Pajama Entrepreneur

Better enjoy the last remnant of civility left on airlines (i.e. no mobile phones) because Ofcom, the UK regulator, has just said they’re fine with mobile calls on UK-registered aircraft.

Read more on Rose Cantine.

The European Commission has chosen the Nokia-backed DVB-H standard for mobile TV. Big loser: Qualcomm and its competing platform, MediaFLO. Qualcomm has been lobbying the Commission heavily in the past few months. What does this mean? By creating one standard for the entire EU, the Commission hopes to give a boost to European mobile TV services. Like they did with the GSM standard, the EU’s adoption of DVB-H will encourage operators and device manufacturers to launch these services within the next year.

I just returned from a trip to Japan. What amazed me was that I did not hear any mobile phones ringing in subway cars or trains. Neither did I hear (or see) people talking on their phones. I was so eerily quiet. But people are using their phones — texting, reading mini-novels, playing games, looking at video. Everyone’s staring into them, oblivious to the other passengers. Note that in Japan, nearly all the phones are the flip model (none of them from Nokia).

What accounts for the silence? On the shinkansen (high-speed train) people are requested to put their phones in silent mode. If you want to talk to someone, you have to do it in the area between the carriages. As a result, even though the subways and trains can be very crowded, it’s more civilized experience unlike in Europe or the US, where people chat loudly and talk about their personal problems within earshot of everyone. I also noticed that when two or more people are talking in a subway car, they do so in hushed voices.

I witnessed the same thing in a cafe at the train station in Kyoto where I was having coffee, waiting for the shinkansen to Tokyo. The guy sitting next to me suddenly rose and ran outside when his mobile phone rang. He did not take the call in the restaurant.

What amazes me though is that during the week and a half that I was in Japan, I did not see one person violate this “rule”. Not even the wildly dressed young guys with punky orange hair boarding the subway in Harajuku (a Tokyo district where a lot of young people hang out). Think of the thousands of people who use public transport in Japan.

What does this have to do with i-mode?

i-mode is a wireless service launched by NTT Docomo in Japan which provides access to mobile Internet sites. In other words, it delivers online content to mobile phones. It’s popular in Japan because on those long boring commutes and subway rides, people can simply stare at their phones and view the content. Since they don’t talk on their phones, it’s the one thing that occupies their time and allows them to not have to look at other passengers.

NTT Docomo entered into partnerships with European telecom operators a few years ago to launch i-mode in Europe. It was a flop everywhere. I know that in the Netherlands, KPN Mobile is giving it away and even then, most people I know who have it, rarely use it.

Why? People talk on their mobile phones in the Netherlands (which irritates other passengers but the chatting commuters don’t care). They don’t have such long commutes either. Many people bike or drive to work, too. Europeans and Americans are more “PC centric”, that is, when they think of online content, they like to look at it on a computer.

Coming in Q3 2008, the follow-up to the N95: the N96 has 16 GB of flash memory which allows one to enjoy up to 40 hours of video, full Flash built in, FM and Internet radio, Nokia Maps application and GPS receiver. This is one of my absolute must-haves for the year.

I was at Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM) in Barcelona the last two days checking out the latest in mobile gadgets and this one is my favorite because it marries the basic thin Nokia phone with Nokia’s new Maps 2.0 application. Maps 2.0 is the Nokia GPS map adapted to pedestrians. According to Nokia, it has an “accelerometer” which measures changes in direction and orientation. The built-in compass makes it easy to follow the map when you are walking around in a city. So when you turn, the map automatically switches orientation so it shows you where you are facing. This is very handy when you are emerging out of a metro station and have no clue in which direction to proceed.

I had a chance to try out the 6210 (pictured above) with Maps 2.o yesterday. I signed up for Nokia’s “Hidden Barcelona” tour. I went in a tuktuk (see below) with a representative of Nokia. We drove to the center of town, close to the Barrio Gotico and we had to find a hidden square called the Square of Silence. Anyone who has been to Barcelona knows that it’s easy to get lost in the center with its tiny alleys. There is no way to orient yourself against the steeple of a church or a building. It’s like walking in a maze.

So with the 6210 and Maps 2.o, I walked, the map told me to turn left here, right there and voila, there I was at the Plaza Saint Felip Neri. I realized suddenly that I had been there before but I don’t think I could have found it again without the 6210’s Maps application. Below is photo of the square, which I took with the new 6220, a phone that Nokia announced this week which has a 5 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics. I could have uploaded this photo directly to my Flickr account but decided to transfer it instead to my Mac Book Pro so I could post it on this blog.

What I also like about Maps 2.0 is that if you are driving, you can see upcoming parking lots, auto mechanics and petrol stations. The map also marks churches, museums, metro stops and train stations.

How often have you wandered around a city completely lost, trying to figure out where the metro stop is, not knowing that it’s only one block behind some building?

What I’d like to do with Maps 2.0 is layer over points showing my friends’ favorite restaurants, cafes and hangouts in Barcelona. Then, Maps 2.0 will really shine. It’s great that Nokia is putting this application on the lower end phones so that it gets mass adoption.

I am in Barcelona for 3GSM, the massive annual get-together of the mobile phone industry. Actually it’s now called something completely forgettable — Mobile World Congress — so everybody still calls it 3GSM.

I hear peals of laughter in the background. What? Pajama Entrepreneur at the cellular industry’s annual gathering? After posting more than my fair share of articles ridiculing and attacking cellular operators, you would never have expected me to come here. Actually I have been to 3GSM before (2004?), when it was still called 3GSM and held in Cannes, France. I think Barcelona is a much better location for the conference.

I will be posting articles on the latest gadgets and applications. This is an interesting year for the mobile phone industry. Unless the device manufacturers give us something better than the iPhone, they’re toast. And unless the mobile operators offer flat-rate affordable data plans and roaming rates, they’re toast. We shall see what they’ve come up with . . .

In the past few weeks, I have attended two conferences, Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco and Nokia’s Mobile Mashup in Palo Alto, on the supposedly new world of mobile Internet, a paradise where everyone can use these incredible applications on their mobile phones AND access the Internet in all its glory. Unfortunately we’re stuck with a basic reality: expensive data plans and the attendant roaming charges when you go abroad. Until I can get a cheap, flat-rate, all-you-can-eat worldwide monthly data service plan, I am not going to use these applications. Of course, I already use Google maps, search and visit a variety of websites on my mobile phone using Wi-Fi when I can find it. But Wi-Fi is not yet everywhere and it’s still sometimes a hassle to use: login screens that make you type in long characters (on a cell phone this is very unpleasant), having to pay every time you log on to a different network. Until we have cheap flat rate plans and no roaming charges, I’m afraid it’s a waste of time to develop these apps and attend these events.

UPDATE: SFR, the French operator, launched their version of “unlimited” mobile 3G Internet access. Click here to see the press release and here to see the article with video clip on Journal du Net. Several problems with this:

• There are 3 different tariffs (39, 49 and 69 EUR) with various services, like mobile TV associated with them. I find it confusing.
• You have to sign up for 12 to 24 months. What if you just want access when you are in France occasionally?
• Works only with certain phones.

If this is the mobile operator’s way to encourage mobile Internet use, good luck.