By Hisham Isa, Vice President (Marketing)
This week the mainstream media is abuzz with rumours from the blogosphere that internet search giant Google is about to launch a “G-Phone”.
“Is the Google Phone an Apple iPhone killer?” writes Peter Cohen.
`Most definitely’ replies tech analyst Rob Enderle (as quoted by the LA Times in this article).
Imagine a free ad-driven mobile service on a handset that costs just US$100. Telecom carriers can’t be very pleased with this possibility. But how close are we to an ad-driven mobile internet?
“What’s interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the non-mobile ads because they’re more personal” Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly told a conference in May.
Search engines like Yahoo! and Google have transformed and driven the growth of the fixed line internet.
But mobile search is so far a different story.
WHY HASN’T MOBILE SEARCH TAKEN OFF YET?
First of all, there’s not as much content. Early development has been driven by telecom carriers, many of which implement “walled gardens”. The carriers decide which type of content to release and make it difficult or expensive for consumers to access content outside the carrier’s portal. In addition, aside from ringtones and games, most mobile content has been re-purposed from the web.
Second, it is generally accepted that mobile devices are not research tools in the same way as PCs. Conventional internet searches yield hundreds, if not thousands of results. Computer users are accustomed to spending time to sift through the information, clicking through the first twenty or so links to find the most relevant.
Search results on a phone need to be more immediate and relevant, even to the extent of being personalised. Half a dozen pertinent results to a mobile search is ideal.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE (MOBILE SEARCH) UNIVERSE
Major players began dabbling with mobile search just a couple years ago. A popular strategy was to provide variations of “local search”, basically mimicking the Yellow Pages. This was soon followed by a “send-to-mobile” feature for addresses, maps, phone books, and reverse phone queries. By the end of last year, the US Yellow Pages finally launched their own WAP site to catch up with its imitators.
Phase II focused on location-based searches, such as “where is the nearest Pizza Hut?” Telcos and handset producers suggest that phones must be GPS enabled for searches like these, ignoring consumer demands for fewer features on their phones. In addition, the results of most location searches unfortunately yield hard-to-read maps with a beeping pointer on a screen.
Consumers want real-world references to locate. Take a lesson from pedestrians who use their phones to locate each other by taking pictures of nearby landmarks. Savvy shoppers are also snapping photos of dresses and shoes they might like to buy, followed by a picture of the store for reference.
WAP and USER-GENERATED CONTENT
The biggest driver of content on the mobile internet have so far been user-generated sites like tagtag and peperonity that enable users to create their own WAP sites for photos, ringtones, games and more. This is reminiscent of the early days of the fixed-line internet. Remember GeoCities?
In the meantime a few mobile players like Google are WAP-enabling web pages. At BuzzCity, we have two WAP-enabled search engines, both of which focus on user generated content: Wikipedia for WAP and the myGamma blog search.
THE NEXT GENERATION OF MOBILE SEARCH
The next flash point for mobile search is going to be speech recognition – still centered around finding places. Contextually relevant searches, like movies and music, are also on the way.
As the industry grows, though, I believe the search-type services that are most likely to succeed are those that best resemble the phone’s original use. A phone is at its core basically a networking tool. Search engines that deliver succinct relevant results, perhaps based on social bookmarking like del.icio.us, digg and stumbleupon, will be the most popular.
Google meanwhile is said to be using OpenMoko's (open source) platform for its G-Phone. This is good news because open source will spawn more niche applications and content for mobiles. There are other groups producing open source mobile innovations as well, like the TuxPhone, but if the rumours about the Google Phone are true, and I hope they are, the pace of change is about to quicken.
By Lai Kok Fung, BuzzCity CEO
John Wanamaker, a US merchant in the late 1800s, famously once said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
We are much closer today to solving Wanamaker’s dilemma. Internet metrics and computer algorithms make it possible to target ads to users who are likely to act on them.
Providing the parameters to computers to analyse the data and filter out the white noise has been a passion of mine since grad school. Back then, I wrote a PhD dissertation on “adaptive learning” with the somewhat clunky title “Deformable contours : modeling, extraction, detection and classification”.
For example, I would feed a database of images into a computer and directed it to locate the ones shaped as keys. The first lesson was that you need to start with some assumptions and a model, otherwise it takes too long for the computer to find what you’re looking for. Second, you have to realise that your initial model is not perfect. You need it to adapt based on experience.
The picture above was taken from my thesis. In clockwise direction, it shows the original "noisy" image, the intermediate processing step called the "edge magnitude", the final and initial boundaries.
We'd like to announce the launch of The Digital Media Forum, a collaborative effort between BuzzCity and NUS to advance the conceptualization and development of digital media products. The Digital Media Forum aims to foster creative and entrepreneurial advancement among developers who work in newly emerging media, particularly mobile media.
By providing a platform for the critical review of emerging digital media tools, applications and practices, we aim to increase the visibility and presence of digital media developers in Singapore. The forum is centred around the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre and features budding technopreneurs and the prototypes they’ve developed from research in the area of Digital Media. The forum also provides industry with a first look at emerging media technologies and services.
This bi-monthly interaction between academics, industry players and researchers is a feedback platform that will act as an early proving grounds for soon to be launched services.
Programme for 2007-2008
17 August 07
Connecting the Unwired
Dr Lai Kok Fung, CEO, BuzzCity
19 October 07
More than Voice at the Bottom of Pyramid?
Professor Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director, LIRNEasia
25 January 08
"It's an Asian Thing": Cosplay and Singaporean Fan Culture
Dr. Thang Leng Leng and Dr. Elizabeth Maclachlan, Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore
11 April 08
Against All Odds
Steven Gan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Malaysiakini
The BuzzCity-NUS Digital Media Forum will provide support for market validation of prototypes via a series of awards to promising start-ups and research teams. Finding the right marketing channel and getting market validation are always challenging for start-ups. With a small domestic market, Singapore companies face additional difficulties to market their products internationally. These awards provide companies with a channel to distribute and charge for mobile content products or services internationally. Companies will receive support in the form of technical assistance, marketing knowledge, cash and advertising credits.
Over a period of a year, 8 awards, each valued at $5,000 will be given away. Panelists from academia and industry will select awards for mobile content related products or services, including:
1. Prototypes that are ready for market testing
2. Business models ready for market validation in order to secure more funding (i.e. validated track record)
3. All start up projects, including but not limited to those from NUS or HOTSpots.
The award is not:
1. Funding of research and development of ideas for new products;
2. A funding scheme in exchange for equity stake in start-ups.
Judging criteria
A panel of judges led by BuzzCity will review all applications submitted for the award. After initial evaluation, short-listed projects will be asked to turn up for presentation and interview. Projects that are sound and promising will be given the award. Schedule for Submission of application:
1) 21 Sept 2007
2) 18 Jan 2008
3) 18 Apr 2008
Please email all applications and enquiries to dma@buzzcity.com . Download application form here
