My day job (well, sometime I work till evenings and nights) is to plan and implement new internet (fixed + mobile) services for the buyers of our mobile phones.
I'm a web guy - I have always been in the internet business (strategy and service planning) ever since I started work (circa 1997). Naturally, I've been following the Web 2.0 since its early days. To this day, I rarely miss reading feeds on web 2.0 -- about 50 of them (I try to keep the max # of feeds at under 50).
Of course this kind of practice makes me smarter, but as a professional, you don't just study; You gotta contribute and deliver, based on what you learned. So how do I align my personal interest with my professional one to create maximum synergy? The answer would be to apply my knowledge on Web 2.0 to our services.
Then the question becomes, does a mobile phone manufacturer (ie. Nokias and Motorolas) have any shot at becoming a significant player in Web 2.0? I think so, for some reasons.
First, a very important ingredient of Web 2.0 is edge content production (aka user generated content), and mobile phones are increasingly well-suited for creating and sharing media content.
- First, the "edge" part: Everyone has a phone, and he carries the phone everywhere with him. Some people jokingly say that mobile phones are the first electronic device in human history that the majority of people carry with them when they go to men's room (or women's).
- Second, the "content" part: Mobile phones are not only great multimedia consumption devices (Nokia being #1 maker of digital camera and MP3 players), but also great multimedia producing devices. One example: mobile phones can be the best device to podcast on. You talk into the phone, as you do all the time, do some editing (like putting in background music), send it - and there you have your podcast, nice and easy.
Also, besides the content, moblie phones can leverage on other C's of internet business quite effectively as well:
- Communication: Phones are by nature communication devices. SMS, MMS, email, chat all supported.
- Community: The address book in your mobile phone = your buddy list
- Context: Phones can do smart tagging (geo / time stamp and other auto tagging)
- Commerce: While users expect whatever service on the fixed web will come free, they are less reluctant to pay for things on mobile. Also mobile services have well established billing methods in short codes, monthly phone bills, micropayments, etc.
In the past, they could exert their buying power to hold off innovations being created outside of their walled gardens. In the US, Sprint is rumored to have told Nokia to shut down their content service, otherwise no business with them. In Italy, the top carrier TIM doesn't allow its subscribers to purchase any content from 3rd parties directly from their phones.
But due to the (ongoing) convergence, mobile carriers will soon face fierce competiion from alternative connectivity methods such as WiMax. This means a) today's mobile carriers won't be the sole companies to sell devices to, and b) by market demands carriers will be forced to provide affordable, all-you-can-eat connectivity, and if they don't offer compelling services as well, they will turn into mere "bit pipes".
This will hopefully make the carriers more open-minded about innovative services from other parties, including phone manufacturers.
Ever since the phenomenal success of the iPod-iTunes, all manufacturers are waking up to the huge potential of the hardware-service coupling, done in the right way. Mobile phone manufacturers are not exceptions, and you will see more and more innovative services from Nokia and other manufacturers. Here I'll be posting my own initiatives sometimes as well.
