Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

The small but powerful iPhone has a new set of accessories that help make it easier to interact with the device. Ion Audio’s line of 3 peripherals act as physical interfaces which help transform the iPhone into the digital core of a 25 key piano, DJ control unit or full size keyboard.

Editor Note: While our iPhone, Droid, and Nexus One are mass produced consumer products, they are also powerful mobile computers, able to act as a flexible mobile core to build off of. One engineer transformed a phone into a mobile microscope for use in remote locations. As the prices drop for these first generation "app-devices" like the iPod touch, expect to see more of this behavior.

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This year's Consumer Electronic Show brings 2010 in with a bang, and a shower of application supporting gadgets. Here is a quick overview of this year's need to know developments.

• For drivers of the Chevy Volt, GM has created a mobile application for use with BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android devices. It presents the user with data about the car's current charging status, and the ability to remotely unlock/lock doors, honk the horn, and start the engine. Also included are notifications for when the Volt is starting to charge or is fully charged.

• We've been following the many remote control applications being developed for the iPhone, now Sony has decided to pick up on the concept and has developed an iPhone app for controlling its newest Blu-ray players. This will be possible through the players' integrated Wi-Fi.

• Samsung announced an app store for use with their televisions, Blu-ray players, PCs, and cameras. The platform is open in hopes that third party developers will get in on the action. Other companies also looking to bring social interactivity to the tube are VUDU, Boxee, and Popbox.  Skype brings HD video calls.

• Video content is not only being brought to the living room, companies are working to distribute on mobile devices as well. FLO TV is partnering with Mophie to launch an iPhone/iPod touch sleeve for live mobile television.

• The car continues to become connected as Pioneer's new audio system includes support for Pandora. We wonder how this will affect traditional radio consumption.

• AT&T expects to provide the first ever Dell Android phone and Nokia users will see the Ovi Store.

• Among the many tablets and e-readers, Sony announces Dash, a 7-inch screen that runs on Chumby and gives access to over 1,000 specially written applications.

Last year connected televisions were hot on the CES agenda, in 2010 it looks like appstores are the "in thing." The reason for this of course lies in their open source nature and ability for developers to bring innovation to an otherwise average device. Expect your gadgets to do a lot more this year.

Here we see rising pianist Kwan Yi passionately expressing himself on the "nation's fastest 3G network," a performance that speaks to a larger trend being enabled by mobile touchscreen devices. Visit the music section on Apple's app store and a variety of instruments will be served up, many of which even professional musicians have been experimenting with. Recently, Stanford's Mobile Phone Orchestra performed using Smule's Ocarina app. The University of Michigan has an entire course on Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble. Clearly something is at work here.

While there are many instruments available for those interested, the piano seems to be of the most popular. Iano puts the iPhone and iPod touch's multi-touch screen to use by packing a complete four-octave keyboard into a single screen. FingerPiano is similar but also provides Guitar Hero style scrolling guides to help the rookie. YouTube is flooded with users showing off their talent via various apps. This is great, and as the price of the iPhone and basic iPod touch begins to drop we will see even more creative applications. Yan Tiersen combines six iPhones for a proper performance.

Truth in Advertising is a running series of television commercials that portray consumers using mobile technology in their everyday life. They take a look at how brands are demonstrating our want and need for mobility. Click here to view previous entries.

In Brazil, there is now a huge opportunity for mobile TV services. The biggest country in South America, Brazil has a population of 191 million people. Of those, 168 million have mobile phones, compared to 70 million with TVs.

Why Video?

According Michel Castaldelli, Business Consulting Director at Ericsson, the ringtone and wallpaper sales are way down. This is forcing a migration towards new revenue generating products. Video fits the bill properly as it is experiencing a boom on the Internet and catching the attention of the mobile user as well. Since video quality has improved, it’s often the main selling feature for new high-end devices. Users want quality and only nowadays mobile devices are delivering it.

Why Mobile?

The Brazilian market is growing exponentially due to the fact Brazilians are in love with TV and with gadgetry, says Barbara Gurjão, former Media & Content Manager (VAS) at the Oi carrier and now the TV & Media Business Manager at Ericsson. Mobile infrastructure has experienced a boost with the launch of 3G, mainly due to the lack of competing fixed broadband access in some areas. Even if broadband is available, low income customers often cannot afford both and will opt for mobile only. Plus, the digital TV standard chosen for Brazil, ISDB-T, offers videos meant for mobile viewing at a price tag Brazilians can afford (i.e., free of charge).

With this in mind, some of the biggest Brazilian media and telecommunications groups are investing in mobile TV:

• The Brazilian TV Group Bandeirantes will launch Bandnews Mobile, a news channel with exclusive mobile content. They will start with short clips on demand and later offer live broadcasting. The service, which will offer national coverage, will start free-of-charge in January 2010 and later a monthly fee will be charged.

• M1ND, the Brazilian company that developed Oi's and TIM's carriers mobile TV platforms, will also invest more in mobile TV. M1ND will create its two own channels to be launched commercially in 2010. One of them will be targeted to the female audience—an attempt to attract women to mobile TV. Currently 63% of Brazilian Mobile TV users are men between 15 and 36, according M1ND. The other channel will be called M1ND TV and will be featured by humor programming.
• The Claro Video Maker is an interesting mobile video product launched by America Movil Group and produced by Compera nTime Yavox. People can create their own videos and send them to friends via MMS or their web site, where any user of the service can download it and video's creator earns ten cents for each download. The most viewed videos of the month go to a special gallery on the site, which will further catapult the sales of its video makers.
• Terra, owned by the Spanish telecom company Telefonica and the biggest internet provider and web portal in Latin America, will offer 20th Century FOX new series and movies to Blackberry users. They will have access to Terra Web, which will give users access to a wide variety of news, sports, entertainment and lifestyle contents.

Challenges

The consumers in Brazil are already using videos on their mobile phones and on the wired web, both for viewing premium content and sharing UGC. Offering the right content the way consumers want it is a challenge to all providers. Michel Castaldelli told us that Brazilians tend to prefer not being tied to a monthly commitment for any services. The price of mobile data traffic is also a barrier.

A Hybrid Model

Experts in this market say that the Mobile TV business success in Brazil depends on a hybrid system in which the offer includes open channels, interactivity, subscriptions and pay channels. The hybrid model plays a key role because the free model attracts the audience but it’s pay TV that can sustain the business.

Not IF, but WHEN
Ultimately, though, the mobile videos industry in Brazil is definitely on the rise and being successful is not a question of IF, but a question of WHEN. Users are currently changing their TV viewing habits towards a much more mobile, on-demand, ad-hoc experience instead of traditional linear TV. As more and more content becomes available in this format every day, both legal and pirated, it’s up to content providers to seize this opportunity to the fullest.

- Edvaldo Acir

Edvaldo Acir is currently Head of Business Development at FOX Latin American Channels and works with digital media since 1998. Has a Master degree in progress at UNICAMP (research about mobile market) and a Post Graduation degree at ECA/USP in Advertising and Marketing (research about internet and mobile market). Contact: edvaldoacir [at] uol.com.br

Through joint efforts, London's BERG and Bonier R&D have been designing the future of digital publishing. Their Mag+ project takes into account the wants and needs of both businesses and their readers and uses combined insights to create a plausible future for the magazine industry. Some features are pulled from the medium's physical past while others completely ignore it.

• Articles run in scrolls not pages, and are positioned side to side. The imitation of page-turning often used in web design is not believable.
• Magazines still arrive in issues. While everything else is becoming real-time, people do like a sense of completion.
• Users can heat up words and pictures to share, comment, and dig into supplementary material.

Many companies are scrambling to figure out what the future holds for publishing, both Wired and Sports Illustrated have their own conceptualizations. In the end it is important to keep user behavior in mind which is a strength in BERG's design. As far as we'd like to take a leap into the future, we do tend to tie ourselves to old habits and are slow to change.

While some movie theatre owners are taking steps to jam cell phone reception, Universal Theatres is embracing mobile technology. With a little help from Kapow they are using a SMS response system to help test out trailers and gauge audience response during screenings. Questions can be asked during certain parts of a movie to gather an accurate representation as viewers can answer while what they see is top of mind.

This mobile focus group is much like Matt Killingsworth's Track Your Happiness, which sends out various questions involving a user's current mood. The end result is a clear picture of when, where, and why a user is most or least happy. Both Track Your Happiness and Universal Theatres' response system benefit from this in-the-moment context, immediacy, and use of the already popular medium of text messaging. Companies that embrace this form of speedy customer feedback will have a clear competitive advantage in gathering more accurate data and improving their product.

[via @jliuzzo]

In the University of Michigan course, Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble, students  are learning to design, build, and play instruments on their iPhones. The course is taught by computer scientist and musician Georg Essl, who has organized a public performance planned for December 9 in Ann Arbor. Essel comments on the evolving use of mobile devices as musical instruments:

The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of musical performance. We're not tethered to the physics of traditional instruments. The touch-screen, microphone, GPS, compass, wireless sensor and accelerometer can all be transformed so that when you run your finger across the display, blow air into the mic, tilt or shake the phone, for example, different sounds emanate. We can do interesting, weird, unusual things.

The University of Michigan isn't the only academic institution embracing the iPhone for artistic expression, Stanford has its own Mobile Phone Orchestra. Perhaps in the near future we'll begin to see more of these mobile ensembles putting the iPhone's flexibility to use.

[via University of Michigan]