Category: Technology

Mobile2.0 or just another Gathering2.0?

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This Monday, me and Erik Sundelof – a former Digital Vision Fellow – headed up to San Francisco for the day to attend the Mobile2.0 Conference, a mobile showcase which preceded the grander, more popular and longer-by-one-day Web2.0 event.

This was a first attempt to bring together individuals, companies, operators and mobile manufacturers to specifically discuss the emerging Mobile2.0 phenomenon. Sadly, it was largely an opportunity missed, although it was useful as a reinforcing exercise. Everyone left the room knowing that it wasn’t just them suffering from the lack of handset standards. Once again, trying to work out a solution seemed way off the agenda, as I guess it would be for a short one day event.

Instead, practical debate was replaced by excitable handset manufacturers and service providers plying their own particular solutions. This in itself was interesting, but at the end of the day the problem will continue to exist until the big players sit around a table and agree to something. But at least we now know that there’s a much wider range of sticky plasters which can be applied in the meantime.

What was interesting, though, was how delegates saw the transition of Web2.0 functionality onto the handset. What wasn’t quite so clear was whether or not the user wanted it or not. Remember, mobiles have tiny screens and fiddly keyboards, and as such aren’t necessarily the ideal device for editing or creating user generated content. The size factor does, of course, work both ways. If they weren’t small then they wouldn’t be mobile. Also, for many the mobile camera will be the only one they have with with them if something interesting or funny should happen in their vicinity, or if they feel compelled to capture a moment digitally. Combine this with location-based services and there is clearly a huge opportunity if it can be grabbed.

For me, one of the key issues here is in definition. We need to decide what we mean by Mobile2.0 – it’s clearer with Web2.0 but the current craze to add ‘2.0’ to everything doesn’t always add value (anyone fancy a Coffee2.0?). The user doesn’t care whether he’s using a 3.0 or an 8.0, as long as he or she can seamlessly and simply carry out whatever task he or she wants on his or her device of choice. If the mobile is simply going to be the originator of content – a photo, video, sound clip or plain old text – which is then uploaded to a web service for ‘mashup’ or whatever, then that’s cool. However, if we’re looking to allow the creation, editing and posting of content directly from the phone itself then that’s a totally different ball game.

If we mean the former then Mobile2.0 is a lot closer than you may think. If we mean the latter, put on the Kettle2.0 – you might be in for a long wait…

Thank goodness for the non-American system

It’s always a very eye-opening experience when you first arrive in a new country. From driving on the opposite side of the road to experiencing different mannerisms and ‘language variation’, not to mention coping with the excessive patriotism (proudly displayed in the form of countless American flags and enthusiastic tributes to “The American Worker”), there are more practical actions that need to be taken, such as getting attached to a mobile phone network (sorry, cellphone network).

This has been a particularly eye opening experience. And all I can say is this. In Europe, mobile networks are being squeezed by the consumer and various EU bodies, but here in the States they’re having a field day. If the rest of the world, and developing countries in particular, adopted their practices then there would almost zero growth in mobile use among the poor, and quite probably also zero initiatives using mobile technology for social good. I’ll explain why. There are two reasons…

Firstly, for some crazy reason users here have to pay to receive a text message. The sender pays, and the recipient pays. If poor, rural phone owners in developing countries were forced to maintain credit on their handsets to receive texts, then many wouldn’t be able to do it. They might also object, or opt out, of receiving valuable health or other information messages. The use of handsets to help bridge the digital – or information – divide would be nothing more than a dream.

Secondly, pre-pay (or pay-as-you-go) customers on some networks are charged a daily ‘connection’ or ‘service’ fee of 99 cents just to keep their number connected. They pay 99 cents each day whether they use their phone or not. It’s ironic that this almost equates to the $1 dollar per day used to measure the number of people living in extreme poverty.

In reality it was the adoption of the pre-pay system which truly liberated disconnected rural communities in developing countries. The ability to connect to the network without needing a bank account, credit history or an address was the key which finally unlocked the digital door. A daily service charge of any kind, for many, would have slammed that door right back in their face.

Combine either – or at worst, both – of these in a developing country context and the effect would be disastrous. Thank goodness we have an alternative to the American system.

Time for specialisation?

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If you cast your mind back a few years you’d remember whole batches of small IT start-ups developing and marketing bunches of IT-based tools and diagnostics utilities. Looking back now some of these seem a little silly – a utility to compress data or defrag your system, another to help undelete files, others to search for files across your hard drives. Now, of course, pretty much all of these have been swallowed up into Windows. The lucky companies got bought out. Others just went under.

The PC market is certainly big enough to support many, many companies of different shapes and sizes. It’s sad to think, then, that so many of these pioneers have fallen by the wayside (although replaced, naturally, by newer outfits). If Microsoft hadn’t liked their products so much and hadn’t either made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, or integrated their ideas into the continuing evolvement of Windows, then quite possibly many more would still be around today. It would make for a healthier environment, I’m sure.

Now we hear that Apple may be under pressure (again) from the Seattle giant. Picture it. A couple of decades or so ago you develop a home computer, and the operating system, only for someone else to come in and steal your thunder (I won’t go into any of the legal issues or court cases here). So, after a period of great uncertainty you decide to move into a new area – portable music devices – and make a huge success of that. Then what happens? Another giant – the same one as before, as a matter of fact – comes in and announces that they will also be entering the market.

Dubbed the “iPod killer” by some, Microsoft’s ‘Zune‘ portable media player will certainly be one to watch. But why does a company with the biggest pile of money ever assembled need to go and enter another market like this? Isn’t the PC market enough to be getting on with?

Competition may be healthy, sure. Survival of the fittest, sure. But let’s be careful how we go forward. I, for one, would rather see companies specialise and stick to what they do best. And leave the others to do the same.

ICTs: Prescribing the right medicine…

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The argument that drugs widely available in Western countries (many at greatly reduced cost via public and national health programmes) should also be made available – at preferential rates – to other not-so-well-off developing countries is not new. Indeed, medicines such as those which block the transmission of HIV from mother to unborn child are widely used in Europe and the United States but, despite their huge success, aren’t always available to the millions in developing countries who need them just as much. Perhaps even more.

You’d have thought that campaigning for life-saving drugs was a bit of a no-brainer. People here are unnecessarily dieing from a disease which has a cure there. Sadly, things are never that simple.

I’ve often wondered if the same concept could be applied to ICTs. Over the past two or three years the emergence of information and communication technologies as a means of enabling economic empowerment in third world communities has grown into something of a phenomenon. Report after report reveals the wide-ranging benefits of mobile telephony in particular, from improved communication between family members through to the creation of small businesses and the provision of valuable news and other information via SMS.

As with the pharmaceutical model, cost, for many, is something of a barrier. After all, getting hold of a phone is just the half of it – without a SIM and regular top-ups it’s not much use to anyone. A mixture of entrepreneurial skills and outright resourcefulness often solves some, if not all, of these problems. But if the mobile is such an economic enabler, and if it is able to spread its influence across multiple disciplines such as health, education and communication (to name just three), then shouldn’t we be looking to remove these cost barriers? As with the medicine model, shouldn’t we be fighting for cheaper and wider access to mobile services?

At the NGO level, those with the vision and will to embrace the mobile revolution regularly stumble across the same barrier. Hitting a few hundred phones with a targeted health message is not only technically challenging for some of these organisations, but it can also be costly. Again, if the benefits are so clear then why don’t we campaign for cheaper, more open access to the networks?

The mobile revolution has not only empowered many third world citizens and communities. It’s also making some people very, very rich. It’s the perfect business model. Wouldn’t it be great if a provider could set up a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) for exclusive use by the NGO community – conservation and development organisations alike working for the greater good? The infrastructure is already there. I don’t think it would be too much work. But it would reduce their bottom line a little. Maybe that’s the problem…

I can’t somehow see this happening anytime soon, but an NGO mobile network throughout continents such as Africa? Now, wouldn’t that be something?