We encourage you to check out this month’s line-up – and we invite you to explore our own newly designed website, a destination from which we will also be sharing our own how-to tips and advice on a variety of topics in the mobile industry ranging from mobile commerce and retail to mobile video. Watch this space for in-depth blog posts and a series of “CheatSheets” that map out how companies can harness mobile to achieve their business objectives.

And be sure to follow the COM on Twitter (@TheMobilists) to find out what’s happening within the COM.

First, a huge round of thanks to all the Mobilists who participated in this month’s COM. After a review of the submissions this is the list of posts that made the final line-up. The quality and variety of this month’s posts made it tough to decide our pick of the month, but we include this at the end of the post along with an honorable mention for a veteran Mobilist who has consistently contributed valuable posts and insights to the community.

For those of you tracking technology and developments around mobile platforms, check out Dennis Bournique’s look into the rumor that Nokia is planning to launch an Intel-based MeeGo handset next week at MWC. He doesn’t buy it and his analysis may well convince you too.

• Antoine RJ Wright expresses his frustration with US mobile consumers and the marketing that is spoon-fed them by the “Mobile Elite” who blindly believe that market is innovative and beneficial to the consumer. Antoine clearly expresses that he believes neither to be true. Take a look at Pardon Our Ignorance in Mobile, We’re Just Different and empathize with his pain.
• As only he can, Tomi Ahonen give us a thorough mobile strategy guide for CEOs and other senior executives at Fortune 500 sized corporations, written with a focus on U.S. management style.
• Plan an efficient networking schedule using Eric Chan’s handy 2011 GSMA MWC Party List over at mobileslate.com Eric invites you to add your event/party/happening to his growing list!
• Get your hands on two new guides from Andy Favell and the team at mobiThinking. The first is a guide to mobile research written by Dr Liz Nelson and Dr Lorenz Gräf. The second is a guide to mobile barcodes written by Laura Marriott. Both are excellent resources to download.
• Mark Bridge at thefonecast.com predicts success for the BlackBerry PlayBook. Not everyone agrees but Mark may win you over with his outline of how the RIM PlayBook separates itself nicely from the iPad and Galaxy Tablets, and why the BlackBerry PlayBook will be a bigger success than many people expect.
• Ram Krishnan at Movik Networks – who looks at the growth of WiFi supported devices and the strategic value from an operators perspective – posed the question: “Have femtocells become obsolete?” Check out his post Femtocells – Are They Still Relevant for Data? and decide for yourself.
• Jamie Wells’ WikiMobiDex Insights Report at Wikimobidex points us to an analysis of mobile marketing industry mergers, acquisitions, key product launches, strategic partnerships, and other significant initiatives in mobile. A special feature is his Company to Watch category that identifies the companies driving these trends (and impacting mobile marketing at all levels).
• Read the article and get the download from Chetan Sharma who’s 2011 Mobile Predictions Survey Results provides insight into key mobile trends from experts leading mobile companies across the value chain and around the world.
• Our submission to the COM is our new white paper Real Goods, Real Commerce & Real Results: The positive future for mobile operator billing platforms. In it we examine the evolution of consumer attitudes toward mobile commerce and identify the payment mechanisms that will allow companies and merchants to satisfy customer requirements. Interestingly, mobile operator billing is an attractive (and lucrative) option now that many of the technology and attitude hurdles have been removed.
• Finally, Peggy Anne Salz over at MSearchGroove has stepped up coverage of mobile codes, mobile health and mobile giving — thanks to the site’s new writer Cynthia Artin. This month’s submission to the COM is Five From Five, a new series that showcases top innovators in barcodes and their top 2011 trends. The surprise conclusion: barcodes are going to be big in the enterprise and the concept of connected retail — bringing together mobile codes on packaging and across multi-media such as video — is a development poised to transform how we shop.

Our pick of the month: Antoine RJ Wright wins our vote (and admiration) for his straight-forward, no-nonsense attempt to grapple with a key issue. This industry is in need of a reality check, and Antoine expertly kicks off this conversation.

Our honorable mention goes to Chetan Sharma who must be congratulated for his survey and – more importantly – for collecting (and synthesizing) the views of mobile industry experts and influencers.

Everyone is welcome to participate, so continue to spread the word among your colleagues. It would be great to see more voices from developing markets and verticals (health, education, social impact), because that is surely where the action will be in 2011.

Meantime, if you would like to contribute material to future Carnivals, please submit your best blogging to the COM (to the attention of Peggy Anne Salz, our coordinator and “keeper of the tents”).

Next month’s COM will be hosted by Eric Chan over at MobileSlate on February 21st. Keep an eye out.

The Changing Face of Campaign Marketing

Nearly two years ago, mobile advertising and social media forever changed the way political campaigns are run. In an increasingly connected and inter-connected world, the way to reach constituents and potential voters needed to change. And it did in a big way – to the advantage of U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Limbo, the company that ran the SMS advertising campaigns for the Dems delivered over one million SMS impressions across the two campaigns and in January 2008 they released a report detailing some of what they learned about the effect of mobile advertising on voters’ attitudes and behaviors. Maybe not too surprisingly, the results suggest that SMS advertising provides a powerful tool for candidates to change consumer attitudes and voting behavior.

Limbo found that those who received the SMS had a 53 percent awareness rate – higher than might be expected from traditional forms of media but in line with other SMS programs up to that point. The overall impact however was considerable with 28 percent of voters who received the SMS campaign messages altering their voting intentions in some way. Limbo’s key findings affected two changes in voters; voting intention and candidate perception.

Voting Intention

• About 6% of those surveyed said that the advertising had changed their voting intentions significantly. 
• Men and people age 35 and older changed their voting intentions most at 7%.
• An additional 22% said their intentions had been changed a little.
• This represents a total of 28% of people who changed their voting intentions.
• Post campaign, a net 10% increase in positive perception was realized.

Candidate Perception

• 14% said that their perception of the candidate was now more positive than before seeing the campaign.
• Only 4% said that their perception of the candidate was now more negative.
• This represents a net 10% increase in positive perception.
• Barack Obama saw the biggest uplift, with a net gain of 16%.

Bringing it Home

Limbo’s findings were important to us for one very big reason. Here in Central Europe, Czech Republic and our neighbor to the east, Slovakia, had particularly hard-fought campaigns by several parties this spring. Facing the very real possibility of losing it’s seats in Parliament, a Slovakian political party with a small but exceptionally loyal following called Tego Interactive to provide strategic and technical expertise in utilizing Web, social media and mobile in their campaign.

We prepared a joint mobile and Facebook campaign strategy that we believed would not only meet but exceed the party’s election goals, ensuring the retention of their parliamentary seats. The reason we felt so strongly that this was possible was:

• Mobile campaigns clearly have observable effect on political campaigns.
• Slovak Republic’s high mobile and facebook penetration make it ripe for joint mobile and facebook marketing.
• Mobile facebook users are twice as active as non-mobile users.
• Access to one engaged Facebook user means access to 130 more of their friends.
• Facebook provides useful demographics of users that we could use to better target voters dynamically.

I wish this story had a happy ending for both Tego Interactive and for the campaign. Unfortunately the party decided other more traditional campaign strategies were more likely to succeed. Well…

Maybe you already see where this is going.

Given the strength of the strategy we presented, perhaps the outcome of the elections would have been more positive for them had the party chosen to pursue our recommendations. Old ways die hard – and apparently so do parties that don’t evolve with their constituents.

In short, I don’t think Apple cares much about the enterprise sector- at least as far as the iPhone goes. My guess is that Apple doesn’t lose (much) by not owning the enterprise market and therefore doesn’t care (much). Here’s why..

Integrated devices (ID) are what mobile operators call those devices that incorporate functionality other than voice and text messaging – what most of us refer to as smartphones. In a recent Q1 2010 earnings call, Rick Lindner, AT&T CFO called ID users “high quality customers”. Why? Overall, ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) was up nearly 4% in the quarter for AT&T, driven mostly by an increase in data plan usage. That is significant. More important however is ID users generate an average ARPU of $90 – an amazing 1.7 times that of standard customers. Understand that only 50% of AT&T’s post-paid customers currently have data plans and you begin to see why operators want iPhones and other smartphones on their networks. This particular group of users can impact mobile operator bottom lines in a significant way, especially when coupled with a two year service commitment.

Since ID users in general are so attractive for operators, the question of iPhone or Blackberry from an operator point of view is neutral at best. In fact I would say from a raw profit perspective, the iPhone is a strong favorite because there is no longer any revenue sharing agreement with Apple. Operators would suffer by not offering Blackberry since the enterprise segment is very important.

Apple doesn’t comment publicly on this, though it is suspected that contrary to the Mac side of the business, they make more money on iPhone app sales than on hardware sales. In other words, profit margin on iPhone hardware is less than profit generated through purchases from iTunes and the App Store over the life of the iPhone. Now couple that with the introduction of iAd and the profit generated through in-app ad sales. Apple would make little if anything on Apps or ads in the enterprise space since most companies restrict their employee’s ability to make unauthorized purchases on their phones. So, no premium SMS voting for your favorite American Idol (or for our international audience, Superstar). No apps. And no App and ad revenue.

Now if Apple were to roll out strong enterprise support coupled with premium services (a la RIM) that companies could justify paying for, this might change. For now, I just don’t see Apple’s motivation to push the iPhone into the enterprise sector.

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