24% of Europeans are Landlineless

The EU released a study today based on interviews with over 26,000 people across 27 countries in the EU during November and December last year.

The most surprising finding … 24% of European households have cancelled their landline service, relying instead on mobile & VOIP services.

This is significant because the continued increase in landine defections will put tremendous pressure on carriers to introduce new & uniquely bundled services to meet customer demand.

Anytime there is tremendous market pressure to innovate, customer’s win. This global transition (numbers in the U.S. are similar) should have serious benefits for customers in price & offerings by Q4’08 as EoY planning begins for ‘09 and landline cashflow and margins look bleak.

Virgin hearts then steals Helio while SK dances

Friday brought news that Virgin Mobile acquired Helio from SK Telecom for the incredibly low, low price of $39M. To put this into perspective, Helio burned through $500M+ in cash to be ‘acquired’ for $39M. To increase the chances of success, Virgin & SK both re-upped into the new company to the tune of $50M.

Outstanding ROI there … yet SK has to be dancing that they found someone else to be part of the effort after Earthlink’s spectacular exit from the Helio experiment.

All in all, Virgin Mobile now has approx. $800M invested in their success and is, at best, marginally (and questionnably) profitable.

The MVNO market is not for the weak, or the poor … especially in the U.S. where monstrous handset subsidies rule the market & make 24-month customer lifecycles mandatory to find a single digit ROI/LTV on a customer by customer basis.

Mobile Growth's Global Scale - 10,000 Handsets / Hour

IDC India is reporting that 22M+ handsets shipped in Q1’08 (obviously in India).

This is roughly equal to 10,000 mobile phones shipping every single hour for the entire quarter.

Add to this the key metric that ChinaMobile has more customers than there are people in North America.

When you think about the scale of mobile’s global growth, don’t look domestically.

The Importance of M-Banking In Developing Nations

While I can’t confirm or deny The Guardian’s reading of txtinsight, they do have a very thoughtful piece on M-Banking & its importance in developing nations.

Availability & liquidity are two key elements we have been discussing here for quite some time … and it seems this thread is becoming increasingly relevant to the global market.

Well worth the read.

Cash in hand: why Africans are banking on the mobile phone

Yahoo! Takes A Proper Mobile Search Path

Earlier today Yahoo announced it added five (5) new mobile search partners to its Yahoo OneSearch initiative.

The partners include: 

• Mahanagar Telephon Nigam Limited (Hong Kong) 
• Smart Communications (Philippines)
• Digital Mobile (Philippines)
• SUN Cellular (Philippines)
• Vibo Telecom (Taiwan)
  

Each carrier will use the Yahoo! OneSearch capabilities on their certified handset decks.

Did you notice anything interesting?

These are all APAC carriers where Google has less of a foothold than in the U.S … and where Yahoo! can easily meet the localization requirements.

As an add-on to this announcement, Yahoo! also announced it has signed agreements with Idea Cellular (India) and Maxis Communications (Malaysia) for mobile advertising.

Right in line with the previous insight, eh?

Google, iPhone & Mobile Search Leadership

According to recent data from Nielsen Mobile, Google captured 61% of the mobile search market for the first four months of 2008.

Surprised? I didn’t think so.

While the iPhone & its easy-as-pie, built-in Google search capabilities have changed the way people search on mobile devices, and contribute wildly to this early lead, this isn’t the only reason Google has, and will maintain, a commanding lead in mobile search.

The critical success factor of mobile search share in the broadband-enabled world is brand recognition. Those who use computers for Web access already overwhelmingly use Google. Why would they use anything else on their mobile devices? Habits & expectations are hard to break & meet, respectively.

The only chance someone has to encroach on Google’s mobile search dominance is to engage an iPhone-like integration with manufacturers for phones in developing nations (read: less Google entrenchment) where habits & expectations for search have not yet been firmly entrenched from Web experience.

These nations represent the fastest growing mobile markets and enough depth and breadth to have a sizable impact on search over time.

This makes Google’s mantra of “don’t be evil” pretty important, doesn’t it?

Underbanked / Unbanked Segments To Drive Mobile Financial Services

For tens (hundreds?) of millions of people worldwide it is easier to get a mobile phone than it is to establish a formal banking relationship. This may be the result of sporadic income, credit problems or, in developing nations, simply the lack of formal financial infrastructure in which to participate.

This is a scary thought. There are more options to spend your money than there are to save it in some of the most impoverished locations on the planet.

While this inequity will persist for many years to come, there is a rapidly increasing number of mobile financial services (MFS) solutions which can have a dramatic impact on the banking options for these market segments / geographies.

These companies represent a tremendous opportunity yet are failing to solve the real problem for MFS.

While they are focusing on the ability to conduct transactions from the mobile phone, they are missing the larger issue which is the ability to provide basic banking services such as debit and savings accounts.

The ability to tie in cash management with the mobile device (which doubles as the physical or virtual payment vehicle at point of sale) is paramount to global success. This is not something relevant only to developing and/or impoverished nations. This is a huge feature request from the pre-paid market segment here in the U.S. where customers repeatedly ask for bank-like facilities ranging from debit platforms to savings accounts.

While there was a trend to bundle pre-paid debit cards with pre-paid mobile phone accounts, this appears to have met a quick demise.

The real solution is a combination of the two utilizing basic mobile commerce / mobile banking capabilities. This needs to take place in lowest common denominator handsets which need only support the global SMS standard in order to participate. Anything above this level will dramatically narrow the market and prevent the massive social change that basic, trusted banking services can provide. 

The lesson here is two-fold.

1) When designing mobile services & solutions, be sure to design for the lowest common denominator - customer and handset - if you wish to reach the entire market.

2) Think through the entire value chain when designing, developing & delivering broadband-like services on mobile devices. The chain is far more fractured than you think.

Is Usage Data Worth More Than Usage Fees?

Reuters Canada is reporting the NYSE has asked the SEC for permission to start selling real-time market data to media and Internet organizations starting in July.

Cutting right to the chase, this is a signal that the value of the market data is finally worth more than the value of the trades themselves. Fascinating value transition taking place right there with huge potential implications to the mobile sector.

How so?

Think about the value of the CDR’s (call detail records) in the carrier’s warehouses. Billions and billions of them sitting there, collecting virtual dust.

How much is it worth to a potential advertiser to:

• Have the ability to know someone calls for pizza on Friday night’s at 6pm and to automagically drop them a coupon / offer / reminder to order at, say, 5.30p? … or …
• Know someone calls interstate most frequently than intrastate and offer them air/train/fuel travel incentives?
  

Beyond the advertiser, how much is it worth to the customer to opt-in to receive such offers? With rising costs for fuel, food and energy, behavioral patterns will dramatically change.

Privacy pundits will have a field day with this, but it is not going to be long before this happens. Carriers (or brands) will ultimately be given permission by the mobile customer (end user) to have anonymous access to their CDR’s to improve the level of services and offers they can provide.

If you don’t believe this will happen, look at companies like SkyDeck. Right now, with your permission, SkyDeck mines your CDR’s to create an intelligent social network much in the same way Xobni does for e-mail.

Right now, if you don’t think this information is already being abstracted into larger ‘intelligence’ about mobile phone usage, you need to take your head out of the sand.

With the continued commoditization of all-you-can-talk/text/data plans, carriers are going to be forced to find new revenue streams to offset declining usage margins. Simultaneously, brands are going to have to find ways to fight through the noise to reach customers more intelligently and, most importantly, more meaningfully.

If the value to the mobile customer is high enough, they will gladly turn over anonymous data to receive better service / offers.

Just like with the NYSE, the usage data will, very shortly, be far more valuable to the carriers than the bargain basement rate their customers pay for usage.

Nokia Almost Enters Mobile Ad Network Fray

Earlier today Nokia took the first step to introducing its own mobile ad network with the introduction of the Nokia Advertising Alliance.

The objective of the program is to make mobile advertising easier for brands and customers by bringing together “leading mobile marketing solutions, including couponing, location-based targeting, image recognition, and other emerging technologies, to offer advertisers a simple way to increase consumer engagement.”

How much easier can it be than to join the alliance and be assured your ads reach every single Nokia handset on the planet?

As the globe’s largest handset provider, this is a significant opportunity for brands, and especially Nokia.

While there is nothing formally stated about the ads reaching every single Nokia handset in operation, how far behind can that ‘service’ really be?

This is the level of participation it will take to rival Google on the mobile ad front.

Nice job Nokia!

Baseball, Almost Live - Anywhere

Coinciding with the iPhone 3G announcements at the WWDC, MLB introduced an exclusive new iPhone app, MLB At Bat. This would not normally warrant attention except for one small thing - the app is built on top of MLB.com’s wildly popular Video Alerts infrastructure.

For those not familiar with Video Alerts, MLB brings you near-real time video highlights, updates, etc. about your favorite team or player. These highlights are available on the web and via iTunes including full game video for select match-ups.

This is a significant announcement because it includes optimized user experience components for fans and leverages the rapidly rising trend of time and place shifting video to mobile devices (including laptops).

My research also uncovered the fact that MLB At Bat service will integrate with the iPhone alert services to provide notification of in-game events and provide near-real-time video of these events. 

Pay close attention here. People don’t want real-time mobile TV. Poor adoption of mobile TV services illustrates this, especially when compared to place/time shifting via Tivo, DVR’s, Sling, ORB and others.

Fans want access to their content (recorded, ripped, whatever) anytime, anywhere. Highlight packages & full games from MLB are part of this desired content - especially when they are time-sensitive to in-game events.

By making baseball available anywhere, in an almost live fashion, MLB and Apple are at least two bases ahead of other video content players who are still looking to stream real-time TV content to mobile devices.