Lark Birdsong's List: Mobile

"As recently as two years ago, mobile banking in the developing world was an object of skepticism among financial insiders. While proponents argued that cell phones could revolutionize personal finance in poorer countries, regulators warned of money laundering and most bankers worried that low customer balances wouldn't be worth the transaction costs. "

"Wireless Intelligence is the global database of mobile market information."

"Mobile will start to become part of every business' marketing and distribution strategy in 2011," said Kunal Gupta, CEO of Polar Mobile. "That's where we all spend our time and brands, marketers and publishers will want to capture that opportunity.""

"Mobile phone apps make this process much easier, as you can record your receipts and track your expenses on-the-go. as they occur. I thought I was a genius when I realized I could just snap a picture of a receipt on my iPhone and store it in Evernote. And while that eliminates carrying an envelopes full of receipts when I travel, that process only fulfills part of what's necessary in tracking business expenses and creating expense reports.

So here are a few suggestions for other iPhone apps that can aid in the process:"

"First, there’s the news about Virgin’s MiFi. It’s a slim, credit-card-size, personal Wi-Fi hot spot. Wherever you go, you can keep it in your pocket or purse and get online with your laptop, iPad, iPod Touch or whatever. The MiFi is available from various cellphone carriers, but Virgin’s plan was different. As I wrote in September:

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“Three things about the Virgin MiFi are very different. First, Virgin’s plan is unlimited. You don’t have to sweat through the month, hoping you don’t exceed the standard 5-gigabyte data limit, as you do with the cellular-modem products from Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile.

“If you hadn’t noticed, unlimited-data plans are fast disappearing — but here’s Virgin, offering up an unlimited Internet plan as though it never got the memo.

“Second, Virgin requires no contract. You can sign up for service only when you need it. In other words, it’s totally O.K. with Virgin if you leave the thing in your drawer all year, and activate it only for, say, the two summer months when you’ll be away. That’s a huge, huge deal in this era when every flavor of Internet service, portable or not, requires a two-year commitment.

“Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.”"

"Thanks to a new service called FreePhone2Phone, that transaction is now possible. Listen to a 10- or 12-second ad, get 10 minutes of free calling to any of 55 countries. According to the company, 85 percent of all calls are under 10 minutes long, so most calls are covered."

"Strategy needs to come before technology.”

“1) Mobile/Social/Local Combinations will Explode but will Generate Little Revenue
2) 2011 is the Year of the “Dumb” Smartphone User
3) The Mobile Fragmentation Problem will Continue
4) The “Apps vs. Internet” Debate Will Continue…to be Irrelevant
5) Mobile Marketing Spend will Surpass $1 Billion
6) Mobile Will Increasingly Prompt Users to Interact with Their Environment
7) The Attention to 4G will Vastly Outweigh the Impact of 4G Networks
8) Companies will Invest First in Convenient Services for Consumers
9) Casual Gaming Will Continue to Boom
10) “Mobile” Will Mean More than Mobile Phones”"

"First, mobile-device and operating-system fragmentation will continue. Unlike Windows in the PC world, no single mobile OS will gain dominance within the next three years. We have at least 10 active mobile operating systems, with the major variants including Android, Blackberry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. While the number of viable operating systems will shrink over time, IT will be forced to manage at least two, and more likely three, in the short run, as well as numerous device types. "