The future of payments

Passion wins was the official mantra for the SIME conference of 2011, and that is exactly why I love this kind of events. You could almost touch the passion when Jacob de Geer entered the stage at shared his story about his latest startup, iZettle.

Jacobs wife, who sell spectacles, asked for his help when she needed to charge her customers by credit card at trade shows, but did not want to buy an expensive card machine.  He did some Googeling around it and did find a company in the US, but who couldn’t give any help until about 3 years. Jacob continued to scan the market and realized that there was a need.

There is a new way to charge, for individuals, non-profits and small businesses, and by connecting the iZettle chip card reader with an iPhone or iPad everyone can charge by credit cards. Since the iZettle was released in August the retail outlets that accept credit cards increased by 5% in Sweden, and they already have 12 000 users, of whom 60% are private individuals, according to Jacob the Geer.

Bonus tip! Drink the best coffee in Stockholm an pay with an iZettle on Cocovaja.

Highlights

Jan Marsalek from Wirecard gave the participants in the workshop Pay Day his insight about the online payment highlights for today and tomorrow:

Trend: convergence

Integration of mobile, payment card issuing, coupons and loyalty. The e-commerce and m-commerce is comming closer together and the point of sale becomes one.

Local is the new global

More countries are launching their own local credit cards and the number of national payment schemes keeps increasing. With more local credit cards, the revenue maintains in the country. The use of as MasterCard and Visa decreases.

Mobile – the hottest topic in payments

Today is the leading mobile payment method is by premium SMS,  but we will see considerably more solutions within the mobile together with Google wallet, Isis and mpass.

The ecosystem of tomorrow

Within ten years it will still be a broad ecosystem of payment solutions as the situation is today. The major difference is that we will use our mobile for 50-60% of our purchases, and the rest will still be a mix of credit card and invoices.

Creating for Mobile – Day 2 and round-up of SIME

For day two of SIME, and as a round-up of the whole conference from a mobile perspective, I thought I’d focus on creating in the mobile arena, and bring up some of the interesting tid-bits from our day.

The first presenter that really grabbed everyone’s attention during the day was 12-year old Puck Meerburg, founder of Puckipedia. He’s a young, very curious kid who has single-handeldly created and released 2 apps to the Apple AppStore, learning English in the process to be able to understand the programming language. Interesting is that an American kid, Thomas Suarez, also 12, just circulated the web for having done exactly the same thing, and speaking at TEDx like a pro. This is just incredible, and says a lot about how easy it is to get into digital creation today if you’re curious enough and don’t see limitations. I also think it says everything about the mobile field. It’s so accessible and tangible, you feel apps are more of an object than software, which makes the concept less abstract to young people. And mobile is simple, it’s about doing small things in a delightful way, which is very easy to get in to. Have there been other young kids creating their own apps for desktop computers before? Definitely. But most probably not as many, and definitely not reaching out to as many people as these kids are today.

The day’s other big mobile evangelists were Maks Giordano, a digital guru now running a mobile agency, and Leif Eliasson, mobile expert at TradeDoubler. Leif is a numbers guy, once again showing the stats on why mobile is on track to outgrow desktop computing within the not too distant future. Maks is a Creative, and presented some great examples of interesting things that are being done on mobile that I’ll present you with below. What both of these people mentioned though, and also Zennström, Hjalmar, and a lot of other speakers at this years event, is that today, right now more than ever, all the bits are in place for truly great services and marketing to be created on mobile. We have the right hardware at a mass consumer price point, we have the software distribution ecosystem, we have the payment solutions, we have the networks and the bandwith, and most of all we now have the users.

But, this doesn’t mean you don’t have to think hard when you start creating for the mobile space. On the contrary, it’s important to really have mobile mindset when creating, and remember that it’s all about context. And also, something isn’t “fun” just because it’s in a mobile space, but contrarily we are more inclined to get tired your campaign or service if you’re not making it easy enough.

Here are some companies that have gotten it right:

• Heineken Star Player, an app that taps into people’s multitasking behavior when watching football (ie soccer) games, and for doing it right they’ve gained the opportunity to have a whole 90 minutes of brand interaction with it’s users.
• Nike+, a mobile app that helps you get your running going. The app, apart from being great in and by itself is probably the best example out there of how to leverage mobile and social networks to add value to your brand.
• Chase QuickDeposit, an app from the bank Chase, that has enabled it’s customers to cash their checks (US company, obviously) from anywhere just by photographing them with the app. It’s also worth noting that Swedish banks have enabled paying bills using their apps and the phone’s camera, but the user experience is unfortunately very bad, which is inhibiting adoption.
• Target, the US retailer has made great apps for iPhone and iPad that are shopping companions that help make shopping at Target more pleasant experience. Here the execution is of greater importance more than the concept, and Target got it right, giving them high App Store ratings which is unusual for a marketing app.
• Jamie Oliver has a set of apps that align perfectly with his brand, making cooking a pleasant experience, and recommending his favorite restaurants.
• Northface in China launched a location based game where you could claim land, which is totally in line with the explorer mentality of the brand, and the winner had placed over 4000 flags over all of China.
• Google Wallet, Google’s initiative to let you make your phone your wallet. This is happening, it’s just a matter of who will rule, and Google is a good canditate to say the least, going down the NFC path for money transactions.
• Tesco in Korea, launched Homeplus Subway Virtual Store where they put up virtual stores in subway stations where you can shop using your phone, scanning QR-codes on life-size grocery shelves while waiting for your train, and having the groceries delivered to your home when getting back from work. Genius, and the only really good use of QR-codes to date.
• There are several price comparison apps, like Prisjakt, where you can scan the barcode of a product anywhere and quickly receive a list of where you can get the item at the lowest price. Retailers – be worried.
• Mobile makes the perfect companion for house/apartment shopping, where Zillow and Trulia on the US market are among the most prominent, telling you what’s for sale around you, letting you peek in before you go in, and telling you if the price is reasonable, all on the go.
• Rabble, a Swedish app that provides digital redeemable coupons based on you location. Providing cheap marketing opportunities for local businesses.

Some other examples Maks mentions, it think fail in the fact that they’re gimmicks, and don’t deliver any real value to the end users in the long run. These apps will be removed very quickly from the users phones after the novelty has worn off and waste the potential you have of making truly meaningful long running relationships with your users or customers.

• Beck, the beer brand, has an app that helps you get home safe from a night out. It automatically calls a cab for you to get home if you don’t pass the in-app sobriety test.
• Axe Auto Romeo, an app that helps you stay on good foot with all your girl acquaintances, gained of course because of the “Axe effect”, by sending the girls your not with texts while you’re on dates.
• IKEA Interactive Catalogue, which lets you test placing IKEA furniture in pictures of your home using augmented reality. See the video at the bottom of the linked page to get an idea of how it works.
• Ebay launched an app that tries to deflect the biggest problem with buying glasses online; you don’t know how they will look on. Using augmented reality technology, you can try their glasses on live using you mobile phone. (Interesting to note is that Favoptic launched this concept long before Ebay on our advice, but their execution was just not up to par)

These are all interesting examples of what can be done with the technology that exists today in mobile. Only your imagination sets the boundaries. But I would really like to stress the importance of thinking about the bigger perspective when working in mobile, and make something truly engaging, that adds real value in the lives to your target group. It’s always possible, and if not taken advantage of you waste a big opportunity in working with mobile, or even the digital space at large. It might require a bigger budget in the short run, but will keep on giving long after your usual “campaign period”.

To send you off, I would like to bring up, a very relevant question was posed at the M-Commerce workshop that I feel didn’t get a good answer. Why, when mobile is showing such large numbers in adoption, is it still such a small part of the digital commerce? I think it’s quite obvious why. A minute part of businesses have yet to adapt to mobile. When we’re talking about companies and services that have been rethought for mobile, we’re talking about very small percentages. How much business do you think a retail store would make if it had locked doors or a 1 m ceiling height, next to a normal one? We have to get to work adapting if we want to get that business.

And lastly, a BIG thanks to SIME and everyone behind it for inviting us to cover our passion, and for being such great hosts for the bloggers this year. Really hope we get the opportunity again. Now back to creating great useful and valued mobile experiences. And keep in touch if you want to hear more.

Day one at SIME, a mobile perspective

This week, MobileApps and me, Christoffer, have been selected to watch the mobile space at SIME Stockholm, the largest conference in IT and media in Scandinavia. We are very excited about it, and since we’re watching the mobile space closely anyway, we thought it would be a really good opportunity to share our thoughts here on our blog.

The first day at SIME Stockholm has delivered some great shows and presentations, and a lot of it touching on, or being directly about the mobile field. We thought we’d summarize it all with the one all-encompassing key take-away:

We’re going mobile, and there is no turning back

First of all, it’s evident already today, that if you’re mindset isn’t in mobile, you’re doing it wrong. How do we know this? Just look at the two biggest actors in the digital field today: Google and Facebook. Google, shifted their main focus on to mobile last year. Now everything they do is mobile first. Facebook, they have already today just under 50% of their 800 million users accessing Facebook on their mobile phones. The shift to mobile has already started to happen in a huge way.

We also heard a lot of other interesting stats, spottings, and predictions from the speakers, supporting the mobile trend:

• Mobile searches have increased 4-5 time under the last year alone
• 30% of all restaurant searches are done on mobile phones (a big stat considering how many non-mobile optimized, or even Flash(!) restaurant sites that are out there. Here’s a great exception by the way)
• 79% of Smartphone users use a smartphone to help with shopping and 70 percent use phone in store.
• Youtube has 200 million playbacks from phones per day (up from 100M a year ago)
• 550.000 new Android Smartphones are activated per day (and Apple is adding another 200.000 iPhones to that)
• Two of this years biggest conference stars iZettle and Wrapp, are businesses completely focused around mobile
• All TV discussions are surrounding the interaction between TV and the mobile devices taking up more and more of the watchers attention
• The biggest websites in Sweden are all seeing exponential growth in mobile visitors, with Aftonbladet, Sweden’s most visited website, predicting mobile surpassing desktop in 1-2 years

The big disparity here is that with all this mobile web usage, very few websites are actually optimized for mobile use. Of advertisers, less than 25% have a mobile optimized site, even sometimes linking to it through campaigns geared towards mobile users. This is why Google has launched a mobile initiative, GO MO, helping businesses go mobile. The initiative is great and we of course love the push from Google telling people to go mobile. When you’ve visited the site and seen what you should do, contact an experienced developer like us to help you get sorted out.

MobisleApps view, that’s supported by what we heard at SIME today, is that mobile is indeed where all digital communication is headed, and we think it’s quite evident. The era where we had to sit down in front of a desk, screen and a keyboard to do everyday interactions was just a phase, forced by the limitations of technology. While we might want to do certain high concentration tasks in a controlled desktop environment, we think the barrier for what these are is being erased, and everything else is just very unnatural to do on a PC on a desktop. Period.

“SIME is like Christmas for the Nordic digital industry” – Johan Siwers

Below is a guest post by Johan Siwers who makes a recollection with a trip down memory lane from the time of ‘SIME Genesis’ to today. Johan is one of the online industry veterans, former MD of Match.com in the Nordics, and has over the past 15 years been involved in breaking ground for a wide range of media and online media ventures within companies like Kinnevik, Spray, Shibsted and InterActive Corp (IAC). And most importantly a credited SIME Junkie. He is one of our favorite writers at the blog with some of his previous posts here and here

Finally it is SIME time again. For anyone involved in the online scene, this is our Christmas, our time to celebrate the great industry we are representing. It is now 15 years since SIME kick started the Scandinavian industry around the Internet by putting the people, the companies and the ideas in the limelight.

Some of us recall where things stood back then. There was the report made by the agency Projektor, predicting that in 1997 online advertising would reach 300 million SEK in turn over, receiving nothing but laughter in response. Earlier this year IRM announced that the online media is the second largest media in Sweden, reaching a turnover of 5,7 billion SEK in 2010.

There was Spray challenging the traditional players proclaiming that the online media was superior to more or less anything else. But the early products such as the Citinavigator, the citiguide Rival or the directory/search service punkt.se did not have any material impact on the world outside of the core online community. This fall Google received the award for “best media in Sweden”, taking over the spot TV4 has subscribed to for some years.

There was SIME being bold and brave when setting up – and filling up – SIME at the classic location Cirkus at Djurgården. When SIME now some years later returns to Cirkus, it is to confirm it’s position as a grown up industry. Still yet being a teenager with passion, ambitions and adventures at the horizon.

Over the years SIME has always been there, bringing the world to Scandinavia – and Scandinavia to the world. The list of influential people that has been visiting – and returning year after year – is nothing less than impressive. SIME has been inspiring us all by sharing stories about success as well as lessons to be learnt by failure. The SIME co-founders, Ola and Christoffer, have raised the bar – in more than one sense – and become a symbol for the passion many of us feel about the industry we are in.

In my role as the Chairman of IAB Sweden, the global industry organization for the online industry, I am happy to be a supporting partner of SIME this year. The members behind IAB are long time visitors at SIME, and we see SIME as a platform for a dialog with You and the rest of the industry. We are passionate about strengthening the online industry and to grow the share of the online media in the eyes of advertisers, agencies and media owners.

IAB, just like SIME, relies on the trust we can get from the industry. We believe the challenges ahead in an ever changing industry calls for a strong industry organization. That is why we are taking the lead in important questions for us all, for example:

1. Our task forces within Mobile, Legal or Search
2. Establishing a framework for the cookie regulation debate,
3. Industry research, with reports like AdEx2011, covering the development in 25+ markets in Europe
4. And ongoing seminars within areas such as search, mobile and social media

Have you ever wondered how strange your online life is?

Something that we saw at SIME Barcelona today is what would happen if you extrapolate your online world offline, and the result was the video below.

We are having a great time at Barcelona, bringing together CTO of Amazon, founder of Flickr, serial entrepreneurs, investors, marketing experts to discuss the digital landscape. The morning session has been all about

1. Making marketing click  - how marketers operate today? And how has the consumption of information changed? From rich media ads to performance marketing, iPads to mobile phone, consumption of information and content has become ubiquitous.
2. CTO of Amazon had 3 golden principles – institutional YES whereby any idea is by default gets a yes or go ahead, and if someone wants to oppose it, he elaborates the reasoning as why not to implement the idea instead of the other way around. Second is, product development begins with an internal press release and a customer FAQ document since then you can come back to what you have promised and what you think you have delivered. And finally, motivating developers through pizzas.
3. The Panel on serial entrepreneurship was about finding the passion and motivating teams to drive towards a larger vision. With the life span of tech companies being very less (M&A booming in the market conditions), the market has a lot of 20+ and 30+ serial entrepreneurs who still go back to building their company instead of playing golf. And if you are still in your job, are you questioning your assumptions every day or are you connecting your passion to opportunity?

Looking forward to the rest of the day!

The State of the European Digital Economy!

How does the European digital economy look like? 2010 was clearly the year where two words dominated the scene – mobile and social. Mobile mainly due to the Android story, the 590M$ Advertising revenue, the ever increasing mobile ad impressions and the launch of cheaper hardware and more sophisticated software. Social due to a new seamless layer that is being added to everything we touch and do. From games to communities, its all about staying connected, multi-tasking with your friends, adding your location  etc. To look into the future, its good to see how far we have come.

The highlights:

1. The most time spent in Europe was on facebook followed by local stars Mail.ru and Poland’s Nasza-Klaza.pl
2. Search still dominated the usage pattern, although the budget spent on SEM decreased in 2010
3. Photos, Communities and Social Networking experienced the most growth
4. Social Networking accounted for greater portion of ad. revenues, predominantly due to Facebook’s phenomenal growth and the movement of digital dollars into engagement rather than pure display
5. The Social Commerce Movement spread like wild fire due to the adoption of services like Groupon and its clones.

(Data from ComCast)

Media Round-Up from DLD 11

Staci. D. Kramer from ContentNext Media, Robin Wateurs from Tech Crunch have done some very good coverage from the panels and thoughts of the luminaries at DLD, one of Europe’s premier tech conferences. DLD, a 3 day event held in Munich, brings together the 170 thought leaders from around the world, over 1000 participants, bringing together a mix of digital, media and art. SIME along with DLD, Le Web are part of the European Alliances of Conferences, sharing ideas and thoughts amongst each other.

Here is the summary from some of the panels at DLD:

• Arthur Sulzburger Jr. New York TImes about why print will be around for longer than you think it will and why the app world will be easier to monetize
  
• Groupon CEO on the lingering IPO question for the company, and his honest truth
  
• Interview with James Murdoch summarized on the pay wall, The Daily  and the landscape of the media industry
• James Murdoch on charging 99 cents / week for The Daily

• And James Murdoch on The SUN, one of their most successful companies having a strong paid component
  
• Google’s Marissa Meyer on Eric Schmidt stepping down as CEO of Google
  
• Cracking the social commerce nut with Groupon and Foursquare CEO

And here is the link to the livestream

The Return of IPO in 2011!

[From Strategyeye Digital Media's Predictions]

Facebook won’t yet, Demand Media definitely will, Skype wants to, LinkedIn might, as may Zynga, Groupon or even Twitter. Tech IPOs look set to come back with a vengeance in 2011. Or will they?

For all the speculation stoked during 2010, concrete commitments for going public this year are harder to identify. And companies are now looking at other ways to raise money.Hulu is a good example of a candidate supposedly poised for an IPO that now looks less certain. Enter Facebook and the USD1.5bn “special purpose vehicle” it created with Goldman Sachs. Via this, the social network will increase its shareholders to more than 500 and will have to disclose its financial results, but it doesn’t necessarily need to go public. Will other companies follow this strategy? Facebook may eventually IPO regardless, but if it does it will be in 2012, not 2011. The only certainty is that there will be more IPO activity this year than last, with Russian search engine Yandex, some more Chinese internet firms, Betfair, Pandora and Glam Media also ones to watch.

All in all a great time to pick tech stocks especially through concepts like Sharespost.

Dear Brands, build fanboys and not customers

The attention economy demands you build fan boys and not customers.

If you had a care-o-meter, most of your average mass marketing messages do not elicit enough attention from most if not all consumers.

Apple has fanboys who will kill for their brand. It’s even part of pop culture called mac envy

Walmart might be considered too cheap, but they serve their market exactly well. So do budget airlines.

The key is not what everyone thinks, but what your actual consumers think and then take their experience to a delightful new level.

At SIME, we asked marketing managers of the major brands today, what and how they built their fanboys. And we collected their response in this video below as part of the SIME Brand Stories collection.

So what’s your story?

Take on a challenge with SIME Non-Profit!

This year, for the first time ever, SIME opens up its doors – for free – to those working to make this world a better place through launching SIME Non-Profit!

SIME Non-Profit will run parallel to SIME Stockholm and is open to leaders from organizations that are helping others. We have created SIME Non-Profit to provide NGOs, non-profit initiatives and social entrepreneurs access to best practice in the use of digital media and IT technology.

It is our hope and ambition that increased knowledge sharing will enable organizations and social entrepreneurs to help millions more.

Why are we telling you this?

Well, first of all you can help nominate organizations that should attend, ask them to click this link and apply. It’s free for organizations and individuals that meet the non-profit criteria.

Secondly, we want you to TAKE ON A CHALLENGE.

On the site, meet the supporters, we have asked some fantastic organizations to present to you their biggest challenges when it comes to staying on top of new technologies and how to utilize social media.

Here is an example:

You will find many more challenges here.

So please, check out the challenges, get inspired and start thinking about how you could take on a challenge. Good, now that you’re done thinking, click on the link “meet us at SIME” and we will set you up for a meeting during the SIME days.

The best solved challenges will be rewarded at SIME 2011!

******

Other ways you can help those who help others:

Invite those who help! If there is any organization that you would like to invite, let them know that they can apply for a seat here.

If you want to contribute in other ways please let us know. Will you?