Wireless for the Attention Deficit Crowd
As my loyal readers will know, I spend a fair amount of time commuting to and from Manhattan. Part of my commute is via NJ Transit trains. During this one hour per day, I try to find ways to either be productive or amuse myself. Since I carry a wide array of wireless devices, I get to try out different modes of time-killing. I also get to observe how my fellow travelers deal with the drudgery and boredom of train travel.
Number 3:
iPhone
BlackBerry gets top marks obviously for e-mail. The Java game capability, with a large screen and trackball has many possibilities for entertaining distractions. I became a Sudoku addict/expert in less than a week on my BlackBerry! There are some OK video options, although much inferior to the iPhone. As long as I don't want to listen to music, I prefer the BlackBerry for the mix of work productivity and entertainment.
Wireless advertising is coming of age
The use of advertising on a mobile device is poised for the big take-off. There are several factors that are contributing to the rightness of the model, right now.
The easiest model to understand is the willingness of large content providers to spend advertising investment to attract subscribers to their premium-SMS services. Today, much of that investment is directed at the Web. There is evidence to suggest that the effectiveness and conversion rates for ads on a handset, for services that are targeted for the handset, is superior to the Web.
This conclusion is almost completely intuitive. If you are sitting in a stadium and you see a beer commercial, you are more likely to purchase a beer, immediately. If you are instead in an environment that does not have that immediate purchase opportunity (like watching the game on TV), the effectiveness of that ad to drive immediate sales is reduced.
So, ads for handset-targeted services seem like a complete no-brainer for the industry.
These ads can come in various forms. Carriers are opening their Wireless Web (WAP) portals to advertising through both agencies and direct contract. With this model, the carriers can get a cut of the ad revenue. The real estate bears limited space, so ads are required to be as condensed as possible to be effective. Other models include The next wave of ads is also being brought in through the Trojan Horse that is a combination of Smartphones and Google services.
These latest models have the potential to remove the carrier from the advertising value chain.
I am sure there are significant discussions throughout the carrier community on trying to derive value from this emerging and potentially huge revenue stream. Anyone care to weigh in? I welcome your comments! 
With Internet-compatible browsing on iPhones and others, the traditional Web advertising model is being dragged on handsets. Based on browser type, ads will be targeted on Smartphones for services that are applicable for the phone itself and for the mobile consumer.
Will iPhone really change the mobile Web?
The big news announced by Google – at least to us mobile types – is the extraordinary number of impressions the Google application in iPhone is generating. It is time to declare the beginning of the end of the existing Web application paradigm on wireless devices. The distinctions between the regular everyday Internet and its wealth of Web 2.0 applications and mobile Internet have started to blur. 
Consumers are beginning to the cross the chasm of these devices being just for business to using them as a primary consumer device. A quick survey of recent smartphones shows a large selection available at $99, a significant decrease from just 6 months ago. The era of large screen, high-speed martphone being part of the “free” entry phone collection is not too far removed. At that point the interoperable browsing capability on a large screen will be a must have feature.
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