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Mobile IM market: eBuddy shows numbers, reports 2 million active!

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 30th, 2008

Articles about Mobile IM and Instant Messaging in general were one of the most popular articles on the site, so I have decided to keep moving in this area, and inform a bit more. As I mentioned in the article about IM and Mobile IM, the two most interesting players in mobile are probably eBuddy and Fring. Today we have a great chance to present the numbers from eBuddy.


eBuddy as a product is also a very interesting product, as it includes multiple networks, where you can login to services like MSN, ICQ, AOL, Gtalk, Yahoo, Facebook chat, and Myspace chat. A variety of the top, and probably all services worldwide. I have never seen a combination this wide and this well interpreted as in eBuddy mobile. ... Read full article

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Admob mistakens Slovakia for Russia

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 29th, 2008
Little bugs and issues in applications are a thing that people who work with developers on a daily basis are common with. You learn how to fix them, laugh at th
em, finnish them off.  A very respected person in the industry has informed me about a mistake that is really worth a laugh, but the issue is it is for one of the largest mobile advertising company worldwide - Admob.  
The company has mistaken two European countries, one of them being quite major, on their regular map: Slovakia (population: 5 million) on the map with Russia (population: 141 million people). See map below. 

... Read full article

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Major challenges mobile browsers face

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 26th, 2008
Mobile browsers on most phones that are out there on the market today face main challenges, the key one is their quality of rendering, which also involves of course the memory of the handsets.
Let me sum up some facts on mobile browsers:
  1. Native browsers suck = try browsing mobile web i.e. on a Samsung handset. You use it, when you close the sliding phone, the site or download falls down with no other options, etc.... Read full article

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iPhone actually supports the smartphone market for competition

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 25th, 2008


I sent the article iPhone to sell 5 mil. by end of 2008 - But what next? to Vassili le Moigne from Microsoft, and he gave me a beautiful comment on it:

“The biggest value the iPhone brings to the picture is not the 5M it will sell (too small on the grand scale of the smartphone market and non scalable without a platform play) but the education it does for the masses about doing more with a phone than just talk. Indeed, all their marketing and using their brand is helping educate the consumer market to the value of smartphones, effectively giving a boost to the past efforts of Symbian, Windows Mobile and RIM in the business segment. Consumers might buy their first smartphone with the iPhone, but chances are that, by the time they get their second smartphone, 6 to 9 months from now, they will be much better educated about what they want (vs. the brand value they bought). At that point, it will up to Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Eten, RIM, Asus, Moto, HP, LG, and so on to show that they (think they) know better than Apple (a newcomer in that market, unlikey to have a new phone within 12 months) what smartphones are supposed to be like (keyboards, mobile email, MS Word, SMS, UMTS,…). And by then, you can bet the different OEM will have learnt from Apple on the design and usability. 


Apple is therefore growing the market for everybody.”... Read full article

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Chrome Mobile to be Chrome Lite and be compatible with all handsets

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 24th, 2008

Today I would also like to follow-up on the article on Will Google Chrome be mobile? which also followed a comment from Michael (Chromevoice.com), who agreed with the article. To add up ontop of  that, recently Engadget reported that Android and the new Android OS will have a Google Chrome like browser. 

ChromeVoice also reported, that:
“During the press conference, the question came up about whether the G1 would use Chrome and the answer came back, “Yes, call it Chrome Lite”. “... Read full article

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iPhone to sell 5 mil. by end of 2008 - But what next?

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 24th, 2008

According to Techtree [link], Apple is supposed to sell 5 mln. iPhone and iPhone 3G devices totally worldwide by end of Q4 2008.... Read full article

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Mobile services will go up very soon!

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 23rd, 2008

... Read full article

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How does mobile video advertising work?

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 21st, 2008
Someone asked me recently how does mobile video advertising work, and seeing a question on LinkedIn made me prepare a quick article on it. 
First of all let’s look at it technically, technically networks are there technologically, most networks in Europe are UMTS (1 Mbit) or HSDPA (3 Mbit) enabled, but the problem with streaming video is not that, but the coverage of these networks, which is still mostly in main cities, thus making it difficult to distribute.
Another big barrier is handset, whereas players and other are not yet completely there and connected. Even the Real Player in Symbian phones sometimes reconnects the settings, which for a regular user is a complete nightmare to change, usually a dead end. 

There are several methods how to do mobile video advertising:

  • Mobile video pre-roll / post-roll
    - a short clip before or after a movie (my market suggestions would say no longer then 4 - 5 seconds for like 30 second clips)
  • Little in-roll from the top or an appearance of the brand
  • Sponsored video
How to distribute? 
  • Streaming - launch it to existing mobile video sites
  • Downloads - launch several clips for download somewhere and have people download and share them offline
  • As text ads by the videos - another offered alternative would be text ads by the videos
  • Mobile games - Of course, the other alternative is to put the mobile video ads in mobile game wraps, if they offer them, which I wrote about in yesterday’s post. 
Best companies to recommend?
  • Probably would recommend the company Transpera for the job, they do a lot of mobile video 
Where is mobile video advertising heading?
My opinion is that mobile video will be a strong medium, but mobile web advertising and other will be stronger. There is no real possible interaction from the mobile video ads, which makes it much less attractive, also targetting and behavioural marketing is not applicable. I would suggest and think through a better mobile ads campaign. 
... Read full article

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How does mobile game advertising work?

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 20th, 2008
How Does Mobile Advergaming Work... Read full article

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Mobile web market data (2008/08) - Hungary

Posted by Jan Rezab on September 20th, 2008

I did 2 researches so far for mobile internet in different countries, and there seems to be a lot of positive change in both of them since (Read article on mobile web in Austria, Czech Republic). I recently receieved data from Hungary, a market which is also evolving quite quickly. ... Read full article

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