The pendulum swings back to “paid for” content

It looks like the swing towards “ad funded everything” is quickly coming to an end, and there is a trend back in the direction of selling products and services to users.

“Ad funded” for many businesses really meant “shareholder funded in the hope of later monetization”. Meanwhile, people actually selling things were ignored – that was thought too “dirty” or “difficult”. However, in difficult economic conditions, remember the Yorkshire expression: “where there’s muck there’s brass”.

Apple iPhone Software Store generating sales

According to Apple, sales of software in the iPhone App store were $30 million in July.
“This thing’s going to crest at half a billion, soon,” Jobs told the Wall Street Journal: iPhone Software Sales take off. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1bn marketplace at some point in time. I’ve never seen anything like [...]

Transcoding the Truth?

There is an interview with Novarra President and COO, Jayanthi Rangarajan in Mobile Marketing Magazine that really takes the biscuit when it comes to spinning the truth around transcoding – its benefits and drawbacks:
http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/2008/05/talking-transco.htmlMs Rangarajan, as COO of Novarra is at best badly mis-informed or at worst blatantly transcoding the truth in her interview with the [...]

Web Browsing or Widgets?

“Mobile web browsing is something of a dead end.” – according to an article in The Register at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/24/china_mobile_vodafone_widgets/
which is all about Vodafone and China Mobile working together on some sort for widget project. 
I don’t think so.  Mobile browsing is taking off fast.  100 fold growth in UK in last 4 years, everybody in Japan and Korea does it. [...]

So how was CTIA?

The flight back from CTIA was taken up by trying to “close off” as many actions as possible by emails, and then on lying back and reviewing what I had seen at the show – ready to report back to all the people who would say “so how was CTIA?”.
In a word: Quiet
CTIA has traditionally [...]

Are you happy for somebody to wrap advertising round your mobile site – and sell it?

If you operate a web site, are you happy for ISP’s around the world to edit the content of your sites and add banner advertising to your pages – without telling you or getting your agreement? 
Several mobile operators have started to place “transcoders” or “filters” that intercept and replace web (HTTP) traffic going to their phones. 
The effects are [...]

I saw what you did and know who you are

It’s not Big Brother, but with the launch of Bango Analytics this week, mobile website owners will now get a unique view on who their visitors are and what they are doing.  Also it’ll provide valuable information on how mobile ads are performing, right across different ad networks.  All this is done without revealing any [...]

New version of Bango Live

A new version of the Bango Live traffic sampler just went live at www.bango.com/live

Free My Phone

Veteran Technical Reporter / Guru Walt Mossberg wrote a great article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.  Full of great info and a call to action to get carriers to open up their walled gardens.
Extract:
Free My Phone
A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by [...]

Brands take control of their mobile destiny

It’s becoming quite common for brands to have an off-portal presence as well as one on-portal. Here Universal Studios articulate why they go to the effort of having both:
“We want to be master of our own destiny more, to have an environment we control,” said Jeremy Laws, the Los Angeles-based senior vp at Universal Mobile [...]