January linkage

I know I haven’t been blogging as much of late. It’s just so much easier to play on twitter. But I’ve made a sort of pact with myself to do more blogging this year and better capture some of my thoughts, projects and reading. I can’t promise I’ll keep it up mind, but let’s see how we go…

There’s a new UK Strategy Group which is looking at the Future of the Internet. Details about this Technology Strategy Board initiative is here. This is as much as I know about at the moment, but it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Victor Keegan’s (no relation!) view of the upcoming challenges for the mobile phone including LBS (location based services) and metadata so that we know more about where we are and who we are to give more relevance for mobile services.

Nice use of SMS for customer service by La Trouvaille restaurant in London’s Soho is noted here.

I’m pleased to be the first Female Friday interviewee for GomoNews. The fairly in-depth interview is here outlining my journey into the mobile world, what I think of mobile marketing and, in particular, the role of SMS and mobile internet.

I’ve been travelling a fair bit too. I had the pleasure of speaking at Hostelworld’s annual international conference for hostel owners in Dublin last week. Cian from GomoNews was in attendance so he captured my keynote speech including tips and hints on how to do mobile marketing on a tight budget. As an aside, Hostelworld has launched its iPhone app which has done amazingly well since its recent launch.

A comprehensive article on the smartphone market by Guy Agin. Well worth a read to put the different smartphone vendors and platforms into some kind of perspective and redraws the mobile platform map and explains the graph below in more detail.

Conceptual design and thinking behind a ‘five year phone’. Food for thought, especially after our Mobile Monday London goes to Brighton event on sustainability in mobile back on 18th January.

Technorati Tags: platforms,handsets,mobile internet,customer service,sms marketing

Preparing for Mobile World Congress

Yes, it's that time of year for folks working in mobile when it's all about Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I've had a bunch of expo passes to give away, courtesy of the lovely folks at BlackBerry who were our lead sponsor for Heroes of the Mobile Screen conference http://mobileheroes.net. I've now allocated all the passes via the Mobile Monday London Yahoo! group, but I'm very aware that not everyone managed to get one so these places will be worth a try to get one:

Android: http://sites.google.com/site/androidmwc/home
BlackBerry: http://uk.blackberry.com/campaign/appplanet/#tab_tab_developerday - click on the tab that says 'no code'
Vodafone JIL: http://jil.vodafone.com/app_planet/

I'll be running Swedish Beers - http://swedishbeers.org - on Wednesday evening 6.30pm until late at Dostrece. Admob - http://admob.com - is our lead sponsor and I'll have more sponsors to announce in the coming days.

More news and info as it comes...

Technorati Tags: mwc,mobile world congress,barcelona,android,blackberry,vodafone JIL,swedish beers

SMS continues to grow in the UK

The Mobile Data Association has released it’s latest SMS and MMS usage figures for the UK. And interesting reading they are too. MMS or picture messaging is still a tiny proportion of overall messaging, but it is there and it is increasing.

According to the MDA, the continued growth of messaging is highlighted by a 2009 daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages. 2009’s text message total was 96.8 billion (a 23% increase on 2008), while over 600 million picture messages were sent across the whole year.

Seasonal drivers still appear to propel the use of Picture Messaging, with 4.5 million picture messages being sent on Christmas Day itself – hence the spike in traffic in December -  while Network Operators’ figures also indicated an upturn in picture messaging during the recent cold snap. I’m guessing lots of people were comparing the snow in their area with friends and family.

Text messaging traffic over the recent festive period continued to rise proportionately.

Christmas Day    Increase on      NYE/ Day      Increase on 
2009                       2008                       2009/10                  2008
441,805,870          31%                   874,033,799               21% 

Assessing the findings of the MDA’s report, Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst at Quocirca, said: "New generation touchscreen handsets and the bundling of SMS messages into many tariffs has made texting easier, and seen its role develop. Now it is not only a convenient medium for a quick chat with friends, but also a way of participating in television voting and raising funds for needy charities. When a powerful call to action is given, the population of the UK often turn first towards their mobile phones." This is borne out with the recent campaigns to raise funds for BBC Children in Need and the DEC appeal for Haiti.

Q4 2009 Statistical findings

Text Messaging (SMS)

Total number of text messages (SMS) sent in:
2009 total 96.8 billion
2008 total 78.9 billion
2007 total 56.9 billion

Video and Picture messages (MMS)

Campaigns like the Radio 1 Free MMS Day appear to have had an effect on the figures by attracting 42,000 messages to the BBC radio station in just 24 hours with viewers contributing to an online mosaic of all their images (moderated of course). Let’s see if MMS continues to grow in 2010. The growth rate between 2008 and 2009 was just 9%, averaging 1.6m MMS per day. However, I’m in no doubt that SMS will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond.

Total number of picture messages (MMS) sent in:
2009 total 601 million
2008 total 553 million
2007 total 449 million

 

 

Source: Mobile Data Association / Text.It

Technorati Tags: sms,mms,messaging,picture messaging,text messaging,statistics,mda,text.it,mobile

Mobile Marketing not living up to its promises?

A lot of good stuff came out of the recent Battle of Big Thinking competition it seems and I’ve been taking a peek at the video of the event. Organised by APG (Account Planning Group) in association with Campaign magazine, the idea behind the event is to celebrate big thinking that leads to big ideas. Attendees heard more than 20 of the biggest thinkers in seven specialist areas – marketing, planning, innovation, the free space, global thinking, social media and mobile - talk about the most interesting things going on in their worlds.

The format is simple: three speakers per round, each given 15 minutes, with the audience voting at the end of each round. The winner of each round goes into an eliminator to find the supreme champion at the end of the day.

I didn’t attend, but Peter Sells, who heads up mobile for BBH, and who I met at Mobile World Congress this year in Barcelona, was the overall winner. And deservedly so. You can see a video of his speech and slides here and it’s well worth 20 minutes of your time if you have even a passing interest in mobile marketing. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: mobile marketing,BBH,Peter Sells,iphone,mobile applications,speech

Futureproof 3 – The Business of Mobile

Just as I thought all my travelling for the year was done, I find myself on a short jaunt to Dublin to speak at the Futureproof conference on The Business of Mobile. It was a whole day devoted to various aspects of mobile from mobile applications and entertainment to mobile marketing and a look at the future of mobile. I was asked to do a keynote on mobile marketing and advertising which, I’m pleased to say, seemed to resonate with the 100-strong audience. It was also great to catch up with friends old and new in Dublin. I do feel very much at home in Dublin’s fair city since I do have strong Irish roots. Next time, I’ll plan to stay longer so I get to see more of the city.

Anyway, I was asked if people could have a copy of my slides and rather than send out a chunky file to everyone, I thought it would make more sense to put it up on slideshare. So here it is.

Futureproof Conference Dublin Nov 09

View more presentations from Helen Keegan.

And a big thank you to Jimmy, Steve and Valerie who invited me over to speak and who looked after me so well.

Technorati Tags: mobile marketing,mobile advertising,technokitten,marketing campaign,case studies

You can still get involved…and be a mobile hero too

In case you hadn’t noticed, it's less than two weeks to go until Heroes of the Mobile Screen http://mobileheroes.net ... and there's still new stuff to announce... I haven’t been this busy with a project since launching ZagMe with Russell Buckley back in 2000. Anyway, I digress… back to Heroes.

So, first up - lovely sponsors who are helping to make all this happen for us. We can now confirm that Blackberry is a gold sponsor and Windows Live and Windows Phone are silver sponsors. WINplc is event sponsor. Smaato is sponsoring the lanyards, Kemp Little LLP is supporting the event and we'll have a few more to announce this week. And not only that, Blackberry has given us a bunch of Mobile World Congress passes to give away to delegates coming to the conference. Keep an eye on the Heroes twitter feed http://twitter.com/hotms and blog http://mobileheroes.net/blog to find out how to get your mitts on those lovely free passes.

Secondly, we have lots of lovely new speakers announced including Hugo Barra from Google, Oded Ran from Microsoft, George Nimeh from Iris, Phil Cox from Silicon Valley Bank, Giles Rhys Jones from Ogilvy, Mark Watts Jones from Orange and still more to be confirmed. Read all about them over at http://mobileheroes.net/speakers

Thirdly. You can still get involved. Well, of course you can buy a ticket (everyone who buys a ticket really makes our day and lots of lovely people have already bought tickets!). But there's also a way you can score a free one... We're still looking for companies who are targeting teens (age 17/18) with their mobile product, service, game, application or device and who want to get some constructive feedback from their teenage audience. Don't worry, it's not scary. Julia Shalet (pictured) is running this session and she knows what she's doing and has briefed the teenagers thoroughly. And she'll also brief the companies we choose thoroughly too so it becomes a useful experience for everyone involved. Anyway, we've had some people apply already, but we want to remind you that there's still time to apply and we really do want to see what you're made of. If you're interested, please email me ( helen [at] mobileheroes [dot] net ) or Dominic ( dominic [at] mobileheroes [dot] net ) to express your interest or to find out more about what's involved.

And finally, there are still some sponsorship opportunities to support the networking party afterwards. If you want to get involved in that, then please talk to me - ( helen [at] mobileheroes [dot] net ).

*Also a big thanks to our media and association partners for their support. Mobile Marketing Association, AIME, Mobile Data Association, IPC Media, Mobile Entertainment Magazine, Mobile Europe, Mobhappy, Mobile Zeitgeist, GoMoNews, Mobile Industry Review, The Really Mobile Project and many many more*

Don't forget to spread the word as well to your clients and colleagues. This isn't just for mobile industry insiders.

See you all on the 7th!