LAS VEGAS — It seems like there are a lot of ecosystems in mobile, and the latest one could be a game-changer in mobile marketing. 

Ford unveiled its new MyFord Touch system, based on the company’s SYNC technology. The in-car communications and entertainment system combines top-of-the-line voice recognition from Nuance Communications with touch-screen controls on the steering wheel to give drivers easy control over digital media and mobile phones.

Here’s the cool part: Ford wants to create what it calls a SYNC App Ecosystem and is offering a SYNC SDK (software developers kit) to encourage developers to create applications that will interface with iPhone, Droid, BlackBerry, WinMo, Palm and any other mobile device via a standard Bluetooth connection.

Internet music service Pandora.com is already onboard. Using SYNC’s voice-recognition system with a Pandora app running on a phone, drivers can flip through radio pre-set buttons that correspond to Pandora’s music feeds. Smart radio provider Stitcher.com and Twitter client OpenBeak are also live.

Now, think about how many hours people spend in their cars – a captive audience.  You could deliver location-based services, mobile surveying and market research, mobile learning, targeted advertising, social media, digital media – all enabled through voice recognition to prevent the “distracted driver” syndrome.

App developers and mobile marketers should be falling over themselves trying to figure out how to extend brand building into the type of in-car experience that Ford’s SYNC offers.

******
Google all the way

Hmmm, let’s review the last 24 hours …

Motorola announces its cool, new Backflip Android phone, which is getting rave reviews.

At its annual developers conference yesterday, AT&T Mobility was all over Android, announcing devices from the aforementioned Motorola, HTC Corp., computer maker Dell and two new devices from Palm.

T-Mobile announced a $180 pricing package for new subscribers on the Nexus One.

We’re no shill for Google, but they own the wireless side of CES this year. Guess this means that all those iPhone app developers better bone up on their Droid coding.

 Val Christopherson is managing director of Global Results Communications, Irvine, CA. Reach her at valeriec@globalresultspr.com.

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What will be the biggest stories in the mobile marketing world this year? SnapTell discussed the next 365 days with industry experts, its customers and partners, and came up with these 10 predictions:
1. Support for MMS shortcodes by major carriers will launch in the first half of 2008. Consumers can then quickly and easily “text” a picture to a shortcode.
2. Launch of Google’s Android handsets by carriers will foster real openness and innovation by independent software vendors and service providers alike.
3. Apple’s February release of a developer’s kit for the iPhone will bang the last nail into the coffin of closed systems.4. Carrier agnostic applications and solutions will be the big winners in this brave new open mobile world.
5. OpenID will be broadly adopted on mobile platforms first, but not until late 2008.
6. Privacy concerns regarding mobile marketing will be front and center in the news this year; campaigns that are not strictly opt-in will risk being seen as phone spam.
7. Mobile web usage will soar in North America in 2008. (The rest of the world is already wondering what took us so long).
8. Consumers’ interest in ringtones, screen images, games and other options will wane; carriers will turn to mobile advertising to replace this revenue.
9. Web 3.0 will appear on smart phones first.
10. Location capabilities will be a key area to watch in the mobile market as more phones come equipped with GPS. Providing information that consumers want, when they want it, is the key to mobile marketing success in 2008 and into the future.

 – posted by Giselle Abramovich

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If 2007 was the year of Web 2.0, then 2008 will be the year of Mobile 2.0, according to predictions made by mobile software provider Antenna Software.

In the year to come, interactive mobile applications will be taking advantage of Location-Based Services (LBS), mobile Internet, video, Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) and presence.Along with innovation, Antenna Software also sees problems with security and management and therefore, IT departments will be seeking the hep of companies that that offer best-in-class security. Already there are suspicions that hackers are beginning to target the growing mobile market.Everyone is trying to improve the consumer experience and the better it becomes, the more it will drive acceptance. The launch of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform are examples of richer user interfaces and more personalized, easily accessible content.Antenna Software forecasts a breakdown of the network carrier walled gardens. Recent announcements by Google and Verizon along with the rise in usage of open source IDEs is evidence of this.Mobility will be a key strategic component for software applications and infrastructure in both consumer and enterprise markets. As more players enter the enterprise mobility industry, IT will look to consolidate vendors and seek out a mobile platform that can be used across the enterprise. Vendors that can offer flexibility and scalability for mobile applications – without a custom-build and intensive IT resources – will dominate.– Posted by Giselle Abramovich

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Rumor has it that Google will be unveiling 1 or several Android-based Google phones at  Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona this February.

The Google-ites are already hard at work, tinkering at the Googleplex on prototypes made of refurbished pieces of HTC phones. The current devices are not the sexiest, but of course these are just developer-ready models. I would imagine whatever Google debuts at MWC will make the iPhone want to run and hide in a closet – if an iPhone had legs that is.

Anecdotally, if an iPhone did have legs Google would be aiming to sweep the rug from underneath it with its rumored debut. Hell, ad-supported (subsidized) Google phones may just have the whole cellular manufacturing industry on the run – in more ways than one – to keep pace with Google. This is true even if the devices don’t offer much new in terms of functionality – unless of course you consider advertisements, however cleverly they are masked, to be new functionality.

The point is these Google phones will eventually be as cool as the coolest phones available and they may be much, much cheaper, therefore highly prevalent in the near future. If they do end up being ad-supported that is.

None but the Google-ites know for sure.

But if we know Google, whatever happens will be just what we did not expect.

A demo of Android posted on YouTube’s Android Developer Channel shows the top level UI menu, in which the user scrolls horizontally through a carousel of icons to launch the relevant application. However, later iterations could spawn limited sub-menus, so that a generic mail icon could contains the selections for email and SMS/MMS messaging, or a ‘chat’ icon could include SMS/MMS plus the instant message client.

We’re waiting, Google.

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It seems that most of the companies that exhibited at SES Chicago were search companies that have an investment in mobile as opposed to mobile companies with an investment in search. (more…)

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