Weekly Mobile Mash-up #3

If you were busy last week and you didn’t get the chance to follow the latest mobile industry news, here are some of the big announcements that came around.

Mobile Industry News

• The end of the unlimited data era: O2′s CEO, Ronan Dunne, announced that data will no longer be unlimited on smartphone contracts, coinciding with the arrival of the iPhone4. Ronan Dunne explained that it was not sustainable for the mobile network operators to offer such plans. AT&T (US Mobile Network Operator) and Orange announced the same - http://bit.ly/9Fnw4o
• iPhone4 pricing : Apple published yesterday the iPhone4’s UK price, and the 5 main UK mobile network are all due to sell it – http://bit.ly/dC3nse
  Here is a nice infographic comparing the iPhone4 with the 3GS.

• AdMob vs. Apple: AdMob responded to Apple’s latest developer agreement changes (check our last week mash-up) in a blogpost written by Omar Hamoui (CEO of AdMob) outlining his view that developers only use ad units from independent mobile ad networks, not ones from smartphone manufacturers - http://bit.ly/9H2pDz
• iPad and advertising: is iPad advertising space worth more than web? American newspaper USA Today says yes as USA Today’s first advertiser on the iPad (Mariott group) paid 5 cents per impression whereas the cost per impression for the online version is only 1 cent - http://bit.ly/aX8C5w
• HTC interested in having its own OS? On the 7^th of June HTC bought French mobile software company Abaxia. Surprising as HTC is the biggest Android based smartphone manufacturer. Are HTC intending to create their own mobile OS? - http://bit.ly/9YvGPb

Mobile statistics and reports

• FIFA World cup and mobile content
  • Orange says that the World Cup will see a 74% rise in mobile TV viewing - http://bit.ly/9OvI4E
  • ComScore’s GSMA Mobile Media Metrics showed that 6.8 million Brits accessed sport content via their mobile phone. Football related content is driving traffic as the viewing peak occurs between 3pm and 6pm on weekends- http://bit.ly/a6qpcM
    Italy and France follow with 6 million and 5 million users respectively
  • InMobi mobile ad network predicted in December 2009 that the FIFA World Cup would be “be a landmark event for catalyzing mobile advertising in South Africa” - http://bit.ly/cXULBT
• Rich media and smartphones: Anup Murarka from Adobe said that Flash will be installed on half of the smartphones by 2012, that is to say 250 million smartphones. Take that Steve Jobs! - http://bit.ly/dxODeb
• Mobile in Canada
  • eMarketer reports that Canadian mobile penetration is 5 percentage points lower than in the US, but it should rise by 20% by 2014 to reach 29.5 million mobile phone subscribers (85% of Canadian population) - http://bit.ly/de4PNK
  • The Canadian Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) forecasts mobile advertising revenues to reach $18 million in 2009, that is to say a 50% increase compared to 2008 - http://bit.ly/9ggu8o
• Mobile in France: mobile web consumption doubled in one year as 4 million French people browsed the mobile web everyday - http://bit.ly/95AjaN. Web browsing is now the third biggest activity on mobile when using a mobile phone after:
  • 59% of French people making phone calls (-5% compared to 2009)
  • SMS: 36% sending text messages

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