PhonepayPlus, the phone-paid services regulator, today announced that complaint figures concerning mobile services are down by half – one year on from the introduction of new rules that came about following its 2008 Mobile Review. The new regulation was introduced in response to a worrying rise in consumer complaints regarding mobile services which, on average, account for some 90% of all calls to PhonepayPlus' Contact Centre.

PhonepayPlus is releasing these figures at the industry launch of its Annual Report in London today, where it will also announce that its Chairman, Sir Alistair Graham, has accepted an invitation to stay in post for a further three years.

PhonepayPlus' complaint figures show that:

– Total complaints regarding mobile services are down 57% from June 2008 compared to May 2009 (2,125 vs 919)

– Consumer complaints regarding mobile subscription services have almost halved since the introduction of the new rules (1,207 vs 651)

– Consumer complaints about unsolicited text messages are down by 85% from the first half of 2008/9 compared to the second half (1,538 vs 230)

Commenting, PhonepayPlus Chief Executive, Paul Whiteing, said: "These results show that we are heading in the right direction and sorting the good from the bad in mobile services. It is early days, and we are still analysing the various impacts on our complaint numbers, but these are an encouraging set of results that appear to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new rules, as supported by responsible providers in the sector.

He continued: "However we are not complacent and remain vigilant for any new opportunistic activity that may result in consumer harm. This risk is especially acute since, with a country in the midst of recession, we expect the PRS industry to be attractive to unscrupulous operators looking for ways to make a fast profit. We remain committed to being proactive in preventing non-compliant services from making it to market."

PhonepayPlus' Mobile Review set out new rules for the mobile phone-paid services sector. It stated that services could not be advertised as free unless they were free from any associated charges; set new rules around trading of third party marketing lists; and introduced a prior permissions scheme for subscription services costing upwards of £4.50 in any given week. The Review also reinforced PhonepayPlus' zero tolerance of any failure of the 'STOP' command for opting out of receiving unwanted contact by text message.

bmcoforum has finalised the next release of its implementation profiles of OMA BCAST enabler for mobile TV. The objective of the recommendations for implementation profiles V2.0, it says, is to fulfil the current market demand, in the perspective of 2010 commercial mobile TV broadcast service launches.

Among the new features, bmcoforum has emphasised the support of additional mechanisms for the Smartcard Profile based service and content protection the support of new Service Guide facilities for broadcast and unicast access, the inclusion of Subtitling tools, 3GPP Fast Content Switching among 3G real time (TV) channels, and improvements enabling convergence of mobile TV over broadcast and unicast networks.

During 2007 and 2008 bmcoforum set up its first package of recommendations for implementation profiles of the OMA BCAST enablers including those functions of OMA BCAST that have been agreed between operators, system and handset vendors to be a top priority in early deployments of Mobile TV Broadcast based on DVB-H and 3G cellular networks. The package became part of the commercial Mobile TV Broadcast services in Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland which were launched in 2008.

A research study from the Internet Advertising Bureau – the trade body for digital marketing – and research company Brand Driver, in conjunction with Kit Kat, is said to have found that mobile display advertising can increase brand awareness and recognition.
 
The UK's first publicly available mobile brand study to cover effectiveness across a range of mobile properties used a sample of 600 mobile internet users. Respondents were exposed to banner ads for FMCG brand Kit Kat across four major mobile sites – Orange World, o2 Active, Planet 3 and Heatworld – which promoted "free downloads" or the chance to "win an ipod".
 
Respondents who clicked on the ads were sent to the relevant page within the Kit Kat mobile internet site where they could enter the competition or download free mobile games or wallpapers. 
 
The results of the study have formed the basis for a new set of five IAB guidelines, designed to increase the effectiveness of mobile ad campaigns. 
 
1. Use mobile to raise awareness.  The mobile ad campaign had a positive impact on raising awareness of the brand, with a 36% increase in spontaneous awareness levels of Kit Kat and 267% increase in first mention – people spontaneously mentioning Kit Kat before any other brands. Furthermore, 76% of those who had clicked on any Kit Kat banner ads said they would be likely to buy the product.
 
2. Mobile advertising can be effective across all demographics, especially 18-34s. The campaign resulted in uplifts across all age groups, and for both men and women. The results were most impressive though amongst 18-34s, for example spontaneous awareness increased by 50% compared to a 21% increase for 35-44 year olds.

3. Brands and mobile internet sites should put the user experience first.  The research found that the context of mobile advertising is extremely important.  People that enjoyed the site they were surfing were 76% more likely to recognise the ad. Heavy mobile internet users were also more receptive to the advertising, and were 80% more like to recall the advert. 

4. Mobile display advertising needs a clear focus. The mobile campaign improved perceptions of Kit Kat across all statements asked, particularly "is a product perfect for a break" but the uplift amongst some of the other statements was minor. This means with just one banner creative, you are unlikely to change a vast array of brand metrics, therefore the creative needs to be focused and streamlined according to what you want to achieve.

5. Mobile is more effective when something of value offered. 1 in 4 people who saw the Kit Kat banner ad clicked through to the mobile site.  Of those who clicked through, 43% had done so because of the competition to win a free iPod.  51% of respondents said they were more likely to interact with mobile advertising if something was offered to them.  The results also highlighted the need for mobile creative to be eye-catching and engaging: 41% of respondents who clicked through were simply interested in the advertising.
 
The research also looked at general attitudes and mobile internet behaviours. In terms of attitudes to mobile internet advertising, 72% of respondents expect the amount of advertising on mobile sites to increase over the next couple of years, and 53% would be happy to receive advertising in return for free content.

According to the first IAB-PricewaterhouseCoopers study of mobile ad revenues, expenditure on mobile advertising in the UK exceeded market expectation in 2008 to reach a total of £28.6 million. The market doubled in size on a like for like basis in 2008, increasing by 99.2% year on year. 
 
Jon Mew, IAB head of mobile, said:  "Mobile advertising is still in its infancy and consumers are yet to be fully sold on it because marketers need learn the emerging rules of engagement.  What the Kit Kat® research tells us is that most effective mobile campaigns follow 5 simple steps, and we hope that publishing these basic guidelines will help accelerate investment in the medium."
 
Will Reeve, associate director at Brand Driver said: "It is an exciting time for mobile advertising and we are delighted to have partnered the IAB on this valuable piece of research. The research clearly shows that mobile advertising has a clear role to play in enhancing brand awareness and connection with other form of media. By following these 5 simple steps, advertisers and marketers can really maximize the potential of this dynamic medium providing another effective route to reach an increasingly media diverse population"

The number of Smartphones shipped with open source operating systems will increase from 106 million this year to 223 million by 2014, according to a new report from telecom consultant, Juniper Research.

The Open Source OS research found that operating systems and the applications are playing an increasingly important role in the differentiation of new smartphones and a key factor in the choice of which handset to choose from by users.

According to Juniper, the last three years has seen a revolution in the OS market with market leader Symbian moving to open source and Apple leading the way in the distribution of applications through its widely copied AppStore approach. The move to open-source OS has also encouraged developers to design new and attractive applications and, with over 60% of the OS market is now based on open-source, and a sizeable pool of software design talent out there, there is a massive opportunity for innovation, says Juniper.

However, says the report, the real key is not whether the OS is open-source but whether it's easy for a developer to design an application and make money from that effort. The combined changes of Apple's open route to the market and LiMo, OHA and Symbian's open-source OS approach have generated a tidal wave-like effect which even the economic downturn has been unable to reverse.

There is a clear warning for device manufacturers – the choice of OS is now critical and market share will, to a large extent, follow application development. The unexpected side effect however will be a shift in the balance of power towards application developers and end users, says Juniper.

The financial downturn will see 1.04 billion fewer devices sold in the next five years than had previously been expected, according to Informa Telecoms & Media's latest report, 'The Financial Crisis: Analyzing the impact on global mobile markets'. The global economic downturn has led Informa to revise device-sales forecasts for the next five years down 14%, but growth is expected to pick up in 2010, albeit at a lower rate than previously expected.

According to Informa, device-sales figures will once again hit 2008 levels in 2011, when year-on-year growth of 8% is expected. Sales of high-end devices are expected to grow faster than those of low-end devices after 2009, indicating a shift among users worldwide away from cheap devices to more feature-rich and expensive ones.

Users will buy 6.39 billion devices between now and 2013, according to revised figures from Informa Telecoms & Media that take into account the global economic downturn.

A forecast made last year, before the extent and severity of the economic downturn became apparent, stated that 7.43 billion devices would be sold to end-users in 2009-2013, meaning that the economic downturn has caused a 13.9% downward revision in Informa's forecasts.

The revised figures forecast that users will buy 1.12 billion devices in 2009, compared with the previous forecast of 1.32 billion. Informa includes both handsets and dongles in its definition of devices.

"Although growth is forecast to slow in 2009, it is set to pick up again in 2010, when users are expected to buy 1.17 billion devices, up 4.27% year-on-year," says Paul Lambert, senior research analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.

End-users will keep their devices for six to nine months longer than in the past as a result of the economic slowdown and that operators will move away from aggressive handset subsidies.

Users are expected to be less inclined to spend disposable income on new devices, a factor that will prolong the handset replacement cycle. Each of these factors will have a negative impact on device sales in 2009.

The mobile industry recorded a first in 2008: For the first time, the quarter with the fewest net subscriptions added was the fourth. Because the fourth is traditionally the quarter with the largest number of net additions, this could be a sign that the financial downturn is now affecting subscription growth.

The number of net mobile subscriptions added worldwide in 4Q08 fell to just under 164 million, representing a 4.5% quarter-on-quarter decline and a fall of about 17% year-on-year. By the end of 2008, there were 3.97 billion active mobile subscriptions globally, accounting for a 59% penetration rate.
The region that suffered the most in 4Q08 was Asia Pacific, where there were 68.4 million net additions, down from 87 million in 3Q08 and 87.6 million in 4Q07. The 4Q08 figure represented the region's lowest individual quarterly growth for seven quarters.

There are also clear signs of a slowdown in growth, when comparing net additions for 4Q07 and 4Q08 in Europe, North America and Latin America. However, there is still resilient growth in the Middle East and Africa. In Africa, penetration is still under 38%, and across sub-Saharan Africa the figure is much lower.

Research specialist Ovum's latest Mobile forecasts to 2014 is predicting slower revenue growth for operators in the short term as the recession impacts, although connections continue to grow. The result, says Ovum, will be downward pressure on Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), leading to an increasing need for network efficiency. In mature markets, this will drive the uptake of LTE over WiMAX, it claims.

Ovum previously predicted that global mobile services revenues would breach $1 trillion in 2010. Due to macro-economic conditions Ovum says it now expects this barrier to be broken in 2011, while the greatest impact of recessionary forces is seen in the short term. Ovum has revised its revenue forecasts for 2009 down by 9% compared to its previously published figures, yet by 2013 the difference is just 1.7% lower.

"However, the recessionary impact will be relatively muted compared to other industries, and mobile is expected to recover strongly from 2011", says Steven Hartley, senior analyst at Ovum and author of the study. "By 2014 Ovum expects total operator service revenues to reach $1,114 billion."

Ovum reckons that voice will continue to be the largest revenue generator worldwide, accounting for 69% of revenues on a global basis and for no less than 60% in any region in 2014. As a result, voice will continue to be mobile's ‘killer app'. Operators must not ignore this fact in the race for data revenues, warns Ovum.

By the end of 2014, Ovum forecasts 6.42 billion connections, up 59% from 2008, and a CAGR of 8%. However, potential for growth will remain as global penetration will be 89% in 2014, with 69% in Africa and 78% in Asia-Pacific. Elsewhere mobile penetration will reach almost 100% or more, but further growth will still be possible from multiple SIM ownership in heavily prepaid markets or through uptake of data-centric devices. As such, population penetration is ceasing to be a useful indicator, says Ovum.

China and India will dominate connections and will account for 30% of total worldwide connections by 2014. However, the countries' penetration rates will be just 76% and 69% respectively by 2014. Ovum says that massive population growth will continue to fuel mobile demand as new, unconnected users join the market.

The enormous growth in connections has financial implications for mobile operators as they are expected to grow by 59% from 2008 to 2014, while revenues grow by 33%. Furthermore, mobile outgoing minutes of usage are set to rise 109% between 2008 and 2014, but voice revenues will rise just 15%.

"Both comparisons highlight the influx of ever-lower ARPU customers from emerging markets and price erosion in mature markets, even for data services. Therefore, efficient networks, enabling competitive pricing, will be critical in both highly saturated mature markets and low-ARPU emerging markets", explains Hartley.

By 2014 LTE will have 109 million connections worldwide. In comparison, mobile WiMAX will have almost 55 million connections. This is in stark contrast to 2013, when parity between the two technologies is expected. The level of operator support and the rapidly burgeoning ecosystem will ensure that mobile WiMAX becomes increasingly marginalised, predicts Ovum.

"Although data services are now here to stay, operators will generally only succeed in generating income from web access, and here competition will ensure that prices erode rapidly, just as traffic increases. Therefore, the aforementioned need for improved network efficiency partly points towards the need for next-generation access networks."

However, connections growth for LTE and mobile WiMAX should be put into context. "Both technologies combined will account for just 2.6% of global connections by 2014. In comparison, HSPA will contribute 11 times that number. Therefore, we believe that the migration to 4G will be neither easy nor overnight", says Hartley.

Ovum forthcoming series of reports focusing on the LTE business case, have found that the availability of spectrum and devices, as well as existing infrastructure requirements and market competition, will have a major bearing on the timelines for LTE deployments.

The GSMA today announced new developments in its Embedded Mobile Initiative, including work to establish standard design guidelines for embedded mobile applications and the kick-off of a competition to drive development in the embedded mobile market.

According to the GSMA, the goal of the Embedded Mobile programme, which was launched in November 2008, is to foster new business opportunities by bringing the benefits of continuous mobile connectivity to embedded devices in the clean energy, education, healthcare, transport, consumer electronics and smart utilities sectors.
 
"The benefits of embedded mobile to businesses and consumers are nearly endless, from enabling a travelling family to easily transmit holiday photos to relatives at home, to helping a vending company automatically track stocking levels and operating status of its machines, to allowing power companies to remotely collect data from across meter and power grids," commented Michael O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer for the GSMA. "As the programmes announced today demonstrate, we are keenly focused on reducing industry fragmentation in the delivery of embedded mobile solutions, facilitating economies of scale in design and production and driving cross-industry awareness of module designs."
 
To further promote the development of the embedded mobile market, the GSMA has kicked off a competition whose goal is to identify best-in-class embedded modules across a number of categories, as well as mobile service applications and solutions. The first stage of the competition, which will focus on leading embedded modules, will be held at the Mobile Asia Congress in November 2009. The second stage of the competition will showcase innovative service applications and solutions at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2010.
 
"KT is confident that its active involvement in the GSMA's Embedded Mobile Initiative will create broader opportunities for this market," said Hyunmi Yang, Executive Vice President & CSO, Personal Customer Group, KT Corp. "We further believe that the launch of a global competition as part of this programme will stimulate the growth of the M2M market and will help us to identify new mobile services that will be of true value to our customers. The GSMA's Embedded Mobile Initiative will allow immediate communication means for everyday devices via a mobile network, and we believe that the mobile network will become the key facilitator for enriching the daily lives of our customers."
 
"Potential use of embedded 3G modules are diversified and require development of unique software for each application," said Ted Matsumoto, Senior Executive Vice President, SoftBank Mobile Corp. "The cost of modules is a critical factor in helping make these applications accepted by a wide range of users, so we should avoid the fragmentation of module hardware design as much as possible. Working with the device and chipset vendors, the GSMA will help to achieve this goal."
 
To facilitate the creation of scores of new embedded mobile applications, the GSMA also announced that it has initiated a work stream within the Embedded Mobile programme to develop and publish of a set of design guidelines for key categories of applications, such as health, automotive, smart metering and consumer devices. This is a joint initiative involving mobile operator and module vendor representatives from across the world. The GSMA expects to make these design guidelines available in November 2009.

Altair Semiconductor, a fabless chip company developing 4G mobile semiconductors for handheld devices, today announced that it has successfully integrated the TurboConcept LTE/WiMAX solutions in its LTE FourGee product line.

Altair's FourGee-3100 LTE baseband processor integrates TurboConcepts' dual-mode turbo decoder core. Altair says it has now successfully integrated two successive turbo code IP core generations from TurboConcept, including the WiMAX-only Core in 2007 and now the LTE/WiMAX dual-mode Core.

"By leveraging our existing, successful technology, and proven partners such as TurboConcept, we are able to bring our LTE products to market more quickly," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development for Altair.  "The Altair FourGee-2150 for mobile WiMAX, which includes a TurboConcept core, is recognized as a market leader in high performance and power efficiency, and our LTE chipsets integrating a similar core from TurboConcept offer the same advantages."

"We are proud being able to address Altair's aggressive technical positioning in silicon specifications. We are convinced that our solutions combined within Altair's unique low-power architecture, will turn rapidly into success in the LTE market." said Jacky Tousch, co-founder & CTO, TurboConcept.

The TurboConcept 4G dual-mode turbo decoder Core TC1700 implements both WiMAX (IEEE802.16d/e) and 3GPP-LTE (3GPP Release 8) convolutional turbo code specifications. It is said to be an ideal solution for base station or CPE receivers implementing both physical layers. The Core is claimed to use a unique architecture that reduces by 40% the silicon area, when compared to two single-mode Cores, with no restrictions on the flexibility and features set.

Two throughput profiles are available, that cover respectively 100 or 200 Mbits/s decoded bit-rate. The Core includes the sub-block de-interleaving and CRC decoding functions, and allows switching between LTE and WiMAX mode dynamically, for each FEC block.

A multi-country study, released today by Lightspeed Research, an online market research company, is said to show the increasingly prominent role mobile phones are taking in our lives. According to Lightspeed, with ownership of mobile phones so high and so many different functions now available, it is increasingly important to understand how people are using their mobile phones and what future opportunities there might be for new applications. 
 
Of the four countries surveyed (the UK, France, Germany and the US) it was Americans (49%) and Britons (30%) who were most likely to agree that their mobile phone was now an essential part of their daily life and they'd be lost without it. Almost half of people in Britain (46%) stated they carried their phones with them most of the time – with the 55-64 year olds most likely to do so.

Younger respondents (18-34) who were more likely to feel their mobile was an essential part of their daily life and they would be "lost without it". And underlining this finding is the fact that two thirds (67%) of Brits leave their mobiles on at night – and only 14% of those switch it to silent.

An interesting result in the survey is that in some markets there are users who never make phone calls from their mobile. In the UK 11% of respondents never make calls; that figure is higher in the US at 13%. 33% of UK and 18% of US respondents make no more than two calls a week. Texting is hugely popular in the UK with half (49%) sending at least one SMS per day and 2% sending a picture or video message (MMS) daily. Women like to send more text messages than men – with 56% compared to 42% sending at least one text per day; men make more daily voice calls – 41% compared to 32% of women. 

Mobile phones have evolved with new features such as cameras, games, internet access and music now commonplace on basic handsets whilst smart phones offer even more sophisticated applications such as video. Whilst some people may feel these are unnecessary add-ons, the results show that in fact these functions are becoming increasingly popular. In the UK the most popular daily function is browsing the web at 9%, whilst on a weekly basis it's taking photos (38% of respondents), followed jointly by browsing the web and playing games (22%) and sending a photo or video (18%).

Respondents were also asked about a number of new functions that they might like on their phone. In all countries a satellite navigation system was the top choice, with 49% of French, 44% of German, 43% of British and 38% of American respondents choosing that option. Being able to locate friends, family and children in real time through GPS functionality was the second preference in all markets except for Germany, where concerns over privacy prevailed. However it seems that the Japanese system of using the mobile phone handset to pay for public transport (like an Oyster card) isn't a popular option – this failed to generate interest everywhere except Germany. Amongst the reasons given for rejecting this function included worries about making the phone a target for theft, concerns about cost, and fears of giving too much data to the phone company.

Commenting on the results, David Day, CEO of Lightspeed Research said: "There is no question that the mobile phone is an important tool for daily life for many of the people we surveyed, and that many people use the additional phone applications such as photos, video, music and the internet. However when we look at take up of some of the current functions, as well as those we may have in the future, consumers do express some concerns. There is real fear around data security and the increased risk of theft and this is something the industry as a whole will need to address to encourage consumers to try new functionality such as mobile commerce."

Vringo, and partner, Innova Group, have announced a partnership with Armenian mobile operator VivaCell-MTS, a subsidiary of Mobile TeleSystems OJSC. Through the partnership, Vringo's video ringtone service will be available to more than 2,000,000 mobile subscribers of VivaCell-MTS in Armenia through a co-branded VivaCell-MTS-Vringo online platform and is claimed to constitute the first deployment of such technology in CIS countries.

The VivaCell-MTS-Vringo service, to be rolled out on a subscription basis, will provide access to Vringo's video ringtone application and its library of 4,000-and-counting video ringtone clips, downloadable via on a fee basis. 

"Through this arrangement with Vringo and Innova Group, VivaCell-MTS is now able to offer our subscribers more multimedia content and more stimulating ways to use that content than ever before," said VivaCell-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian. "We believe Vringo's fun and captivating video ringtones will be an extra tool in our efforts to keep our subscribers updated with the latest technologies."

"Vringo is thrilled that VivaCell-MTS is joining our growing family of carrier partners," said Vringo CEO Jon Medved. "This exclusive agreement will enable VivaCell-MTS to use Vringo's suite of customizable tools to engage its customers through the most important pivot on the mobile device: the ringtone."

"Armenia is a fast evolving country in the mobile area and working with VivaCell-MTS is an important project for Innova. We truly believe in Vringo's Video Ringtone solution and our cooperation with Vringo and VivaCell-MTS initiates an important project for Innova.", said Innova's CEO Mr. Vassilakis Manos.

This is the fourth custom-built in-language carrier platform Vringo has created for an international mobile partner. Others include platforms in Vietnamese for Viettel, in French for Bouygues Telecom and in Turkish for mobile provider.

In addition to carrier partners, the company also maintains relationships with content providers (including Turner, Discovery Mobile and Agence France Presse) and handset manufacturers, such as Sony Ericsson, which is including a direct online link to Vringo on its new Sony Ericsson Walkman phones.

Vringo is also partnering with Innova Group to provide billing services for the partnership with MTS Group.