Mobile opportunity in Dubai?

After a short trip to the UAE and the Middle East over the summer break, I have come to believe there are many opportunities in the booming state of Dubai for mobile service developers and Naviblog is currently looking at opportunities with a number of local partners. The tourism, construction, property and banking sectors, as well as high mobile phone penetration and increasing usage, are laying down the groundwork for strong everyman demand for mobile services of all stripes.

Tourist maps and guides? Property price comparison sites? Mobile banking portals? Employment sites? I think there is a lot of opportunity here for mobility as the Emirates move from a predominantly heavy industry and construction economy to a services- and information-centric society. It's an exciting place and time to be there.

Naviblog accepted as UK govt supplier

Naviblog has just been accepted as a registered supplier for both CompeteFor, the tendering marketplace for the London 2012 Olympics contracts, and supply2.gov.uk, the UK's portal for SMEs working with the UK government. Anchoring ourselves even more closely to London, we look to leverage this registration to win over the confidence of London and UK-wide government bodies for mobile and more general IT work, leading up to and beyond the London Olympics in 2012.

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.

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).

Naviblog Europe to become Orange certified partner soon

Our long-term relationship with European operators is slowly coming together: Naviblog Europe should be a certified mobile partner with the Orange network very soon... more soon on http://naviblog.co.uk. Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration on building cool services on this very wide ranging network.

Naviblog Europe site opens

The Naviblog website is now open! The new naviblog.co.uk site will be the center for the international expansion of Naviblog, and will fuse its roots - deep in the tradition of Tokyo-based companies for innovation in new technologies - with new visions of mobile development in the booming European market and worldwide.

Naviblog strongly believes in sticking to the areas where it has worked to the greatest effect, that is, working with advertisers and advertising agencies to provide complete, multi-channel and multimedia experiences to brands and their users. From Guinness beer to our upcoming advertising partnerships, Naviblog believes that it can help bridge the gap between brands and the online consumers of cool services. We believe that the mobile phone is central, and will become more and more central to this experience.

In a departure from the past, Naviblog will also look to empower associations related to social development, ie. working to strengthen social and economic development in developing/emerging nations worldwide. We believe that Naviblog has a role to play in enabling communities in unfavored economic situations to leverage the mobile phone and the mobile web to help themselves and build an ecosystem of systems that can help their basic life and sustenance.

We are also working on a number of other projects at Naviblog, all of them mobile technologies that will make people's life easier and drive adoption of cool services on the mobile phone.

Go to the new site here: http://naviblog.co.uk