Mobile Fix: MWC 2014 round-up
As Mobile World Congress closes for another year, Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive!, rounds-up the key take-outs – and explores some of the new opportunities.
Mobile World Congress is big. Really big. 80,000 people and eight huge halls – plus many off site parties and events.
It’s changed and grown over the years – this post reflects on those changes – and 2014 saw it join Cannes, CES and SXSW as a place for brands and agencies to go learn what’s happening in Tech.
Advertising has been the slightly poor relation in previous years, but it’s now clearly centre stage as the money ramps up – and the business models focus on ad revenue as the key monetisation.
Our 4Ps of Mobile Framework is now virtually vintage, but we still find it a good way to sort through the mélange of news, views, announcements and trends across mobile and social. So for Mobile Word Congress it’s the perfect tool.
Devices
MWC has always been about devices – we can remember seeing the DoCoMO stand covered in the next seasons new phones, many brightly coloured or patterned depending on which fashion company they had partnered with that year.
Whilst Google and Apple don’t show up, Samsung does and this year chose to announce significant new devices. The Galaxy S5 is the latest weapon in the war between Apple and Samsung for high end customers – those paying $500+ for a phone – often through a pricey monthly contract.
The screen on the S5 is a little bigger at 5.1 inches (the iPhone 5 is 4 inches) and has fingerprint scanner for locking the phone and authenticating PayPal transactions. We’re told people were trying out the devices, locking them with their fingerprints then wandering off, leaving them useless for anyone else. Oh, and it’s now waterproof.
Its an iteration of the hugely successful S4 and not that exciting; supporting our view that smartphones are now like the TV market – it’s very hard to stand out with hardware. Just as it’s hard to differentiate an LG from a Samsung in the TV department at John Lewis, it’s now hard to differentiate a Samsung from a HTC etc in the phone section.
Everyone makes the bezels as small as possible so their screens are as big as possible, and the only opportunity for ‘design’ is the rear. To be fair an iPhone remains instantly recognisable – it will be interesting to see what the iPhone 6 does to stand out.
Sony launched nicely designed tablets and smartphones, like just about everything else using Android.
Even Nokia announced a new phone that uses Android – sort of. They have chosen to use a forked version (like Amazon does) that means Google isn’t baked in, which must please their new owners Microsoft. They use their own Nokia appstore (it is relatively easy for developers to teak their android apps so they will work on these devices) and a range of MS products like Skype and Outlook. The interface is similar to the tiles that Windows Phone uses.
They are cheap, but are they cheap enough? Many OEMs see the low end market as the opportunity to go after and MWC was full of Chinese companies with good Android smartphones wholesaling at around $40.
Firefox announced their own phone on their own OS that would sell for $25 – general view is that Android will probably get there first.
Wearables fit into Devices too and just like CES, everyone seems to have one on their stand. Samsung announced 3 new ones and their GearFit got lots of attention. With a curved screen and a heart rate sensor and we think it could trump the Nike Fuelband etc. But it is still most useful when paired with a phone, so again wearables peripherals.
Whilst Google didn’t show up it did steal some headlines with a leak that it is developing a Nexus watch, to be announced in June. Along with the Apple entry into this space that everyone expects, we think people will wait and see. Watches are so much of a statement we don’t think many will spend money on a Samsung etc that could look very dated against an Apple or Google device.
One other interesting fact about wearable – Ben Evans tweeted he had seen just one person Google Glass; when you have 80,000 mobile people it’s odd that more people aren’t wearing them. Maybe even the evangelists aren’t that convinced?
People
We have long argued that social and mobile are essentially the same thing, and having Mark Zuckerberg keynote at MWC proves this. Of course he talked about WhatsApp and made the point that their reach is complimentary to FB and a key part of internet.org, which he focused on. This is the project to get the rest of the world on the internet and Zuck sees that providing free messaging, search etc is crucial for the world’s poor.
His plea for operators to allow this free access for Internet.org – and this basket of free services designed for everyone – rests on persuading them that this acts as a gateway drug to get people using data that they will pay for.
Well worth watching the keynote video.
WhatsApp dominated the news – both as people debate the valuation – with Zuckerberg arguing he got a bargain and because of their announcement that they will add voice services later this year.
Places
Location now seems like hygiene in mobile – it’s there and most people are finding ways to use it – but there is a long way to go. One of the first Addictive Ideas we hawked around the industry when we started was the idea of using mobile to validate credit card transactions abroad. When travelling we all get used to cards being declined because the UK fraud people decide it’s unusual you are in Seoul or San Francisco. But whilst it may take a while to know if my card is missing or has been cloned, I know when my phone has gone almost instantly.
So we approached banks, credit card companies, their agencies and anyone we could think of. Zero interest. But now Mastercard is launching a similar solution. It’s all about timing.
The Foursquare deal with Microsoft is seeing its first fruit with Cortana – the Microsoft answer to Siri. The core use of Foursquare appears to be on the wane – of the 80k people at MWC just 2,600 checked in.
Physical
Whilst QR codes are no longer fashionable, no one has told the Chinese who use them in lots of smart ways. WeChat enable people to follow someone by scanning their personal QR code and invite people to a group chat with one.
But all the energy in physical is now around beacons and Apple have announced their specs for iBeacons, as they look at impose their usual command and control on the space. Whilst at this stage they are regulating the hardware we suspect there will be some restrictions on how the service is used. Apple doesn’t want its customers to start getting spam every time they come close to a Beacon and we think some best practice will be forthcoming.
And unsurprisingly the Internet of Things clichés were at MWC – what’s more Physical than connecting your toothbrush to your smartphone?
Promotions
Continuing the emerging markets focus, new research showed that there are 219 mobile money services in emerging markets – with 13 now having more than a million users.
Coming back closer to home, Greggs now has a mobile loyalty scheme where food lovers can pay using their mobile. With Eat taking a slightly different approach working with Pouch from Weve, people are going to get more familiar with using their mobile in stores and this should drive more mobile transactions.
Get Up Stay Up
The key challenge for Graffiti artists in New York is how to Get Up and how to Stay Up; how to get your art on the side of that subway train or high wall and is it good enough to stay up or will a better artist paint over your work?
It’s the same for Apps – how do you Get Up on a user’s home screen and how do you Stay Up, rather than being deleted or just pushed back across screens until your in the App Graveyard seven or eight screens back?
Just like the power laws that mean 80% of all Google traffic comes from the first page of results (with 80% of the rest from the second) and 80% of all TV viewing is from the first page of the Sky EPG, we suspect a huge amount of app usage is driven by those apps on the home screen
So the phone home screen has the same role – and we find apps can get put there, then relegated as new apps come along but over time the most useful stay there.
But we don’t know. There is very little data available on how people use apps. Apple and Google know what we have downloaded, and Apple know (?) how we have grouped apps. Facebook know through their Facebook Connect a lot of the apps we have – and some insight into how they are used. And Yahoo have a good idea on Android with their Aviate app.
The other people with really good insights into app usage are Flurry and their latest research shows the half life of apps – that is how long before the number of monthly average users hits 50% of its peak.
Half of apps lose half their peak users in just three months. For games, the half life is two months whilst news apps average seven.
But for real insight you can’t beat talking to users, and seeing what apps they have on their home screens is really valuable. But it’s not scalable. Or is it?
The clever people at Betaworks came up with a way of boosting their sample; people sharing their homescreen on Twitter and Instagram. From this they have built a fascinating report that is a must read. Our favourite fact is that 14% of people don’t have the phone ‘app’ on their home screen.
For further insight the new Deloitte report is interesting – one trend they note is that the number of apps downloaded is down by around 10%.
New TV
Amazon’s march into TV continues. All their Prime members in the UK now get what was LoveFilm for free – until the next renewal when the Prime increases from £49 to £79. This is an aggressive move against Netflix, Blinkbox et al and they have kept the news buzz going by announcing they are to save the popular Ripper Street series that was cancelled by the BBC. And rumours of an Amazon set top box have been revived.
Other GAFA players have TV ambitions too; Google has announced the first set of Chromecast apps – hopefully someone somewhere is working on an iPlayer one. And maybe Amazon will decide to do one too?
Apple has done a deal with Disney, allowing buyers of Disney movies to watch them on any Apple device. And using a code on DVDs sold since 2008, digital versions of movies bought in disc will be added to the Apple locker too.
Microsoft are also dipping their toes into video with a stake in DailyMotion – given the reach of their XBox and its capacity as a set top box this gets them deeper into newTV too.
This is an edited and abridged version of Mobile Fix – click here to read the full article on Addictive!’s website.