Another interview with one of mobile luminaries. My recent interview were :
- Mobile thoughts: an interview with the father of WURFL, Luca Passani
- Design for Mobile devices, interview with an experienced designer
This time it's the turn of Jan Michael Hes, CEO of Mobile Economy( www.mobileeconomy.de) and blogger for http://blog.mobiliser.org.
Enjoy !
> - Can you explain more about your background and introduce yourself?
> Are you more business/marketing or technical oriented?
My name is Jan Michael Hess and I founded the consulting firm Mobile
Economy GmbH in Berlin back in 2000. Before that I worked for 5 years
in various Internet companies - mainly developing online marketing
concepts or leading innovative projects - e.g. Pixelpark's first
Interactive TV project back in 1998. With my company Mobile Economy
I mobilised myself to help mobilise the Internet.
Now, in 2006, I see that the Mobile Internet usage is still too
expensive and too difficult for the mass market. So I plan to invest
another couple of years to make Mobile Internet access a commodity.
This can be done by bringing down mobile data tariffs, either with
the help of "flat rates" that are usually capped in monthly GB usage
or by flexible inexpensive data volume tariffs.
In fact, I have a business degree and I consider myself as a business
and marketing guy. At the same time, I continuously try to increase my
technical understanding to improve my human interface competence with
programmers when it comes to developing new ideas or managing
development projects.
> - When and how did you start to be interested in mobile field? What do
> you like?
My interest in mobile actually started in 1999 when I was developing
a business idea for a personal life management service with a focus
on optimising digital transactions. To manage your life you need a
service that is available anywhere and anytime - on big screens and
small screens.
Thus, I had to look into mobile networks, devices and services to see
what can be done and how it can be done. Now I realise that these ideas
are still hot as most people still look for the best solutions to lead
and manage their ubiquitous digital lifestyle without overpaying for
access, gadgets and services.
> - How do you see fragmentation in the mobile field? Is there anything
> we can learn from the web experience in order to overcome fragmentation?
There is a lot of fragmentation in the mobile market which basically is
good as humans are not created equal. This means that the demand side is
the sum of millions of different personal digital lifestyles. No single
entity in the market will be able to cater to all these different
lifestyles. That's why I don't believe in portals.
At the same time, many lifestyles have many things in common such that
creating market segments still makes sense. The best example is our
common love for spam-filtered free ubquitous email - ubiquitous is
the sum of fixed and mobile. Most of my friends get very nervous
without constant email access.
What I don't like is financial fragmentation when it comes to using
what is already available today in the Mobile Internet. If all MNOs
(Mobile Network Operators) understood that they have too significantly
reduce data tariffs to increase demand for data services the number
of happy mobile consumers would be a lot higher.
> - Do you see Flash Lite as the technology that the industry is waiting
> for to introduce rich-experiences for mobile users ?
The leading Flash Lite market is Japan. Over there, more than 50%
of handsets support Flash Lite. You can find a lot of mobile
content developed with Flash Lite and users like it. Flash Lite
content I have seen in Japan looks really cool.
The big question is whether Flash Lite will be cheaper to install
for MNOs and device makers and easier to develop for developers.
People believing in Tiny SVG and Java have a different opinion
exactly for these 2 reasons.
I think Flash Lite can have a great future if Macromedia does not
become too greedy when licensing this technology.
> - What are your thoughts on business/marketing/social models that work
> for mobile contents?
Simply speaking, a business model describes how a company plans to
make money or, in other words, who is going to pay you for which product
or service. If you have an idea who will be the people that will
first buy your product then you already know who will be your early
adopters. Talk to your early adopters and try to confirm your own
assumptions about the reasons for their behaviour. Thus you will
learn a lot about your customers and you will be able to design
your marketing activities in the right way.
The biggest mobile content business is music. In the beginning,
mobile music was about making your phone play publicly a couple of
seconds of music when your phone rang. Now it is about listening
privately with headphones to hours of music on the mobile device
when the user wants. When the pricing is right, i.e. same price
for buying a song over the air than over the wire, some people
will start buying songs in mobile situations.
As of today, the biggest digital music retailer is Apple. Apple is
so successful because their CEO Steve Jobs is a music lover who
pays attention to all the details of buying and listening music.
If Vodafone or any other MNO wants to become a successful music
retailer it should look for a new CEO that is a real music lover.
In fact, Apple is the current role model and benchmark in the
digital music distribution industry.
> - What's your view on the future of mobile (Mobile TV, Mobile 2.0,
> Mobile Web browsing ..) ? And What about your thoughts on Flash Lite's
> future ?
The future of the Mobile Economy is 3G, after that will come 4G.
Developing and penetrating a new mobile air interface generation
into the mass market is a 10-year process.
In Japan, 50% of the users have migrated to 3G, the first 3G network
there was launched in October 2001. In Europe, 3G penetration is
around 5% - if we are very generous.
3G is all about data services. But the MNOs do not push data services
as they make too much money with their 2G cash cows voice and SMS.
That is the strategic MNO dilemma. MNOs can solve this dilemma by
reducing data tariffs and opening their networks for third party
MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) and All-over-IP.
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