Naviblog is Prime Mover at CEATEC 2008

Naviblog will launch ExpoNavi with the mobile service development company to address the prestigious CEATEC Japan 2008 Conference – the largest technology exhibition in Asia.

Naviblog, which develops technology for mobile marketing and mobile navigation, will launch ExpoNavi, a mobile solution for anyone armed with a mobile phone and searching around an exhibition hall for the exhibitors they want to see and to browse others they may not know about. The technology allows users to bookmark the locations on the optional PC site and send to the mobile to browse when on the spot. See the product factsheet here.

An early version of ExpoNavi has been very popular with CEATEC attendees in the past and Naviblog is again managing the conference exhibitor search service, allowing users to find any of the 800+ companies exhibiting, by name, hall or keyword. ExpoNavi is now being launched as a stand-alone solution at the conference where it has had such success.

Speaking of the conference, Mandali Khalesi said today,

“We are closely involved with CEATEC 2008, both as technology providers and as part of the tradeshow community. I am very much looking forward to meeting with colleagues and partners and hearing about the latest developments within the tech world, as well as showing off ExpoNavi.”

Naviblog’s technology is applied in providing mobile marketing and mobile navigation services to the Japanese and UK business-to-business markets, especially in the tourism, food & drink, and tradeshow verticals. Naviblog specialises in mobile 2.0 related technology development and services, and other offerings include Naviblog Basic, Naviblog Enterprise, and Naviblog Voice, which uses speech recognition technology to eliminate the need for physical text input when creating location-based blogs.

CEATEC Japan 2008 takes place from 30th September until 4th October. The conference will focus on the many new capabilities and services made possible by digital convergence and their impact on businesses seeking new markets created by the convergence of devices, hardware, software, services and content.

Naviblog is supported by Gateway2Investment (g2i). Programme Manager Ian Shields said,

“I am delighted to hear that Naviblog will have such a leading role at CEATEC 2008. Speaking at, launching a product and providing technical support for a major conference such as this gives the Naviblog team many opportunities to develop new relationships and demonstrate their products.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

About Naviblog

Naviblog (Chairman: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo/London-based mobile technology firm providing mobile services to the Japanese and UK business-to-business markets, especially in the tourism, food & drink, and tradeshow verticals, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile services platform.
Within 18 months of startup, the company had developed 6 industry-first mobile services including its location-based mobile search product "Naviblog 2.0", for which Naviblog received the Red Herring Top 100 award in 2006. Featured in dozens of publications, and receiving industry awards in both Japan and Europe in 2007 and 2008, Naviblog is tipped to become the first universal software for publishing mobile services worldwide, regardless of handset, geography or mobile phone carrier.

Contact: Mandali Khalesi Naviblog UK info[at]naviblog.co.uk

About CEATEC Japan 2008
Since the inaugural event in 2000, CEATEC JAPAN has matured as a show conveying information about the most advanced IT and electronics technologies from Japan to the world. Our mission is to remain a high-value-added, flexible and efficient show, to keep our eye on the rapidly changing digital industry and markets, and to become a vital element of the global IT and electronics industries. To provide visible results that contribute to the businesses of exhibitors, CEATEC JAPAN is working from its firm foundations to make the most of its unique qualities and strengthen business support.

Contact: www.ceatec.com/2008/en/conference

About g2i
gateway2investment (g2i) is the highly successful investment readiness programme, backed by the London Development Agency, delivering early-stage private investments to exciting young London-based businesses. The programme is delivered by a consortium led by the financial and business advisory firm Grant Thornton UK LLP and comprises E-Synergy, Pembridge Partners, Quotec, The Innovatory and Library House. g2i has worked with over 600 start-up and early-stage London businesses, helping them secure more than £26m in equity funding, a figure that is continuing to grow. g2i supports businesses across the design and creative, life sciences, emerging technologies, energy and environment, ICT, food and drink, value added manufacturing and retail sectors, providing the equity investment community, Venture Capital and Business Angels, with high-calibre investment opportunities. www.g2i.org

Contact: Ian Shields Grant Thornton/g2i

Naviblog's Mandali featured in prestigious IOD magazine

The world's oldest professional director's association, the Institute of Directors, magazine featured Naviblog Chairman Mandali Khalesi in its recent Autumn/Winter London branch issue. The article was referring to the new IOD member reception earlier this year which allowed Naviblog to mingle with other new members of the 100+ year organisation, from all walks of life, ethnic backgrounds and convictions.

"It was a surprise, to say the least", said Chairman Mandali Khalesi, "to see Naviblog featured in such a prestigious publication. The IoD really is about sharing experiences with fellow directors, regardless of whether it is a FTSE company or a startup, and trying to better yourself everyday as a director and as a corporate leader."

About the Institute of Directors (see website)

The IoD is a non party-political business organisation founded by Royal Charter in 1903, currently with around 55,000 members. The IoD has always championed the entrepreneur and seeks to provide an environment conducive to business success. For any company to prosper, directors will be continually engaged in making decisions involving innovation, risk and investment. Entrepreneurial activity needs to take place within a solid, strategic framework.

Over the last 5 years, membership has grown by over 11,000 members and includes directors from many sectors of the economy - from media to manufacturing, e-business to public sector. Members include CEOs of large corporations as well as entrepreneurial directors of start-up companies. They are represented in 92% of FTSE 100 companies, whilst 70% of our members are directors of small and mid-sized enterprises.

About Naviblog Corporation (see website)

Naviblog (Chairman: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo/London-based mobile technology firm providing mobile services to the Japanese and UK business-to-business markets, especially in the tourism, food & drink, and tradeshow verticals, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile services platform.

Within 18 months of startup, the company had developed 6 industry-first mobile services including its location-based mobile search product "Naviblog 2.0", for which Naviblog received the Red Herring Top 100 award in 2006. Featured in dozens of publications, and receiving industry awards in both Japan and Europe in 2007 and 2008, Naviblog is tipped to become the first universal software for publishing mobile services worldwide, regardless of handset, geography or mobile phone carrier.

2 in 3 humans own a mobile by early 09

According to the UN's head of telecoms, Hamadoun Toure, about 60% of humans will own and use a mobile phone by end 2008. With 600m new mobile users joining every year, 2 out of 3 humans on the face of the planet will own a mobile within 6-9 months of this article.

It is amazing to see that although within a year or so most people will own a mobile, a scaleable mobile services platform that can be used to build solid and reliable mobile services worldwide remains elusive. Discussions in the mobile development world focus more on the differences of approach between technology factions, such as Java, Brew, Symbian, etc., with little talk about a platform that anyone can use to build out their mobile services globally, on all phones, and regardless of where you are.

It required the likes of Apple with its new mobile user interface, Google with its eponymous internet-based map services and Android wannabe-OS, and Nokia with its purchase of the powerful Symbian mobile operating system to nudge the world into thinking maybe we need to worry that when we build a service, it should be accessible from anywhere, on any phone, and not only on 15 handsets in one geography.

There are a lot of people outside the comfort zones of the maturing European and Japanese mobile markets (and upcoming US market) that need the mobile as a part of their day-to-day survival. When 2 in 3 humans own a mobile and want to use services anywhere they are, the mobile technology world needs a system that can live up to that challenge, and do it cheaply and efficiently.

More on the details of this statement over at the UK's The Guardian website.

Naviblog clinches world no.3 tech exhibition contract

For the second year running, Naviblog has clinched the contract to develop and manage Asia's largest tech exhibition CEATEC 2008's exhibitor search service. The service, developed by Naviblog and named ExpoNavi, is a hybrid contextual map search solution which combines Google Maps' familiar map manipulation functionality and combines it with CEATEC's original hall maps and a custom-built exhibitor information search engine.

This allows users to search through the 800-odd exhibitors on their PC, by exhibitor category, keyword or hall, search the map visually, and bookmark all their favorites online for later reference. The site is available in English and Japanese. The service also has an optional "send to mobile" feature where users can send the saved bookmarks to their mobile phone, and login and search exhibitor information optimised for their mobiles, just as they would on the PC.

You can access the site here. CEATEC 2008 lasts from September 30th to October 4th in Tokyo, and is the world's largest tech exhibition behind the Computer Electronics Show in the US, and the IFA in Berlin.

Naviblog featured in Tokyo IT News

"The leading GPS navigation marketing company" is how the Tokyo IT Newspaper presented us in a feature on emerging technologies in last week's edition. With a cute picture of a girl holding a mobile phone, the article detailed how Naviblog's location-based mobile marketing solution was being introduced by an increasing number of business clients from social networking portal heavyweight Lococom to beer brand marketing for Guinness Beer. Not sure if you can find it online, but you can look around at the Tokyo IT Newspaper's site at http://itnp.net.

Tokyo report: 1 in 2 Japanese use mobile web daily

A recent report by the folks at the CIAJ, one of Japan's most respected telco industry associations and who I'll be seeing next week in Tokyo, picked up the latest trends in Japan mobile use. Notable trends showed 1 in 2 Japanese using the mobile web daily, mobile TV usage booming to more than 1 in 4, and daily usage of GPS/map-based services nearly doubling over the last 12 months to nearly 1 in 5 users.

Quite a few losers since last year's report including mobile ringtone use (54% to 46%), wallpapers (35% to 30%), digital music (20% to 19%), infrared (18% to 14%), videophone (9% to 3%), and push-to-talk (5% to 3%).

Bluetooth usage bucked the trend with an amazing jump from 2% to 10%, so the manufacturers must have finally got their act together and be offering something substantial across the handset spectrum. The reason they haven't so far must be having people in EU/US shrugging their collective shoulders, but it's one of those things like why 2D barcodes are not widely available on phones over in Europe... maybe they never got round to it.

Daily usage of mobile digital cash services (ie. Oyster card-like services using a built-in chip on your phone instead of a card) also increased 33% to 1 in 5 users, as people use their phones to pay for goods in corner stores and Japan Rail-affiliated commercial centers, where you can buy your wares before heading home by touching your phone in and out at the checkout.

Irish entrepreneur's $2bn tropical mobiles

From Haiti and Jamaica, to Tonga and Papua New Guinea, Irish mobile entrepreneur has built a $2.2bn mobile phone business Digicel where others will not go. War, famine, poverty, entrenched elites, these are the keys to his success in trumping local carriers and expanding market size with cheap prices and an independent network of cellphone masts.

Having set up a mobile phone network in Ireland in 1995 - selling out to BT for $3bn to BT Group 6 years later pocketing $300m himself - he snaps up Jamaican mobile phone license for $50m around 2002. Before Digicel arrived in Jamaica, 10% of Jamaicans used mobile phones. 6 years later in 2008, 90% do. Same story setting up in Haiti in 2006 quickly building 120,000 users, two years later he had 2 million. This just shows the explosive nature of the mobile when you open up the market with cheap, affordable technology for the masses.

Find out more in August's edition of Forbes, just out on their website today.

83% of US teens use mobile to band together

Interesting piece here where 83% of US teens own a mobile phone and are found to be looking predominantly for social networking and video on their mobiles. At the same time they use texting to create a barrier between themselves and their parents. It really looks like a reactive-defensive mechanism looking to group together with similar-minded teens and distance themselves from their mobile-illiterate parents.

Japan was like that in the early years too, but with the advent of cheap mobile web and the explosion of bargain-hunting on mobile commerce sites, parents (especially moms who surf the mobile commerce sites in search of cosmetics or clothes) eventually caught up with the basics of texting and browsing by about 2007, three years after the introduction of flat data rates in Japan.

There is always a gap there, with younger kids literally typing texts with their thumbs at such a speed they don't need to look at what they're typing, but the female working population has caught up to some extent. Working men are more navigation/search-oriented, but social networking completely passes them by: they have their drinking dens and the drinking habits of the companies they work in, so little reason to race to the mobile for that.

Read more on US teen activity on the mobile phone from the Walt Disney Internet Group survey reported on CNET.

Naviblog connects Japan and UK

As Naviblog scales out internationally, our two websites have come together and should be converging towards a common offering within the next few months. It is important to show both our European and Asian customers that we are part of a whole, and that we are not separate companies, but rather an extended framework, preparing us for explosive growth. Googles and Yahoos beware, here we come.

Navibloggin' twitter offline!

... again. As you can see from the picture, Naviblog's twitter setup is offline with a nice picture of an airborne whale being flown around by orange birds (?!) Smoking ban for the smoked-up guys that made this one up and help keep the service stay online!

Cool application of Microsoft Surface

Just checking out this appealing video of Microsoft Surface, as applied to a gaming/casino/dating use-case. For those of you who don't know, Microsoft Surface...

... turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. It's the first commercially-available surface computing platform from Microsoft. The product provides effortless access to digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Today, it's a 30-inch diagonal display in a table-like form factor that's easy for individuals or multiple people to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it's a surface come to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more.

See the embed here of their upcoming partnership with Harrah's Entertainment in the US:

Video: Microsoft Surface at the Rio in Las Vegas

Naviblog presents at Library House

Naviblog Corporation are proud to announce that they will be presenting at the Library House event "Meet the companies" sponsored by g2i, and held at NESTA in Central London. Naviblog will make their company pitch in demo.com-like style, surrounded by plasma screens and with only 6 minutes to catch the eye of the investor crowd. See more at the event website here...more later on how well (or not) the event went.

Date: 11th June 2008, 8:30am - 12:30pm
Location: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE
Companies: 7

More about g2i
Gateway2investment (g2i) is a programme supported by the London Development Agency (LDA) and designed to increase the number and quality of London based technology companies receiving investment. g2i actively supports early stage companies to develop their propositions, teams and pitches, and offers VCs and Business Angels early engagement with exciting new investment propositions.
www.g2i.org/

More about Library House
Library House is the essential source of comprehensive information on the fastest growing, most innovative ventures. Library House discovers, researches and profiles fast-growth, innovation-led private companies, their people and investors. This provides a unique insight into the leading enterprises of the future that are the investment and business partnership opportunities of today.
http://www.libraryhouse.net/

Naviblog named Orange premium partner

This is to announce that we have just received notification that Naviblog has been accepted as premium development partner for the Orange mobile network!

The reach of Orange can hardly be understated in Europe and we look forward to be able to provide Orange-approved mobile solutions throughout Europe. The next natural step in this close collaboration will be to work towards an orange certification as a company, in order to build greater trust with our clients and partners, as well as accelerate the adoption of our sites generated using our Naviblog mobile technology platform.

Juniper says the future is mobile 2.0

An interesting whitepaper released over at Juniper Research concludes that mobile web 2.0 is one of the most promising growth industries worldwide with a quadrupling of revenues over the next 5 years from 5.5bn USD (2.75bn GBP) this year to 22.4bn USD (11.2bn GBP) in 2013. The Far-East and Western Europe were predicted to grab 50% of market revenue (at about 25% each), with North America taking 20% of the market.

A telling quote from their report:

Made-for-mobile platforms, better mobile phone screens and faster network speeds are supporting a richer Web-like experience that is preferred by businesses[...] off-portal mobile Internet sites that combine social networking, user-generated content and messaging applications are establishing large user bases across a number of regions and monetising services via a combination of advertising, revenue-share and subscription models.

Completely in line with Naviblog's experiences in Japan, the key drivers for the mobile web 2.0 were stated to be:
- advertising
- easy accessiblity
- location-based services
- social networking and user-generated content
- the PC web moving over to the mobile web
- flat-rate data plans
- made-for-mobile websites
- increasing mobile web service adoption
- new revenue opportunities
- value-chain disruption

Downloading the actual report will set you back 2,400USD a pop, but you can download a free synopsis of the article at Juniper (need to register though).

Berg says 100m EuroLBS users by 2012

Berg Insight's latest report on LBS, released last week, notes that as "all the pieces needed for successful LBS are more or less in place", they forsee the explosion of LBS related services on the mobile phone in Europe in the next few years.

Of course, these reports have been rushed out at every possible occasion over the last 10-15 years because LBS technology is not new and its applications and wider benefits are fairly easily understandable. However, I think the difference is (1) the ubiquity of PC map-based technologies such as Google/Yahoo/MSN Maps, (2) the attention given to interesting mashups of different data layers using maps, (3) the increasing ubiquity of mobile web browsers, (4) increasingly cheap mobile web data plans... the elements have definitely come together to make it more plausible.

But the article tempers the projection adding:

First there must be a critical mass of active users to work with, then someone must create a successful model for reaching out to these individuals via their handsets and after that the mobile media must be embraced by the top spenders in the advertising industry

Sounds like Naviblog hunting grounds to me...

Google's latest mobile thing... is offline

As per this article in Techcrunch, it seems that Google is having some teething problems with its new mobile service that allows users to have "one phone number for all your phones, for life" which is a great idea... when it is online.

The Techcrunch article pretty much tears through the ability of a phone service to be "offline", and when I read the official comment being "unfortunately I’ve been up in the mountains with the family this weekend and had no cell/internet coverage so couldn’t respond earlier", I don't think this sounds very reliable. I mean, I know it's Beta, but you can't expect a $50m phone company not to have 24/7 tech support and redundant power sources. The founder shouldn't have to head down from the mountains to fix a power cut!

Is this another example of tech giant Google beta-izing its offerings, while we wait til they catch up with our expectations of what the service should be? This sounds more like what people complain about Microsoft products than Google products... but never mind.

It also reminds me of JPhone->Vodafone->Softbank/Yahoo! (mobile) in Japan, always falling foul of some reason or other and not being able to provide a consistent 24/7 mobile service. No wonder it's not going anywhere, and most telco professionals complain about it.

A mobile phone company is a utility company: either it's working, or we cannot live a normal social life.

Some moblog photos in Paris...

Orascom proposes mobile banking for MENA

From a recent article on Bloomberg, the largest telco in the Middle East and North African region (often shortened to MENA) is planning on launching mobile banking services to reach most of its subscribers that according to the article "is likely to become a key revenue source for telecommunications companies in developing countries, where bank charges can be high and retail bank branches few and far between, whereas billions of people own mobiles".

It remains to be seen whether the banking system is developed enough in all of these regions or countries to drive adoption and ROI, but in major emerging markets with a burgeoning middle class, this is definitely a good idea. I could see this probably coupled with mid- to high-end tier handset subscribers, so at least they have some basic ARPU to siphon off in the medium term.

But how relevant is it to the more basic current needs, such as with food price problems, unemployment/industrial dynamism, and education? The jury is still out on how the mobile can help really make people's lives easier...

Even US goes off-deck

With Japan moving more and more into the mobile web and Asia and Europe following in its wake, the US is finally developing its own taste for the unknown waters of the "off-deck".

"Off-deck" means outside the mobile phone carrier's officially vetted mobile websites. In the traditional business model for mobile phone carriers or operators, when you click on the Internet button on your mobile phone, carefully vetted specific service providers are showed to you on an official "menu" or "deck". However with the increasingly atomised interests of mobile web users, the slow speed to which operators react to changes in their user's interest centers, and the slow mobil-isation of web content and web services means people are more and more willing to find the services they want and don't need to be spoonfed in that process. This seems to have started happening in the US as well as people get more and more used to the idea of internet on their small mobile phone, and more and more phones are internet-enabled with bigger screens.

When speaking at the mobile roundtable at the Dreamgate Japan CEO conference in early 2007, K-Laboratories CEO Tetsuya Sanada waxed sentimental about how the walled garden allowed the Japanese mobile industry to develop around Docomo, and that's where he cut his teeth so I could see where he was coming from. But the go-go early 2000s are radically different to the end of the 00s where fixed mobile convergence will make sure that competition will be coming from one media or the other or diagonally out of the woodwork where you least expect it. It struck me at the time more as an argument that ailing agricultural producers would lobby for in the face of the globalisation of trade, but it is the opposite of competition.

Walled gardens work to develop an industry and should be retained to help seed emerging markets and industries, that's why East Asian economies have done the same and have been rewarded with long growth periods of growth, but once out of the posts they fail to serve their purpose when they fossilize current players with little novelty to bring to the dynamism of an industry. When I said that the walled garden is falling apart and on-deck is dead, I was slapped down by both walled garden participants at the conference. One year on however, and the walled gardens keep crashing down all across the globe.

More in the original article here.

Research on microblogging and communities

It seems microblogging is all the rage these days, but is it more than a webified instant-messaging widget? It seems to be the logical progression from function-restricted and price-constricted "mainstream" mobile phone users being forced to use texting to get their message across for so long now that one-to-many texting has taken this route. Naviblog's even got its own Twitter widget now (see top of the blog page), just to play around and see what it does and how it enhances the site.

Will the flat-rate data packages now being deployed in many carriers Europe-wide change this to a longing for standard email as we've known it in Japan? When you think about it, people still short-message here, but the price differential is so tiny that no-one really cares.

Will the newfangled functions to be found in mid- and even low-end handsets spur increased usage, for example for GPS or mobile commerce? I think the rule is if it's simple and the hurdle of adoption is low enough in usability and price terms, then it's very likely there'll be strong adoption, at least in the first instances.

Anyway, this piece of research (about 3MB) from the University of Maryland and NEC Labs America details the architecture and dynamics of microblogging: quite interesting as a primer to the area, and generally interesting when thinking about social communities on the mobile.