Livewire

Hi Sandeep,

For the last 2 years major companies have been coming up with innovative solutions in mobile industry that are still not available to the common consumer circuit. Even iPhone and Google are a bit slow in releasing core applications as part of mobile OS. Some Nokia devices have phenomenal capabilities but are highly priced for regular buyers. All said, I would like to see true video conferencing software in mobile devices along with social media applications integrated. I know for sure, I will not be carrying my notebook everywhere.

Great thoughts Raj, sorry I missed this comment earlier. It is true the cost of services in the wireless space needs to become even more affordable for the consumers. Even with newer devices like iPhone & G1 rolling out and carriers bundling them with all-you-can-eat data plans, I still feel that the cost of such data plans are on the higher side. But the other side to this story would be that as the data plans become more affordable, more consumers will try to subscribe to them resulting in more network traffic when the carriers themselves are trying to reduce their operational costs.
I believe this is where carriers can try to subsidize the costs for services by introducing non-intrusive mobile advertising. An excellent example could be to utilize the idle screen within applications to introduce non-intrusive ads when the application is busy performing let's say an upload. What are your thoughts?

Hi Sandeep, thanks for responding to my comment. I think your example of non-intrusive mobile advertising is an excellent idea (we already have screen savers in some phones that don't add any value). I certainly can see few benefits and perhaps some basic statistics that are helpful for consumers.
I understand how this can drive cost down for consumers and I am not an expert in this area but:
-- If the Ads are push data, I would assume it will not be charged to consumers data usage.
--If Ads are interactive, does the customer usage get involved?
-- Running Ads would have some impact on battery life of the devices, something to look into.
--Of course, all these can be driven through user preference settings and opt out.
--Finally, it will be very nice if Social Media tools are integrated with displays similar to SMS a Direct Tweet from Twitter gets shown on the screen.

Overall, I agree and like the way you are thinking.

Raj, Thanks for adding to the thread. Idle-screen (a.k.a the phonetop) is one of the most valuable real estates on the mobile phone that a number of solution providers and operators are trying to make use of not only to insert non-intrusive ads but also to provide content based on user's preferences (Weather, sports score tickers, news headlines are just a few examples).

To answers your questions, most of these ads are push-ads and hence user's data usage won't be affected. Providing user-preference based content for the idle screen is also an alternate way operators are exploring to increase their data usage. But battery life is definitely a critical consideration for such solutions. I believe this is where solutions like On-device Portal (ODP) can make a difference where the application can periodically pull the content and cache it thereby not reducing the battery life.

Mobile advertising is a growing industry phenomena with a lot of stress on non-intrusiveness and user opt-ins. Operators are also exploring business models where they can provide incentives to the consumers for choosing to receive ads on their phone. One interesting example for such a service is the Ad-service rolled out by the UK mobile operator Blyk which provides free Text Messages and free air-time minutes when users opt-in to receive push-ads every day.

It will be interesting to see how mobile advertising evolves to become more targeted (of course maintaining a good user experience) and how consumers are provided more incentives to opt-in to get the ads.

Mobile operators can work with the Banking industry and devise solutions on payments and collection side and evolve a standard across industry. Why carry a credit card now when we have a mobile phone as a powerful device and more secure to use. I find mobile banking more relevant in rural areas and it can be the next big thing for financial inclusion.

Raman, Thanks for pointing out a very interesting and an emerging market opportunity. Mobile Money is a very interesting area where a number of players are trying to evolve standards and solutions and I believe this will soon become a reality. Creating a sustainable ecosystem for mobile money products will help consumers, especially in developing countries, where the penetration of mobiles is much more than banking services themselves.

There are a number of "Mobile Wallet" like solutions/services that are being tried out currently so that consumers can use their mobile phone as a "prepaid" credit card which can then enable mCommerce transactions like purchases, utility payments, etc. and global money transfers. It will be interesting to see how Operators, Banking Institutions, Banking Regulators and Mobile Solution providers come together to establish a global ecosystem to enable Mobile Money based products and services. I think there is a very big opportunity for all stakeholders in this value chain to offer such services.

Greetings, Sandeep. Great commentary. A major area of mobile's potential is in shopper and retail marketing. Today, retailers resist spending money to deploy customer-focused technology in their stores, such as digital signage, "smart" shopping carts, etc. The mobile essentially is going to eliminate some of the in-store infrastructure cost hurdles retailers and brands face.

Is Infosys involved in developing technologies -- mobile or otherwise -- that tie in to shopper and retail marketing? I'm interested to learn more.

Hi Peter, thanks for highlighting the potential mobile devices hold in the Retail space. Web technologies transformed the way consumers shopped online. Now it's the turn of Mobile technology and we believe it has the potential to take the consumers' shopping experience to the next level. Mobile devices can augment the shopping experience by offering a personal, location & context aware experience both on mobile-enabled storefronts as well as on the Retail Channels.

At Infosys, we have been involved in creating next generation retail solutions that combines the potential offered by Mobile devices. One such example would be our "ShoppingTrip360", a mobile marketing product, the goal of which is to provide context and location relevant content to the consumers while they are in the purchase-mode, within the store. Our ST360 product also comes with a Mobile-based concierge service that can manage shopping lists and reminders for the shoppers and allow them to access context specific incentives and product information. You can learn more about this product @ www.infosys.com/ShoppingTrip360.

We are also working on mobile-based shopping tools and applications that can extend the power of Online Shopping to the mobile phone combined with Web 2.0 based Social Media features.

Hi Sandeep,
I have been following your mobile content publications and they seem brilliant. But there are so many similar concepts being worked on retail industry, something like what MS is trying build on retailer assistant.
Would love to see more on mobile and hospitality.

Aditya - I definitely agree with you that many concepts are being tried out in the retail space leveraging mobiles. I just saw this recent announcement about Unilever's market trial for mobile coupons.

I believe most of these concepts are still in their trial phase and we have not seen anything rolled out for the mass market yet. One of the reasons, I think, is that solutions are not only needed for the mobile phones but the retailers too need to upgrade some of their existing systems (like PoS to support mobile based bar codes for example) to start supporting such innovations. We will have to wait and see how all these different concepts that are under trials really make it to the market in a way that consumers are willing to adopt.

Gents, what are your views on Mobile VoIP? I realize carriers are somewhat reluctant, but for how long can they avoid it?

VoIP telephony had changed the landscape of the traditional voice telephone industry. It had created a downward pricing pressure on the call rates and resulted in telephone calls becoming cheaper and affordable. Today, I can even make international calls for very less or at even no cost!

I agree that Mobile operators have been some what reluctant to allow VoIP applications on their network. This was due to the cannibalization effect on their rich source of revenues from Voice and SMS services. Call Rates in the cellular world still remain largely higher. But sector of VoIP enabled services on Mobile is heating up. Today some VoIP apps like Skype have been made available though only over Wi-Fi. Still this is a start! There is a growing amount of attention given to VoIP enablement on Mobile. Operators have expressed their willingness to test VoIP on mobile and they are slowly opening up to accept this change.

With sufficient support from regulatory bodies(like FCC who stepped in when Google Voice got rejected on iPhone) and the increasing consumer demand for choice of services, I think Mobile VoIP will soon see the light of the day over the next few years.
I would like to hear your thoughts.