PayForIt
September 18, 2007 | CommentsI went to an NOC event last week on the subject of PayForIt... and was surprised at how dry the topic wasn't. Some scattered notes from the evening:
- Operators have implemented opt-in behaviour inconsistently;
- There are 3+ steps to making a purchase;
- Merchants don't always get a MSISDN for their customers, instead getting a unique token (but not one a future version of the API is guaranteed to honour);
- Time to implement a live service has maxed out so far at 5 days;
- 13% of users cancel payments they make during the payment process, and 7% of PayForIt billings fail - but they fail immediately, with an out of credit notification;
- Vodafone offer a higher revenue share via PayForIt than PSMS;
- Some operators can put the merchant name next to billings on phone bills;
- iPlay saw a 15% conversion rate for game downloads via an off-portal mobile site they ran; the web conversion rate was much worse;
links for 2007-09-18
September 18, 2007 | Comments-
"My god … Trutap developers take stage and peform Boys-II-Men-style jingle"
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"Trutap, the latest company wanting to give the world’s teenagers access to their lives on mobile phones, will launch on Friday."
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"If you recall, Hotxt has a huge warehouse full of developers so I’m rather excited to see what they’ve dreamed up."
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"The nice thing is that they do aggregrate messaging from multiple networks and platforms."
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"They're ending with a flourish, a hilarious a capella rendition of their theme song"
links for 2007-09-17
September 17, 2007 | Comments-
"Everyone wanted to know if there was a situation where it was OK to whip out the laptop. My answer, over and over again, is “No.”"
O2, iphone
September 16, 2007 | CommentsSo, O2 look like they're going to be the iPhone operator here in the UK. I've tried to avoid writing or thinking about the accursed thing over the last few months, but a couple of chance encounters in San Francisco (a hotel coincidentally around the corner from the Apple Store and a friend of Joh's who works for Mr Jobs) led me to give it a going over... and start feeling the oh-so-familiar Apple Lust.
I find the device pretty pleasant; lack of MMS is a shame, but the screen is lovely, the touchiness (?) works well (better than the Prada phone, which is ostensibly similar), and the hardware drips Apple slickness. The really nice things about it are at the business end though: tariffs that actually let you use Google Maps without bankrupting yourself (unless you're abroad), and that 10% of revenues generated which Apple has apparently negotiated with operators.
This percentage is something really new - I can't recall any other handset vendor having successfully negotiated for in the past, and chatting to a few industry types I get a sense of unease from folks who've had experience working at operators: it's the slippery slope, and other vendors will want this too, now Apple have it. Who knows, maybe it's the beginning of the end for handset subsidies too?
But I wonder whether this might be a good thing in the long-term. Handset vendors are trying to circumnavigate operators and build direct relationships with end-users, what better way to prevent this than offering to cut them in? And what better way to improve worthwhile features and user experience than giving handset vendors a financial incentive to drive usage?
links for 2007-09-16
September 16, 2007 | Comments-
"mobility is being packaged differently so old-time webheads can digest it, now that they are screwing around with their first smartphones and thinking what exactly does it all mean for the industry and their businesses"