Another year is upon us as we now enter a new decade. In October 1999 I founded mobileStorm and by August of 2000 we officially incorporated. Those days were interesting, we took any job we could to keep the company going. We even took a job installing a wireless network in someone’s house. There was only 802.11 B back then and it was very tough trying to get a signal to the whole house. We must have been there for the entire day. I know what were we thinking? I guess my reasoning is that it was mobile so at least it was somewhat focused. Sounds like we should have been working at the Geek Squad.
Back then we were 100% service driven; somewhere along the way I realized that we need to create a product that we can sell over and over again. This is the only thing I knew would keep us around for a long time. We didn’t really start picking up steam till we released Stun! 2.0 (now called mobileStorm, check out the waybackmachine). You could come to the site, sign up for our service, upload a database and create a campaign. We focused first on email since that was really taking off and we could barely get anyone to pay for text messaging. We took off in the nightlife industry and became the dominate player within a year. We went from making $25,000 per month (starting at $0 each month) to making $100,000 repeatedly very quickly. We knew we had something important on our hands so we started to hire friends and family, the only people we could trust to give us 100% and take as little as possible.
I have been waiting for a long time for the “Year of Mobile” to be upon us. Every new year for the past 5 years people have said, “next year is the year of mobile for sure”. However the year would come and go and decided not to take mobile with it. I always thought the year of mobile meant an explosion in mobile services, applications and products. Sure one year ringtones went crazy and the next year video games were all the rage, but mobile still didn’t have that massive consumer adoption that everyone wanted to see to officially declare it the “year of mobile”. However my friends I think it is pretty safe to say 2010 is the official year. Why? Well for the most part we needed to have a fast mobile network to fully recognize mobile’s potential. 3G is here and in a big way. Heck Sprint has a 4G network. Because of the fast speeds a little company named Apple developed the iphone and just two weeks ago it was officially announced as the most popular device. As a result of how amazing this device is you are seeing lots of innovation. The innovation has sparked consumers to buy the device and other companies seeing how much money is being made are jumping into the smart phone game (i.e. Google).
2009 was certainly the first big year businesses spent money on SMS services. We feel this trend will continue and a lot of companies will embrace SMS as another important channel and not just part of their experimental budget. We also believe MMS is going to start to gain some traction. Two weeks ago AT&T just launched the largest MMS campaign. I think carriers will start to educate consumers more on how to use this and the cost will come down. Do we need to support this? Yes, but don’t ask when. More important than MMS, LBS or Location Based Services, will really start to take shape. Currently LBS is great for social networks and “checking in” so your friends know where you are. Moving forward it seems that the carriers are finally getting over their privacy concerns (or feel they can manage them better) and are allowing LBS for commercial use. It’s all finally happening, and what a wonderful thing to watch go down after so many years of waiting and wondering.
So as you start to think about what you want to accomplish in 2010, smile because its our year, the year of mobile.
Jared Reitzin
CEO
mobileStorm Inc.
I’ve been working in mobile for a long, long time and every time I hear the words ‘the year of mobile’ it makes me want to puke.
What are the key indicators for it being ‘the year of mobile’? Faster networks and new features doesn’t mean anything unless everyone can use them.
Think about how long ago 3G came out and the amount of time it took for it to get a decent amount of market share. 4G will be the same, you won’t see the effects for years.
‘The year of mobile’ won’t happen until the market is less fragmented. You’re looking at 4/5 years for platforms like Android to unify the market.
The MMS campaign by AT&T pales in comparison to the MMS marketing activity done by Vodafone over the last 4 years (hundreds of campaigns a year, several million MMS interactions sent each month) and those years weren’t anymore ‘the year of mobile’ as 2010 is going to be.
Hey, great post there! Im first time here visited your blog, definitely will visit back later, keep it up
Thank you, nice post.
Mobile technology all the time, evolving.
I have been working with advertising for mobile devices and see that mobile technology all the time, evolve.
Good luck in 2010.
Murat, my article was referring to the U.S. I know Europe is way way ahead of us. I know it is the year of mobile because I have watched it for close to 12 years. I have been involved in almost every facet of the eco system. There are so many other indicators besides the iphone such as the admob/google acquisition and the funding of 10 LBS companies in the last few months. One could say the end of 2009 started the year of mobile.
But surely if the UK and Europe is well ahead of the US and it isn’t the year of mobile here then surely it isn’t in the states?
And mobile advertising is still 30-odd billion dollars behind a declining print advertising industry. Surely that should be some sort of indication of where we are at. We’re still in a dodgy financial period too.
Consumers aren’t even at a comfortable level with mobile payments yet. NFC and other mobile payment systems have yet to saturate the market.
Augmented Reality is still in its infancy despite all the hype. It has potential but everyone is still working out what to do with it .
Admob+Google – great for the industry but what does it mean to small + medium sized businesses? Have their needs/concerns/budgets changed? It is still ad-serving at the end of the day and why would any companies who aren’t doing ad serving already be persuaded to do it all of a sudden? You still need a destination of a wap site or application right?
I love MMS advertising and i’ve worked on it for years. One thing that absolutely has not changed for businesses wanting to do it – the cost of MMS. This is the prohibitive aspect of it – the power has always been in the hands of the operator (all the work i did was for Vodafone). You have some genius campaigns like the BMW one but it’s the exception rather than the rule. I’d love to see more. I did some MMS work for Verizon and its great medium which can get high ROI but unless you’re the operator it’s difficult.
Same applies for consumers sending MMS in, cost concerns are big, the proposition needs to be really good or the interaction needs to be zero rated. This is rare (but great when it happens)
I’m waiting to see what Facebook have up their sleeve with mobile and/or location. They are a game changing company with almost unrivalled reach. 300% increase to 65 million mobile users in 2009 is awesome.
I don’t want to spoil the party, yes mobile is exciting, yes it’s evolving but we are in the very early stages of an amazing industry.
Nice post, this year must be better than the past of course..
Murat, how do you define the year of mobile? I define it as mass adoption of applications and services. Is this industry going to grow more? Sure. But 2010 is going to be the first year where there is a big enough adoption of mobile that we will really see a difference compared to previous years. We don’t need to see 90% adoption of smart phones before we can proclaim the year of mobile. The year of mobile is really the first year that will start it all.
I define it in revenue, adoption, brands, handset penetration and consumer behaviour.
You’re saying we are (or near) at mass adoption of apps and services – what are the figures? Remember the % of phones that still don’t have apps like iPhone, Android and RIM.
I’m not saying we need 90% adoption of smartphones at all? But you can’t move forward without technology getting better which you’ve already acknowledged.
“But 2010 is going to be the first year where there is a big enough adoption of mobile” – What are the differences from 2009? Are you talking about the adoption of better mobile technology or more of the population owning mobiles? Adpotion of ‘mobile’ could mean quite a few things.
Murat, Great post, enjoyed reading it. I also believe this is the year of the introduction of the explosive medium. So i wont say year of mobile, i will say welcome to the Decade of Mobile.
haha nice….wheres the advertisers and publishers if not, look for some ….thinking mobile marketing are need of some foot soldiers .. introducing http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwglobalwithmobile…
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mobilestorm thanks for the info