In April we reported statistics from browser company Opera showing large growth on the Mobile Web. According to Opera, there was a 157% increase in usage of their Opera Mini web browser from March 2008 to March 2009. What's driving that growth is devices like the iPhone, new mobile operating systems like Android, and hot applications like Augmented Reality.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Apple Dominates Mobile Web, But Android on The Rise...

We named Apple our Best Bigco of 2008, mostly due to the success of the iPhone and accompanying App Store. By most statistics, Apple is in a fairly dominant position in the Mobile Web. At the beginning of the year we reported data from AdMob (a leading mobile advertising marketplace) showing that Apple has a 48% market share of smartphone traffic in the United States. That figure doesn't just come from the iPhone, but the iPod touch too.

By June 2009, Apple's share of smartphone traffic in the U.S. had surged to 64%. Perhaps more significantly though, Apple's share of worldwide smartphone traffic had increased to 47%. This is important, because internationally other smartphones were utilized much more than in the U.S. before the iPhone arrived.

However, Apple can't afford to rest on its laurals. Google's mobile OS Android has been making rapid progress. According to the latest Admob statistics available, for July '09, requests from the Android Operating System increased 53% month over month and Android now has 7% worldwide OS share. The iPhone OS dropped slightly to 45% worldwide and 60% in the U.S.

Bigco Initiatives & Trendy Startups

All of the big Internet companies have strong Mobile Web initiatives. We discussed Apple and Google above.

Yahoo continues to push Mobile Web, which currently goes under the OneConnect brand.

Microsoft has announced a number of mobile initiatives this year, including a mobile version of Microsoft Office and MySpace bringing its platform to Windows Mobile phones.

Earlier this month Facebook announced a mobile expansion of their Facebook Connect platform. "Facebook Connect for Mobile Web" enables developers to add a Facebook Connect button to their apps in order to make them more social.

Probably of most interest is watching the up and coming Mobile Web startups. We've had our eye on Brightkite for some time, but perhaps the trendiest startup right now is Foursquare. It's a location-aware social app for the iPhone, but only available in a limited number of countries currently.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality, the addition of a layer to the world on your mobile device, has been a very hot trend this year. As we noted in August, it is in everything from mobile apps to kids toys. Many people think that "AR" will soon be talked about by everyone the way they used to talk about "social media" and "Web 2.0" before that. That remains to be seen, but there's no denying there is a lot of interest in AR right now.

As we reported at the end of August, the AR apps are starting to flow into Android (the early leader in this space) and iPhone devices. We reported that the Paris Metro Subway was apparently the first AR-enabled app to be accepted into iTunes. Then came a new Yelp app with AR, which any 3Gs owner can turn on by shaking their phone. Presselite, the company that made the Paris Metro Subway app, followed up with a London Bus app for the App Store.

Conclusion

Clearly mobile devices are an increasingly important way to access the Web. Many of our readers have smartphones nowadays, a good proportion of them being iPhones or Android devices (our statistics prove this). And there is no shortage of mobile web applications flowing into the App Store and Android's marketplace - not to forget Nokia and other prominent mobile manufacturers.

What's perhaps most encouraging however, is the entirely new class of mobile apps we're seeing. Augmented Reality is the most obvious example. It's been a big year for mobile, with much promise to come.

ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends of 2009:

1. Structured Data
2. The Real-Time Web
3. Personalization
4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality
5. Internet of Things

Mobile phone backup services are par for the course these days. Several vendors offer their own version: for example, Apple has MobileMe, Microsoft has My Phone and Nokia has Ovi. Despite this fact, a lot of users aren't taking advantage of these solutions for one of two reasons: either their phone isn't supported or they simply don't want to pay for the service. Case in point, Apple's MobileMe starts at a hefty $99 per year. After already blowing hundreds on the handset alone, that extra fee often proves to be too much for some users.

That's why Best Buy mIQ has appeal. Although the service maxes out at 1 GB of storage, it's enough for the average mobile phone user to backup everything on their phone with room to spare (well, except for iPhone users, but they're not supported at this time. Guess they have to pony up the $99 after all). 

In addition to providing online storage, the new service also provides a web site where users can access their online account, even reading and responding to incoming SMS messages from their PC. From the website, mIQ users can share photos and videos to popular social networks, too, including Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed and Twitter. And all changes made from the web instantly sync back to the mobile phone and vice versa.

Officially launching on Monday October 12th, mIQ will be pre-installed on any supported phone sold at Best Buy. In addition, other users, even those who bought their phone elsewhere, can sign up to use the service too from miqlive.com. Currently the system, built by Seattle-based Dashwire, supports smartphones running BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 operating systems like the BlackBerry 9700, Bold, Tour, Nokia E71 and N97, HTC Pro 2, Samsung Omnia II and T-Mobile Dash 3G.

But you don't have to wait until Monday to sign up. The site is accepting registrations as of now.

What's the Catch? Why is mIQ Free?

If you're wondering why Best Buy would offer a valuable backup service like this for free when so many others force you to pay, it's because the company is busy rebranding themselves as more than just a place to buy phones and accessories. They want to be an end-to-end mobile solutions provider - a place where you can shop for phones from multiple carriers, get advice, and receive support for your handset throughout the life of the phone.

To accomplish this goal, the company has been busy ramping up new offerings like a dedicated Best Buy Mobile site, a revamped Facebook page with new applications, and of course, a partnership with Google for exclusive Best Buy apps, including some designed just for Android phones. ]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_buy_announces_mobileme_competitor_miq.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_buy_announces_mobileme_competitor_miq.php Mobile Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:16:36 -0800 Sarah Perez GetJar, a large cross-platform mobile application store, has today launched a new service called the "App Download Page." Designed for companies distributing mobile applications, this page is essentially a mobile-ready web page which automatically detects the make and model of a website visitor's mobile phone in order to identify the correct version of the mobile app they had wanted to download. This makes mobile downloads much easier on consumers who no longer have to try and remember their phone's model number when looking through a download list - the identification is automatic. All the user has to do is click a link.

One of the main problems in the mobile industry today is fragmentation. There are thousands of different handsets out there and multiple mobile platforms to code for, too. Sometimes, mobile applications for the same platform - like the Blackberry, for instance - don't even work on all Blackberry devices, only on certain ones. That makes it challenging for both the developers who have to write the various versions of their mobile apps and for the mobile users who want to install applications on their phones.

In many cases, consumers don't even know the model number of their phone - they may know the brand, but only because it's etched into the top of their handset. So when they happen across a mobile application on the mobile web, they're stumped as to whether their device is supported.

With GetJar's new service, that confusion could be a thing of the past. By automatically identifying a consumer's handset, the mobile App Download Page can point the end user to the correct download automatically. And if their phone isn't supported, the page can redirect the user to another mobile webpage of the application developer's choosing.

Developers who sign up with GetJar can manage all their mobile applications from the Developer Site, where they can also track download and performance analytics, sign up to advertise on GetJar sites and partner networks, and integrate in-app ads within their mobile software. 

Future Plans

Facebook was one of the first companies to use the new service and photo-sharing website Photobucket will roll out their GetJar integration later this fall.

Next year, GetJar will also launch a new version of their mobile application store which is currently available only as a traditional website and a mobile-ready WAP site. The future version, which will feature some 50,000+ mobile apps from GetJar's catalog, will more closely mimic the iTunes App Store mobile experience as it will be accessed via an icon placed on mobile phones' homescreens. The company is currently working on establishing partnerships with mobile carriers in order to prepare for the store's launch.

The Indonesian mobile market has more than doubled in the last year and for a lot of users there, their mobile phones are the most important on-ramps to the Internet. As InMobi points out in its press release, strong competition among carriers has brought prices down and made mobile phones more affordable in the last year. While the BlackBerry is generally regarded as a business phone with a focus on email, it is currently beating the more web-centric iPhone in Indonesia when it comes to mobile web usage.

InMobi estimates that the average user in Indonesia generated 592 page views, while the global average is only about 250. About 80% of all the handsets sold in Indonesia are web-enabled - though most of them obviously don't give users access to the rich experience smartphones can offer.

As for BackBerry's lead in this market, it's important to note that AdMob's last metrics report from July (PDF) points out that both Apple and RIM only have a small share of the Indonesian handset market. BlackBerry currently holds the lead against Apple, though, and judging from InMobi's data, it looks like it also has the momentum to extend this lead.

The process works not only with traditional coupons but with customer loyalty cards, too, which are typically used for in-store discounts, points, and other special offers provided by the retailer to regular customers. Since most stores already run their own in-house programs for this, MoLo Rewards is introducing a way to link the existing programs to their mobile platform. The incentive on the retailers' part, says the company, is that a mobile system such as this would dramatically cut down on fraud while also cutting costs associated with mailings and printings. They can also use RFID tags on store shelves to distribute coupons to customers walking the aisles.

In addition to the coupon processing, the MoLo Rewards system tracks your purchases on the backend in order to provide you with targeted coupons and other offers based on both your spending habits and your physical location. As you use the mobile coupons, you earn MoLo points, which can then be redeemed for "rewards" which include things like laptops, game consoles, bikes, gift cards, and so on.

NFC vs RFID

One drawback to this program - at least here in the U.S. - is its use of NFC technology. NFC is much more popular in European and Asian markets where it's already used for everything from micropayments to file sharing. With this in mind, MoLo Rewards also offers RFID as an alternative. This allows the application to work with any phone as all the consumer needs to do is attach the company's RFID tag to their phone in order to participate. Also available are "show and go" coupons, which are basically a low-tech feature of their application that lets you show the coupon on your phone's screen to the cashier so they can then enter it manually into their system.

MoLo Rewards is currently in beta as they work to add more retailers to their system. In the meantime, those interested in registering can do so here.

Sharing Flash Apps on Mobile Devices

On the mobile side, Adobe and Gigya will give users the ability to share content on a wide variety of phones, including Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. Users who want to install a sharable application on their mobile phones will simply receive an SMS message with a link to the application. The service will automatically detect the type of device and deliver the right version to the user. Developers can also give their users the ability to share iPhone versions of their applications - though obviously those have to be native iPhone applications, as the iPhone doesn't support Flash.

Developers will be able to track the success of their applications through and Adobe AIR app that will allow them to measure distribution and customer usage. In partnership with Gigya, Adobe will also give developers the ability to assure installs through paid promotions and to monetize apps through cross-promotions.

Coming Soon: Easier Integration with Social Networks

Adobe also announced that it will launch another Flash Platform Service later this year that will allow developers to easily connect Flash applications written on top of Adobe's platforms with a number of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Developers won't have to worry about the idiosyncrasies of a service's API, but will be able to write their applications on top of Adobe's social platform instead.

In April we reported statistics from browser company Opera showing large growth on the Mobile Web. According to Opera, there was a 157% increase in usage of their Opera Mini web browser from March 2008 to March 2009. What's driving that growth is devices like the iPhone, new mobile operating systems like Android, and hot applications like Augmented Reality.

We named Apple our Best Bigco of 2008, mostly due to the success of the iPhone and accompanying App Store. By most statistics, Apple is in a fairly dominant position in the Mobile Web. At the beginning of the year we reported data from AdMob (a leading mobile advertising marketplace) showing that Apple has a 48% market share of smartphone traffic in the United States. That figure doesn't just come from the iPhone, but the iPod touch too.

By June 2009, Apple's share of smartphone traffic in the U.S. had surged to 64%. Perhaps more significantly though, Apple's share of worldwide smartphone traffic had increased to 47%. This is important, because internationally other smartphones were utilized much more than in the U.S. before the iPhone arrived.

However, Apple can't afford to rest on its laurals. Google's mobile OS Android has been making rapid progress. According to the latest Admob statistics available, for July '09, requests from the Android Operating System increased 53% month over month and Android now has 7% worldwide OS share. The iPhone OS dropped slightly to 45% worldwide and 60% in the U.S.

Bigco Initiatives & Trendy Startups

All of the big Internet companies have strong Mobile Web initiatives. We discussed Apple and Google above.

Yahoo continues to push Mobile Web, which currently goes under the OneConnect brand.

Microsoft has announced a number of mobile initiatives this year, including a mobile version of Microsoft Office and MySpace bringing its platform to Windows Mobile phones.

Earlier this month Facebook announced a mobile expansion of their Facebook Connect platform. "Facebook Connect for Mobile Web" enables developers to add a Facebook Connect button to their apps in order to make them more social.

Probably of most interest is watching the up and coming Mobile Web startups. We've had our eye on Brightkite for some time, but perhaps the trendiest startup right now is Foursquare. It's a location-aware social app for the iPhone, but only available in a limited number of countries currently.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality, the addition of a layer to the world on your mobile device, has been a very hot trend this year. As we noted in August, it is in everything from mobile apps to kids toys. Many people think that "AR" will soon be talked about by everyone the way they used to talk about "social media" and "Web 2.0" before that. That remains to be seen, but there's no denying there is a lot of interest in AR right now.

As we reported at the end of August, the AR apps are starting to flow into Android (the early leader in this space) and iPhone devices. We reported that the Paris Metro Subway was apparently the first AR-enabled app to be accepted into iTunes. Then came a new Yelp app with AR, which any 3Gs owner can turn on by shaking their phone. Presselite, the company that made the Paris Metro Subway app, followed up with a London Bus app for the App Store.

Conclusion

Clearly mobile devices are an increasingly important way to access the Web. Many of our readers have smartphones nowadays, a good proportion of them being iPhones or Android devices (our statistics prove this). And there is no shortage of mobile web applications flowing into the App Store and Android's marketplace - not to forget Nokia and other prominent mobile manufacturers.

What's perhaps most encouraging however, is the entirely new class of mobile apps we're seeing. Augmented Reality is the most obvious example. It's been a big year for mobile, with much promise to come.

ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends of 2009:

1. Structured Data
2. The Real-Time Web
3. Personalization
4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality
5. Internet of Things

Update: We just heard back from Google - here is the official statement about which phones will be able to contribute traffic data to Google Maps:

Google Maps products that include location services will make use of this information for traffic. This includes the downloadable Google Maps for Mobile product for mobile phones as well as the Google Maps application for Android phones. One exception is the maps functionality that Google provides for the iPhone - the iPhone does not provide any location data that is used for traffic crowdsourcing at this time.

Google is obviously aware of the potential privacy issues involved here, but according to Dave Barth, the product manager for Google Maps, Google will "find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it." This way, nobody can find out where a car actually came from.

According to Google, enough users use these phones to make this project feasible. In my experience however, the data for these arterial roads isn't quite as trustworthy as the data for highways.

Overall, though, this is a great project and the more users are aware of it, the better the data will become. However, it is also worth noting that some GPS manufacturers have been using data from their users' GPS systems to crowdsource traffic data for years, though chances are that Google will be able to recruit more users and hence create a better experience for its users.

Mobile analyst firm MSearchGroove has just published the results of a series of tests which show that the mobile search service ChaCha beat out two other voice-enabled search applications on the iPhone when it comes to search query accuracy. [Update, Ed: a commenter points out that the report was actually sponsored by ChaCha] To test this, the researchers used Google's own mobile application and Vlingo for iPhone, an app that lets you search both Google or Yahoo. Oddly, they ignored Yahoo's mobile app, which also has voice search built in.

The results of their study aren't entirely shocking: if you want to be understood, ask a human, not a computer.

ChaCha's mobile search service can be accessed both by SMS and by calling a toll-free 1-800 number. Since these tests focused on voice search, the phone-in method was used. When using ChaCha, the service identified the queries accurately in 94.4% of the cases and delivered accurate search results 88.9% of the time. Vlingo, which the researchers used to test Yahoo search, only interpreted queries correctly in 72.2% of the cases and delivered accurate results 27.8% of the time. Google, surprisingly, fared worst of all. Their mobile application only understood spoken queries in 16.7% of tests and delivered accurate results 22.2% of the time.

To test the applications, the researchers conducted two rounds of tests using both keyword search and natural language queries where they asked questions using sentences. The queries represented a cross-section of typical mobile searches in categories like navigation, directions, local search, general information, social search, and long-tail search.

It's not all that surprising to find that ChaCha outperformed the other voice-enabled applications - after all, they have real, live humans on the other end of the line to interpret the spoken questions. What is surprising, though, is how wide the gap is in between the human-powered search and the speech recognition apps, especially when contrasting ChaCha with Google.

Did Google Just Get Beaten at Search?

When you think of search, you tend to think "Google." When you use Google, there's a certain expectation that your queries will be interpreted accurately and your results will be relevant. What these tests show, however, is that when it comes to the mobile platform, all bets are off. Not only was Google outperformed by a mobile application whose name few mainstream users have probably heard of (Vlingo), they were also outperformed by a crowdsourced workforce who answer ChaCha queries in their spare time. Could this mean that mobile search is an area - perhaps the only area - where a competitor could actually get a foothold and steal away a bit of Google's market share?

Well, not so fast. Google could still dominate on mobile thanks to brand recognition alone. Mainstream users aren't going to seek out new alternatives to search, even if they're better. That's precisely why companies like Microsoft have to spend millions of dollars on advertising campaigns just to gain a percentage point or two of search market share.

Then there's the fact that tests which compare human-interpreted queries to machine-interpreted ones seem a little unfair. We all know that people can still understand each other much better than computers can. (Well, for now at least). ChaCha wins this round, but only because this was never a fair fight to begin with. Speech recognition and natural language processing are technologies still in their infancy. But if we know Google, they're coding away right now to improve them as we speak.

The concept behind Aloqa's app offers a unique vision for mobile search that's quite different from how most people use their phones today. Currently, if you're looking for nearby restaurants, for example, you would first launch a mobile mapping application like Google Maps, let it locate you, and then perform a search for "restaurants." Once the results loaded, you could tap on the various pushpins to see the info about restaurants nearby, including names, phone numbers, and addresses.

In Aloqa, however, that same search would be much simpler. In fact, it wouldn't be a search at all. Instead, you would just tap on the icon for restaurants and immediately see a list of those nearby. When you see the one you want (oh look, there's sushi!), a second tap will display a window where you can choose to go to the business's web site, display the location on a map, call the business, or send the info to a friend.

This same sort of functionality can be used for anything from restaurants to retail stores to gas stations and ATMs. It can also help you find events that may spark your interest, like a nearby concert for instance.

Location-Aware Facebook Friend Finder

One of the even more interesting functions in Aloqa is its ability to find your nearby Facebook friends. Instead of building an entirely separate mobile social network like mobile social networks Loopt and Brightkite have done, Aloqa lets you invite your Facebook friends to share their location with you on the "Aloqa Buzz" channel. Then, when you and your friends are in proximity to each other, you'll be able to chat with each other via the mobile application. Although this still isn't the ideal solution for making Facebook a true mobile social network (nothing short of a location-aware mobile Facebook app would really do that), it comes very close. All you have to do is convince your friends to accept the invite.

About the Platform

In addition to proactively monitoring your location, Aloqa can also send out "push notifications" based on your own preferences for the types of alerts and levels of intrusiveness you want. For example, you can choose to receive a text-based alert when you walk past a nearby store offering a mobile coupon or you could receive a phone call when an important event occurs - like when your child leaves a pre-configured safety zone.

Surprisingly, Aloqa doesn't exclusively use GPS technology to deliver its location-aware information. If your phone doesn't have a GPS chip, then Aloqa will use cell towers or Wi-Fi to determine your relative position. Not only is this data "accurate enough," explains Aloqa CEO (and ex-Googler) Sanjeev Agrawal in an interview with VentureBeat, it's less of a drain on battery life, too.

Where to Get It

Currently Aloqa is available only on the Android platform in beta form. Over the coming weeks, the app will be made available for other phones, too. Stay tuned to this company's news - this is one app you're going to want to try.

Pizza Hut, a company that apparently understands the difference between an app and a web page, has just released a brand-new iPhone application that puts Papa John's lackluster attempt to shame. We wonder: will this be the start of a new trend in company-branded applications?

The Pizza Hut App

Today, however, a user searching for the keyword "pizza" in iTunes will come across a number of restaurant locator apps and one new one that will jump out at them: Pizza Hut (iTunes URL). That's right, Pizza Hut has released a new application designed specifically for the iPhone. The app will complement their already robust lineup of alternative ordering methods that currently include ordering by text message, web site ordering, mobile web site ordering, and even a Facebook ordering system.

The Pizza Hut iPhone app offers a simple interface that includes a menu and a checkout function, as expected. However, the company has also smartly included a "virtual fridge" where you'll find coupons to add to your order and a free game called "Hut Racer" which you can play while you kill time waiting for your pizza to arrive. Altogether, the app seems to be well-thought out, well-designed, and simple enough for anyone to use.

Will Pizza Hut Encourage Other Restaurants (and Companies) to Follow?

However, the most revolutionary thing about the app may be the fact that it exists at all. No other pizza delivery company has launched an iPhone application yet. For that matter, no restaurants have done so either, not even Apple partner Starbucks. (Correct us if we're wrong about that, we searched for numerous popular chains and found none...but we're sure you'll let us know if there are some out there. At any rate, there are very few if any.)

We once wondered why so few companies, not just restaurants, but also retail stores, travel sites, and other big businesses had eschewed the App Store entirely, opting instead for mobile web sites (or, sometimes no mobile sites at all). Why shouldn't companies build iPhone applications to complement their other online offerings? The cost of development isn't prohibitively high and the iPhone represents a huge chunk of mobile web traffic both here in the U.S. and on the worldwide stage.

Some commenters on that original post argued that an iTunes store filled with branded apps from companies would clutter things up, but as the App Store now offers some 65,000 applications (give or take), is clutter really that much of an issue anymore? Others worried instead about cluttering up their phones' screens and becoming overwhelmed by the number of applications. That issue, too, has now been somewhat addressed thanks to OS 3.0's extended springboard and Spotlight search feature. You can now fill your phones with apps and find them exceedingly fast via search.

Of course, we don't think that users would download and install every single application for every single business they've ever patronized - just those they use on a regular basis, probably only a handful at most. Because really, how many businesses, restaurants or otherwise, do you visit or use multiple times per month that would make a dedicated app worth your while?

Finally, multiple commenters noted that designing a mobile web site made the most sense since it could be used on any platform. Of course we agree that companies should have a mobile site - that should be par for the course these days just as having a web presence is - but why ignore the 59% web traffic marketshare delivered by the iPhone here in the U.S. or the 43% of web traffic worldwide? Why not build for this dominating platform?

It will be important to watch Pizza Hut's success in this space, as they're leading where so few others have so far failed to go. If they see increased revenue driven by their mobile application, other restaurants - especially those that offer delivery and carry-out options - may end up doing the same. We hope this will bring about a new trend of company-branded applications, but it's far too soon to tell. We'll just have to wait and see...I guess we'll play a little "Hut Racer" in the meantime. 

Siri has been preparing for this for some time now. While the product is still more promise than substance, I at least got to look at some real-life iPhone demos in San Jose.

What Users Can Expect (U.S. Ones at Least...)

Last October it raised $8.5 million and in November ReadWriteWeb named it as a Semantic App to watch, purely based on the promise of the app. Siri was spun out of SRI International and its core technology is based on the ambitious CALO artificial intelligence project. Siri is aiming to be a "personalized assistant that learns."

I asked Kittlaus and Gruber what specifically is in store for users of Siri? They told me that Siri will start as a mobile application, but it will become available over IM, email and other communication platforms too. Kittlaus added that you will be able to "access your assistant in the manner you choose." The iPhone app will be the first one launched, at the end of summer, however the pair were button-lipped about which device would be next.

Siri also sees a future for their product in smart devices, for example VCRs - where they could replace the instruction manual. The overall message is that Siri will be "a systems play in everyday systems." Later in the interview, Kittlaus and Gruber described Siri to me as an "intelligent interface".

Siri wants to enable a "person-centric world," rather than the device-centric one we have today. In other words, they want Siri to serve the user and act as an intermediary between the person and the device. In the demos I saw, you could type or speak instructions into an iPhone - e.g. "What is a good movie about to start near my current location?" - and the product would deliver a textual and graphical answer.

Siri vs Chandler

I asked if there are any similarities between Siri and another 'Personal Assistant' product, the Mitch Kapor inspired Chandler - an open source project which re-defined the phrase 'scope creep' for the web 2.0 era (it finally reached version 1.0 status in August 2008, after more than 7 years development).

Kittlaus and Gruber replied that Siri will be very task-focused and will be much more pragmatic than Chandler. They claimed that Siri will "focus on domains we understand," such as movies and restaurants. They also noted that the time and place for a personal assistant product is now, due to rise of the Mobile Internet. So Chandler suffered from bad timing too.

How Will Siri Make Money?

As noted above, one business model for Siri will be partnerships with companies that make personal appliances such as VCRs. What other ways will Siri make money, I asked?

Kittlaus and Gruber told me that they will have affiliate agreements on transactions, for example movie tickets. What's more, their model will be CPA based - where advertisers define what they want Siri to do and pay for the outcomes. An example might be Netflix paying for every new customer.

Browser Technology to the Fore

We spoke a bit about the problems of designing Siri for many different devices. Siri is looking for browser technology to come to their rescue, pointing to WebKit's progress in the mobile browsing world. Siri is also looking for upcoming browsers to integrate functionality such as speech, which Siri will be able to leverage; inputting commands into Siri by voice is expected to be a big use case. As a lot of Siri's processing is done in 'the cloud,' and browser technology will be an important factor in the success or otherwise of Siri.

I think this is a pretty good bet by Siri, given all of the competition and advances in the browser space right now - check out what IBM is doing in a browser-related project called Blue Spruce, as just one example.

Mobile a Big Part of Siri's Vision

The demographic that Siri is targeting initially, 18-35 urban and social, are early adopters of the iPhone and mobile in general. This user base is also a multi-tasking one. That again plays to Siri's goal to deliver personalized information in context, which these days usually means on a mobile device.

The proof - as always - will be in the pudding when Siri is launched at end of the summer to U.S. users. We think it's a great shame that international users won't be able to enjoy this product too, until probably 2011. In any case, you can see Tom Gruber give a demo of Siri in this SemTech video (slides here):

Thanks to the higher availability of GPS-enabled phones among other factors, the LBS (location-based services) market is about to boom big time. In fact, it already is. According to research firm Gartner, the market will more than double this year.

Despite a 4% decrease in mobile device sales, Gartner forecasts the LBS market to grow from 41.0 million in 2008 to 95.7 million in 2009. Revenue, too, will increase from $998.3 million in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2009.

But it's not just GPS technology alone that has led to this sort of rapid growth. Other factors playing a role so far have included "improved price/performance of the enabling technologies and compelling location applications," says Annette Zimmermann, senior research analyst at Gartner. In other words, smartphones got cheaper and there are tons of fun apps to run on them.

As someone who totes her iPhone everywhere, this author has to agree. There are currently half-a-dozen or so LBS apps on my device including everything from mapping applications to friend finders to apps that tell me what's playing at my local cinema. I can even read local news stories courtesy of the location aware app Radar (iTunes link).

Beyond 2009

Moving further into 2009 and beyond, it won't just be iPhone addicts (like myself) who get to enjoy all that LBS technology has to offer. Other smartphone platforms will also become major players in the LBS game. For example, we're expecting 18 more Android-powered phones by year's end, Microsoft's MyPhone has just entered into beta, Blackberry's App World is only 3 months old, but has already doubled the number of apps, and Nokia's Ovi Store may have its issues, but is still a major player worldwide. Zimmermann notes that this increase in the number of application stores such as these will play an important role in growing the LBS market over the next year and beyond.

Still, as prevalent as LBS technology is today, it's still in its infancy. Over the next 12 to 18 months, Gartner predicts we'll see even more compelling applications including mobile location-based digital coupons and points-of-interest search services. And of course, we're still waiting to subscribe to our local paper via our mobile (or even pay for a downloadable app!)

However, the popularity of such applications is still dependent on region. For example, here in North America, navigation and family-safety solutions are the most popular. In Western Europe, navigation is the most used, followed by local search and friend finders, but there's no significant uptake in safety applications. These sorts of regional preferences will lead to a dynamic LBS market worldwide.

We're looking forward to watching this boom as it occurs, and are wondering what will be the next big thing in LBS apps. It's still surprising to us that Facebook hasn't integrated LBS into their mobile apps yet, leaving that to smaller players like Brightkite, Loopt, Foursquare, and others. Is that a niche that will finally take off this year? We're not sure - so far, it seems slow going - but if the market is about to double, then who knows? We may see new applications that we couldn't have even imagined emerge! It's just a matter of time.

What sorts of LBS apps are you anticipating or craving?

Just for Uganda at First

Even though Google stresses that it targets 'Africa' with these services, in reality, they are only available for users on MTN Uganda's network, but chances are that, if successful, Google will expand these offerings in the future.

Google worked together with MTN Uganda, the Grameen Foundation's "AppLab," and a number of other local partners to get this service off the ground.

Fighting Information Poverty

In a post on the Google Africa blog about this launch, Rachel Payne, Google's Country Manager in Uganda points out that the company believes that "it's important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need most, and in areas with the greatest information poverty." It will be interesting to see how (and if) local users will make use of these new services.

SMS Tips

Among these new services, Google SMS and Google Trader are very interesting and will definitely be quite useful for a lot of users. Google SMS Tips seems to be the most sophisticated of these services, as it interprets search queries and doesn't just return a list of links, but actually tries to compute the query and return a relevant answer to a question. For now, SMS Tips works best with health questions and queries related to farming (including weather information). Even if you are not in Uganda, you can give the service a try here (query form is at the bottom of the page)

Depending on whether agencies in a selected location are participating (currently, nearly 1,000 agencies have signed on since the company's launch in March), users can sign up at the Nixle website to subscribe to emails, web alerts, and text messages about community issues from tornado watches and traffic accidents to local robberies and fugitives on the loose. Nixle moreover provides a painless way for local agencies to transition into modern times and notify community members of critical details in ways that will have an immediate impact.

Users can add as many locations as they like to receive alerts for different areas; for example, I know of several female relatives who would be more than happy to know of police alerts in the various towns I travel to and worry/overreact accordingly.

Users can also choose which kinds of alerts to receive and what on medium they prefer to receive them.

Nixle claims to be the first authenticated, secure service for connecting municipal agencies and community organizations to residents in real time. It uses the Google Maps API to determine and display location and proximity. The company is privately funded and its services are free to all governments, government agencies and organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and end users.

As geographic location and proximity become more and more relevant to users and the wealth of information about locations increases, applications such as Nixle seem like the next logical step in law enforcement and public safety. It's great that these alerts are available in real time; it would also be great to see a Brightkite-esque "check-in" process made available for users. For example, if I'm at a friend's house and a store down the street is robbed, it would be great to have the information and know to stay safely inside for a little while.

Then again, real-time availability of information is just as useful as location-based information, particularly when issues of public safety are involved.

What do our readers think? Is a real-time, geo-specific alert system the future of law enforcement? Or is it creepy, Big Brother, Minority Report territory?