MashupsAndMobility
From MashupCamp
Up: ProposedSessions
Description
Consider the content and services that are being supported by today's mashup API providers... events, places, relationships, media, messaging, search, commerce, and storage. Now match these with the functionality provided by the software components found on today's most dominant device, the mobile phone. The telcos have so far failed in their attempts to provide a compelling and usable personalized experience that successfully integrates the obvious relationships between these offerings. This is a compelling opportunity that needs to be addressed by those interested in tearing down the walled gardens that have been erected by the proponents of the so-called Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
Interested
- ChrisMessina, Flock
- ScottAnderson
- SarahBanko
- AndyStack
- DorrianPorter
- ChrisRadcliff, EVDB
- RodneyAiglstorfer, mFoundry
- MarcLaventurier, Utilitus
- PaulDSmith, mPulse
- CindyLu
- JaySullivan, pocketThis
- EleanorKruszewski
- OnurKabadayi
Session started at 10 am - Room G Notetaker - Dorrian Porter
Read Russell Beattie's thoughts from London http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008827.html
Questions participants are interested in: *Mobile business models *Mashup ideas *Standards for data to mobile devices *Device feature overview *Guidelines and pitfalls *Marketing and mobile mashups *How to make web applications *How consumers will discover mobile applications *Usability of various formats *Mobile bookmarking *Combination of web and handset *Designing for mobile first/how do apis get mobilized
Setting the stage:
Different kinds of mobile browser experiences - xhtml for mobile profile. There are some exciting platforms that are trying to change the way that works. Browser based interactions are starting to change.
SMS rising popularity in the US. Thinking about SMS as a conversation between the phone and a machine. Or as a command line. Using SMS as a command line to enable other applications. You also see billing mechanisms starting to take hold with short codes - where the short code serves as a way to charge the consumer based on sending a single sms from the phone.
Platforms can vary considerably around the world.
Browser experience - connectivity/latency. If you can't optimize for latency, you are reducing performance for the user.
Some folks have never seen a mobile application make money. What does make money is wap and sms. How does WAP make money? Yahoo! makes millions of dollars on wap uses of mobile - email, search, movies. But they (he) has yet to see how a pure browser or demoable application makes money.
Messaging, applications, wap browser? Do they all win? Does one win? Does it depend on the nature of the use? Of course.
WAP is inherently unreliable - doesn't have the reconnectability.
We are still a long way away from seeing reliability in mobile.
Flash and Opera Mini are starting to present interesting possibilities. In looking at mashups, you have to start to assess what are the platforms that will be winning and try to build for what you are trying to do. You can't operate in generalities.
How to make money. Sell an application off the deck. Premium SMS billing. Installing the application.
What incents the carriers? Do they want consumers to exceed the buckets? Yes. When it goes to fixed messaging plans (a commodity) what will we see as the ARPU actually falls. Are we still too far away to know (i.e. lots of room for the carriers to grow data usage).
Will consumer mobile go the same way for the web - a transition from pay model to free supported by advertising. It seems like too broad a statement to me (notetaker).
Mobile appropriate content. You have to look at the subset of what's applicable on the web or the traditional application - not just apply the same stuff to the mobile. Let's use the mobile for what it's good for.
How does the movement towards personalization on the web affect the mobile phone? How can the mobile phone affect personalization.
Wait! We have to define a mashup. A collection of multiple data services into a single experience. Mashups are perfectly suited for the mobile phone because there are demands by the user to get access to personalized data quickly. So do mashups happen in the background and the phone is a delivery device. Is the phone just an input/output point.
We're confusing mobile applications and mashups. How can a developer create an economically sustainable model around mashups for the mobile? You are dependent in most cases on external data sources (maps, content), which may go away. Can you build a business on APIs? When can you build a business on APIs? You have to have a service level agreement in place, not just hope that it never goes away. Can you get service level agreements for content and/or infrastructure? For both.
3 topics we have time to discuss:
- How to make web app mobile *Making APIs mobile friendly *Enterprise
Understand what we are trying to make mobile friendly. Understand who the primary user is and what kind of device they are going to have.
www.wurfl.org - maintain a very large xml repository - not going to get a lot of profile date - but getting very basic useful characteristics
www.mobileresearch.com - provide mobile device info
It's very difficult to build a mobile mashup! We need better definitions!
A few comments, as I am not sure I am allowed to write on this page. Technically speaking, Mashup on mobile does not mean the same things than Mashup on web. The mashup can happens on server side for instance. Technologies can be (and will be different): J2me which is by the way the most spread technology, Browser based are improving, but far from being as good as on the web, the others are really niche for the moment.
Regarding revenue: many applications are generating money, and there is a lot of different business models. But premium SMS is usually the most obvious one, but be creative....
