Translation:

1. We need more money from you but we can’t think of a smart way of doing this. So we’re going with the ‘inflation’ argument.
2. We’re not sticking the price up for any arbitrary reason. It’s inflation, man. Inflation! 
3. We did think about it a lot. We didn’t take the decision ‘lightly’. Indeed we flippin’ need the cash, alright? 
4. Please do NOT phone us. 

Goodness me.

I don’t have a problem with companies ensuring they have sufficient money to operate. I would rather Three took £5 or £10 off me and gave me some greater value, though.

Just sending me an email like this demonstrates the company is nigh on devoid of imagination. 

Utterly ridiculous — but a sign of the times.

If you haven’t checked out the Seductive Motion video featuring the new Samsung Smart TV, I strongly recommend taking a look at the video above. It’s promoting the company’s Smart TV range of televisions. I have to say I was pretty impressed at the technical innovation demonstrated in the advert.

The advertisement begins with a lady appearing to wave at the office block opposite her apartment. The chaps sitting at their desks in the office block are therefore astonished that she appears to be standing waving at them. And then she starts beckoning to them.

Cue a stampede as every guy jumps up from their desks and rushes over to the apartment opposite.

What these rushing chaps don’t realise is that the lady is actually using the motion control features of her Samsung Smart TV. The ah-hah moment at the end of the advert did impress me. You can control your Samsung just by waving at it? Nice. Although I would like to know what happens if the whole family waves at the TV. Which family member does your Samsung pay attention to? Oh the arguments…

Anyway have a look at the advert and see what you think. Do any readers have a Samsung Smart TV? I’ve been giving a lot of thought to buying one given the ‘connected’ capabilities (e.g. Skype, Lovefilm, BBC iPlayer, Facebook, Youtube etc.)

(This post is sponsored by Samsung Smart TV)

John Flynn, VP Global Accounts at LoopUp, comments on the success of the show and the networking and social events around it.

LoopUp’s focus is “making the everyday conferencing experience better for enterprise users”.

Over to John:

In about 48 hours the original report of Facebook hiring a few Apple engineers has now snowballed into what feels like an imminent announcement of shipping hardware!

Hiring a few engineers doesn’t build you a phone.

Creating a phone from scratch is a serious, serious affair — and today’s consumer is incredibly unforgiving of anything but ‘almost perfect’. Getting to that stage will require hundreds of millions of dollars. Whether it’s Facebook’s money or somebody else’s (e.g. acquisition or close partnership), it’s not a light decision.

Standing on the shoulders of someone else doesn’t make it easy. Easier, perhaps. But not easy.

Plus, you can’t get it wrong.

Yes you can certainly upgrade hardware — but you can’t get the initial one wrong. Just look at the Apple Antenna screw-up (and the resulting free bumper programme) if you’d like a high profile example.

It’s also a shocking, shocking market in which to compete.

The handset has moved from a device of utility (in the West) to a disposable fashion item, thanks largely to Apple’s iconic approach to the industry. So you’ve got us lot to contend with. We’re a difficult audience, but we’ve got a bit of cash to play around with.

Then you’ve got the bulk of the planet — the so called ‘developing’ markets — with rather different attitudes anchored in the functional nature of telephony. A $100 handset is a serious investment for someone earning $5 a day. However much you enjoy Facebook, you’re not going to be spending that on anything other than a guarantee of functionality from the likes of Nokia, HTC or RIM.

Why would Facebook bother with a phone?

Well if you sit back — and you’ve got a $16 billion to play with — then it’s quite easy to get hyper-paranoid. You have to think strategically. You have to think in years. You have to actually do something. And when you’ve got billions of dollars winking, smiling and dancing in front of you, stressing you out, you need to put them to work. You ideally need a big project to get stuck into.

If you start thinking about the existing mobile platforms as life threatening to Facebook, then yes, I can very well see why you’d want to crash the party. Apple’s integrated Twitter deal could well be weighing heavily. Google’s own tenacious focus on ‘+’ is certain to be baked even more closely into the next iteration of Android. Nokia and Microsoft? Well you could call them friendly, given Microsoft’s long time involvement with Facebook. A huge percentage of users on RIM’s platform are already Facebook users — indeed you might call RIM a very close friend — given it’s one of the only platforms that ships with a phenomenally capable Facebook client pre-installed.

It’s a question of perspective though.

If you killed Facebook on iOS tonight, the iPhone would be significantly less useful to tens or hundreds of millions of users.

This is the crux of the issue.

Consider it closely.

If you were denied Facebook access on your iPhone, would this materially decrease the value derived from your device?

Yes.

I think anyone who’s been a regular user of Facebook on iPhone would answer yes. Some would be sweating at the very thought.

Ok. Next question — stay with me.

So Facebook access is prohibited on iPhone. Would you change platforms to Android, Windows Phone or RIM as a consequence?

Now we’ve got a ball game.

I think most people would answer ‘no’ to the last question.

So there’s a value in having Facebook present on your platform. Indeed Facebook is a must-have. New platforms can’t launch unless there’s a Facebook app. It’s a ‘tick’ app. You have to have it on your platform.

Could Facebook be smothered by Google and Apple?

Could they seriously decrease the social network’s potency on their platforms, for their own commercial interests?

Arguably.

It’s a difficult sell, especially when all your friends are on Facebook. When you’ve uploaded gigabytes of photos to their galleries, when you use the platform as a communications medium. Facebook users can probably live with Apple integrating ‘tweet this’ into the menu structure but they wouldn’t wear much else designed to push them away from Facebook.

My brother is 25. He caught the cusp of the Facebook generation. He doesn’t do email any more. I don’t bother emailing him. Even SMS doesn’t get the same quality and immediate response as a Facebook message. For some, Facebook is the primary mechanism.

He’s not alone. I recently met a lady who works for a big Exhibition firm as an event marketing manager. It’s a serious position. She’s 26. She’s based in Sydney. She’s super-connected. But she doesn’t use email. She’s got an iPhone. Her work email stays on the laptop. She doesn’t use email personally. Instead she ‘Facebooks’. I found it astonishing. I even demanded to see her device email settings. They were blank. Her life is on Facebook. And she accesses it predominantly on her iPhone.

I quote these anecdotes to underpin the value that millions derive from Facebook. It’s sometimes difficult to get a handle on this when you’re working closely to the market (or if you can remember what Betamax was — i.e. you’re old).

Is Facebook feeling threatened?

You might comment that they’re in the perfect position at the moment. They could sit back and watch the continuing handset fight from the sidelines. They’re already the biggest mobile ‘platform’ around (something we discussed in detail on this week’s 361 Degrees podcast by the way). The big players can’t do without them, however much they might hint or tease.

Fast forward a few years and remember that you’ve already blown $1 billion on Instagram and you can easily see why Facebook might think it needs to do more to assure continued connectivity to its mobile users.

They’ve 500 million mobile users today but it won’t be long before that doubles to a billion. It won’t be long before a huge percentage are mobile-only, that is, they don’t ever bother with a desktop (and increasingly won’t own one).

Why should Facebook care about the ‘terminal’ (as the mobile operators famously refer to handsets). Why does that matter?

Facebook aren’t buying Dell.

That would be laughable.

They aren’t starting their own PC manufacturing plant either. That would silly, right?

Well it’s actually a similar proposition.

So why mobile?

Well, it’s a complete unknown. We don’t know where it’s going to be in 10 years. And that’s a real problem if you’ve got the weight of $16 billion and millions of investors demanding you make the right call — now.

If I was advising Facebook, I’d be telling them to start gazing into the future right now. I’d be highlighting that Apple’s dominance of the smartphone ecosystem is a brilliant, brilliant opportunity. It’s actually holding the whole marketplace back. We’re committed to this single-silo app ecosystem for at least 5 years. Everyone else is scrambling to try and replicate Apple’s creations. In most cases, everyone is aiming for parity. There’s little focus on anything beyond. Google’s done everyone a lot of favours by allowing Symbian-esque fragmentation that’s made life a flipping nightmare for developers — and their Wild West marketplace has helped dissuade consumers from jumping into the full connected experience that Android could offer.

There’s a lull in the industry right now. It’s perhaps best illustrated by the likes of the “retina display”. Simple, easy stuff that Apple can knock out. That’s not to diminish the company’s phenomenal capabilities. It’s just that single ‘halo’ features like this mask the relatively slow progress with the mobile experience. FaceTime, Retina, a slightly better camera, they’re all nice to have. They all help push the upgrades and keep the cash flowing into Apple without significantly changing things. If anything, Apple has an interest in maintaining the status quo. So does everyone else. The legions of developers all have an interest in a bit of stability — on the basis that the App Store is at least a known quantity and, yes, some folk can actually make some money on mobile.

What about the next paradigm shift though?

What about a unified personal experience on a device that completely moves the needle — that offers a single API to easily surface information at the point of need? What will it take for me to be able to walk out the office and have my device automatically recognise this, together with the time (e.g. 5pm), historical data and my empty diary and assume, therefore, that I’m probably heading to the train. Why not carefully surface the current train times, highlighting to me if there’s a 5 minute delay so that I can pick up my dry cleaning or get a coffee?

If you think about it, there’s a whole host of applications and services that need to talk to each other — at millisecond processing speeds — in order for this to work. It’s impossible on an iPhone with it’s (current) simple single-silo app architecture.

When you move this vision of future connectivity into the social world, you can begin to see the challenges and opportunities for Facebook.

The next-next-next mobile paradigm will be driven by our social networks. But not in the rather Fisher Price manner of today.

Speak to anyone at any handset manufacturer and they’ll tell you their future research demonstrates everything is all about social. It’s only social. That’s the fundamental. Even back when Nokia was hawking N97s, their top chaps were speaking of the need to begin focusing their device experience on a social framework, connected or based upon a map with a whole series of different visual and experiential planes (family & friends, friends from college, friends in home town, work colleagues from 10 years ago, the people I’ve just met — all skewed and visualised across 500 metres, 500km, or according to the nearest Starbucks).

Today’s app framework won’t exist. Instead they’ll be replaced with services. I don’t need a flipping app to tell me where the nearest Subway restaurant is, and to keep track of my Subway points. I expect all that to happen automatically in the background, surfaced to me on an interface that dynamically adjusts to the specific needs of the moment.

When you start thinking in these terms — when you start ‘blue-sky-ing’, it’s easy to appreciate the dilemma that one part of the Future Innovation team at Facebook is facing. You can see why it’s up at the top of the agenda. They’ve got to balance the needs of ‘now’ (i.e. buying Instagram) with the changing mobile landscape 1 year, 5 years and 10 years out.

So I’d be playing with it. I’d be getting my engineers to start coding these wild and exciting examples. Not as real world apps — but as proof-of-concepts (“POCs”). I need POCs so I can start playing with them, so I can begin to appreciate what I need to be getting my dotcom and mobile teams to be building now. I also need to be selling a vision to my partners — the HTCs, the Nokias, the Apples of this world. I need to make sure they ‘get’ my vision, ideally with a Facebook brand on it. So when BlackBerry 10 arrives, I want to be sure they’ve baked in the goods I’ll need in 3 years time.

This is one reason I’d want a load of Apple engineers hanging around.

It wouldn’t take much to persuade me that Facebook needs a phone, though, if only to do a ‘Nexus’ — to point the way to the industry. Yes it’s a load of work but if I could set a team of absolute geniuses free with a billion dollars to play with, what paradigm shifting technology could they deliver? You wouldn’t need to sell many to force a shift in the market. And, even that might be difficult given the fact Facebook itself has no experience selling hardware.

However it’s no secret that Facebook has been working very closely with many handset manufacturers for a long time. Most large manufacturers have a team (or, at least a senior single-point-of-contact) dedicated to the social network. There’s already a relationship there. So it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to envisage a “Built for Facebook” phone issued by one or a a few platforms — I’m thinking of an HTC Chat on steroids. I don’t mean just sticking a Facebook button on the phone.

But, to the subject of this diatribe: Why talk of the Facebook Phone is good news for the mobile industry

In no particular order:

• It’s another ‘thing’ that will continue to scare the mobile operator executives who’re already busy panicking about everything else — perhaps this might actually get them off the fence and encourage them to start innovating themselves (or simply admit defeat and become dumb yet profitable data pipes)
• It should hopefully get the device manufacturers opening their minds a little bit more too
• It’s a brilliant question to ask any senior executive, especially in the handset and operator world: “What’s your Facebook Phone strategy?” This single issue is keeping a lot of PR folk up at nights already. 
• It’s helping expand the view of the industry beyond the rather boring Apple/Google fixation
• It will focus attention from external third parties who might not have previously considered the value or importance of ‘social’ in the next decade’s mobile development — think investors, big conglomerates — phrases like, “And of course, we haven’t even touched on the possibility of the Facebook Phone” will shortly be finishing many future-gazing board meeting segments.
• The investor issue is rather important: Facebook is certainly known for being acquisitive and now they’ve (apparently) signalled a greater focus on mobile. Which means there’s another 800lb Gorilla to buy your investments. So investing in some crazy sounding social-related mobile stuff won’t feel as risky. 
• The very hint of Facebook actually testing hardware for deployment will have folk in and around this industry positively orgasming with excitement. 
• There’s potential for some rather cool headlines and market moves. I love big moves — when the world changes with just one story from the Wall Street Journal. Consider how you might react to: “Facebook buys RIM and Nokia; injects billions of dollars; signals intent to become #2 in mobile in 3 years; ‘We are now a mobile company,’ says Zuckberg” — well, we can but dream. That kind of competition would seriously sort the men from the boys.
• We do need a bit of competition in the industry — I’d like to see a world where Apple, Google, Nokia, RIM and Samsung were fully funded, fully capitalised and competing with each other on a fairly level playing field. Dream-worthy I know, but right now everything is so Apple-focused it’s difficult for anyone to have an independent thought outside that framework.

So, Mr Zuckerberg, whatever you’ve got planned, let’s hear about it soon. 

Hi, this is Momchil here with a video of Adam Linford presenting exciting new Truphone services.

Adam Linford, head of Labs at Truphone, discusses “Converged Services” such as “Parallel Ringing” which was demonstrated at the Keynote.

The BlackBerry 10 App, which is in Alpha state, will allow a complete feature set of the VoIp client for BlackBerry for the first time.

Over to Adam:

1) The huge, huge problem with Android’s wild west marketplace

2) The potential scale that Android malware can achieve in a short amount of time

3) The reality that consumers using Android need to seriously keep their wits about them

I have been pretty direct with my opinions (mostly negative) on what I feel has been a rather lukewarm approach from PhonePayPlus in the past. I’m pleased to see firm action from them.

Here’s the overview:

A malware attack targeted at 18 countries that cost unsuspecting users £15 every time they tried to open a ‘free’ app has been cut off by PhonepayPlus, the UK’s premium rate telephone services regulator.

Sanctions imposed by the regulator’s Tribunal will see all money returned to UK consumers on top of a £50,000 fine imposed on the provider of the premium rate shortcodes that enabled the apps to fraudulently charge smartphone users.

Fake apps of popular brands including Angry Birds, Assassins Creed and Cut the Rope were posted to Android app stores. These fake apps were advertised as free but contained malicious coding (malware) that charged the phone’s account £15 every time the app was opened (usually charged through three £5 premium rate texts). The malware suppressed the sent and received text messages that notify users they have been charged. It was only when consumers received their bill that they were alerted to the fraudulent charges.

This malware attack was dubbed RuFraud by security experts and approximately 14,000 downloads of the malicious apps were made worldwide. The RuFraud attack affected 1,391 mobile numbers in the UK and £27,850 was taken before the shortcode was suspended. Due to PhonepayPlus’ and industry’s swift action in identifying the malware, ensuring that the shortcode was suspended and that the money was held and not passed on to the fraudulent app developers, none of this £27,850 of UK consumers’ money reached the fraudsters.

PhonepayPlus investigated and took action against the provider, A1 Agregator Limited, who had control of, and responsibility for, the premium rate payment system which enabled the malware to fraudulently charge consumers’ mobile phone accounts. A1 Agregator Limited was issued a fine of £50,000, ordered to make refunds directly to ALL consumers within three months, whether or not they had complained and directed to seek prior permission for a year from PhonepayPlus to run any premium rate service in the UK.

Patrick Guthrie, PhonepayPlus’ Director of Strategy and Communications said:
“We will continue to clamp down on those who wish to take advantage of UK smartphone customers. We are very pleased that the tribunal ordered that everyone affected will get their money back and that a strong fine was imposed. The digital economy is vital to the UK’s future and we will continue to take action to maintain the confidence of the public.”

PhonepayPlus recently held the first UK mobile malware summit and works closely with the police, mobile networks and antivirus companies to combat the threat to UK consumers from premium rate malware.

Another alternative would be to make the app free to help support Exchange itself.

The offline mode sounds interesting. Will folk prefer to use the existing native email client though?

This fall, Microsoft plans to release two new native iOS applications on the App Store featuring the Metro user interface: Outlook Web App for Exchange 2012 users, and an updated mobile version of the Lync communications platform, AppleInsider has learned.

Microsoft is currently planning for both Outlook Web App and the new Lync to debut on the iOS App Store before the end of October, a person familiar with the upcoming software revealed. Both will be native iOS applications that render Web content with the same tiled Metro user interface style that can be found on Windows Phone.

via Microsoft working on new native iOS apps for Outlook Web App, Lync.

I’m about to go and find my iPad and download Autumn Dynasty based on the Youtube video trailer above. This is the first super-quality real time strategy (“RTS”) game I’ve seen deployed on an iPad. Indeed the chaps over at game review site Kotaku commented that it looks more like a PC game than anything you’d expect to see on a tablet.

Instead of frantically moving your mouse about your desk, you can control everything with touch — and there’s the obligatory multiplayer functionality too, bluetooth or online.

I used to play a lot of Age of Empires and Age of Mythology years ago so there’s still a place in my heart for RTS games (if not any time in my diary).

I can’t comment yet on the quality of the game itself — I’m just going by what I have seen online and at the game’s site. In terms of keeping up with what’s going on in the industry, Autumn Dynasty certainly looks worth examining.

It’s priced at $4.99 for the next few days so if you’re thinking about it, get it today (iTunes link).

I spent a few weeks with HTC’s One X handset recently. Just 20 minutes with the phone was enough for me to begin to appreciate why many geeks I know were salivating at the sheer concept of owning the device.

Granted, at MWC, I was able to take a quick look and play around with a few of the features, however I always find it far better to actually live with a device for a few days in order to form an opinion.

A lot of my peer group — especially those I work with — were actually marking the HTC One X launch date (via Vodafone) in their calendars. They treated the purchase, unboxing and activation as a nigh-on religious experience.

I can see why.

It’s a big phone. Very big. The screen is fantastic. It’s not too heavy — enough to indicate the quality, yet it sits nicely in your jacket pocket without doing a Nokia N90 (i.e. weighing down one side like a brick).

The camera is very nice indeed — I particularly liked being able to take photos during recording video. I’m a bit partial to the iPhone 4S camera — however I found the X camera quality as good (if not a tad better).

I think the graphics performance is probably one of the most striking elements. I was delighted with the way the unlock screen worked by dragging the little metallic circle up the screen. That could have been an abominable experience but it was super-smooth and utterly pleasing. I really could see the benefits of quad-core in that respect.

The integration with all the basic services I use from DropBox to SkyDrive to Gmail to Facebook and Twitter was brilliant. I was up and running with my ‘life’ in about 5 minutes. Indeed I need to be careful to separate the device from the platform. I still have a few concerns over Android and it’s suitability for new users, however you can’t argue with what it lets you achieve — and so efficiently.

The X felt nice in the hand. I quite like the ridge around the camera on the back of the phone. I liked handling the polycarbonate chassis. What’s more, I felt proud using it.

It is big though. Very big. That’s the way things seem to be going with these top-end phones nowadays for a whole set of reasons. So it did take a bit of adjustment. Like many others in it’s class, the HTC One X isn’t really meant for single handed operation. You ideally hold the phone in one hand and operate with the other. I did like using it for phone calls (once I got over the ‘HEY, I’M ON THE PHONE’ feeling that all big phones engender) in part because of it’s size. I like to speak INTO the phone, not into thin air.

What else? Well apps worked very nicely. Google Play runs beautifully on the X. I was searching and locating my favourites in seconds and they were installing with speed. Indeed it was highly satisfying to just tap-tap into my Google Play account and bring down all my standard apps. I’m still accustomed to Android devices taking a wee bit of time to download and then install — not so with the X.

I was particularly impressed at what HTC’s done with the “Watch” functionality. HTC Watch is the company’s answer to the iTunes Video store. I was pretty impressed with the choice of available movies and I was even more impressed at the keen pricing. Some decent films were only £0.05 to rent. This is the kind of thing HTC needs to be doing. I felt that service added a lot of value to ‘owning’ the device.

The default on-screen keyboard worked very well indeed. I was tempted to see if I could get the likes of Swype installed but in the end, I stayed with the default.

I did enjoy the camera experience, especially since I’m using Picasa for all the family photos — so the ability to stick them straight up from the device was very welcome.

As for battery life, I didn’t set my expectations high at all. However I’m pleased to say that I managed to get ‘a day’ out of the battery with significant use. Much like any other top-end smartphone though, when I hammered the phone with data intensive usage and then loads of video viewing, I was facing a red battery indicator within a few hours. Don’t expect miracles. I’m pleased to say I had to raise my expectations though.

I think it’s a very smart device.

If you’re giving it serious consideration, pop into the shops and check it out. Get hands on. Check out the keyboard. Check out the gorgeous screen. See what you make of the super little on-screen widgets. Make sure it’s the device for you before ‘spending’ your 24-months worth of contract on it.

Perhaps one of the best deals I’ve seen on the One X recently is from Three who’ll put one in your hand for just £29 up front and then £29 a month — for 24-months. That’ll give you 500 minutes, 5000 texts and all-you-can-eat data. Or pick one up for £439 sim-free from Amazon.

Nice work HTC.

I’m giving serious thought to swapping to one.

Very, very interesting move this.

If you live your life in-and-around WiFi you wouldn’t need a mobile operator…

Given the chance, you would probably turn your iPod Touch into a fully working iPhone, right? TextMe is launching in the U.S. today with an app that will get you close to that dream.

“The real vision is to deliver a full feature communication set to any connected device,” said TextMe co-founder Christophe Bach.

Bach explained that right now, people who want free communications on their Internet connected device will generally turn to Pinger for text, Tango for video, and Skype for calling. TextMe, put all three of those together in today’s release.

via TextMe turns your iPod into a phone with today’s launch (exclusive) | VentureBeat.

If so, please do send me an email (ewan@mobileindustryreview.com) and I’ll forward it directly to the chap in question. Here are the details:

Hi Ewan, hope you’re well.

Am looking for a superstar internationally experienced (operator savvy) solutions engineer based in London area. Very good salary and options available.

Anyone spring to mind? Welcome any intro’s you can provide.

Hope to see you soon

Please do tweet or forward this around to anyone you think might be interested.

A reader — a highly connected senior executive — emailed me this afternoon quoting this signature he’d just noticed.

First the offending text:

Sent from my Motorola Smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint

And now the reader’s comment:

I was actually a little bit sick in my mouth.. This is quite possibly the ugliest email sign off I’ve ever seen.

Yeah.

I have to agree.

The defaults like Sent from my iPhone or Sent from my BlackBerry are at least brief — just four words.

That Sprint signature — which definitely has the whiff of a corporate inspired wheeze from the operator’s marketing team — is a whopping 11 words.

The fact that the author of the text felt compelled to use the phrase “Motorola Smartphone” confounds me. Was it critical to point out that it’s a SMARTphone? Not a Motorola Dumbphone? And the “Now Network” (Sprint’s own branding) is a bit… well, I don’t think it works in this context.

Dear me.

I think this is probably the worst I’ve seen.

What about you? Have you witnessed anything like this?

I hope you’ve managed to take a listen to the 361 Degrees podcast that I produce with Ben and Rafe.

Ben runs Wireless Worker, Rafe runs the All About Symbian / All About Windows Phone sites. That gives us a combined distribution into the millions (thanks mostly to Rafe).

We’re now on our third rather popular series. I’ll need to get up to date stats from Ben (as he’s the webmaster for 361) but last time I asked, we had tens of thousands of listeners — just brilliant.

Each week we pick an issue (or series of issues) and explore it — or, at least, dig in around it.

We’ve got a special coming up though: We’re going ‘live’ again.

We did this for the Nokia World 2011 event back in September last year during Series 2 and we’re bringing the format back again. It was rather interesting to do the whole thing ‘live’ in front of an audience, especially when they’ve got access to alcohol. You had to be a Nokia World attendee to come along to that one though.

So thanks to both Nokia and leading digital agency LBi, we’re bringing back the live recordings — this time it’s open to all.

I strongly recommend coming along. For anyone who’s been to Unlimited Drinks (the MIR networking events) you’ll find the live recordings a familiar experience.

Think: Nice surroundings, free drinks and really good networking with uber smart people. I’m just looking down the public guest list and goodness me it’s a veritable who’s who so far. I think there will be a considerable amount of heckling. I reckon the questions will be fantastic.

The format is ‘Question Time’ — myself, Rafe and Ben and then an array of panelists. So far we’ve got the utterly eloquent Ilicco Elia. He’s Head of Mobile at LBi (and, as former Head of Mobile for Reuters, the man behind their inspired mobile strategy). We’ve also got the painfully smart mobile hotshot Ed Hodges. Ed is Head of Mobile, Business & Commercial at Royal Bank of Scotland. Previously he was the man responsible for sorting out Tesco’s mobile app strategy.

Ilicco and Ed will be brilliant. We’re aiming to add a few more guests. More on that soon.

The timings and details look like this:

When: 11th June 2012

Where: LBi HQ, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1

What: Part meet-up, part podcast recording… Starting with “Mobile Question Time”* a panel of mobile experts will debate topical (mobile) questions from the audience, all followed by drinks and socialising.

Doors: 6:00pm
Panel starts: 7:00pm
Networking until: 10:00pm

More info: Eventbrite

I think the panel will be entertaining. The networking will be second to none. If you’d like to meet some of the mobile influencers of London, come along.

We’ll need to be sharp with the timings I think as I reckon there will be a lot to be said. Ben will chair the discussion (he’ll be our David Dimbleby) whilst Rafe and I will join the panelists fielding questions from the audience. The resulting discussion will then be published as a special edition to the 361 Degrees podcast feed.

Now then, if you’d like to join me, all you need to do is register for a ticket. It’s free. You need to be really, really quick though. We’ve only got a total of 50 spaces. Ben and Rafe published their announcements of the event a few hours ago and the available spaces has now reduced to 32 already.

The event is generously sponsored by Nokia and by digital agency LBi — thank you chaps! We’re hosting it in LBi’s event space and, goodness me, you will be thoroughly impressed with their offices. Think warehouse chic meets science laboratory.

See you there!

“Yes it is,” I answered.

“Hello I’m calling from Three, your mobile service provider,” continued the chap.

“Good afternoon,” I replied.

I listened to the offer.

“We’d like to offer you a discounted rate on anything you see on our website for you or your family members.”

Oh dear, I thought. Carry on.

“And we’d like to offer you a special deal on an iPad 2 which is available without any up front cost.”

I bet it is.

“Would any of these be of interest to you? If so I would like to go through the offer which will take 2 minutes of your time.”

I declined politely. I explained that I’d already got an iPad 3. I then said I was “OK” with my existing arrangements. [I actually purchased the new iPad outright rather than bothering to give the business to an operator.]

The chap thanked me for my time. I thanked him. We went on our merry ways.

This is the culmination of weeks of missed calls from the mobile number 0800 358 9766. After about 6 missed calls (and no voicemails) I did a Google on the number and saw various people describing it as 3 sales. Eventually after what feels like a month of missed calls, I managed to answer in person today.

It’s a fascinating look into how mobile operators work. No text messages. No emails. No. Telephone only.

No customer records of any note.

Indeed 3 probably think I’m a relatively new customer given the fact I churned (at their sales person’s instruction) to get the new iPhone 4S.

They haven’t bothered tracking my wants or needs beyond whacking me on to a must-call-n-flog sales list.

You can guarantee that a few moments ago my record was checked off the ‘possibility’ list and assigned to the ‘not interested’ list.

Tomorrow or sometime next week, the Sales Director at 3 UK will be receiving an activity report. In there hidden amongst the figures will be my record.

They’ll probably try and call me in 6 months or so just in case my circumstances have changed.

For the avoidance of doubt though, I’m certainly in the market to sort out my telecommunications and to spend a lot. Just not with 3 at the moment. I didn’t feel like volunteering — as I have done before — that I’d like to get another iPad or that I’d like an HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy SIII etc., etc. I’ve tried this before — but the rather nice sales people typically can only add new additional lines, not upgrade or add to existing accounts..

So there we have it.

Another record of my experience interacting with a mobile operator. I do like to record these for posterity.

Jamie — for that was how the chap introduced himself during multiple calls — was at pains to point out that he, “Wasn’t in front of his computer,” and so couldn’t do anything. Apart from read his email and make calls.

Many companies make this kind of behaviour commonplace by preventing their employees and teams from getting anything done when they’re out of the office. Unless you’re carrying a flipping huge Dell laptop that needs to be secured by no less than six different “factors” before you can open Excel.

How long will it be reasonably acceptable for people to use the (often valid) excuse that they’re “not at their desk” as an explanation for why something can’t be done?

If you leave aside the usual IT problems with connecting remotely, I often find folk don’t do anything when they’re out of office because they can’t run Word, Excel, Powerpoint or some stupidly old back-end “application” can’t be accessed remotely.

Is it time yet for companies reconstruct their technology operations to enable work from anything and anywhere?

I wonder. Probably not. For most, being able to work fully from a mobile device is not yet a business critical requirement. Indeed I wonder how much of the UK workforce still defines “working” as being sat at their desk with Outlook open?

My family and I are taking a road trip around the UK before heading overseas and I’m trying to find a route planner that includes Points of Interest and Camp Sites (for a camper van). I have found lots of route planners but nothing that contains everything inside one app. Are you aware of anything that does it all in one? I have the AA route planner and there a whole heap of apps that show campsites but I’m struggling to find a single source of info for everything.

Any ideas?

Right then what do you reckon? Is all-in-one too much to ask for?

And you thought having an iPhone 4 or 4S made you an exclusive part of the tech elite?

Think again.

Is this the beginning of the end for niche Apple?

On the back of IBM’s rather exhaustive telecoms consumer survey, they’ve outlined some rather direct findings. Take this paragraph, for example:

The survey results reveal that globally only 18% are advocates, contrasting sharply with industries as retail and banking, where the level of advocacy is twice that of the telecom industry. A majority of customers – some 60% – are antagonistic toward their CSP ["Communications Service Provider"]. In other words, three out of every five customers have negative opinions about their communications providers. These antagonists cost more to support and are prone to speak negatively about their provider through social media, but are typically not telling their CSP about their problems.

via Creating loyalty is difficult | Telecom Asia.

What’s interesting here is that — broadly speaking — they’re telling me what I already know — but with the facts and figures to back it up. Shocking.

If anything, their post takes what I thought was the case and hits it for six. It’s worse than we thought.

The authors of the post are Nick Gurney (Managing Partner, Communications Sector) and Rob van den Dam, (Global Telecommunications Industry Leader).

Super work chaps.

Welcome to The USA. Calls cost 135ppm to make & 100ppm to receive. SMS 35p + your home rate & pic msg 37p. For your £5 per day you have 25MB of data, then it’s £3 per 1MB. Click http://live.vodafone.com/zr/sa1 for free price info or call +441635691700. Emergency 112

All fine. I’m certainly not happy with it. But I can live with it. Until Apple or somebody else fixes this ultra-annoying roaming price problem.

So I’ve been told I’ve got 25mb to play with, right?

Wrong.

I got this message a few hours later:

From Vodafone: To let you know it’s nearly midnight in the UK. If you do need to carry on using data after midnight, you’ll be charged a new daily rate of £3 per 1MB. To stop these alerts, text STOP to 40506 Sent MAY 13 @23:30 UK

So because Vodafone’s billing system can’t hack it, they’re shortly going to start nailing me for three-quid-a-meg.

This is ostensibly because the billing system works in British time.

That’s not my problem.

Well, actually, it is. They’ve made it my problem.

“If you do need to carry on using data,” reads the message.

Well?

What’s your stupid modus operandi, Vodafone? Are you telling me that I should be using my data abroad based on the British timezone?

Yes.

Goodness me it’s rubbish, isn’t it?

I don’t see why I should be forced into some stupid timezone-based usage model when that’s absolutely not what “25mb per day” means as any man-on-the-street would understand it.

Per day? Surely that means per 24-hour period? Which for simplicity, we define as “Monday” or “Tuesday”. Calendar days. That’s fine. Insisting that this calendar day must be limited to Newbury-Time isn’t good enough. Not for a global organisation like Vodafone.

I look forward to the day when these billing practices are completely smashed.

In the meantime, you’re doing yourself absolutely no favours Vodafone (other operators are doing similar). You’re just guaranteeing I will be even faster at leaving you the moment somebody steps up and fixes this.

Visual voicemail does fix this a little bit — but for the longest time I’ve wanted the ability to quickly scan the list of incoming messages to identify the most urgent. That’s precisely the functionality that the team at HulloMail has just added.

I’ve been using HulloMail for ages. I’ve also been following them for the longest time. Indeed if you want proof, just do a search for ‘HulloMail’ and you’ll probably find the first video with one of the company’s founders back in — I don’t know — 2009? Something like that.

Across the years Andy and his team have steadily iterated HulloMail to the point whereby today I consider it to be one of the best third-party voicemail systems out there. It’s way, way more advanced than Apple’s standard offering and if you’re unlucky enough to use an operator who doesn’t bother enabling visual voicemail, HulloMail is about a billion times better than clicking the voicemail button and having your phone call your operator’s creaking (and frankly, rubbish) voicemail system. (See this post for the background).

The latest HulloMail iteration now adds voice transcription — with a difference. It only transcribes the first 10 seconds. There are a few reasons for this.

Here’s Andy to explain why:

Over several years we have been testing different ‘fully’-automated transcription services that have fallen short of the mark. However, in Nuance we have found a partner that provides a balance of accuracy and quality of service for a highly competitive rate. And because it’s fully automated, we have been able to keep the cost as low as possible for our subscribers. We will be evolving our transcription product range over the coming months, so watch this space for updates.

It’s a smart fix. You need a heck of a lot of processing power to transcribe a 3 minute voicemail. But you can transcribe 10 seconds of voice really easily — especially given the first 10-seconds of most messages should, hopefully, be reasonably audible and therefore easier for the machine to understand. It also enables HulloMail to charge a single monthly fee for the facility, rather than cost-prohibitive per-message transcription fees.

You only need to glance at this screenshot featuring transcription enabled to see the difference:

The context afforded by the transcription is hugely, hugely valuable in determining what messages to prioritise.

You can turn on 10-second transcription in HulloMail for just £1.49 per month, billed to your iTunes account.

Right now this update is just for iPhone but expect it for other platforms soon. Get it in the app store.

Here’s the full release:

HulloMail™, providers of the award-winning voicemail mobile application for smartphones, has today incorporated a new voice-to-text transcription technology, Scribe™, into its SmartVoicemail™ mobile applications.

Hot on the heels of the launch of the Access Control hacking prevention tool, the first Scribe™ product, Get The Gist provides users with a 10-second ‘snapshot’ of their voicemails in text format within the app, therefore giving an indication of what the voicemail is about before playing back at a more convenient time.

The voicemail transcriptions are fully automated and use proven voice-to-text transcription technology that has been integrated in partnership with Nuance, a leader in voice and language solutions, including the Dragon Dictation application.

Get The Gist is today initially launching on HulloMail’s iPhone app, with the planned launch on its Android app scheduled within a matter of weeks.

Andy Munarriz, founder and CEO of HulloMail, commented on the launch; “Over several years we have been testing different ‘fully’-automated transcription services that have fallen short of the mark. However, in Nuance we have found a partner that provides a balance of accuracy and quality of service for a highly competitive rate. And because it’s fully automated, we have been able to keep the cost as low as possible for our subscribers. We will be evolving our transcription product range over the coming months, so watch this space for updates.”

John Pollard, vice president and general manager, voice-to-text services, Nuance Mobile said; “We’re very excited to work with HulloMail to bring innovations like Scribe to market. Consumers love the flexibility of being able to read their voicemails as text, and quickly decide whether to ignore, call back or simply respond with a text message. It’s voice messaging innovation that keeps people connected anywhere, anytime.”

Pricing and Availability:
The new Get The Gist service is initially available for iPhone users for a monthly subscription of £1.49GBP in the UK, $1.99USD in the USA and €1.59EUR in Ireland. This is for a maximum monthly allocation of 50 messages. The service will launch for Android devices soon – further details will follow shortly.

The full HulloMail SmartVoicemail™ apps are available to download from the iTunes store for iPhone, via Google Play for Android and the BlackBerry’s App World store for an annual fee of £5.99GBP UK, €5.99EUR in Europe and $5.99USD in the USA.

For more information regarding HulloMail, visit www.hullomail.com.

People who believe that Google is currently the biggest threat to mobile operators may not realise exactly how much time mobile customers are using on Facebook and how Facebook is currently changing the way over 800 million people communicate on a daily basis. The biggest difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook is a communication tool that people use to keep in touch with their family and friends every day.

via Facebook is killing the mobile operators' SMS traffic and revenue..

I’m normally not a fan of these kinds of over speculative posts however I do like to play out scenarios in my mind and this could be a highly successful one for Apple in the medium term.

Apple is indeed preparing a smaller version of its wildly popular iPad tablet and it will launch this coming October for between $200 and $250, a new report claims. Numerous earlier reports have suggested that an iPad with a 7.85-inch display will launch in the third or fourth quarter this year, and now Apple watcher iMore has reinforced these rumors

via Apple iPad mini set for October launch, $200-$250 price tag.

Two 8-year-old twin orangutans at Miami’s Jungle Island zoo, draw, play games and communicate using an iPad tablet. The park is one of several zoos experimenting with the interaction of apes and computers, allowing six orangutans to use Apple’s tablet to communicate as part of a mental stimulus program, Fox News reported.

via Apple iPad: so user friendly, apes use it to communicate.

I think this is a good move by Three. And it’s a smart move for IBM who’ve long been experts in this regard.

The wider issue, though, is shocking.

If you take the above research statement, based on IBM’s exhaustive 2011 Global Telecoms Survey, that’s ridiculously bad news for operators.

It’s obvious, though.

Of course!

Let me ask you this question: Assume you’re paying £35/month for your mobile service plan at the moment. Would you like to pay £40?

No.

Ok, next question: Still at the £35/month rate, would you like me, as your operator, to mess around with our price plan configurations in 2014 so that even though your basic rate stays the same, we screw you on out of bundle calls, so that you end up paying £45 a month on average?

No.

Ok, final question: Would you like me to simply decide to unilaterally raise the cost of calls citing some slight-of-hand ‘inflation’ reason (or equivalent smoke’n'mirrors) so that you end up paying £50 a month for the same basic service?

No.

Whatever way you analyse it, there’s no way I — or the rest of the country — wants to pay MORE money for the same OLD ROPE that you’re flogging me, Mr Operator.

This IBM research statement is exactly the same as the internal polling that most operators will show you only when they’re having a really, really bad day and the CEO is screaming about service innovation, yet again.

Their polling says the same: No consumers are prepared to pay more. Customers HATE paying more.

Correct.

The trouble is, it’s also wrong.

Well, it’s the interpretation that requires some guidance.

I’ll use myself as an example.

I’ve no intent whatsoever to pay more for the same services. If anything, I’d like to pay less.

And at the EXACT same time, I’d like to pay a lot more, for additional value.

THIS is where the internal operator polling screws up. Because they either routinely get it wrong, ask the wrong questions or don’t have the ability to incite enough delight in their customers (during survey) to show them service configurations that would have them throwing money at their operators.

So what would I pay more for?

Prioritised data services. I want a better service than the 12 year old sitting next to me in a restaurant. They’re messing around trying to download the latest delight from Rovio. I’m trying to download a powerpoint because I’ve got a conference call in five minutes. My stuff is more important. I’m not talking about net neutrality. I’m talking about business service levels vs consumer service levels. So I’d pay a lot more for that.

I’d pay for better, enhanced insurance that doesn’t require me to arse about visiting stores, handing over cracked phones, waiting for them to determine the screen is actually cracked (duh) and then waiting to be told when to re-visit for a replacement. No. I’d pay a lot more for that facility.

I’d like to buy my computing resources from my operator. I quite enjoy being able to walk out of a phone store with a ‘free’ iPhone — because Vodafone’s CFO is better at accounting than I am (and they’ve got a lot more fiscal resources than I do, as I’ve got curtains and sofas to pay for right now). So I’d like to do that with my MacBook Air. Or any other business technology.

While I’m at it, I wouldn’t mind rolling my email and server requirements into my operator spend every month.

I’d like to pay for enhanced services — one number, multiple devices, for example.

I’d like to pay for 2-4 week device loan programmes so I get sent new devices to try out on rotation.

I’d like to pay for family location monitoring, say £5 per month to locate my wife, my children, my car, myself etc.

I’d like real-time “emergency” help so that wherever I am, my operator will help me out of whatever fix I’m in.

I’d like guaranteed 2-hour handset and SIM replacement 24-hours a day, anywhere in mainland UK.

I’d pay more for unlimited, unmetered billing. So I don’t have to think about it.

I’d pay more for a proper roaming service plan.

I’d pay more for a concierge customer service telephone/online call centre, so that when I phone up, the person on the other end says “Hello Ewan” within 2-rings and doesn’t arse around with inane security questions — and who sorts out my every request right-away.

Blah blah blah.

Now I’m an edge case. But there’s a lot that consumers will pay for. The issue is that operators are spectacularly rubbish at doing anything about it.

Gone are the days that you can charge for landline calls. Or anything like this. It’s being commoditised down to next to nothing. It’s far too late already but the operators still have an opportunity to innovate before the wider market moves on.

First, let me say kudos to the Telefonica Digital team behind TU Me.

Second, let me say: Yah-boo-sucks to the rest of the mobile operator community that’s been standing still, watching paint dry for the last few years doing absolutely nothing to innovate anything more exciting than a slightly modified price plan.

TU Me is a single communications hub — think What’s App, but on steroids. It’s a smartphone app — iPhone initially — that enables you to send text messages, voice messages, photos, location information and even make calls. You don’t need to be a Telefonica customer to use it — it’ll work on any iPhone, anywhere, on any communications platform (cellular data or WiFi).

Brilliant!

I very much like the Telefonica Digital approach with TU Me? They’ve actually got out of bed and made something worthy of the new economy, the new world — this connected reality that we’re all beginning to inhabit. Put simply, TU Me really does make Apple’s current iteration of iMessage look like a highly limited rubbish first iteration. The Telefonica Digital team have done the Crocodile Dundee equivalent of “that’s not a knife, THIS is knife!” with TU Me.

To build, it took the team 6 months from zero to live. That is excellent. More of this please. If TU Me is a reflection of what we should expect from Telefonica Digital, I reckon we’ve got some very exciting times coming soon. And that’s not all. In the press release below, the company points out it’s got a lot more of this coming, including some “enhanced communications services” (also using the TU brand). Further, these new services will be made available to Telefonica customers “as part of their bundles”.

… interesting. Very interesting.

Bring it on.

So it’s iPhone-only today, but you’ll be able to pick it up for Android shortly. I really do encourage Telefonica to go the extra mile in this case and NOT favour any particular platform. I’d like to see them make TU Me available for:

- Windows Phone
- Symbian (YES! FOLK still use it!)
- BlackBerry 5-7, PlayBook & BB10
- And, er, maybe even Bada

The key, I think, is to remove every single possible excuse for folk not to bother using TU Me. iPhone, Android and RIM will cover a huge part of the company’s smartphone ecosystem. It’s important that families and friend groups that are all using different platforms aren’t put off and don’t just either stay with What’s App (or similar) or avoid even bothering to look at TU Me because of limited platform support.

Remove all the barriers.

I wonder if I could use TU Me on multiple handsets? So even if I had different phone numbers, I’d always get the same messages everywhere? I’ll need to check that out.

Spare a thought for the other mobile operator groups today. They must be having kittens over at the other operator HQs. (Vodafone Xone, anybody?). Deutsche Telecom? Heh. France Telecom are better positioned to respond swiftly with their Life Is Better On team who could certainly deliver similar.

Will we actively see TU Me marketed as a Telefonica / O2 / Movistar / Vivo properly via their standard mass-market, mass-media channels? That would really, really start to shake things up with the standard service proposition that hasn’t seen significant change for a long time.

Will we see TU Me included into international roaming bundles for Telefonica customers?

Can you imagine the potential value of being able to offer customers unlimited fair-use TU Me access for £5/week whilst abroad roaming? Folk would be insisting their families installed the service so that when they were abroad, they could stay in touch easily. It might even be worth Telefonica running a roaming ‘balance of payments’ debt to other operators to promote this and to gain loyalty, customers and additional revenues. If they did this, I think it’d be the bait I’d need to actually got off my arse and swap primary providers to O2 in the UK.

Wouldn’t it be great if they integrated something like Onavo compression or Mailsuite compression into the app so that when you’re abroad roaming, it automatically does it best to limit data use? Or perhaps it could go into ‘roaming mode’ whereby it only allows you to send/receive 200 characters per message and only allows the transmission of text to limit data use?

Yes, I can feel the sound of a thousand mobile strategy executives working through the night speculating on just what the launch of TU Me could herald for their particular customer segments or divisions. (I know: I’ve had a few calls on this today already!)

We shall see. Let’s see where this goes.

Nice work Telefonica.

The branding is excellent as well — TU Me (“too me”)? Love it.

Here’s the full release FYI:

Telefónica Digital today announces the launch of TU Me, a mobile app that enables communication and sharing via smartphones, keeping a record of every interaction through a simple, searchable timeline. TU Me offers one of the best integrated communications experiences on a smartphone and is now available to download from the Apple App Store. Free to use at launch, the service will continue to be developed with added value functionality.

TU Me is the first service from Telefónica Digital to launch directly to consumers and the first time Telefónica has launched a product worldwide, regardless of its operating markets.

Telefónica is committed to innovating in its core business of communications. Over the coming months, it will also use the TU brand to launch a number of enhanced communications services which its O2, movistar and Vivo businesses will make available to customers as part of their bundles.

TU Me is designed to make it as easy as possible for people to communicate with their friends and family using their smartphone. Users of TU Me can exchange text messages, make calls, leave voice messages, share photos and location information. Interactions are stored in a timeline format, making it easy to view, scroll through and keep a history of conversations.

TU Me has been developed to offer the best communications experience in an app and is built to rigorous phone industry standards. It is the only app of its kind that stores your content in the Cloud so that it is always available whenever you log into the app, even if you lose your device. It is also the only app that lets you make calls, send voice messages, instant messages, photos and location from one control within one screen, with no need to switch apps or tabs.

TU Me is initially available for iOS users with the Android version to follow shortly. The service is available for free to anyone with an iPhone worldwide, regardless of their network operator, and works via their mobile data plan or over Wi-Fi.

TU Me is the first product from Telefónica Digital to launch under the new TU brand and reached the market less than six months from the formation of the unit.

“We’ve seen the growing popularity of communications apps on smartphones but we believe we’ve gone one better with TU Me using our knowledge and insights of how people use their devices,” said Stephen Shurrock, Chief Commercial Officer at Telefónica Digital. “TU Me puts all your communications needs into one place, for free, and is a great way for people to stay in touch with those close to them. It’s also a testament to the innovation, speed and agility within Telefónica Digital.”

TU Me is available as a free download in Apple’s AppStore or visit www.tumeapp.com for more information or to sign up to receive information about upcoming releases for other operating systems.