraries are divided between PCs, mobile catalogs and handsets. Using Gracenote's database of 60 million tracks, the platform uses all three for search, discovery and management.
PC to Handset: Through Gracenote's platform, users of the Walkman handset can access the Global Media Database to identify all the music in their existing PC collection, and then easily transfer both the music and associated data to their handset.
Handset to Service: To conduct a search, users type in an artist's name, track, album, or even a line from the lyrics of a song, and they are instantly connected to Sony's Playnow store with relevant content.
Along with the ability to search, through the TrackID service powered by Gracenote, users are able to identify any song playing on the handset's built-in FM tuner, or anywhere within the proximity of the handset. The TrackID service identifies the song, delivers back the information, and then connects the user to the Playnow store with the option to purchase related merchandise.
Finally, as part of the integrated solution, the Playnow store also provides recommendations for music using Gracenote's Discover recommendation engine. Using data points based on artist type, era, origin and genre, the engine provides recommendations not only for music the user may appreciate, but for collections currently stored on their handsets.
OFF-PORTAL
Groove Prepares for Vodafone Trial
By Monica Alleven
Reach and participation mark the new partnership between Mobile Posse and Ultramercial.
In one corner, Mobile Posse's technology inserts small banner advertisements onto the idle screens of mobile phones. When the banners are clicked on, they expand and facilitate a number of calls to action including click to call, click to purchase, click for information and click to opt-in. Customers are included on an opt-in basis to view ads in exchange for carrier-devised incentives.
In the other corner is Ultramercial, which creates online commercials that Internet viewers can watch in exchange for premium content. Viewers interact through full-page, multiscreen pages of the advertiser's message to arrive at their content. Ultramercial currently places ads with Economist.com, Harvard Business Review and Virgin Mobile. It also has particpated in campaigns for American Express, GE, Honda, Microsoft, Motorola and Time Warner.
Together, the two companies make a stronger play in the mobile advertising space.
According to Jon Jackson, Mobile Posse's founder and CEO, Mobile Posse offers Ultramercial its idle screen insertion technology while Ultramercial provides a high-profile advertiser base.
Together, the two companies rolled out their first campaign over Mother's Day weekend with a mobile advertisement from 1-800-FLOWERS. This initial project delivered advertisements promoting the 1-800-FLOWERS' Mother's Day special to consumers who had opted-in in exchange for discounts on wireless service fees. Rick Vandervoorn, Ultramercial's senior vice president of sales, said more than one-third of the recipients of the ad clicked on the banner to view the full screen and "a significant number" of those users used the click-to-call capability to take advantage of the offer.
Mobile Posse currently offers an incentive-based, opt-in program with Ohio regional carrier Revol. The campaign is available to subscribers in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown, Toledo and Columbus Ohio and Indianapolis
CONTENT
Start Mobile Introduces Widget
By Wireless Week Staff
San Francisco-based Start Mobile, an independent mobile content company, has introduced a mobile content widget, powered by XLR8 Mobile's WapItUp! mobile commerce platform.
The WapItUp! platform delivers mobile content from any Website to any mobile phone via a proprietary commerce system, featuring micro-site widget storefronts.
The Start Mobile widget currently features wallpapers, ringtones and video ringers.
NAVIGATION
TeleNav Updates GPS Navigator
By Monica Alleven
TeleNav today launches the 5.2 version of its GPS Navigator, allowing users to send their current location to any other text-capable mobile phone.
Similar to some other social networking services, like Boost Mobile's loopt, the product allows subscribers to let their buddies know where they are located in real time. But unlike others, the TeleNav service includes users on other networks.
The new version also includes a new user interface (UI) with improvements in the graphics and usability, according to Sal Dhanani, TeleNav co-founder and senior director of marketing. The company hired Frog Design to help with the UI and bring to it the simplicity of an iPod and the slickness of the Mac, he says.
TeleNav expects people will use the latest version as a social networking tool and share user-generated content, such as restaurant ratings, which also can be accessed via the TeleNav Website. Sports enthusiasts might use it to alert team members that their soccer field has changed location, for example, but the full range of applications probably isn't even yet known, Dhanani says.
Customers can share addresses of favorite businesses, including restaurants, hotels or movie theaters. The Fuel Finder feature allows users to send information on local gas stations with the cheapest prices for that day. Other new features include reviews and ratings for nearby businesses and the ability to rate restaurants directly from a mobile phone.
To help subscribers discover all the features in the TeleNav Navigator, the company is offering a product tour as well.
The latest version of TeleNav GPS Navigator service is offered for $9.99 per month for unlimited use. So far, the application can be launched on about nine Sprint phones, but more models and carriers are expected to be added. Current customers using TeleNav GPS Navigator on supported phones can access the new version by re-downloading TeleNav GPS Navigator.
TeleNav GPS Navigator originally launched in 2003.
Last week, In-Stat came out with research showing that cellular operators whose service is based on CDMA and iDEN have an advantage over other mobile operators in nearly every region of the world largely because of the A-GPS technology originally driven by E911 mandates. In-Stat surveys of U.S. subscribers show that navigation applications have a strong ability to draw subscribers from others operators and keep them loyal.
MESSAGING
Foonz Offers CLM
By Rhonda Wickham
No, the headline isn't a typo. Foonz is the company name identifying a provider of on-the-fly group calling for mobile subscribers. And CLM stands for closed loop messaging. CLM lets subscribers leave a voice message for a group of people and then see who actually listened to it. Foonz connects friends, teams, small businesses or other groups.
Foonz works with any phone from any mobile carrier and lets anyone assemble a group on a single call or leave group messages at a moment's notice. The Foonz service combines the benefits of mobile voice communication, the ability to speak with multiple contacts in real time, and the instantaneous aspect of IM and SMS/TXT.
Users can set up a free account at www.foonz.com and create a Foonz contact list. Then they can dial Foonz at any time, from any phone, to record a message for a group. Group members receive an immediate SMS, IM or e-mail notification letting them know that a message is waiting for them. When they dial the number in the notification, they will hear the message and they can even record a response to the whole group. After leaving a message, the sender can log on to foonz.com to see who has listened to the message.
MESSAGING
USA TODAY Launches Text Messaging Service
By Wireless Week Staff
USA TODAY has launched a text messaging service to provide real-time news and information to users through their mobile phones. To offer the service, USA TODAY partnered with 4 INFO, a provider of mobile search and text messaging services.
Users sign up to receive free text alerts on subjects ranging from news, sports scores, stock quotes and weather forecasts to celebrities, movies and travel. Promoted daily in the newspaper, anyone can sign up by sending a text message to 44636, along with a key word for the subject desired.
"USA TODAY's short code-based text message partnership is yet another innovation for a brand that is continually embracing new platforms and the latest technologies," Jeff Webber, senior vice president of advertising for USA TODAY, said in a statement. "This service capitalizes on core brand strengths and offers great new real-time interactive services for readers and advertisers."
Along with news headlines, readers will receive adverising related to their interest areas. Consumers can then reply via text message to the ad for more information.
Mobile Content News Briefs - June 15, 2007
• Aylus Networks, real-time multimedia sharing provier, has raised $15 million for business expansion in its second round of venture capital funding from original investors Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.
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