Welcome to the Red Fox blog. Red Fox’s interests are anything mobile, particularly mobile ticketing, and the application in sectors such as airlines and entertainment. Hopefully you will find the comments and insight interesting, entertaining and sly. 
There has been a lot of speculation recently about whether Apple are soon to launch an NFC-enabled version of the iPhone. News articles report on Apple patent filings relating to NFC and their recruitment of a mobile commerce product manager with NFC experience.
Almost everyone agrees that the Mobile NFC market needs a big brand to make a commitment to NFC in order to achieve the required critical mass of consumer adoption. If Apple were to include NFC in an upcoming version of the iPhone then that would create a very compelling catalyst for the Mobile NFC ecosystem.
When it comes to mobile payment, you could wave your NFC-enabled iPhone past an NFC reader at point-of-sale to make a purchase.
Apple would however be very unlikely to simply add NFC capability to the device. Apple are much more than a gadget provider and are no longer satisfied with the small piece of the value chain that comes from selling hardware. Apple have been extremely successful in capturing the consumer and content marketplace through their previous achievements with the iPod/iTunes and iPhone/App Store. The iPad is now also doing the same thing with book and movie downloads. Apple take a significant slice of any transaction. Why wouldn’t they try to achieve the same thing with NFC?
How best could Apple own the mobile NFC payment marketplace and take a slice of the transaction? The answer would be to become a bank and issue Apple credit and debit cards. Rather than a physical plastic card, the “cards” would be virtual cards stored securely under NFC.
With music, books, and movies, Apple has to recognise the content provider and provide an acceptable share of the transaction revenues to them. For payment, the “content” is money. Apart from cocking a hat to the Federal Reserve, money requires no recognition to a content provider.
Does this sound far-fetched? Who would have predicted that Apple would become a major player in the music industry with iTunes? The Apple brand has a devoted band of followers which enables them to shrug off issues like the iPhone 4 antenna problem whilst barely skipping a step. The Apple brand has the level of trust required to manage people’s money.
How would Apple go about this? They might start with an exclusive deal with a particular bank to simplify the financial regulatory requirements. The Apple brand would no doubt get a prominent mention alongside the bank. Apple could then even acquire a small bank to achieve the necessary banking licenses and then go it alone. Apple would then control most of the value chain and it would make iTunes and the App Store look like small fry.
P.S. The Red Fox isn’t a banking expert, and there are no doubt many financial complexities involved. Don’t however doubt Apple’s ability or motivation to overcome them.
On the 28th July, we were all delighted at Mobiqa to have our products and services recognised by Juniper Research as we accepted their Future Mobile Award for Mobile Coupons and Tickets. This award highlights companies at the forefront of new developments in the Mobile Commerce field and we took gold for; our barcode technology, key partnerships and crucially, our growing customer base across airlines, rail, cinema, live events and retail.
Howard Wilcox, panel judge and Senior Analyst at Juniper Research said, “Mobiqa, mBlox and eBay Mobile are all successful pioneers in their sectors; critically they have shown the ability to translate mobile technology into commercial businesses that make a real impact in the Mobile Commerce marketplace.”
Contributed by a friendly Hound.
Until recently, I was quite happy to use my phone to call people, text friends and even capture that Kodak moment with my in-built 5MB camera complete with auto-focus and flash. And, as reluctant as I was to use mobile internet, I’m finding it’s creeping into my life more and more, subtly coercing me to depend on it for almost every decision.
My initial reluctance stemmed from poor past user experience, at a time when phones weren’t quite up to the task of displaying a decent looking website on their tiny screens at a pace which wasn’t akin to tectonic plate movement, I just didn’t have the patience.
But now, as phones and mobile internet speed have evolved, companies have recognised the importance of brand control via mobile and as a result, many are rewarding their customers for visiting their mobile site with a clean, user-friendly experience.
Unlike using internet on a computer, most people using their mobile to access the web are there with a singular purpose in mind; to find out films times, to check-in for a flight, to confirm the opening times of a museum etc. A lot of the time you’re greeted with a perfectly optimised website, fit for accessing only the most useful of information, it’s quick, it’s simple, you’re in and out of there in mere seconds.
Unfortunately, there are still some culprits out there who haven’t fully grasped the importance of a mobile website. As mobile moves toward the preferred access medium to the web, companies need to control their brand and the way people view and experience it. Having to endlessly scroll horizontally and wait an age until the full website downloads onto a tiny screen is definitely not the way forward and does real damage to the customer’s brand perception. If some companies have whole departments dedicated to brand size, placement, colour and format, why not pay the same diligence to the mobile experience?
Now for another unfashionable statement: the current trend and hype around App Stores could be fairly short-lived.
App Stores, led by Apple’s iPhone have achieved incredible usage. Other manufacturers such as Nokia with their Ovi Store and RIM’s App World Store have been desperately trying to catch up. Apple were not however the first to offer an App Store. Websites like GetJar would justifiably claim that they have been offering an App Store for many years.
It is strange that App stores are generally controlled and managed by the manufacturer themselves. This is a bit like having to go to Dell to buy all of the software for your PC. We are seeing moves by mobile network operators to offer App stores supporting a broader range of devices, but wouldn’t we expect to go to a general online retailer such as Amazon to buy mobile apps rather than being tied to a manufacturer’s store?
Downloading and installing applications is like taking a step back to the PC world of the early 90’s. Before the widespread availability of high-speed broadband internet, you installed applications locally on the PC for pretty much everything. Now most “applications” are now delivered as website services through the internet browser without any need to pre-install. Many people use these services regularly without even considering them as an “application”.
Now that high-speed, reliable mobile data is becoming widely available, combined with “all-you-can-eat” data plans, the requirement for installing applications on a mobile is also diminishing. All that is required is to simply enter a URL into a mobile browser. The removal of these barriers creates a sense of déjà vu and recreates the conditions for mobile internet to replace installed applications just like what happened on PCs.
Browsers can never fully match the user experience delivered by an application running locally on the device, but with new web technologies, these differences are diminishing rapidly. Downloaded apps will still be used for certain purposes, where the full capability of the device has to be exploited. Entertainment, particularly gaming will continue to be delivered as a downloaded app in the same way that games are still installed on PCs.
ABI Research is forecasting that App store usage will peak in 2013 before starting a gradual decline (http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1003443). Although it might be unfashionable right now, I’m sure we will see many other analysts reaching the same conclusion.
The launch of the Nokia N8 later this year could well be when Nokia recapture much of the mindshare that has been lost to other smartphone manufacturers such as Apple. Although Nokia has always delivered on technology features, recent designs have failed to capture the public imagination.
The HD video capability with dolby surround sound could be the unique selling point that makes the N8 the phone of choice. It can be plugged into a home cinema system with an HDMI cable or into a TV using an AV connector. Videos posted to YouTube will be much higher quality than those from current cameraphones.
The 12 megapixel camera illuminated through Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash puts the iPhone’s 2MP effort to shame.
The iPhone also sells on its attractive design. The N8’s slick aluminium shell with 3.5” display will make a Nokia desirable once more. The user-interface has all of the iPhones sexy multi-touch gestures including pinch-to-zoom.
Throwing in the free Ovi Maps with voice guided navigation and Facebook and Twitter social network integration on the home screen and the deal might just be sealed.
The quality home video recorder and satnav in your phone. Other smartphone manufacturers will need to sit up and take notice.
Further details of the N8 are available at: http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n8
The cancellation of thousands of flights in Europe as a result of the ash from the Icelandic volcano creates a massive customer communication challenge for airlines. Using SMS mobile text messages provides a very effective and low-cost way to automatically communicate a message to thousands of passengers simultaneously.
This is just a very small example of how an airline can benefit from a comprehensive mobile strategy.
There’s no surprise about Apple’s launch of mobile advertising for the iPhone and iPad. Yet again Apple is extending their grip on all applications and content delivered to the iPhone or iPad by controlling the advertising content through iAd. It’s a great revenue model for Apple, but not so good for content providers or the consumer. They’ve picked up the baton that Microsoft were forced to drop a while back and it takes them another leap towards an FTC investigation.
April 22nd of this year marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day – the day that we’re all encouraged to turn off our engines, dust off the recycling bin, fix the leaky tap and think a little bit more about how we can take care of our planet. In celebration of this day and all things green, we at Mobiqa have helped to save our customers over 7,000 miles of paper – ten times the length of the UK – with our paperless ticketing and boarding pass technology.
Mobiqa join a number of companies and high profile individuals pledging their support for Earth Day; Verizon Wireless are letting folks drop off their old mobile phones at their stores to be put through economically sound recycling; Cartridge World are encouraging people to refill rather than buy new ink cartridges; and Stella McCartney, Vera Wang and Giogio Armani are getting involved in The Green Action: A Bid to Save the Earth.
Aside from the obvious reasons for supporting the mobile channel, Mobiqa are encouraging the people of planet earth to save paper and reject their printer in favour of mobile delivery. Instead of printing off your boarding pass at home, passengers using Delta, Qatar, Malaysia, Swiss, Olympic, Aegean, Vueling, LOT and Spanair can get it sent to their phone. Tickets.com and Ticketmaster also offer mobile as a ticket delivery channel so the next time you book a gig – why not go for mobile and save a bit of paper?
