Users tell Xiam/TNS they would increase time spent each week accessing mobile content by over an hour (a 55 percent jump) and monthly spending by $8 (a 148 percent increase) if their content was personalized. Weather is the type of content most commonly accessed via mobile device, with 67 percent of subscribers now embracing weather-related apps and services followed by maps (55 percent), social networking (52 percent) and games (also 52 percent).

Users reporting problems accessing data

Across the board, some 80 percent of all users report some type of problem accessing or using data and websites on their mobile phones.

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Slow or hard to find information

The biggest culprit is slow or hard to find information. In all cases, more than 61 percent of users reported this issue.

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Phone or interface issues

Phone or interface issues rank second for users. Well over half reported problems.

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Irrelevant content

Of lesser importance, but still an issue to users, was receiving irrelevant content when trying to access or purchase content.

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Payment issues

In the United States, more than one in 10 users reported payment and billing issues as problem areas. It was only slightly worse in the United Kingdom, where 13 percent of users cited it as an issue.

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Effectiveness of methods for finding content

Users found that going to favorites or bookmarks were the most effective ways to navigate when searching for content. URLs, search engines and desktop icons followed as favorites, in that order.

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Least effective methods of finding mobile content

Consumers said they are least favorite way to find the mobile content they want actually is by clicking on ads or banners at their wireless service provider’s store or portal. They were nearly as dissatisfied with their handset manufacturers store or portal.

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Percent of attempts to access or purchase mobile content that are unsuccessful

In what should be worrisome to content providers, users say they are unsuccessful in accessing the mobile content they want 27 percent of the time. In the U.S., that number falls to 24 percent of the time.

This is where Alabot’s AI/NLP based engine helps in content access and discovery for both operators and content aggregators and portals. To know more about how Alabot can make this happen you can write to me at sidhartha.bezbora at alabot dot com

Source : WirelessDuniya

Do read the entire article if you are interested in the mobile space.  The link is here

Excerpt

“A welcome addition to the list is Alabot, a mobile search provider based out of Pune, India, with offices in Kuala Lumpur and London. I first met Akshat Shrivastava, Alabot founder, at a mobile search conference, where I had the pleasure of presenting him with the Bronze in the category Best Technology Innovation – Software. Earlier this week Akshat sent me a DM via Twitter (@peggyanne) with the great news: Alabot has secured funding from a global innovation fund and sealed a deal with a Malaysian mobile operator to develop a multi-lingual (English, Bahasa, Chinese Tamil) mobile content vertical search service.

The text search service will start off serving up ringtones and wallpapers from the operator’s online content stock, “low hanging fruit” Akshat tells me is just the beginning. As he put it: “Content services that require a syntax or Internet access aren’t getting traction [in that region] because they are not intuitive or interactive.” Moving forward, Akshat tells me plans are to extend the service to other content verticals and expand reach via deals with several OEMs. Rock On!”

I beleive that going forward content on the mobile will be easier to reach. This content could  be wallpapers, ringtones etc or complex queries for local search, mcommerce and other verticals.

Technology and user need will drive companies and operators to launch intelligent, interactive and most important of all “relevant” services on their networks.

excerpt and url below:-

What is the Semantic Wave?

The semantic wave is a tidal wave of four stages of internet growth. The first stage, Web 1.0, was about connecting information and getting on the net. Web 2.0 is about connecting people — putting the “I” in user interface, and the “we” into Webs of social participation. The next stage, Web 3.0, is starting now. It is about representing meanings, connecting knowledge, and putting these to work in ways that make our experience of internet more relevant, useful, and enjoyable. Web 4.0 will come later. It is about connecting intelligences in a ubiquitous Web where both people and things reason and communicate together.

Over the next decade, the semantic wave will spawn multi-billion dollar technology markets that will drive trillion dollar global economic expansions to transform
industries as well as our experience of the internet. The Semantic Wave 2008 report examines drivers and market forces for adoption of semantic technologies in Web 3.0 and maps opportunities for investors, technology developers, and public and private enterprises.

What are Semantic Technologies?

Semantic technologies are digital tools that represent meanings and knowledge (e.g., knowledge of something, knowledge about something, and knowledge how to do something, etc.) separately from content or behavior artifacts such as documents, data files, and program code. This knowledge is encoded in a digital form that both people and machines can access and interpret. The basic shift in information and communications technology (ICT) that is occurring now is from informationcentric to knowledge-centric patterns of computing. This is made possible by the application of semantic technologies and open standards that enable people and machines to connect, evolve, share, and use knowledge on an unprecedented scale and in new ways that make our experience of the internet better. Not restricted just to current Semantic Web standards, the next stage of internet evolution will encompass a broad range of knowledge representation and reasoning capabilities including microformats, semantic html, pattern detection, deep linguistics, ontology and model based inferencing, analogy
and reasoning with uncertainties, conflicts, causality, and values.

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?report_id=682287&t=d&cat_id=

Based on the feedback from our partners and user requests, we have incorporated modules and tweaks which will further reduce the time taken to complete a transaction on Alabot.

It also has an enhanced context switching module which allows us to mesh more than one vertical into one. We would be launching the travel vertical with the movie vertical to test this concept.

(Alabot travel on gtalk is only doing bus tickets for now – the flight API is being updated with the new algo)

Will send a mail as soon as its done.

Gday All

“As RBI prepares guidelines for payment through mobile phones, a statement said: “This channel facilitates small value payments to merchants, utility service providers and the like and money transfer at a low cost.”

 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mobile_to_be_your_credit_card_soon/articleshow/2996614.cms

Excellent news for us, we were waiting for something like this to happen at the top level.

Now closing the loop would become possible from within our ecosystem seamlessly.

Jai Hind.