Mobile Fix – devices, places, people, physical & promotions

Around 20,000 digital luminaries have been wandering around Austin, Texas this week at SXSW; sharing ideas and getting glimpses of the future (both Twitter and Foursquare were essentially launched at SXSW in the past).

A round up of SXSW makes the point that the internet is over; it’s now so ubiquitous it seems increasingly odd to talk about it. We used to illustrate all our work at Mindshare with a picture of an old electricity pylon, because digital is the electricity of this age – it runs everything and we rely on it – only thinking about it when it’s not there.

With digital becoming ubiquitous, and the pace of change in mobile showing no sign of slowing, we’re developing a new way at looking at the mobile space – a framework using 5 themes; Devices, Places, People, Physical and Promotions.

The mobile space is driven by the Devices that people use and the capabilities of these devices dictate what can be done with mobile so we start here. The ability to easily use GPS has driven Places to be a strong theme – with areas like mobile search hugely enhanced by knowing where the searcher is.

The ease with which the social graph can be accessed on mobile – through Facebook Connect, Twitter sign-ins and even LinkedIn means People is another potent theme.

Physical is next , looking at how people can scan barcodes (traditional and QR) and use NFC to connect the digital world with the physical world. Google Goggles falls into this theme too.

Out of this heady mix comes the final theme; Promotions. The context provided by the other themes, coupled with the information trail that digital allows (recent searches, membership of a loyalty scheme etc) allows very targeted offers to be delivered through the device.

We don’t think it’s perfect – and would love to hear your thoughts – but it has proved very useful so far. There is lots of crossover, which is especially interesting when you merge the themes with GAFA, our other way of categorising the market. Looking at how Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon play across these themes highlights their strengths and shows some of the gaps, where new players might emerge.

Devices

The next big thing in devices is NFC – or near field communication. In the week when it emerged that Apple probably won’t have NFC in the iPhone 5 – so delaying their much anticipated move into mobile payments -Google seem likely to take the lead in this space. Their Nexus S has NFC installed and there are strong rumours they are about to trial a payments services, using their Google CheckOut

Given the Apple advantage of 200 million iTunes accounts and the ease with which people already buy content (music, apps, movies & books) with one click on their iPhones, anything Google can do to even the playing field is good for Google. And of course through Adwords and Checkout they already have lots of merchant accounts, which is their strong advantage.

Places

An early battle on mobile was about mapping (which is why Nokia paid $7 billion for Navteq – seemingly a major factor in Microsofts interest in Nokia). Google have announced that 40% of their maps traffic is mobile, with over 150 million users, whilst admitting they have been slow in this space. Despite this huge audience around maps and having bought Dodgeball – the first location focused company started by the founder of Foursquare – Google looked to have missed the boat on location. There is a plethora of people in this space now. But Google now have one of their smartest and most senior people on the case.

We talked the other week about the fact that Facebook were unwilling to share their list of locations with their competitors; now Foursquare have made a very smart move in opening up their locations through an API. So if you want to play in the location space, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t build your service around the Foursquare database – and this could be interesting to brands who see location as an intoxicating way of leveraging their stockists.

People

The general consensus is that no one big thing emerged at SXSW – though group messaging start-ups were everywhere. This way of using SMS to build groups for messaging was pioneered by FastSociety and GroupMe (who we covered back in October) and now has lots of me-toos. The hot one is clearly Beluga, who were bought by Facebook the other week.

Most, if not all of these, are built using Twilio – a company we’ve been following for ages – who are doing great work around what we term NewSMS – using text as a way of interacting with web services.

People sometimes forget that LinkedIn is a pioneer of social too – with an IPO rumoured – and they are working hard to get mobile working for them – now partnering with London based company Snaptu to develop a mobile service that works on feature phones. (Just like Facebook did a few weeks back)

Physical

It’s debatable whether ShopKick is a physical play rather than a location one, but with a box in stores that their app connects with using sound, it’s a very interesting company – with a million users already. eMarketer look at a variety of data sources to make the case that shopping is embracing apps and location – enabling that connection between physical and digital.

We’ve been talking with luxury brands who are very focused on this opportunity, as they invest huge amounts in digital and don’t really know whether that drives shop traffic. Mobile can be an elegant way of bridging the gap.

QR codes seem to be getting traction but this research shows people don’t really know what they are and what they need to do with them. We think there is a big need for some consumer education. There is a school of thought that things like NFC and Google Googles will make QR codes redundant, but they suffer from even more ignorance.

Our friends at Diageo have been trialling Goggles and if you scan a Smirnoff label, Goggles will open the Smirnoff mobile site – which is great, but how do you tell people about this and get them to try it? We see a role for QR codes as a way of educating people about the space and then evolving to the more advanced options.

Promos

The way to make money out of all this is about smart targeted offers and Amex tested an interesting partnership with Foursquare at SXSW.

We’re always reminded of the Emperors new clothes story whenever Groupon is mentioned. You can’t doubt their growth nor the valuation they received on the latest investment round. But to us the offers seems untargeted and uninteresting – and we hear the same from lots of other people; although they do get some quite good ones occasionally. At a presentation is SXSW one of the key people at Groupon was called out by a disgruntled merchant. We wonder how many others feel the same.

Amex show the potential here – anyone with good data could enter this space and do well. We’ve raised the idea with credit card companies as a natural extension of their core business – leveraging all that purchase data. And O2 are showing how operators can thrive by using permission and profiling (and SMS) to grow O2 More to 2 million users.

Finally

In Mobile, Japan is a constant exemplar of best practice and great innovation. The terrible events this week reminded me of a DOCOMO demo I saw at MWC in Barcelona few years ago. They were showcasing a fantastic service designed to help in the event of earthquakes and in talking about it I learnt how seriously they take earthquakes. This week showed why.

My 11 year old son was every moved by the news and has decided to do a sponsored bike ride this Sunday – 5 circuits of Victoria Park. If you’d like to do something for the people of Japan this could be a good way to help.

Simon is chairing MediaTel Group’s Come on Mobile… Stand Up and Deliver! event in London today. For up to date comment, follow us on Twitter (MediaTelGroup – #MTmobile). Full coverage on Newsline later today and next week.

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