Think of this… recall the last commercial you saw on television for a mobile phone – was anyone actually talking on a phone? Not likely.

We heard recently at NMC from Nokia executives how life is going mobile. Technology is enabling people to connect to people and to connect to their passions. With 3 G services rolling out the vision of a mobile life is now a reality. As an example, all one need do is look at some of the numbers (Source: Gartner research):
 - 1.7 billion mobile phones in use around the World
 - wireless usage is growing at a rate 6x faster than fixed line usage
 - a noticeable increasing trend in the use of data services
 - mobility is changing the way we work

Enterprise Mobility

For the developer, it’s important to remember that personal and entertaining services are not the only lucrative market. Enter the World of enterprise mobility – connecting people with access to critical enterprise applications & IT – currently about 15% of the market accounts for some 40% of the mobile enterprise revenues. As companies seek to cut expenses and raise revenues, mobility is a natural next step. Already, countless offices now make some form of concession in mobilizing not only their field workers and sales force but its become commonplace for employees to now work some portion of their week from a remote or home office location. Some interesting figures that we heard at NMC may get your wheels turning, for example:
 - by 2007, 40% of corporate applications will have some mobile element
 - 60% of employees will have mobile access to corporate applications
 - 80% of EU & US organizations will have wireless messaging

As one example of some innovative cost saving, we heard of a UK-based firm that has elected to equip their mobile workforce with N-Gage devices – apparently the popular series 60 device was the most cost effective solution in mobilizing their sales force!

We are reminded that we are also faced with an aging population, many of whom are service regularly by mobile professionals in the health care sector. Opportunities are abundant and the ease of use and cost effectiveness of devices suitable for PIM and synchronization with the back office will no doubt translate in the push to change. Taking this one step further, I'd go out on a limb and consider enterprise mobility to be "the killer app" that industry has been in search of!

Entertainment & Mobility

As we previously mentioned, much hoopla was made surrounding the recent announcement of the Nokia 7710 wide screen device. Optimized with a wide format screen (enabling 640x320 resolution) this touch screen device is ideally suited for html browsing and high resolution video (and audio) output.

With fast EDGE connections and the advent of WCDMA in many emerging markets, customers have been empowered with options to consume new services like real-time media, video messaging, mobile TV, and 2-way telephony.

We heard much discussion at NMC about several related technologies that will affect these markets – information about these disciplines follow:

Mobile TV – Simply put, this is the delivery of TV-like content to a mobile device. Likely markets include the presentation of news updates, sports scores, market information, soap opera updates, etc… Given that the recently announced Nokia 7710 will support an MMC card that can store 1 GB of data (word on the street is that 2 GB MMCs are just around the corner!) users will easily have the ability to watch full-length TV shows and even feature films on their mobile device. Take this one step further, service providers taking advantage of speedy EDGE infrastructures can send data to customers via OTA download during off-peak times ensuring users will have access to constantly updated information and mobile programming.

The numbers… a recent Broadcast Mobile Convergence (BMCO - http://www.bmco-berlin.com/) survey out of Berlin has revealed that 80% of people would in fact be interested in using and paying for such a service.

Benefits to the industry include:
 - reuse of valuable content
 - opportunities for new content
 - a new outlet for advertisers
 - opportunities for new data {revenue} services

The EU market for these services is expected to arrive in 2006

FYI, Mobile TV technology is enabled by IP data casting over DVB-H, a combination of digital broadcasting and internet protocol which enables reception on a handheld device. Some suggested resources for more information include: 

•  http://www.nokia.com/ipdatacasting 
• http://www.dvb.org 
• http://www.ipdc-forum.org 
• http://www.openmobilealliance.org 
• http://www.rtt.tv

Visual Radio (VR)

VR provides for the synchronization of images and text with radio broadcasts. By delivering information and interactivity to the mobile user VR offers the potential for greater access to content and more audience participation.

Media firms for broadcasts like the BBC have already shown much enthusiasm for this technology – look for them as one of the early adopters of the technology – as have Virgin Radio UK. According to Simon Cattle, BBC World, they expect to get the following in return for adopting this technology:
 - more viewers
 - diversification
 - a better user experience
 - a packaged offering
 - revenues

With the packaged bundling of video, radio, graphics, text, animations, and meta-data, VR will deliver a truly interactive and reactive user experience. Sample demos we saw included the delivery of music and artist information along with the audio output, delivery of images and video with music, interactive polls and contests targeted to specific music and radio broadcasts, and the delivery of real-time traffic and weather information with radio programming. Indeed this truly is a much more interactive and personalized user experience.

The first visual radio devices: Nokia 7710 and 3230

Once again, some promising figures; some 2.26 million UK adults polled have already listened to radio using a mobile device.

Suggested services that we’ll likely see offered via Visual Radio include:
 - song/artist information and bios
 - tour dates and ticket sales
 - images/pictures/video
 - weather, maps
 - news, weather, and traffic alerts
 - audience polling
 - contests
 - purchase/download songs, videos, and ringtones

Delivering Multi-Media content

We’ve discussed the new enabling devices and touched on the technologies; another piece of the puzzle announced recently at NMC 2004 is the Nokia Media Charger. This client-server solution enables operators to offer mobile users an OTA solution for the retrieval and reception of multi-media content.

How does it work? Simple – the client subscribes to services (video, music, TV, etc…) and the service is delivered to the client/device overnight and over-the-air while network traffic is low. The content is distributed over existing cellular networks and stored in the device memory resulting in easy access to fresh content and services.

The Nokia Media Charger delivers the content automatically in the background and includes a download recovery function that makes delivery of the content reliable and transparent for the user. The solution is not tied to any specific access technology and uses existing cellular networks, for example, GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA. (Source: Nokia)

Clients are expected to use this service for receiving news, sports scores, music, cartoons, and weather updates. Once again, the solution is designed for optimization on GPRS, EDGE, and WCDMA networks.

For information see http://www.nokia.com/nmc2004/launches/media_charger.html

There you have it… mobile TV, Visual Radio, the Media charger. No doubt we’ll be hearing much more about enabling technologies, supporting devices, services, and developer solutions and applications. These are the enablers or pieces of the puzzle that are enabling Life to Go Mobile.

SymbianOne is always eager to hear your comments, and suggestions.