4 mobile killer-application of the coming year
In this post I tried to describe the most likely candidates among mobile applications and services for wide distribution in the coming year. Opinion is subjective, sometimes based on some expert opinions, sometimes contradicting them, but based on personal experience, nevertheless, I hope, always grounded. There were two reasons for writing this review: on the one hand, I wanted to show the prospects for the development of mobile services, evaluate their mass character, on the other hand, think about potential business models, so a separate emphasis was placed on the commercialization of these applications and services.
1. Mobile messaging
The cost of transferring 160 characters (Latin letters) via SMS costs about 5 cents, transfer 160 bytes via Internet-GPRS - approximately 0.006, that is, 1000 times cheaper! And although it is obvious that any messenger, along with messages, still sends a cloud of service information, constantly requests changes in the status of other users, it is obvious that the benefits of using mobile messengers are colossal. Moreover, there are already quite a large number of clients working with most popular protocols (from ICQ to Skype) for both Java ( JIMM , mICQ and others) and Symbian ( Agile Messenger , mobile QIP ). But as long as they remain the lot of 7% of innovators, and the rest may be aware of this opportunity, but use it a little and that is why - usually people from our contact list are online at the same time with us (for example, during the day at work or in the evening at home), At the same time, we can contact them only by SMS. In order for the mobile messaging to enter into competition with SMS, it is necessary first of all to promote this opportunity among non-technical people. And it has already begun - the advertising campaign of the mobile Mail.ru-Agent has recently begun in the press, and this is quite correct - the emphasis is on simplicity and cheapness. Second, a change in the paradigm of messenging is necessary. Now a person writing from a computer and from a mobile phone is in unequal conditions, it is obvious that the first one writes several times faster. One of the solutions may be the introduction of a special status (by the way, it has long been in MSN Messengere), signaling that a person is using a messenger from a phone, so he can communicate in a telegraph style. Another is the wide distribution of phones with QWERTY-keyboards, which in this case will not be heavy and cumbersome. I think that this is another matter of the coming year.
')
Who will earn on it: you can easily say who will lose on this - cellular operators. While most of the distributed clients are free, but no one bothers to offer some more convenient version for money. For example, I use Agile Messenger, which sends SMS to a two-dollar number on its own once a month, and does not use free QIP, because it is very buggy on my phone. Nothing prevents developers from embedding third-party mobile services there and making money on this as well.
2. Mobile video
Now everyone is raving about mobile video and TV, this is one of the hottest topics in the industry, but there are still few successful commercial models. I would venture to suggest that mobile video will evolve in an evolutionary way. Now mobile video exists in two epostias - small video clips of poor quality, downloaded from content providers or from a computer and then distributed via viral-bluetooth, and movies and series developed for mobile devices (smartphones and smartphones with large screens). And although everyone is hoping for 3G, which will accelerate mobile video, I think that it will still develop in the direction of downloading from a computer or viral distribution. Tariffs for data transfer in 3G are unlikely to please users, but the increase in screens, cheaper memory cards and the further spread of Bluetooth will increasingly increase the size and quality of video clips. Someone will download their music videos and make their own personal MTV, someone will watch the latest Lost or Desperate Housewives series in boring lectures or on the way to work. Most likely, the increase in the number of mobile video users will be sufficiently progressive and will not depend on third-generation networks, but rather on the screen size and battery life of the mobile phone. Now the screen size of a modern phone is around 1.5-2.2 inches. There will be 2.5 (ipod screen) without a significant increase in size - and happiness will come.
Who will earn on it: and again it seems that no one. However, despite the success of Russian torrent services, it can be assumed that you offer someone to download videos, TV series and movies in mobile formats with a small payment via SMS - this is quite possible to build a small stable-growing business. And if the operators will not be greedy with the tariffs for 3G, they will be able to strongly promote this market in the segment of non-Internet users. And God himself commanded to start actively selling porn movies, in this format they are much more functional than on the Internet or on DVD :)
3. Mobile VoIP (Voice over IP)
Anyone who has ever talked to the phone via Skype via Wi-Fi (like for example :) I will say that this is a fantastic feeling. Skype itself is a genius because it allows you to talk to a person in another city or country for free, and if you can do it from a regular phone without being tied to a computer with headphones and a microphone, this gives you tremendous freedom and money saving. The prerequisites for this are: the presence of wi-fi or 3G in the phone (3G already exists in many places, wi-fi so far only business devices and flagships of Nokia and SonyEricsson appear, but the same was with Bluetooth and with many other technologies ), widespread wi-fi and 3G networks (the first in Moscow is practically no problem, the second can be expected in 2008), and of course the presence and distribution of VoIP clients (one that supports Skype, Gtalk and MSN already - Fring , Nokia recently announced its collaboration with the Gizmo project , and if Nokia is interested in something, he and this will advance). In the first two or three years, this service will remain the lot of a small part of innovators and those who need long-distance calls, in the future everything will depend on the price of the issue - if calling via VoIP is easier and still cheaper (wi-fi and 3G traffic all most of them cost money) than through a mobile operator, the service can be very popular.
Who will earn on it: Strangely enough, mobile operators building 3G networks and developing Wi-Fi, as well as Wi-Fi operators. Of course, operators will lose part of voice traffic, but most likely this opportunity will spur people to call other cities and countries more than they do now and use a mobile phone rather than a landline phone or an IP telephony card.
Also, it is possible that, as in the case of SkypeOut, you will need to call a subscriber who is not in the client for a small amount of money. Well, all the possibilities open to the developers of mobile messengers are also available to the developers of clients for mobile VoIP
4. Mobile (photo / video) blogging
Photos or videos taken with the help of a mobile phone camera are still incomparable in quality with soap dishes, but are no longer perceived as horror-horror-horror. Video from mobile is flooded with Youtube, photos often flash on blogs - obviously, there is interest, but so far it is almost impossible to avoid a layer in the form of a computer, which you first need to upload a photo or video, and then upload to photo-video hosting. Although operators and third-party developers ( MOPOTO ) promote the ability to send photos or videos via MMS, this method is still quite complicated for the average user. You need a “one-button version” when you need to literally press one button to post content. And here you can move in two directions: firstly, phone manufacturers must embed this opportunity into their phones (as now you can immediately “send by MMS”, so in the future you can “post to the blog”). If this does not happen, then surely there will be special customers that allow you to do this in semi-automatic mode. Considering that the interest in microblogging, blogging and blogging (:))) is huge now - take Twitter and Jaiku , which already have this opportunity, I think in the next six months, the era of mobile blogging may well come.
Who will earn on this: almost everything. Vendors receive a new chip, with which you can sell a new model. Operators - additional, though not MMS, but traffic. Blog hosting platforms - community growth and its capitalization by known methods.
Of course, this list of candidates for killer-ap is not limited to, there is also mobile MMOGaming, mobile positioning (LBS), mobile widgets and others, but they will most likely be discussed another time.
1. Mobile messaging
The cost of transferring 160 characters (Latin letters) via SMS costs about 5 cents, transfer 160 bytes via Internet-GPRS - approximately 0.006, that is, 1000 times cheaper! And although it is obvious that any messenger, along with messages, still sends a cloud of service information, constantly requests changes in the status of other users, it is obvious that the benefits of using mobile messengers are colossal. Moreover, there are already quite a large number of clients working with most popular protocols (from ICQ to Skype) for both Java ( JIMM , mICQ and others) and Symbian ( Agile Messenger , mobile QIP ). But as long as they remain the lot of 7% of innovators, and the rest may be aware of this opportunity, but use it a little and that is why - usually people from our contact list are online at the same time with us (for example, during the day at work or in the evening at home), At the same time, we can contact them only by SMS. In order for the mobile messaging to enter into competition with SMS, it is necessary first of all to promote this opportunity among non-technical people. And it has already begun - the advertising campaign of the mobile Mail.ru-Agent has recently begun in the press, and this is quite correct - the emphasis is on simplicity and cheapness. Second, a change in the paradigm of messenging is necessary. Now a person writing from a computer and from a mobile phone is in unequal conditions, it is obvious that the first one writes several times faster. One of the solutions may be the introduction of a special status (by the way, it has long been in MSN Messengere), signaling that a person is using a messenger from a phone, so he can communicate in a telegraph style. Another is the wide distribution of phones with QWERTY-keyboards, which in this case will not be heavy and cumbersome. I think that this is another matter of the coming year.
')
Who will earn on it: you can easily say who will lose on this - cellular operators. While most of the distributed clients are free, but no one bothers to offer some more convenient version for money. For example, I use Agile Messenger, which sends SMS to a two-dollar number on its own once a month, and does not use free QIP, because it is very buggy on my phone. Nothing prevents developers from embedding third-party mobile services there and making money on this as well.
2. Mobile video
Now everyone is raving about mobile video and TV, this is one of the hottest topics in the industry, but there are still few successful commercial models. I would venture to suggest that mobile video will evolve in an evolutionary way. Now mobile video exists in two epostias - small video clips of poor quality, downloaded from content providers or from a computer and then distributed via viral-bluetooth, and movies and series developed for mobile devices (smartphones and smartphones with large screens). And although everyone is hoping for 3G, which will accelerate mobile video, I think that it will still develop in the direction of downloading from a computer or viral distribution. Tariffs for data transfer in 3G are unlikely to please users, but the increase in screens, cheaper memory cards and the further spread of Bluetooth will increasingly increase the size and quality of video clips. Someone will download their music videos and make their own personal MTV, someone will watch the latest Lost or Desperate Housewives series in boring lectures or on the way to work. Most likely, the increase in the number of mobile video users will be sufficiently progressive and will not depend on third-generation networks, but rather on the screen size and battery life of the mobile phone. Now the screen size of a modern phone is around 1.5-2.2 inches. There will be 2.5 (ipod screen) without a significant increase in size - and happiness will come.
Who will earn on it: and again it seems that no one. However, despite the success of Russian torrent services, it can be assumed that you offer someone to download videos, TV series and movies in mobile formats with a small payment via SMS - this is quite possible to build a small stable-growing business. And if the operators will not be greedy with the tariffs for 3G, they will be able to strongly promote this market in the segment of non-Internet users. And God himself commanded to start actively selling porn movies, in this format they are much more functional than on the Internet or on DVD :)
3. Mobile VoIP (Voice over IP)
Anyone who has ever talked to the phone via Skype via Wi-Fi (like for example :) I will say that this is a fantastic feeling. Skype itself is a genius because it allows you to talk to a person in another city or country for free, and if you can do it from a regular phone without being tied to a computer with headphones and a microphone, this gives you tremendous freedom and money saving. The prerequisites for this are: the presence of wi-fi or 3G in the phone (3G already exists in many places, wi-fi so far only business devices and flagships of Nokia and SonyEricsson appear, but the same was with Bluetooth and with many other technologies ), widespread wi-fi and 3G networks (the first in Moscow is practically no problem, the second can be expected in 2008), and of course the presence and distribution of VoIP clients (one that supports Skype, Gtalk and MSN already - Fring , Nokia recently announced its collaboration with the Gizmo project , and if Nokia is interested in something, he and this will advance). In the first two or three years, this service will remain the lot of a small part of innovators and those who need long-distance calls, in the future everything will depend on the price of the issue - if calling via VoIP is easier and still cheaper (wi-fi and 3G traffic all most of them cost money) than through a mobile operator, the service can be very popular.
Who will earn on it: Strangely enough, mobile operators building 3G networks and developing Wi-Fi, as well as Wi-Fi operators. Of course, operators will lose part of voice traffic, but most likely this opportunity will spur people to call other cities and countries more than they do now and use a mobile phone rather than a landline phone or an IP telephony card.
Also, it is possible that, as in the case of SkypeOut, you will need to call a subscriber who is not in the client for a small amount of money. Well, all the possibilities open to the developers of mobile messengers are also available to the developers of clients for mobile VoIP
4. Mobile (photo / video) blogging
Photos or videos taken with the help of a mobile phone camera are still incomparable in quality with soap dishes, but are no longer perceived as horror-horror-horror. Video from mobile is flooded with Youtube, photos often flash on blogs - obviously, there is interest, but so far it is almost impossible to avoid a layer in the form of a computer, which you first need to upload a photo or video, and then upload to photo-video hosting. Although operators and third-party developers ( MOPOTO ) promote the ability to send photos or videos via MMS, this method is still quite complicated for the average user. You need a “one-button version” when you need to literally press one button to post content. And here you can move in two directions: firstly, phone manufacturers must embed this opportunity into their phones (as now you can immediately “send by MMS”, so in the future you can “post to the blog”). If this does not happen, then surely there will be special customers that allow you to do this in semi-automatic mode. Considering that the interest in microblogging, blogging and blogging (:))) is huge now - take Twitter and Jaiku , which already have this opportunity, I think in the next six months, the era of mobile blogging may well come.
Who will earn on this: almost everything. Vendors receive a new chip, with which you can sell a new model. Operators - additional, though not MMS, but traffic. Blog hosting platforms - community growth and its capitalization by known methods.
Of course, this list of candidates for killer-ap is not limited to, there is also mobile MMOGaming, mobile positioning (LBS), mobile widgets and others, but they will most likely be discussed another time.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/8874/
All Articles