The Seven Deadly C's, and One that Really Isn't - Understanding 7 C's of Cellphones

I've been talking at various private workshops for the past half year or so about the expansion of the needs of the mobile phone. This helps understand why there is such wide discrepancy with what the giants such as Motorola is doing in this space, compared to what Nokia is doing, or what SonyEricsson is up to, or say a niche player like RIM with its Blackberry or Apple with its iPhone. It also helps shred some light to where the thinking might be with a given mobile operator as well.

Let me tell you about the seven deadly sins. Or actually the Seven C's of Cellphones (as opposed to sailing the seven seas in this, the Year of the Bond, double-oh seven).

First C - Communication. The oldest need of mobile phones was calling. Or more accurately communication. This we received as a legacy of the fixed landline telecoms business. Voice calls. That is why phones have numbered dials, and we all have phone numbers. Because the early phone systems started to assign fixed landline owners phone numbers, and then later introduced the rotary dial with 10 digits to let us make the call connections ourselves, without the need to talk to an operator to connect our calls. We had wireless phones used in some government, police and military uses, but for consumer use we had to wait for cellular technology to give us mobility in our phone calls.

Invented in America, then the first commercial launch of cellular telephony was in fact in Japan by NTT Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, the Japanese incumbent in 1979. So from day 1, cellphones have served a communication need. And since then cellphones took over from all other forms of communication as the predominant communication channel. Today twice as many people make calls on cellphones than on fixed landline calls around the world, the total traffic and the total revenues on voice calls from mobile phones are dramatically larger than those on fixed landline phones. And in leading countries of the industrialized world such as Finland and Portugal households are abandoning fixed landlines altogether as all have mobile phones. 2.7 Billion cellphone subscriptions were in use at the end of 2006, compared with about 1.3 Billion landline phones.

In 1991 the first digital cellular network (the first cellphone network of the "second generation" or 2G) went live on a standard known as GSM, in Finland by the world's first challenger cellular network, Radiolinja (now known as Elisa). Yes, still carrying voice calls, but this technology also allowed the first use of a digital data service on mobile - SMS text messaging. The first SMS text message was sent on that network in 1991.

Today SMS has become the most widely used data application on the planet, with some 1.8 Billion people sending messages. The European average is nearing 2 SMS text messages sent per day per cellphone user, the British send 6, the South Koreans send 10, the Singaporeans send 12 and the Philippinos send 15 SMS text messages per day per subscriber. As we have reported in our book, all teenagers around the globe prefer SMS to any other form of communication from voice calls to e-mails to IM instant messaging. Even after they go to bed, teenagers still exchange late night messages with their mates. And even Americans are catching onto this, the fastest form of communication, with 42% of American cellphone owners already sending SMS text messages, and across all cellphone users, Americans already average over 0.5 SMS text messages sent per day. And yes, twice as many unique users are active users of SMS text messaging as are users of e-mail, over five times as many users of SMS than users of IM Instant Messaging. And every one of the 2.7 billion cellphone owners on the planet can be reached via SMS. So yes, communciation is the First C of Cellphones.

Second C - Consumption. In 1998 a Finnish internet provider named Saunalahti (aka Jippii Group) introduced a radical innovation for the cellphone. They invented the downloadable ringing tone. So about 9 years ago the first expansion of the cellphone began and phones offered the chance to consume content. The next year, 1999, Japanese NTT DoCoMo introduced the prototypical content portal service for cellphones, i-Mode. Today all cellphones and all networks offer the chances to consume content from the very basic SMS based news alerts to consuming WAP and web pages to downloading full track MP3 files to MMS multimedia messages to watching live TV and beyond.

Now, the interesting comparison is with the internet of course. While the consumtion ability was being invented for the cellphone in obscure corners of the world in Finland and Japan, four years earlier the internet had broken into the mainstream being on the covers of Newsweek and Time in 1994. And the internet offered a lot of content consumption opportunities back then, and massive amounts of content today. I forget the exact statistic, but the Discovery Channel had a programme on the information age, and said the equivalent amount of data, as in all the books in the Library of Congress, are moved on the internet globally every 16 minutes or something like that. Truly enormous volumes of information and entertainment there on the internet to be consumed. So what of the cellphone consumption.

Lets talk money. I was there employed by New York's first ISP, OCSNY, back in the early 1990s as our Director of Sales and Marketing. One of my ideas was to put an advertisement onto this new medium the internet. (I was a creative and brave guy back then, full of vigour and enthusiasm, ready to grasp new challenges, no grey hair etc ha-ha). And we did. We launched the world's first advertisement by a computer company to the fledgeling internet. It wasn't the first ad on the web, but among the first, and definitely the first by any company involved in computers or networking. And we hit a firestorm at the time, many calling us traitors and destroying the purity of the internet, introducing commerce and business to the internet, which by its very core philosophy should be free and embrace a philosophy of open-ness and sharing. Today the world has come a far distance from those early times and obviously just about every business of any relevance has a web presense. And far more than advertising, the internet soon started to develop paid content to the horror of the free-content-purists.

How is the internet content industry doing? Actually any new media channel will discover that the first content is of adult oriented nature. The first playing cards featured naked ladies, the first moving picture reels were peep shows, the first video cassette rental money was made in porn as were the first DVD sales. Yes, adult content drives any new media and internet was no exception. The adult industry discovered the internet first. A difficult industry to measure, the Internet Filter Review reported that in 2005 the web based adult content industry was worth 2.5 Billion dollars worldwide. And every major study reports that adult pages and adult content (and adult topics in search) continue to be the top content on the web. But today there are many other content industries on the web. The second largest content category is gambling at about 2 B dollars, and then videogaming at about 1.9 B dollars. The other content categories then such as music sales (think iTunes) or access to the premium pages of the Wall Street Journal and other such branded content sites etc, are in the single Billions in size. The total content industry for the 13 year old internet is about 25 billion dollars, led by porn and gambling. So thats our context.

Now consider the younger media channel. Content on mobile networks was just measured by Informa to be worth 31 Billion dollars. Oh? Yes ! Already much larger than internet content by revenues. And consider the maturity of cellphone content. Yes, adult entertainment is there at 1.7 B dollars as is gambling on cellphones at 1 B dollars globally, but already six content groups are larger than adult on mobile as a mass media channel. Led by mobile music at 8.8 B, we then have infotainment, images, videogames and web browsing all ahead of adult and gambling. Content on mobile is younger than web content, larger in dollar terms and more mature as a media channel. Not bad for a 9-year-old. And also remember that Hollywood earns under 30 Billion dollars in box office annually. The music industry earns less than 30 billion dollars of worldwide music sales. Videogaming software industry is also under 30 Billion dollars in size. But this 9-year old content media channel, mobile, already delivers more paid content than the total size of any of those giant media industries.

Would you want to be an Paramount in movies or a Warner in music or an EA in gaming? Now such giants are being born for the mobile content industry, and most of those companies are totally under the radar as mobile content appeared so suddenly and so much seems frivolous like the Crazy Frog ringing tone. Don't forget, like we've reported here, that one annoying ringing tone, Crazy Frog alone outsold all of iTunes worldwide in 2005. And of the internet darlings, eBay, AOL, Amazon, Yahoo and Google? Yes they are big internet companies, but the world's largest internet provider is NTT DoCoMo's domestic market i-Mode service in Japan ! Not only largest internet company by revenues, the i-Mode division of DoCoMo makes more profits than eBay, AOL, Amazon, Yahoo and Google combined. Yes, the cellphone has arrived, it is now a fully valid media channel - it is in fact 7th of the Mass Media - and has discovered its wings in the Second C: Content.

Third C - Creation. Then in 2001 a weird combination from the challenger carrier in Japan, J-Phone (since Vodafone KK now Softbank) combined what many thought was attempting a merger of airplanes and submarines. The introduction of the cameraphone. Not strictly the first integration of camera and cellphone but certainly the first mass market offering of cellphone and digital camera. And it took off like a rocket. In the next 18 months over 40% of J-Phone's customers had snapped up these cool new gadgets. And before you could say Nokia Motorola Ericsson Siemens Sony Samsung LG, all phone makers added the camera feature to the phones.

Now today nearly 100% of phones sold in Japan and South Korea are cameraphones. More than half of all phones sold worldwide are cameraphones. And even after removing the old phones due to the 18 month replacement cycles, there are about 1.2 Billion cameraphones in use, meaning there are more cameraphones (with colour screens) than all internet users worldwide. Oh? And this helps explain why 30% of American users of Flickr send pictures straight from cameraphones to Flickr. Why 90% of South Koreans do the same to their equivalent service, Cyworld. And why Japan last year became the first country where PC sales dropped by 18% - while cellphone sales keep setting new records. (and yes, Japan has one of the highest penetrations of broadband, highest speed broadband, and lowest cost broadband in the world). Like the Japanese ministry for communications reported last year, not only does Japan have more people accessing the web via cellphones, cellphone based internet users also access the internet more than PC based internet users.

Like our friend and the famed author in mobile Tony Fish says, the cellphone is available at the moment of creative inspiration. What use is our wonderful 8 megapixel digital camera if it is back home in its camera case, when we are on the road and a wonderful view is upon us and we want to snap a picture. But the trusty cameraphone is there with us, always. Literally always, as we've reported on the BDDO and Nokia studies, 7 out of 10 cellphone owners sleep with the phone within arm's reach. Its THAT personal. So yes, six years ago the cellphone added its third C: Creation.

Fourth C: Commerce. There had been pilot projects to allow consumers to make payments with cellphones for individual services as far back as 1998 for the two coca cola vending machines in Finland, or in 2000 in Norway to pay for parking etc. But the first mass consumer payment systems where cellphones could be used in multiple locations nationwide, were introduced in short succession in the Philippines by Smart and Globe.

Today various cellphone based payment systems are in most countries and range from paying your congestion charge in London by cellphone (20% already do) to paying for your public transportation in Helsinki (57% of single tickets to Helsinki's trams are paid by cellphone). In Slovenia you can pay by cellphone in McDonalds and in taxis. And the most advanced systems are in Japan and South Korea. In Japan the use of the keitai (the cellphone) as the mobile wallet is so advanced that they are already constructing apartment buildings where the locks operate by cellphone. And in South Korea Visa credit card company will ask you on a new Visa card approval on the phone "do you want plastic with the credit" as the credit card functionality will automatically be enabled on your cellphone and the old-fashioned plastic card for your wallet is a free optional extra, only really needed if you travel outside of South Korea. Some think that payments on mobile are limited to "micropayments." How wrong can you be. In Kenya the telecoms industry has set a limit that the maximum single transaction on cellphone based payment or money transfer is - drumroll  - a million US dollars. Yes, coming soon to a pocket near you, your taxes, your salary, your spare cash, your credit (and your keys, access passes, loyalty cards, etc) will be embedded onto your phone. Yes, the Cellphone has discovered its fourth C: Commerce.

Fifth C - Community. Then this crazy phenomenon around YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Second Life, World of Warcraft and blogging. What many call social networking. What we called digital communities in our book Communities Dominate Brands. What the Economist said on its cover story in April 2005 that is such a huge change that companies who don't understand digital communities will die. What Business Week said in its cover story in June 2005 that is so huge, its the biggest change since the industrial revolution (and we've had a few rather big changes since then, such as electricity, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, television, computers and the internet). And what Time put on the cover of the Person of the Year issue in 2006. User generated content, ie digital communities. Electronic communities had been around in academia, military and government in the mainframe computing environment from the 1970s (my nickname HatRat originates from mainframe computer e-mail use in 1983) and even in the PC the networked world from the 1980s but internet chat rooms really broke to the mainstream with mass market adoption of the intenet in 1994.

For contrast, while many smaller trials and niche markets for communities did exist on mobile - I was part of the trial to use SMS-chat on Elisa's network in 1998 for example. But for practical purposes the first mass market consumer communities for mobile were launched in South Korea by SK Telecom when Cyworld released its Mobile version in 2003. So communities have existed on the web for 13 years but on mobile only four years. Cyworld by the way, in a country one sixth the size of the USA, delivers more video uploads than YouTube does worldwide, and Cyworld is the world's second largest online music store behind iTunes. Not bad for a four-year old.

Today one of our favourite stories of a mobile community continues to be SeeMeTV who reward the original creators of videos on the 3G service that runs in Three/Hutchison networks such as those in the UK, Italy, Austria, Australia, etc by giving you a penny every time your content is viewed by someone. A hundred viewings, you earn a Euro. A thousand people watch your video, you earned 10 Euros, and so forth. Some people have earned thousands who have created the most popular content. And here at the Communities Dominate blogsite we of course celebrate the innovative community services whether Habbo Hotel that integrates online community with mobile payments, Flirtomatic that gives dating/flirting users the same experience on internet or phone, and MyNuMo which allows any creator of user-generated content to be paid by posting it on their mobile service.

So how do they compare? The community content revenues online on the PC based internet are under 2 billion dollars, with by far the biggest chunk coming from the MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) such as World of Warcraft, Lineage, Counterstrike, Everquest etc. Also some money is earned by the Second Life type environments and the online dating services like Match.com and professional communities like LinkedIn and Ecademy etc. But the social networking on mobile was measured to be worth over 3.45 billion dollars last year by Informa. Yes when digital community services, or mobile social networking if you prefer that term, or user-generated content on mobile, or mobile web 2.0 to use yet another common phrase (and the book title of our dear friend Ajit Jaokar) - has exploded from zero dollars in 2003 to 3.45 Billion in three years. That is definitely the world record for fastest growth of a new billion dollar industry ever. And enabled by what technology did you say? Mobile of course. Yes, the cellphone has discovered its fifth C: Community.

Sixth C: Commercials. I am sorry the name is so close to the term Commerce, but I do mean advertisments here, and am playing with the gimmick of the repeated letter C. so yes, Sixth C is Commericals, or mobile advertising if you will (as I often call it, mAd). This C should not be here in sixth, to be honest. It should be back there around the time of creation and commerce - as mobile advertising as a mass market offer was born in Japan when the country's largest mobile operator NTT DoCoMo got together with the country's largest ad agency, Dentsu and formed D2 the world's first major advertising company specializing on mobile. But I like to place this as the sixth in order of the C's to bring emphasis to it. In a few countries mobile advertising has taken off remarkably well in the past few years - Spain is an obvious example - but in most countries mAd is almost an afterthought, a minor component of the interactive part of a larger ad campaign. Cellphones? Good for perhaps some viral and some coupons perhaps, but not more. How wrong they are. As an advertising channel cellphones are the youngest obviously but also the most personal. They allow personalization of the ad message dramatically more accurately than ever before either in direct mail or on online ads.

The innovative cleverly completed mobile campaigns in every country have broken all kinds of records and expectatoins. We've reported of mAd campaigns here at our blogsite such as the one in America that had a 39% response rate. Or the amazing stats that in Japan 54% of all cellphone owners receive ads (opting in) and 44% of Japanese actually CLICK on ads on their phones. We've reported that nearly half of British teens interact with brands on their cellphones. That while only about one in three wants ads to their phones spontaneously, 8 out of 10 British teens will take ads happily if they can give them the benefits they want, such as topping up their prepaid phone account. (Did someone say Blyk?).

One of our heroes trailblazing in this mAd space is our dear friend and fellow blogger and author, Russell Buckley the MD of Admob. In a little over a year, Admob has already delivered 2 billion ads. We calculated that out of British interactive advertising, Admob alone - just one mobile advertising comapny - had cannibalized about 8% of all British interactive ads. In just over a YEAR. Any ad executives out there still asleep? What? What was that number again? Can you afford to ignore this media and advertising channel? And how big is it? ABI Media just reported that mobile advertising this year 2007 is worth 3 billion dollars worldwide. Time to wake up and smell the cellphone. And yes, Commercials are emerging as the sixth C of cellphones.

Seventh C: Control (as in Remote Control). And where will this all lead? The communication device in our pocket already has expanded to offer six converged functionalities and is rapidly becoming master of them all. What next? I'll tell you what next. In my research for my latest book, Digital Korea (out shortly, I'll give you full info when I have the first chapter to share with you). In South Korea - incidentially the world's most digitally connected country, leading even Japan in broadband adoption, ties Japan with broadband speed and price; but vastly leads Japan in 3G cellphones, WiFi/WiMax adoption, Digital TV, home robotics, videogaming, virtual worlds, penetration of avatars - yes funny stat, 43% of South Koreans have made an avatar of themselves. Have YOU made your first avatar depiction of yourself?

But yes, in South Korea today the cellphone is becoming the remote control for just about everything. There are remote control systems sold commercially to have your cellphone operate your home heating and air conditioning and security systems. Remote controls for your car and your home robot etc. And South Korea is where the 2D Barcodes (or QR codes, Quick Response) - those fuzzy squares that look like a fingerprint - were first introduced. Today you can't escape them, 2D barcodes are everywhere from wine bottles to airline tickets to restaurant menus to bus stops and billboards and magazine ads. I've added the 2D barcode to my business card now that Nokia has released its first phones that include the 2D barcode reader. But this is typical remote control function. What the 2D barcode does, is that it eliminates typing altogether. Just use the camera on your phone, point it at the square, and voila! like magic, all the typing appears on your screen. Almost like reading your mind.

We are starting to get to the latest, the seventh function of the phone as a remote control device.

So there, the Seven C's of Cellphones. Communication, Consumption, Creation, Commerce, Community, Commercials and Control.

The one C very consipicuous in its absence is Computing? Don't we need computing? well, in a way yes, the modern smarphone is actually a very smart pocket computer yes, but we - consumers that is - don't need computing. We don't use the scientific rapid calculation function of our PCs as computers. We don't do computational fluid analysis or multiple regression analysis or weather map forecasting or econometrics. It so happens, that the computer is an excellent multi-purpose device, but most users (outside of the mathematicians and perhaps the analysts say in finance and some very serious engineers) don't use the computer for computing. We use it for internet acccess, to write e-mails (and blogs) and generate powerpoints and edit our digital photos etc. We need those functionalities, but we don't need to compute, with our computers.

So for the cellphone, does it need to be a computer? No. But most likely it will continue to be a pocket computer simply because computers today are so efficient in multiple different tasks. But that is why you don't see Computing as the eighth of the C's of Cellphones.

Now what can we learn from this? A lot. How far is your company thinking into the future of cellphones. If you only try to do communication (say Blackberry) you are abandoning all the newer and greater stuff. If you focus on consumption (consider Ed Zander's recent comment how fantastic is his latest Motorola phone with 30 frames per second viewing) then you are still only the second stage. Cameras - consider SonyEricsson's stategy of the Walkman phones (consumption) and the Cybershot phones (creation). Rather clever to have this split in their focus. And who does community? Well, the first phone maker to get it was obviously Nokia with its Lifeblog. Commerce? Look at NTT DoCoMo's aggressive push of its Felica (In Japan the mobile operator specifies the phone and then orders it to spec from the manufacturers, even the phone maker's brand is not visible on the front of the phone in Japan). Commercials? Control?

And operators? While most operators like Orange, Vodafone etc tend to focus how great they are at delivering content anywhere, did you notice T-Mobile's sudden announcements earlier this year that now they will connect communities ! Wow, this will be big. Clear shift in their focus. Or that Blyk that I mentioned, the MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that focuses on advertising sponsored telecoms.

And what of the pending iPhone? I am afraid Apple is still a bit behind the curve - typical of American players in this industry - focusing so much on "its an ipod, its the internet, its a phone" - sounds to me that Steve Jobs was thinking the iPhone is communication and consumption (primarily) even minimizing the camera function (only 2 megapixel, with no flash) so not even getting the third C of creation. But don't worry, Apple is the best at making things work for its consumers. Even if the first edition of the iPhone turns out to be incomplete, the second release of the iPhone will be the utmost iconic pinnalce of cellphone design, as Apple will have by then incorporated the feeback from users from the first iPhone and adjusted.

But there. A journey into how our phone has evolved and taken on ever more functionality. And it poses particular problems. I counted that my first cellphone (a Nokia 2110 in 1995) has 15 buttons including the on/off switch. 6 years later my first GPRS phone had climbed up to 18 buttons. But now as the phones take on ever more functionality, today my Nokia N-93 has 31 buttons !  Here too, the iPhone comes at a critical time for our industry. We cannot keep on adding buttons to the tiny device, something HAS to be done, and much of that has to be in intelligent design. Now, personally, I don't think a "one button" solution by Apple is the perfect solution with all others on the multitouch screen, but we do need vital innovation in this space. That is why companies like Fjord are now in so high demand as operators and manufacturers alike need new innovation to use intelligent design in the cellphone interface. Fjord was the company by the way, behind for example Nokia's Lifeblog and T-Mobile's Fave-5 user interface that focuses on your friends, mates, community rather than the classic function icons similar to the personal computers of 15 years ago.

Stay tuned, its going to be an exciting time for cellphones

FREE INFORMATION - for those who would like to understand the basics of the mobile telecoms industry, its current size, replacement cycles, second subscriptions, mobile content revenues, SMS texting usage etc, I have written a concise 2 page Thought Piece on Size of Mobile Industry. Send me an e-mail to  tomi at tomiahonen dot com   and I'll send it to you for free.

Comments

[Lars]

Hi Tomi:

Great read as always, Thanks!

I'm confused about your QR code comment under Seventh C:

"And South Korea is where the 2D Barcodes (or QR codes, Quick Response) - those fuzzy squares that look like a fingerprint - were first introduced."

Was always under the impression that was Made in Japan..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

Cheers,

Lars

[Javier Marti]

The QR barcode posters will be a great enhancement to small business and freelance commerce in general through guerrilla marketing.
Example: my ex girlfriend, a proffesional dancer, teaches salsa dancing in Madrid. To promote her services, she uses posters. However, many people forget what they saw on a poster as soon as they read it.
So with the phone as a tool, we'll see advances like the QR codes further activate sectors of the economy we didn't even think of.
Now that person can point, click, add a reminder, and attend the class. This woudln't have happened before, when it all relies on our memory.
Think what this means for other artistic events: DJs and rave parties, street teathre (popular in many countries)...small businesses that can't place a poster on a pillar of a street for legal reasons but can anounce their products in a busy UK newsagent's window will do so, and this time, will profit.
Result: more money will exchange hands. More people will attend more events. Powerful, yet almost invisible changes...

Regards
Javier

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Lars and Javier

Thanks for the comments

Lars, am not actually sure. The first time I saw 2D barcodes was in South Korea, not in Japan, and NTT DoCoMo launched them in Japan in 2004 I believe, after they had been launched in Korea? But it may well be that they were invented in Japan. I'll need to dig into that.

Javier, good point, excellent examples of where 2D barcodes can be used.

Thanks for stopping by and posting the comments!

Tomi :-)

[Krzysztof]

Hi Tomi,
Excellent summary, especially tasty while being read on bright and shiny Nokia N 95 (context :). Being also 007 fan can’t help reflection how much of Bond’s toolkit phones have become. One piece is missing form me in article namely GPS/LBS & SatNav services. Can not find C – name for this. Context again?
Cheers

Krzysztof

[cooli]

Great piece again Tomi :-)

What about another C (the 8th) about Context? It just came to my mind so my thinking would need some time to mature, but the cellphone being so personal, so much with us, is a key element to understand our "context" and share/use it in an intelligent way.
By context, I mean many things here: this could be our location (GPS, cellID), our surroundings (noise, speed, "in the pocket", "charging", bluetooth neighbours, camera view...), our current activity (phone profile, phone usage, phone calendar, ...), any extra sensor linked to the phone.

What do you think about it?

Cheers!

[Lars]

Hi Tomi:

Indeed DoCoMo made the QR Code reader a standard pre-install for all models in the 505-series:
http://www.nttdocomo.com/pr/2003/001112.html

We have video of the 505 presser in spring 2003 here:
http://wirelesswatch.jp/2003/05/07/wireless-watch-japan-update/

Pretty sure it was on a few select 504 models from 2002 but would have to check.

At any-rate once DoCoMo started pushing that in their marketing things really got rolling thanks in no small part to the penetration of camerphones and the fact that DensoWave gave away their claim to royalty fees to create and use the product.. 8-)

Here's more on the history here:
http://www.denso-wave.com/qrcode/index-e.html
I know many people had already downloaded the free app. and there was already plenty of QR codes in newspaper/magazines back in 2001 when I 1st got here!

Cheers,

Lars

PS:
Cooli -- Context is another great C for the list.. 8-)

[David Harper]

Hi Tomi. I've been meaning to connect with you for a while. Please ping me at my email address. Cheers. David Harper, Founder, Winksite.com

[Yoke Kong]

Hi Tomi,

Great post! Just for your update, Globe Telecoms has now expanded their G-Cash m-commerce service to their citizens working overseas. This is now live in Hong Kong with CSL, and soon to be launched in Singapore and Malaysia.

Oh yeah, I agree too...Context is certainly another great C.

Cheers !

[no.wires]

Hej Tomi

excellent article, yet you forget one C - probably the biggest C of them all ... and the one that a lot of operators start to forget while chasing the other Cs: COVERAGE.

"No coverage, no good" as the old saying goes, and I am afraid that in Europe at least coverage has gotten worse instead of better over the years. I remember a mobile operator in Austria in the late 90ies advertising their "hiss-free" network. Would doubt that this operator or any other would dare to run a campaign like this today. If the operators don't focus back on the most relevant service of them all, ie. providing ubiquitous connectivity I am afraid all your other Cs won't come to pass.

Interestingly enough, if you ask customers why they stick to one network and don't shift to the other the answer is almost always "Better coverage", also if you look at market shares the lions share most of the time goes to the operator with the best coverage. Maybe we should have a movement: Customer for coverage!

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Krzysztof, Cooli, Lars, David, Yoke and no.Wires

Thanks for the comments

Krzystof - ha-ha, very good yes. As a die-hard 007 fan and as a gadget freak the Bond movie series has been a sheer delight in the fantastic inventions (except this Casino Royale, with no gadgets, and no Q ! and no villain's lair and no Moneypenny and no....). Its what I originally loved about the very first brick-sized Nokia Communicator - that it looked like a large mobile phone, but wow, like a James Bond gadget, it held a secret inside, a fully operational communication centre ha-ha.. There definitely always was an element of the Bond kit in my subsequent Communciators, and I love that kind of magic also to the N-93 with its twists and turns, morphing into various configurations...

The location need? Hmmm. Is this really a something we as humans have as a need or is it more of a function to make the other needs better served. I see GPS and actually all of the context parts as "enablers" and "features" which make our communication better, our consumption better, our creativity better. Much like a colour screen helps us rather than a monochrome screen. I definitely yes see a value out of GPS and location (it is the first of my Six M's in my mobile service creation theory after all) but would I put it as one of the seven (or eight) capabilities of the phone, no I wouldn't.

Its like roaming is for voice calls and messages. We really don't "need" roaming, we need to be connected. And the phone service which has roaming (early mobile phone services did not until the NMT standard came along from Scandinavia) is better at serving our communication need.

Its a bit of how you define it, I guess.

Cooli - the same with context as the above. I definitely see the benefit, not so much this or next year, but a few years down the line when it becomes a common element of advanced services. But again, it is not something we - people - inherently need. It is something that the technology - a mobile service - can use to serve our needs (to communicate, to consume, to create...) better. A bit like IP (internet protocol). We don't need IP. But in today's digital internet-oriented world, its rather silly to develop services which are "not IP based". Its an enabler, which helps make those services perform better for us.

What I mean is that we don't need context, but we can derive GREAT benefits, when context is enabled in our services like communciation, creation, commerce, etc..

Lars - great, thank you very much. As you know I lived in London, and my contacts with Japan were infrequent, usually once or twice per year - often meeting you in fact - and much of my Japan knowledge came from my European NTT DoCoMo friends and your wonderful Wireless Watch Japan website and some other good Japan sources in English.

David - thanks, we've now made contact off-line.

Yoke - Wow, that is VERY cool. Thanks ! I'm going to post about it at Forum Oxford, that's great news. About time too, ha-ha, we do need more international cross-operability in mobile commerce and mobile banking etc.

no.wires - good point about coverage being important. Its easy to forget if you only live in major cities and commute between the aiport and major hotels etc ha-ha. But seriously, this is another enabler. We don't need coverage. We need our communication, or our consumption (for our creativity we don't even need coverage ie our cameraphone to be able to capture the image, for that we need light ha-ha).

So yes, coverage is absolutely vital for a mobile service. But it is NOT a need we humans have, it is a functionality the network needs to enable our communcication, consumption, commerce, community interaction etc.

For all our readers - about GPS/presence/context/coverage:

There is a clear distinction in these, WHAT need is being served and HOW it is being served, in terms of an enabling technology. WHAT is the Communication, Consumption, Commerce, etc. HOW is coverage, context, GPS etc.

Consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If we say shelter is a need. And its raining. You could say that therefore we need a roof. No, a roof is one way HOW to deliver shelter, but we can also dig a hole to go underground or have waterproof clothing or use an umbrella to get the equivalent shelter. That is the HOW.

I hope that helped clear it up.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

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