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What's great about the Web is that there is always somebody to help you out!

 

For the Oscar's some clever folks looked for ways to keep updated even though they were not able to watch the Oscars live on TV. Dennis Bournique from wapreview.com found "a couple of mobile sites where you can follow the festivities using your mobile browser".

 

Thank you Dennis, you did a very good research job!

To support mobile web developers using the NetBeans IDE, Netbiscuits staff developer Steffen Kremp created JAM, a plug-in that facilitates coding for Netbiscuits. If you want to learn more about JAM for Netbiscuits please register for our upcoming webinar.

 

Netbiscuits provides a 30 day free trial. After this period you can upgrade to a free of charge Developer Edition that allows you to set up an unlimited number of mobile websites.

 

Netbiscuits is the mobile publishing platform that enables eBay and many other major brands for the mobile Web. As a cloud-based software service it allows you to take advantage of its advanced technology to set up your own mobile Web projects and services.

 

The platform enables you to create and deliver web content and services easily and efficiently for any mobile device. It allows you to exploit the rich internet capabilities of high-end mobile phones like the iPhone, Android or BlackBerry devices, and also guarantees optimized delivery to the less expensive but highly popular web-enabled mass market feature phones as well.

Stanford Engineering's European Entrepreneurship and Innovation Thought Leaders is a weekly speaker series that presents industry leaders from Europe's hitech startup, venture finance, corporate and university research and technology commercialization communities to share their insights and experiences with aspiring and veteran entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley.

Last Monday, March 1st, Michael Neidhoefer, CEO & Co-Founder of Netbiscuits, gave his lecture at Stanford University on "Venture Capital and Mobile Startups in Germany" to an audience of more than 100 students, post graduates and startup entrepreneurs from the campus.

More: http://www.europeanentrepreneursatstanford.com/

Mobile search company Taptu has released a detailed report showing that the future of the Mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile web sites - rather than apps built specifically for iPhone, Android, or any other platform. Taptu calls the former "the Mobile Touch Web," which it defines as "Web sites created for mobile touchscreen devices, with finger-friendly layouts and lightweight pages that are fast to load over cellular networks."

 

Taptu estimates that there are 326,000 Mobile Touch Web sites worldwide, which they say compares to 148,000 iPhone apps in the App Store and 24,000 apps in the Android market. tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_app_or_browser-based_site.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';Taptu expects the browser-based mobile web market to grow much faster than the app market.

 

Read more here.

It was a privilege for us to join forces with MTV helping to enable the “Hope for Haiti”-concert with the greatest digital distribution of any televised fundraising event in history. More information on the concert and it's broad digital spread can be found here.

 

BTW, don’t forget: For your donations pls. go to: www.hopeforhaitinow.org

 

All proceeds will benefit Haiti relief funds managed by “Hope for Haiti Now” charities: Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation, and the newly formed Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation.

Despite falling voice revenue, Informa Telecoms & Media is predicting that total annual mobile services revenue will exceed $1 trillion globally in 2013.

 

The latest Global Mobile Forecasts report also indicates that data revenue will account for more than $330 billion that year, up from $208 billion in 2008. Increase in consumer use of mobile broadband services can be credited for the predicted uptake in data revenue.

 

“These figures indicate that the quality and coverage of a mobile operator’s network remains an important differentiator,” said Nicholas Jotischky, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, London.

 

Read More

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the dominant web access device worldwide by 2013 according to a new forecast issued by research firm Gartner. Based on Gartner's PC installed base forecast, the total number of PCs in use should top 1.78 billion units in 2013--by that time, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones is expected to exceed 1.82 billion units, and the gap will continue to grow in the years to follow. Gartner adds that mobile web users are typically prepared to make fewer clicks on a website than PC users, contending that most websites not yet optimized for smaller device screens will need to be rebuilt and their content reformatted.

 

Looking even further ahead, Gartner anticipates that by 2015, context will be as critical to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the traditional web. Gartner argues that context will provide the key to delivering hyper-personalized experiences across smartphones in the same way search enables web users to organize information and services, adding context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Gartner also notes that while search is predicated on pulling information from the web, context-enriched services will typically prepopulate or push information to users.

 

For more on the Gartner forecast:
- read this release

 

 

Congratulations: Online marketplace eBay Inc. took first place in the competition for the 2009 Mobile Retailer of the Year award! We are very proud to serve eBay mobile solutions since 2003.

 

For the whole story, pls. check out Giselle Tsirulnik's excellent article for Mobile Commerce Daily.

North American mobile web consumption increased 110 percent in 2009 while worldwide access grew 148 percent according to new data issued by audience measurement service Quantcast. Mobile devices now represent 1.3 percent of all web pageviews in North America, with Apple's iPhone operating system accounting for 65.1 percent of mobile web traffic in the region--Google's Android OS is second at 12.4 percent, followed by Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS at 8.7 percent. Quantcast adds that Motorola's fledgling Droid is already having a significant impact on mobile browsing--the Android-based smartphone captured almost 4 percent of market share in its first full month following its November 2009 release, giving Motorola 10x the U.S. mobile web market share it enjoyed the previous quarter.

 

Quantcast anticipates the mobile web's percentage of North American pageviews will grow a full percentage point to 2.3 percent by the end of 2010--in addition, the firm forecasts a global increase from the current 0.95 percent to over 1.8 percent.  Quantcast adds that the boundary between mobile and PC continues to blur, with Apple's much-anticipated tablet device expected to blur the lines further while accelerating interest in web access on the go.

TechCrunch's Robin Wauters released an interesting article on eBay's mobile service turnover. Here are the figures:

 

- 750.000 unique mobile users, 50% of them outside the USA

- 500 million $ mobile GMV (value of good sold) via iPhone app & mobile website until end of 2009

- Mobile GMV is growing on a double digit rate per month

- Every two seconds one item is purchased on the mobile channel

 

I like the article's conclusion most: "Anyone still believe e-commerce via mobile isn't worth the effort?"

 

BTW, eBay's mobile web services are based on Netbiscuits.

 

For the whole article pls. go to TechCrunch. Best, Lars

It was pure fun to me, reading this article on WIRED today: Android’s Rapid Growth Has Some Developers Worried.

Key Message: Now that Google Android gets some traction – “available on at least 12 phones, with more devices waiting in the wings” – the same old fragmentation issues come up that we know from other handset/OS providers. The article points out that the tight regime that Apple puts on the iPhone offers a solution to the fragmentation problem, but frustrates many developers.

The analysis is right, but where are the conclusions?

Apple’s way will not be viable for any other handset manufacturer. Other that the Jobs-company they don’t have the aura of creating devices just right and therefore have to throw new devices on the market every six month. Fragmentation also increases because new manufacturers constantly enter the market, take Acer as one of the latest examples.

The article’s conclusion is that also in the future developers will have to limit their apps support to a selected number of devices and operating systems. Really? My conclusion is that apps are a dead end street, because for them the fragmentation issues will never vanish. My advice is obvious: use the browser! For 98% of your demands, it'll deliver anything you / your customers need.

Lars Hartkopf

 

Today MobileMarketer published an interesting interview with Todd Ames, vice president of consumer marketing for Spike TV (part of the MTV network) who talks about the importance of mobile for SpikeTV. Here is the quote:

 

"Mobile is growing in importance as its importance increases in our everyday lives. We are still evolving how it manifests itself in our advertising strategy in terms of mobile banners, or SMS sponsorships and etcetera, but it will continue to increase its presence in our mix.

Not to sell us short, though. Spike is already a leading mobile content provider on the major carrier decks and via our WAP site, which receives several million pages views per month.

We use the WAP site to build awareness for our new content by showcasing promotional video with existing popular videos and by tagging most-frequently streamed clips with tune-in info. Mobile video on demand on carrier decks is a substantial footprint and we use tags and promos attached to these videos to raise awareness for new launches as well."

 

For the whole interview, pls. go to MobileMarketer.

 

We received great feedback from the attendees of our US Partner Day that took place in Soho House, in NYCs meatpacker district yesterday. Thanks to all attendees and our wonderful line-up of speakers and panelists!

 

If you missed to be there, here are two articles published today by Mobile Marketer that give you all the facts, feedbacks and a good number of pictures.

 

Mobile Web connects brands to consumers: Netbiscuits panel

 

Netbiscuits Partner Day round-up: Not a sales pitch in sight

Yahoo’s head of mobile David Ko said today that if consumers visit Yahoo! on the PC and from their phone, they end up spending 82 percent more time with the company’s various web properties. That reaffirms what other online companies have said recently. Last month, Facebook announced that users are two times more engaged with Facebook if they use a mobile version. Ko said: “Mobile is not cannibalizing the web.”

 

Yahoo's and Facebook's experience are in line with what many other Netbiscuits customers are reporting. This is not only because users go online with there mobile at different times (with peaks during non-working hours). They are even more engaged, if they encounter services that really were made for mobile use cases.

Netbiscuits participates in all three Social Networking Forum event this year. In relation to the London event, which took place back in March, we experienced a great rise of interest in mobile solutions this week in Singapore.

 

The US event, taking place in November in Santa Clara, will surely confirm this trend, bringing the mobile services of established players like going.com more visibility and providing a platform for new services to be launched. In 2010 we will see a lot of great new examples of successful mobile SN services.

 

For a brief video summary of the Singapore event, pls. go to telecom.tv.

Wow - you've got to read this pick of mobile misconceptions, I laughed a lot! My personal favorites are 1,2, and 7. Mobile Entertainment should add the religious war on "Mobile Website vs. Mobile App" that's currently going on out there. Stupid, because sometimes its clever to have both. The only question is, how to realize both the most easy and cost-efficient way. Netbiscuits has a clever solution: Mobile websites embedded in shell apps for all the major platforms (iPhone, Symbian, WindowsMobile, Android...). Watch out for our next press release to learn more!

 

Best regards, Lars

US directory service provider WhitePages now reaches more than 2 million mobile users through its iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, SMS and m.WhitePages.com mobile offerings. Whitepages mobile website is based on Netbiscuits.

 

For the complete story pls. go to Mobile Marketer

Its new study claims mobile Internet adoption will grow to 39 per cent in the region from 13 per cent in 2008. It adds that a third of Western European consumers will own Internet-enabled phones in 2014.

The context for this growth is an overall base of 344 million users, powerful smartphones and flat rate data plans.

"The recession is forcing many consumers to reduce their spending, but they aren't cutting out their mobile subscriptions altogether," said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson.

 

"In the next decade, the mobile Internet will replicate the success story of the PC-based Internet as social networks, widgets, search engines or company websites adapt for mobile presentation, Forrester said.

 

Read more here:

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/34197/Mobile-web-use-to-triple-in-Western-Europe-by-2014

Former Universal Pictures mobile boss Jeremy Laws has been crunching the numbers of the 6 biggest US mobile advertising networks and made a guesstimate for Fantasyland and Realityland based on some recent monthly unique site visitor data, per network, from Nielsen.

 

Read the whole thing here, it's quiet interesting!

Hi all

 

read this article on UK advertisers to demand optimized mobile sites and how Google responds to it.

 

Google is wrong on this one. Mobile Internet never took off since years, because people hoped that software like browsers of web-site transcoders could convert the PC Web to mobile automatically.  And what did result from this? User experience was bad resulting in no usage of mobile sites. Now Advertisers start to complain for the same thing: bad user experience - and there are right about this.

Wake up guys, no matter how good browsers and software on phones will ever be, the form factor of a mobile phone will always be smaller than big 19 inch PC flatscreen monitor and you will have to present the user with optimal ways to navigate and consume content on the device, which will be different from the PC-site

The industry needs to focus on explaining to businesses to create optimized mobile content and sites. Then this market will take off and also Google will be happy by generating more ad revenues.

 

Read more here:

http://www.nma.co.uk/news/mobile-app-ads-cause-concern-for-advertisers/3003570.article

 

Cheers BiscuitMonster