MediaPost's Online Media Daily reports on the latest transaction in the busy mobile sector:

THE MOBILE CONTENT AND SERVICES feeding frenzy continues, as San Francisco-based SendMe has announced its acquisition of the mbuzzy online and mobile community.

Meanwhile, London-based Refresh Mobile has rolled out Mippin, a service that aggregates, displays and customizes content for a user's mobile Web experience.

Opportunities for marketers to "go mobile" with branded applications, sponsored content and standard mobile ads are bundled into both announcements.

San Mateo-based mbuzzy adds a social networking asset to SendMe's pair of mobile entertainment properties--SendMeMobile.com (a distribution network for ringtones, games and other interactive content) and SoLow.com (an SMS-based bidding game that users play to win prizes like electronics and trips).

With mbuzzy, users create a profile and share pictures, videos and other content via mobile phone or desktop. The off-deck service also allows for instant messaging, chat and status alerts--and it's not tied to any particular carrier or handset, maximizing the potential for market penetration.

More @ MediaPost

Today's issue of the New York Times addresses the long running Google Phone rumor mill:

For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google has been working in secret on a mobile phone project. As word about their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists ahead of a speech by Steven P. Jobs.

But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone — and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s.

Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile Internet, a small market today, but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project. The cost of those phones may be partly subsidized by advertising that appears on their screens.

Whatever Google winds up releasing, it's going to be a while before we have it in our hands:

Google is expected to unveil the fruit of its mobile efforts later this year, and phones based on its technology could be available next year.

Read more @ the New York Times.

Here's a story we can look forward to seeing rewritten in the near future in the US as we begin to catch up with the rest of the world in the mobile data arena:

According to the French association of multimedia mobiles (AFMM), the use of bar codes in magazines this summer was very successful. 15% to 25% of traffic to the websites of Public, Closer, and Voici were generated thanks to users coming through the bar codes.

The bar code technology enables users to access online content on their phone by taking a photography of the code, inserted in the paper, with their mobile.

Users must first download a special application, Flashcode, in order to identify the bar code and access the content.

In July and August, there were about 30,000 downloads of the Flashcode software.

“One of the main priorities now will be to gradually pre-equip mobile devices with the Flashcode software, so that the user doesn’t have to download it," said Nicolas Guieysse, from the AFMM.

@ The Editors Weblog (via mocoNews)

The iPhone will be arriving in the UK on November 9th, in an exclusive deal with O2. Competitor Vodaphone is not waiting idly:

Vodafone is planning to offer its all-you-can-eat music service free of charge in a bid to drive customer uptake in the UK. Although Vodafone’s MusicStation service was launched with a £1.99 per week charge, the operator will offer it free on 18-month contracts of £40 ($80) or higher using certain handsets. MusicStation offers unlimited downloads for a subscription price, but if the person stops paying the subscription they stop being able to play the songs.

Coincidence? mocoNews says otherwise:

Vodafone’s free move is clearly intended to help it better compete with O2 and the iPhone during the traditional Christmas mobile sales rush. It’s of course hoping that despite the lacklustre record so far for operator-portal music services, the MusicStation subscription model will strike a chord with users.

Full Story @ mocoNews.

Clear Channel Outdoor’s Spectacolor Division unveiled a digital billboard in Times Square this week.
...
The new Spectacolor HD billboard is the first to run multiple advertiser spots in conjunction with streaming news, weather and live HD broadcasts, which are provided exclusively by CNN.

Why are we bringing it to your attention?

In addition to streaming news, the billboard will also provide viewers with a dedicated audio channel received via mobile phones by dialing a toll free number. Advertisers will have access to a standard feature set that includes Bluetooth downloads, interactive content via short code (SPECHD) and Times Square’s first free public WiFi Hot Spot.

Somehow billboard doesn't do this thing justice.

@ Media Buyer Planner (via Textually)

The big news in mobile today has been Nokia's bid for digital map supplier Navtaq (Google News: Nokia Navteq).

Hot on the heels of TomTom's plan to acquire mobile-mapping company Tele Atlas, Nokia has announced an agreement to acquire Tele Atlas rival Navteq for $8.1 billion.

Analysts say the moves, if approved, will effectively create a duopoly in the mobile mapping market.

"There are no independent map suppliers left in the market,” said John Strand, CEO of Copenhagen-based consulting firm Strand Consult.

The deal calls for Nokia to pay $78 for each share of publicly traded Navteq in a transaction that will be financed roughly half by debt and half from Nokia’s cash horde. (Red Herring)

So what does this deal mean? Reuters has already put together a short analysis:

The $8.1 billion bid for Navteq, if successful, could make the world's largest cell phone manufacturer a leading player in the navigation business, which is one of the technology industry's fastest-growing segments.

Nokia's financial resources, wireless technology and carrier relationships may give it an edge in creating phone-based navigation devices, analysts said. What's more, it could damage Garmin's ability to influence design decisions at Navteq, Garmin's biggest map supplier.

Of course there is the Google angle:

An industry executive speaking on the condition of anonymity said Google may decide it needs access to a digital map database, especially if the widely rumoured Google phone turned out to be a real product. Google is already taking comprehensive pictures of cities for its online maps system.

And what about TomTom?

TomTom's position as Europe's leading maker of car navigation devices could also be threatened by an aggressive move into the navigation segment by Nokia, if it can convince consumers they do not need a separate navigation device.

"That is not an imminent risk, but a couple of years out, if Nokia has the ability very tightly and nicely integrate functions, get the form factor and services and the pricing right, it could prove a very interesting alternative," Oberdorfer said.

As a follow-up to our earlier post about Barack Obama's text messaging efforts, we'd like to point you to this story that appeared on the Washington Post's 'The Trail' 2008 election blog a couple of weeks back:

If the campaigns get it right, mobile experts say, next year's election will see "a very big bump" in youth voter participation.

That's a big "if."

So far only Sen. Barack Obama, who's emerging as the pioneering Internet candidate of the campaign (by measure of online fundraising prowess and grassroots popularity on the MySpace-Facebook-YouTube trifecta), is regularly using a text messaging campaign effectively and strategically.

And they've got a study to back up those claims:

A new study by Princeton and University of Michigan found that on the eve of last year's midterm elections, young voters who were sent message reminders were significantly more likely to vote. No surprise there, experts say, since most teenagers live on their cell phones the same way many use SMS programs on Facebook and MySpace. The non-partisan Working Assets Wireless, a mobile company that works with civic organizations, reported that sending a message reminder to vote -- particularly a succinct, to-the-point reminder -- gave a 4 percent boost in the youth voter turnout rates.

Read the entire piece at the Washington Post's website.

Oh, and if you need more proof to how mobile-savvy Barack Obama's campaign is, in addition to  a twitter-based effort, they've even got ringtones.

In an potentially important development, Bylk has launched the first free pan-European  mobile service.  It would be interesting to see how receptive consumers are to an ad-supported service like this--unfortunately Bylk is not exactly what it first appears to be:

At a press conference in London, Blyk founders Pekka Ala-Pietila and Antii Ohrling said Monday that they have started offering subscribers 217 free texts and 42 free minutes in exchange for accepting MMS (picture messaging) and SMS (text) advertising. Customers will be charged for additional usage.

After that, you've got to pay up, which begs the question, why not just pay from the start and not bother with the ads. Nevertheless, Bylk should make for an interesting experiment.

For more, head over to Red Herring.

SPRINT NEXTEL IS GIVING RETAILERS another way to market, advertise and pull money from the pockets of subscribers. The wireless carrier on Thursday introduced Mobile Shopper that lets consumers buy products via their mobile phones through an e-commerce tool powered by mShopper, a Boulder, Colo.-based company owned by 2B Wireless.

The service allows consumers to search among 7 million products from 30 online retailers such as eLuxury, eBags, JC Penney's, Wal-Mart and Target, which have an opportunity to tie promotions and ads to Sprint's mobile Web application.

And how will Spring promote this service?

While television or radio ads won't promote the service, Sprint spokeswoman Emmy Anderson says the Kansas City, Mo.-based carrier will market Mobile Shopper through text messages sent to some of its 54 million voice subscribers. A link on Sprint's Web site provides a demonstration and literature to educate consumers.

Sprint has been the most aggressive carrier when it comes to getting voice subscribers to sign up for data services, says Julie Ask, wireless analyst at JupiterResearch.

Read more at Media Post's Marketing Daily.

We all know that the 18 - 34 demo is extremely mobile savvy (and of course teenagers and tweens in even greater percentages), but this bit of news is definitely surprising (in a good way!):

NEW DATA FROM INSIGHTEXPRESS SHOWS that when it comes to use of mobile features, Baby Boomers aren't that far behind their younger, seemingly more tech-savvy counterparts--a sign that mobile marketers and advertisers have the opportunity to tap into a wider, more diverse audience than previously thought.

The Stamford-based online market research firm surveyed more than 2000 mobile users and separated them into four age groups: Gen Y (18-24), Gen X (25-44), younger Baby Boomers (45-54) and older Baby Boomers (55-64).

Not surprisingly, mobile penetration was high across all ages, at 85% and 82% for Gens Y and X, respectively--meanwhile, 80% of younger Boomers surveyed had a mobile phone, followed closely by older Boomers at 79%.

Boomers' handsets were just as cutting edge as their younger counterparts, as 75% of younger Boomers and 68% of older Boomers had phones that supported text messaging--compared to 86% and 82% of Gens Y and X, respectively. Gen Y led the pack in actual text-message usage with 43%, followed by Gen X with 22%--but some 16% of all younger Boomers and 10% of all older Boomers sent or received text messages daily.

Head over to Online Media Daily for the rest of the findings and some interesting commentary.
 

Media Post's Online Media Daily has some news on the mobile classifieds front:

MOBILE FIRM IQZONE ROLLED OUT a free service that lets users create, send and post photo and video ads to online classifieds via mobile phone. Meanwhile, Yellow Book USA posted links to a set of online video ads--spots that the local search powerhouse crafted to give advertisers a preview of its forthcoming video classified offering. The two services are the latest examples of how video is shaping the development of both online and mobile classifieds.

IQzone's "Snap Send Sell" service is geared toward the under-30 market--namely, college students aiming to sell cars and textbooks, or find roommates. Users take photos or video of their merchandise, include the ad copy with price and ZIP-code info, and then send to [email protected]. The application then categorizes the item for sale and submits the ad to a number free online classifieds and aggregators like oodle, edgeio, and LiveDeal.

Classifieds are big business--newspapers rely on them for revenue--and developments like this one, along with the ever-expanding reach of Craiglist,  spell big trouble for an industry already in deep water.

Consider this situation:

When a wildfire threatened resort areas of Catalina Island off Los Angeles last week, authorities used bullhorns to spread word of an evacuation.

We know that there is a better emergency communications solution--and is seems that California has realized that as well:

"All of the cellphones within range of those towers [on Catalina Island] would ring with an emergency message," says Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D), describing the proposed cellular alert system, which could use text and voice messages. "Visitors as well as residents on the island who had cellphones, pagers, BlackBerrys, etc., would get the message."

Cellphones are now ubiquitous – outnumbering land lines in the US – making them an obvious part of any emergency alert system.

Visit CBS to read more about California's emergency SMS alert effort.

Information Week reports that Diebold has acquired a number of patents that promise to change the way you use the ATM:

Diebold said that the technologies will allow mobile phone owners to find ATMs, order cash withdrawals remotely, generate electronic checks, transmit wireless payments and conduct other transactions more securely and conveniently than they do now.

Sounds exciting. Unfortunately we won't be seeing these applications for a while:

The company said it is in talks with technology partners that could bring Diebold's tested applications to market in three to five years.

At Information Week (via textually)

Research firm SNL Kagan released a 10-year wireless projection last week which predicts that by the year 2013, mobile phones--including consumer, business and dual users--will achieve 100% penetration in the U.S., when an estimated 322 million cell phone units in use will actually exceed the total U.S. population. Kagan estimates current U.S. cell phone penetration at 84%, or about 233 million units.

Kagan projects that subscriber units and voice revenue will inch along as market saturation is approached--but data revenue will grow at a compound annual rate of 14%, rising to at least 22% of service revenue, compared to under 10% today. Kagan says it may revise its data revenue projections upward after new WiMAX offerings and the winners of the 700 MHz auction emerge next year.

And what does that mean for mobile advertising?

Analysts say the exponential growth of mobile data use--including text, Web browsing, games, music and video--is spurring carriers, WiMAX competitors and other key players to accelerate their pursuit of the "holy grail" of market paradigm shifts: free mobile services fully subsidized by advertising.

Mobile advertising currently brings in about $500 million annually in the U.S., a small slice of the overall revenue generated by Internet advertising. With mobile operators, media companies and Internet giants like Google actively exploring potential applications and huge advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Burger King and Pepsi experimenting with mobile phone ads, some analysts believe that the overall market for mobile advertising could top $11 billion by 2011, or more than one-third of the current Internet advertising market.

Read more at MediaPost Online Media Daily.

Wikipedia, everyone's favorite online encyclopedia, is now available via SMS-sort of:

SMS service GoLive! Mobile now offers a convenient text messaging interface to the Wikipedia.  Text the words about <your search term> to short code 23907 and you'll get back a link to a mobile-friendly, shortened Wikipedia page. This is fantastic for quick trivia look-ups on the go - but it does require that you can surf the web on your cell phone. (If only they texted you back the results...)

(via LifeHacker)

For those who can never seem to keep up with an endless stream of appointments and responsibilities comes PingMe, a new SMS-based reminder service. Thrillist has the details:

PM's a new free service that'll text and/or email you reminders whenever you command it to, much like your late manservant did, only PM's missives do what Covington never could (digitally beam themselves into your pocket). With its Post-it-esque interface, using PM's as easy as setting and saving however many "pings" your defective memory requires: punch in your message, date/time, targets (phone or email), and whether or not to repeat -- daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or millennially (handy for long-prophesied apocalypses). When the time comes, you'll get a text/email with your requested info, like rental car confirmation numbers, bar/restaurant addresses, or just friendly reminders for everyday tasks: "I must kill...the Queen"/"I must prevent Reggie Jackson from killing the Queen."

Sounds promising--for more head over to Thrillist.

Dadnab is an Austin Texas based company with an interesting SMS application:

Dadnab  is a text messaging service that plans your trips on city transit.  Without web access and don't want to study the schedules?  Dadnab tells you which bus or train to take, at which location, at what time.

They recently added the Bay Area to their system:

A Bay Area Dadnab user sends a text message (SMS) with an origin and destination to [email protected]. Seconds later, the user receives a text message with the optimal routes and times to get to the desired destination by rail, bus, or ferry.

Dadnab incorporates schedule information from 28 Bay Area transit providers and serves a population of more than seven million residents in the region.

This is an interesting use of text messaging--the only question is, how well would this service work for complicated directions? Would such a response overwhelm the user? Would it require multiple texts? Regardless, this is an innovative service, and if they could figure out a way to account for service delays and shutdowns--which would have been a godsend during New York City's recent subway flood--they might have a killer app on their hands.

Read the entire press release here.

Media Post is reporting that Gannett Co, the owner of the USA Today and nearly 100 other smaller newspapers, has just rolled out a lot of free mobile content:

The Virginia-based media outlet has developed mobile news sites that correspond to some 84 daily newspapers and 19 broadcast station Web sites, as well as one for its national paper USA Today.

In addition to local news and information, the sites link to national news coverage available via the USA Today mobile site, and the content will be supported by local, regional and national display ads.

Users with handsets and data plans that allow for Internet browsing can access the sites for free by entering an 'm' before an existing Gannett site's URL (such as http://m.tennessean.com), via links from the home pages of all Gannet newspaper and broadcast Web sites, or by texting a unique daily short code to 59523. The short codes are being promoted through Gannett's print, online and broadcast news presentations.

Read more @ Media Post.

RCR Wireless News is reporting that People Magazine will be launching their own custom-built application:

The periodical launched People Mobile, a downloadable application that delivers breaking celebrity news, photo galleries, a puzzle game and a style blog. The application is available on carrier decks for $4 per month in addition to messaging charges

This is an interesting development, worth keeping an eye on. Not content to merely deliver a messaging or mobile web-based solution, People has built their own mobile application. And, bucking the usual model, the application itself is free; instead monetization will come through subscription access. If they see success with this strategy we might see a lot of brand-based, downloadable applications, especially if the FCC's recent ruling opens up the landscape.

The FCC recently issued a ruling that partially opens up the American airwaves:

The agency approved rules for an auction of broadcast spectrum that its chairman, Kevin J. Martin, said would promote new consumer services. The rules will let customers use any phone and software they want on networks using about one-third of the spectrum to be auctioned.

No one is quite sure yet how open things are about to get, but in the meantime, today's Wall Street Journal observes that some consumers have broken out of the walled garden themselves:

Ever since wireless companies began offering Internet services on cellphones, users have shared a similar complaint, largely because the companies want to control which sites their customers visit. Phones come with browsers designed to go mainly to the Web sites the carriers chose -- usually the ones they have revenue-sharing deals with. It is possible to go to sites outside this "walled garden," but the experience is so slow and cumbersome that most users don't try. And some of those outside Web sites won't work with the carrier-approved browsers.

But now those walls are beginning to break down, in a development that harkens back to America Online's failed attempt to limit its Internet subscribers' surfing in the 1990s. "Having a Web browser and the ability to browse the open Internet on your mobile phone will be a given in the future," says Tony Cripps, an analyst at research firm Ovum in London. "It's a capability that eventually people would expect to be there, just like text messaging and camera."

Since it was launched in January 2006, more than 15 million cellphone users around the world have downloaded the Opera Mini browser, which is available for free and usable on most cellphones. Early versions of the Opera Mini, developed by Opera Software ASA in Norway, display Web pages in a single column, which works well on cellphones with small screens. The latest version shows Web sites in full-page views that are even more similar to the look on a PC.

Read the entire article @ The Wall Street Journal.