Business Model: The shift to micropayments with mobile carriers for entertainment

One of the larger winners in the emerging entertainment and media experience would be the mobile carriers. As more and more content migrates from the normal web to the mobile experience, mobile carriers will be in a great position to capitalize on the ability to charge pennies for downloadable entertainment and experience enriching material for the mobile user.

While the content is created out of house for the carriers, it will be the mobile carriers ability to charge and bill at mere fractions of normal charges that places them in an advantageous position.

The US will most likely follow the emerging patterns of Japan and Korea, and the phone in your pocket will become much more than simply a talking device.

See DoCoMo and the iMode scenarios.

Do you know where your children are?

MySpace and other social networking websites are currently struggling to keep their audiences engaged. When they were first launched, however, these sites had the opposite problem - they were too engaging. Especially for predators looking for young children. This has led to the creation of a large market that combines security companies and mobile handset manufacturers such as NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank.

"Mobile-phone and security companies in this safe Asian nation sell phones and school bags with GPS devices to help parents overcome fears." Read the article here.

This is in alignment of technology leading us to the ubiquitous network and Web 3.0 with the convergence of, what has now become, utility devices such as cellphones and GPS technology. Throw in WiMAX and you've got the platform for what could (and will) become an improved way to stay connected. With companies like Softbank providing content for children on portal websites like Yahoo! Kids, I think this is a very good example of responsible companies mitigating the risk associated with having sensitive information about children available online.

Mo 2.0

If you thought 2.0 was a web thingie (what the .... is it anyway?), guess what. That little fella who goes gallavanting with you everywhere, sneakily communicating with his buddies from the dark, warm abyss of your pocket - yes, he just two.O'd himself.

Mobile 2.0 or Mobile Web 2.0, as defined by Dan Appelquist (sounds like someone important):

"...closed mobile application and services, available only through one operator, are Mobile 1.0. Mobile 2.0 applications and services are open and available to anyone to download, install and/or put to use via the mobile Web. In my mind, the Mobile Web is a big part of Mobile 2.0. Mobile 2.0 also builds on the ideas voiced by Tim O’Reilly and extends those to the Mobile platform and its capabilities...

In short, Mobile 2.0 takes the Mobile platform to where the Internet is today, and shows us how the mobile phone can become a first class citizen, or even a leading citizen, of the Web. What Mobile 2.0 does not mean, at least in my mind, is more sophisticated, but still essentially closed, mobile applications and services. Openness and user choice are essential components of Mobile 2.0."

"Here are some rough extensions of the O’Reilly Web 2.0 set of examples applied to Mobile 2.0:
SMS -> IM (e.g. Yahoo! messenger for mobile)
MMS -> Media sharing (e.g. ShoZu)
Operator Portals -> Mobile Web and Search
Premium SMS billing -> Mobile stored value Accounts (e.g. Luup)
Java Games -> Embedded Applications (e.g. Blogger application)
Presence & Push-To-Talk -> Embedded VOIP applications
WAP sites -> .Mobi sites
WAP push -> RSS readers
Location services -> Google maps application
Time or volume-based pricing -> “All you can eat” data charging
Content consumption -> Content creation (e.g. mobile blogging)"