Slides from last nights short Pecha Kucha presentation on Exploratory User Research at Super Deluxe can be downloaded from here [3MB].

Related research about what people carry where, why and how can be downloaded from here and here.

[Thanks BH for getting the material uploaded so swiftly]

7:18:10 PM    comment   

Customised iPod Nano encrusted in rhinestones - photo taken during a night out with friends in Shibuya.

Extreme customisation of devices such as mobile phones, iPods and tamagotchi is taking off amongst women (and occassionally men) in their 20's and early 30's here in Tokyo. Mobile phone and nail shops are offering extreme customisation as an extension of their existing services, nail shops being a particularly good fit given the skill set required to carry out the procedure. 7,000 yen (56 Euro) will buy you a glittery off-the-shelf design, whilst 60,000 yen (430 Euro) will buy you front, back, top and bottom fully customised design of your choice. Downside of the process? Losing use of the device whilst it is being customised, and the customisation process can invalidate the warrantee.

For the customer: what drivers for customising?
For the service provider: is it possible to scale up, to offer mass-customisation?

One of my recent side-projects was to document the extreme mobile phone and nail customisation process for two Japanese teenagers, from preparing their phones - removing existing print club stickers and other adornments, sketching desired designs, interactions with the crafts-woman, and then following the customisation process in the shop up until delivery. The research material is not suitable for an academic paper but may put some material together here at a later date.

Working from the UK for the next couple of weeks. What new things to learn?

7:00:48 PM    comment   

So far closely linked to the DVB-H broadcast technology for mobile TV, Nokia said it also intends to support a competing technology that will enable the provision of broadcast services over 3G mobile networks. Nokia is not quite as narrow in its focus as it would appear from reports about mobile TV: Nokia also intends to support the 3GPP standard MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Standard) to enable streaming video over existing third-generation mobile networks.
Tag: | Posted in: Breaking 3G News
Our 3G Support Service - [Daily 3G News]
6:48:11 PM    comment   

ET reports that Korea Telecom is the front-runner for snapping up a majority stake in Shyam Telelink which operates fixed-line and CDMA-based mobile services in Rajasthan under the Rainbow brand. Korea Telecom is one of the largest global players in the fixed-line broadband space. US-based Sprint, Deutsche Telekom and Sweden-based Telia are also said to be in the reckoning.

Shyam has a subscriber base of 2,30,000. Of this, 1,95,000 are voice and the rest are data customers. Among voice customers, only 35,000 are mobile, and the rest are fixed-line subscribers. The company plans to increase its subscriber base to 3,50,000. It recently signed a contract worth Rs 200 crore with ZTE for buying and installing equipment for 5,00,000 lines.

Shyam was the first GSM mobile service-provider to roll out services in Rajasthan. In April [base ']Äô04, it sold its stake in Hexacom to Bharti. Hexacom was the largest cellular operator in Rajasthan with a subscriber base of 2,65,000. It was valued at $565 per subscriber. Its enterprise value was about Rs 1,000 crore. Bharti Hexacom now has more than 1 million subscribers. But this valuation can[base ']Äòt be a benchmark for CDMA operations as average revenue per user is different for mobile and fixed-line services.

Shyam Telelink has equity of Rs 456 crore and debt of Rs 300 crore. Its revenues are above Rs 160 crore. It provides services in 123 cities of Rajasthan and has optic fibre cables of about 5,000 kms - both as backbone and access.

If the deal goes through it would be the first equity sale in the CDMA space. All the mergers and acquisitions in the telecom sector have so far been limited to the GSM space. At present, there are four private CDMA mobile service providers - Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, Shyam Telelink and HFCL Infotel.

6:47:37 PM    comment   

"The growth rate demonstrates that we are delivering on our plan to drive subscriber growth in India. The value proposition of our offering is being validated by growing the demand for our service," said Noah Samara, chairman and CEO of WorldSpace. "We look forward to continue building on our success in 2005 and we are extremely excited about our plans to expand our service throughout India and other focus markets."

6:46:36 PM    comment   

âo[ogonek]Hungama.com is the first Indian company to formally enter a deal with iTunes. We should go up in another ten days. Our deal for now is exclusively with T-series and we expect to put close to 30,000 tracks from their catalogue in the next six months,âo? says Hungamaâo[dot accent]s CEO, Neeraj Roy. The first series of albums that will go onto the iTunes site include chartbusters like âo[breve]Main Hoon Naâo[dot accent] and âo[breve]Chalte Chalteâo[dot accent] along with more recent releases like âo[breve]Aashiq Banaya Aapneâo[dot accent].

6:46:11 PM    comment   

On mobile music: "Silva Screen has not benefited from the monophonic and polyphonic ringtone craze. However, since the emergence of the actual sound recording now being heard (master tones, true tones, real tones) instead of the inferior sounding ringtone, we have made tremendous inroads in this area. Our recordings are used as real tones worldwide, in particular, Japan and the US. The quality of our recordings and the ability to move fast has enabled Silva Screen to be a leader in this field...The eventual ease and speed by which the consumer is able to access content will be of tremendous benefit to both consumer and content owners."

On the Internet: "The music business landscape is changing and the whole distribution model is in the process of evolving. At retail, CD sales are down although Silva Screen was up last year. There is severe pressure on margins. The consumer has more choice by way of entertainment and record companies are fighting for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. Against this background, we are still optimistic for the future. Our success in ring sounds and now full track downloads via the phone is what we are gearing up towards. We have in excess of 100 albums on itunes and our catalogue is being added on to many download sites throughout the world."

On piracy: "I do think that the major record companies have taken their time. However, looking at it objectively, one can hardly blame them for making sure that security / digital rights management (DRM) issues are full proof. After all with all the illegal downloading taking place and the rampant piracy of CDs, all owners of IP need to be prudent. [ContentSutra]
6:33:18 PM    comment   

Malaysian 3G cellphone users will be able to download, view and participate in a local interactive reality show in March, if everything goes as planned. The reality show is brought to you by homegrown mobile messaging solutions company Macro Kiosk Bhd, which successfully acquired Eluxion Media Sdn Bhd, a local multimedia production house, recently. According to its chief operating officer, Henry Goh, users can look forward to more content, including movies, dramas, video clips and commercials in the near future.
Tag: | Posted in: Breaking 3G News
Our 3G Support Service - [Daily 3G News]
6:18:15 PM    comment   

I find it hard to believe, but it's almost three years since the Harvard Business Review published my article IT Doesn't Matter. Every time I think the debate about the piece is dying down, it flares up again. The latest example comes in the new issue of Fortune Small Business, which features dueling interviews between me and Dell CEO Kevin Rollins.

5:36:43 PM    comment   

Verizon has finally decided to do something with the GPS feature in some of its phones. Cashing in on a service Sprint has already been providing, it's launched the VZ Navigator, a subscriber service that will let you get directions and the location of nearby businesses including every Starbucks in the whole world (ok, maybe not the whole world, but a lot of places) using those GPS-enabled phones. Right now, the service is being offered on the Motorola V325 and costs $10 a month for unlimited use or $3 for 24 hours (perfect for singled-out road trips and any Frappuccino carving you may have).

Verizon Launches Navigator Service [Phonescoop]

5:25:17 PM    comment   

I think the new Opera Mini is just about the best thing I’ve ever seen on a mobile phone. Really! It’s easily the best Java app I’ve ever seen, and actually I think it’s probably the best Mobile Web Browser there is out there - native smart phone apps included. I’ve been using it since last summer when Opera gave us a preview at Yahoo! and it was pretty great then, and they’ve done nothing but improve on it since. Today they’ve officially launched it world wide, so click on the link or view mini.opera.com from your mobile phone and grab it now!

Here’s the things that separate it out from every other app out there:

First, it’s small and easy to download and install. At 100k, even my GPRS-only Sony Ericsson W800i phone downloaded and installed it in less than a minute. This should not be overlooked - Opera has made the process dead-simple by providing direct access to the download (no registration, or multiple page views needed) and paid attention to the size of the app to make sure there’s no bloat. It seems simple, but these two things alone separate Opera Mini from 90% of the mobile apps out there.

The app starts quickly, with a clean page and an inviting logo and you immediately notice when the first page comes up that the fonts are incredibly readable and use the screen efficiently. Mobile phone fonts are generally awful, so Opera does everyone a favor and draws the fonts for us - with an extra-small option that’s still readable and provides for much more content per screen. This is pretty awesome - anti-aliased fonts on my phone? Rock on. This alone separates it out from every other mobile browser that exists today - every other one uses the native fonts, and they all look horrible. Opera really nailed it with this feature.

Next, the speed of the downloading is incredible. It makes GPRS seem A LOT faster - i.e. actually usable. Not only must they be doing compression and down-sizing of pictures on the server, they must be managing cellular latency really well. Latency is the nemesis for all mobile Internet apps. So where other mobile browsers will be dumb and create new requests to the Internet for each image or file that makes up a web page (taking latency hits each time) Opera Mini’s architecture allows it to make only one connection to the server and get perceptably huge speed increases as a result. Like I said, I’m using it right now to browse around on my GPRS phone, it feels like a handset with a much faster connection.

The speed of the app itself is also impressive. Other apps I’ve seen like this are sluggish to say the least, but Opera Mini is always responsive, even while downloading a relatively huge page like my 300+ subscriptions in Bloglines or my blog. This is probably due to the fact that the bulk of the processing happens on the server - so they’re not forcing a small mobile phone to parse HTML or render massive images - instead they send down only what the app needs to know in order to display the page. But that’s not to downplay how well the client is made either: Clicking to the left/right will page up/down, and not only is it fast, but it has smooth-scrolling! Huge pages can be navigated really quickly this way, without getting lost at all. And the user interface is well done too - it never leaves you wondering what’s happening. As soon as you click a button, the bottom status bar changes to tell you what’s going on and how long you have to wait. This helps expectations and user perception considerably.

Finally, the app Just Works(TM) as you’d expect. Yes, not every web page will look perfect - the CSS-linked header image on my blog doesn’t show up for example - and not every Javascript on a page will work perfectly, but it’s surprising how great the pages look and how usable many websites are on a small screen. I think Opera has really done an amazing job on this app. I expect huge things from this - it could even become its own platform. I bet you could easily base a new web-based business around this browser, it’s that good. Though I have to mention that neither Yahoo! nor Google JavaScript-based advertising is shown on any of the pages I’ve seen so far. That should be fixed.

Definitely a must have app for any mobile phone you have. Congrats to everyone at Opera who made it happen!

-Russ

2:23:00 AM    comment