By applying AI techniques to in-depth research of mobile portals, Irish specialist Changing Worlds has discovered that 74 per cent of content held is invisible to users.
That's because only 26 per cent of content can be reached with 30 seconds of visiting the portal's Home page, Changing Worlds says.
The company argues that a longer wait than 30 seconds crosses the typical user's boredom threshold.
The research is even more frightening when translated into what Changing Worlds calls 'click distance'. It's simple – click distance is the total number of clicks required to reach a particular item.
What's your threshold? An ordinary person would probably stop searching after say three or four clicks. A bit more of a mobile phone aficionado could probably last five or six clicks.
When Changing Worlds surveyed 20 leading mobile portals, guess how many clicks it took on average to reach a piece of content? 16. Yes, Changing Worlds says the 'mean click distance' is 16 clicks.
Obviously Changing Worlds has an answer which is technology it calls ClixSmart. In essence, it uses AI techniques to dynamically alter the location of content so that what interests a particular mobile surfer is less clicks away.
ClixSmart isn't new. Vodafone has been using it on its portals for years. What's changing is the whole mobile online scene.
Take advertising for example. What screen do young people look at most? The PC's? The TV's? Or the handset's? Well the handset is looking increasingly like a front runner.
So how do advertisers reach the right audience on their mobiles? If mobile phone users start to tailor their whole online surfing experience, it will be easy to identify their interests.
Plus mobile has one huge advantage over the PC. Location. If thousands of people are connecting to a bunch of cell sites in the wilds of Somerset, then you know they're into music.
This whole thing can get a bit Big Brotherish so ClixSmart offers users the chance to opt in and opt out.
The frightening thing is Changing Worlds' next target. Mobile search. A search engine which knows which Jaguar you mean according to whether you an Apple Mac person, a sports car fan or an animal lover.
Now that would be useful.
In a repeat of last year's mobile industry initiative on IM, a gang of seven leading GSM operators are set to announce a similar move regarding mobile search.
At the 3GSM conference in Barcelona last year, the networks operators backed Personal IM as the way they'd offer Instant Messaging to mobile phone users.
The aim was to prevent handing the whole market to an outsider – such as Microsoft with its Messenger product. At this year's event next week – according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, the Gang are going to focus on mobile search.
The assumption being made by the newspaper is that the operators don't want to hand all of the advertising from mobile search – such as selling sponsored links – over to the likes of a Google or a Yahoo!
However, Mobile Insight suspects it may go further than just advertising revenues. The results of a Google search are still too unfocussed to help handset users find the mobile site they need.
However, if searches became more predictive – as with T9 and texting for example – then mobile phone users would be more likely to make better use of the mobile internet.
Plus, if the operators could agree on a way that location was allied to searching, then quicker results could be delivered to handset users too.
For example, if 'airport' was used in the string and the handset was connected to a cell near Heathrow, then more relevant results could be achieved more quickly.
It's unclear how successful any joint initiative over mobile search might be, though. The attempt to persuade major companies to build special .mobi sites for the mobile internet appears to be floundering.
In yet another acknowledgement of India's growing importance in the cellular world, Sony Ericsson has announced it's going local and plans to start making mobile phones in Chennai.
Significantly these plans will be realised through agreements with its existing outsourced manufacturing partners - Flextronics and Foxconn.
Initially the idea is to produce handsets for local distribution – such as basic colour phones as well as mid-range music enabled phones. They'll also sport customised keypads and come pre-loaded with local content.
However, manufacturing in India is part of Sony Ericsson plans to bolster its position globally. The company expects its annual production capacity in India will reach 10 million units by 2009.
Significantly, in a market which already has 105.4 million GSM subscribers, Sony Ericsson is claiming it is the Number Three supplier of such phones to the Indian market.
With BenQ Siemens effectively now out of the way, Sony Ericsson needs to catch the likes of LG and Samsung if it is to take the No: 3 slot globally. Success in emerging markets was named by arch rival Nokia as one good reason why it is holding onto its No: 1 slot.
The recent launch of a fourth Beidou (Big Dipper) navigation satellite by China has highlighted all the old sat nav arguments. Will the US be facing a serious challenge to its GPS system?
To date the only serious challenge to the existing Global Positioning System (GPS) run by the USA has come from Europe's Galileo project. Of which China is also already a partner.
However, it currently looks like Galileo won't be ready until 2011 at the earliest. Meanwhile China has thrown up a handful of geo-stationary Beidou satellites to give it a rudimentary navigation system that covers China and not much else.
Beidou is also reported to have an accuracy to within 10 metres which is enough for one of its major commercial applications – helping deep sea fishing boats work out where they are.
The snag is that this fourth satellite looks like the start of a Chinese plan to cover the globe by putting around 30 satellites into space.
More significantly China has also admitted that Beidou will form the basis of a more accurate system to be known as the Compass Navigation Satellite System.
Additionally there is a growing feeling that building some kind of satellite navigation system into mobile phones will become essential. It's being driven by the USA's desire to provide accurate location for its E911 emergency service.
To date the leading supplier of a GPS capability to mobile phone makers has been – Qualcomm. Particularly with its gpsOne on chip offering.
Now if Qualcomm is going to make its chips attractive to Chinese manufacturers and the Chinese market in particular, it may find itself having to provide compatibility with Compass.
Which is all fine and good but Qualcomm may have met its match. The company is renowned for protecting its IPR. And China is renowned for its secrecy. It's going to make for some interesting discussions.
According to a report posted on the Crunchgear site, Micrsoft is planning to
respond to the Apple iPhone with a cellular version of its Zune MP3 player.
Rather than employ the full Windows Mobile UI, however, the phone is going to
stick with a simpler, Zune based approach.
www.crunchgear.com
In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)
This week
BBC Three Mobile
Mobile Insight recently discovered that there is as a WAP site run by the
British broadcaster , the BBC, for its BBC3 channel - BBC3
Mobile site. What this site does is enable you to download video clips of
certain BBC programmes like Torchwood, Comedy Soup and (theoretically) some
episodes of the Sci-Fi hit, Dr Who. Anybody who wants to try BBC 3 Mobile out
should text the word 'THREE' to 81010. Or type the following URL into their WAP
browser :-
