Sometimes the use of mobile technology in pop culture can be hilariously absurd, as is the case with Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone in the 1960s Get Smart television series. Other times the depiction of futuristic technology can be much more prescient, as was the case with the communicator.

So when I went to see Star Trek this past weekend, in addition to seeing how one of my new favorite directors interpreted the favorite TV series of my youth, I was looking forward to seeing how mobility “evolved” in J.J. Abrams vision of the future. Like almost everything else in the movie, I wasn’t disappointed.

In what will undoubtedly be one of my favorite product placements of all time, Star Trek features a touch screen Nokia phone, mounted on the dashboard of an antique Corvette in the sequence where the audience first sees how James T. Kirk grows up.

I must say, there is nothing earth shattering about a touch screen phone and media player; I have that in my car for two years with my iPhone and its dock (how did Apple, one of the kings of product placement, miss this choice opportunity?). Perhaps the most futuristic aspect of this Nokia phone was how its classic ringtone evolved. But it was still great fun, as is the rest of the movie. If you haven’t yet seen Star Trek, it gets two thumbs up from me!

We began at the close of market October 3, 2008 with an index value of $500.49. At Friday’s market close (March 6, 2009) the MoPR 500 was valued at $358.82, a loss of 28.31 percent.

For some context, at the close of the market on October 3, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was valued at $10,325.38. On March 6 the DJIA was valued at $6,626.94, or a loss of 35.82 percent. As we watched the ups and mostly downs of the market these past five months, we observed that our mobility index usually though modestly outperformed the DJIA.

Of our 27 mobility stocks, 26 went down in value. Standing alone was Broadcom (NASDAQ: BCRM). On October 3, a share of Broadcom was worth $16.63, and last Friday it closed at $16.97. Only a 2.04 percent gain, but in this volatile market, who wouldn’t take that? For the most part, Broadcom has traded consistently over $16 per share over the past five months. Perhaps part of the stock’s appeal is that Broadcom recently introduced multimedia chipset technology for mobile phones.

The next four best performing stocks in the top of the of MoPR 500 are:

• Sybase (NYSE: SY), purchased for $28.76 and trading last at $26.48 for a loss of 7.93 percent.
• Syniverse (NYSE: SVR), purchased for $16.11 and trading last at $14.14 for a loss of 12.23 percent.
• Verizon (NYSE: VZ), purchased for $31.24 and trading last at $27.28 for a loss of 12.68 percent.
• Neustar (NYSE: NSR), purchased for $18.83 and trading last at $15.63 for a loss of 16.99 percent.

It’s sad when three of the best five performers have double digit losses, but these losses are about half the average loss for the index and about a third of the loss of the DJIA.

Four of the five worst performing stocks comprising the bottom of the MoPR 500 cost about $3.00 per share. At such a low initial value, every cent lost makes the stock drop more percentage-wise. The sole exception was Clearwire, purchased for $9.92 per share. Clearwire is in the midst of a much-watched consumer WiMax service roll out.

The five worst performing stocks of the MoPR 500 are:

• Powerwave (NASDAQ: PWAV), purchased for $3.32 and trading last at $0.25 for a loss of 92.50 percent.
• Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT), purchased for $2.08 and trading last at $0.32 for a loss of 84.62 percent.
• UTStarcom (NASDAQ: UTSI), purchased for $2.88 and trading last at $0.70 for a loss of 75.69 percent.
• Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR), purchased for $9.92 and trading last at $2.82 for a loss of 71.57 percent.
• Alcatel Lucent (NYSE: ALU), purchased for $3.54 and trading last at $1.16 for a loss of 67.23 percent.

More information about the individual holdings can be found on our Stockalicious and Herdstreet portfolio pages, as well as our MoPR 500 Index page.

• Users are sending more than 2 trillion mobile messages per day globally as of the end of 2008.
• In-Stat consumer surveys showed that consumers who use mobile messaging also use significantly more voice minutes than overall survey respondents.
• In addition to paying more for value-added services, US mobile messengers are also more likely to pay up to 25% more for their handsets than all survey respondents.

The research report, titled “Worldwide Application Series: Mobile Messaging Still Profitable,” concluded that the most profitable data service is still text messaging.

This report is right in line with the October report from Osterman Research that revealed an overwhelming percentage of mobile messaging users admit to engaging in inappropriate or even dangerous behavior to access and respond to email and text messages during off hours.

The Osterman study found that 94 percent of respondents use their phones to send email or text messages during work nights or on weekends, and nearly 96 percent never leave their phones at home, even on vacation. This mobile email / text messaging addiction has driven 79 percent of respondents to send messages from their phones while in the bathroom (ew!). Another 71 percent admitted to texting behind the wheel of a moving automobile (gasp!), and 41 percent said they’ve texted on commercial flights while the plane was in mid-air (shame on you!).

So get out and do your part. How many of those 2 trillion messages will you be responsible for sending today?

Watch the BBC video report where the reporter details the top secret mobile phone. She says she can’t show us how it works (that part is still a secret) but she can tell us about it.”

The device is called the Zumba, and the Hereford-based technology company believes it will fully revolutionize the mobile industry.

According to the IA site, “Zumba connects people by fusing the worlds of telephony and web-based networking, and presents a potent combination of consumer benefits with true mass-market potential.”

The hands-free design for the Zumba is based around what IA calls the “world’s first fully accurate voice recognition system for mobile phones.” The device is the size of a credit card with an earpiece that pops off to fit over your ear.

To place calls or send a text, one simply touches a button on the earpiece, which calls up a secure website portal – called Zumba Lumba (seriously, that is what they are calling it) - where your contacts are listed and allows you to place the call or text using only your voice to navigate. According to the IA site, “ZumbaLumba is a ‘Natural Connections’ website that taps into our real life circle of contacts held on our phones and allows us to interact with them in new and purposeful ways. It allows users to manage their contacts, availability and communication, whilst enabling closer connections. ZumbaLumba ‘Natural Connections’ brings the virtual world of networking into the real world of connecting to solve real problems that affect all of us.”

The company recognizes that in the fast-paced world of telecommunication technologies, mobile devices come and go like last week’s gossip. Mobile devices are not merely for convenience anymore; they make up a large part of today’s fashion accessories. To provide fashion-lovers and trendsetters a way to satisfy their techie needs, RENTOBILE lets you get your hands on the latest cell phones without shoveling out loads of cash each time a new ‘must try’ phone is released.

You typically have to wait for your contract to expire or have to pay full price for a new phone to try out something new, but with RENTOBILE you can sample a huge variety of mobiles on your whim for a set monthly rental fee.

The first step is deciding whether you want to rent phones as a RENTOBILE member, or as a guest. Membership rates begin at $5 per month, and members get a break in rental fees, along with other privileges.

When you are ready to pick out your new phone you browse RENTOBILE ’s collection—including sections for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon as well as unlocked models—and choose which device you’d like to try out first. Your rented mobile device will be carefully packaged and delivered to you in like-new condition.

Rental rates start at about $15/month, plus a $9.95 round trip shipping charge (per device). You can rent for as little as a month or as long as you want. When you’re done and ready for a new phone you simply return the item for free and tell RENTOBILE what to send you next.

Members can request specific devices, even though all the hottest ‘must have’ phones from Apple, Blackberry, HTC, Palm, LG, Motorola, Nokia and more are already available.

The fickle yet fashion conscious gadget-aholics who would use this service are the same group of consumers that myriad mobile app developers want to reach. I wonder how long it will be until we see third party mobile apps, browsers, and other software pre-loaded on these devices for consumers to try out. No, the phones wouldn’t be “like new” if RENTOBILE pre-loaded the extra bells and whistles on them, but these gadget loving phone-fashionistas would probably really enjoy the extras!

Will Twitter get down to business? Twitter is free for now but will the recent hiring of a Director of Mobile Business Development mean they might start charging or setting up a premium service?

According to Twitter’s blog: “Twitter receives a crushing amount of partnership opportunities on a regular basis—it’s a good problem to have yet until now there has been nobody on staff dedicated solely to business development. Things are changing.”

And, according to Telephony, “Twitter has floated the idea of some pay-per-use, premium services. But it risks losing users to other still-free services such as FriendFeed – not to mention telco-provided SMS.”

It will be interesting to see where this is headed – Twitter needs to eventually start making some cash – just preferably not from us.

The ever changing media landscape. We flinch every time we get a newsfeed about some newspaper or magazine cutting staff, shutting down or scaling back frequency. Though we have no intention of turning Weekend Reading into an obit section for publications, we feel the need to let our readers know about the landscape and how this polar shift affects our industry tremendously.

Newspapers and their current business models are sinking – that’s a given. Some, like The New York Times, are experimenting with alternative ad models, such as putting ads on the cover page. It’s not really that dramatic and has been done, but not with a paper of the Times’ caliber. It gets worse – one pundit claims the Times could no longer exist as a newspaper as early as this spring.

Change is painful but it also brings opportunities. Blogs sprout up everyday. News is getting hyper-localized; information is open and free [which has its advantages and disadvantages] and newer business models are flourishing. News isn’t a commodity anymore with sites like Twitter and its users scooping mainstream media stories. Just this week news about Steve Jobs stepping down and the Hudson plane miracle were both reported on Twitter first – with a dramatic photo directly from the crash scene posted on a Twitter user’s account.

Robert Niles in the Online Journal Review lays out some hard rules on these changes and shifts in media and how the new landscape might look. Here’s one that caught our eye:

The old rule: You can’t cover something in which you are personally involved.
The new rule: Tell your readers how you are involved and how that’s shaped your reporting.

MoPR is a company that works hard to tell its clients’ stories to their audience and this kind of transparency and honesty resonates with us. That’s why we’re increasingly having more open, two-way conversations with reporters and bloggers – and laying all the information on the table so to speak. From there, we let the reporter tell their side.

As the media landscape shrinks – and at the same time expands – we will always be looking for ways to make sure our clients get heard. It’s like a Disneyland ride – we’re cautiously looking at the next turn but we’re also excited about where the industry is headed.

American Idol Text: Fail? Are you on AT&T? Did you get a text on your mobile phone earlier this week promoting the season premiere of American Idol? You weren’t alone.

According to various news sources, the carrier sent the text message to a large portion of its subscriber base – many of whom were not very happy with it.

From The New York Times: “AT&T is defending the text barrage, claiming the messages weren’t spam because they were free, and because customers could opt-out of future ads. The ads were sent to frequent texters and to customers who had voted in the past, AT&T says.”

Social network sites growing on adults. The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8 percent in 2005 to 35 percent now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the US population than teens, which is why the 35 percent number represents a larger number of users than the 65 percent of online teens who also use online social networks.

Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious; 60 percent of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that only their friends can see it, and 58 percent restrict access to certain content within their profile.

Welcome back. We hope you enjoyed the holidays. We certainly did. We’d like to thank you for reading our posts from 2008 and look forward to bringing you more industry tidbits throughout 2009. Be sure to subscribe to our feed if you don’t want to miss any posts. Here’s the URL for your feed reader: or scroll down to the very bottom of this page and click on Entries (RSS).

Marketing execs “sick” of Web 2.0? Perhaps they drank too much of it in 2008, but a new survey by Anderson Analytics conducted for the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), claims marketing executives are going back to basics this year, putting renewed focus on satisfying and retaining customers and investing in research and insights, but are “sick” of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as “blogs” and “social networking” compared with last year’s survey. However, marketers still admit they don’t know enough about it. This lack of understanding was evident in results from a November 2008 MENG social media study showing 67% of marketing executives consider themselves beginners when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes.

It’s really a shame to see this lack of understanding translate into a negative feeling towards an area of marketing which carries so much potential. Let’s hope these marketers get over their burned-out attitudes quickly enough to realize these Web 2.0 technologies are more than buzz words, and that when used effectively can make a real and tangible difference to a company’s marketing efforts - especially in the areas of satisfying and retaining customers.

Mobile Broadband to Exceed 140 Million U.S. Subscribers in 2013. So says a new report from Parks Associates.

“By 2013, there will be over 140 million U.S. consumers paying for mobile broadband, which will extend video, communication, networking, and support services to all sorts of devices,” said Kurt Scherf, vice president, principal analyst, Parks Associates.

Parks Associates also forecasts 4.5 billion mobile phone users worldwide by 2013, with many people using these devices as gateways for entertainment services, community information, and social networking. The increasing importance of the mobile phone will affect other product and service sectors. For example, over 100 million femtocells will be shipped worldwide in 2013, cumulatively serving over 300 million subscribers.

Broadband deserves some government help. The federal government should create a national broadband strategy, create incentives and support efforts to boost broadband demand in order to increase broadband access, according to a new report released by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Learning the right lessons and emulating the right policies will “enable the United States to improve our broadband performance faster than in the absence of proactive policies,” the report claims.

The report also argues that it is time to move the “broadband policy debate beyond the free market fundamentalism on the right and the digital populism on the left and begin to craft pragmatic, realistic public policies” that focus on the primary goal of getting as many American households using high-speed broadband networks to engage in online activities, including education, health care, work, and commerce.

Spammers and scammers discover Twitter. Hooray. If you’re on Twitter you’ve probably noticed an increase of followers that look like spam. It’s not your imagination that names like @dof74s or @prongirl are starting to appear in your stream.

And if you think spammers are bad, it gets worse. Scammers have also discovered Twitter as was the case when several high profile Twitter users were hacked recently via the Direct Message (DM) function by being lured into entering their log-in information into a spoofed screen.

Here are some guidelines we personally follow when using Twitter to help cut down on the spam.

No. 1: Be real. If you follow us and use the Twitter-supplied avatar we won’t follow you. By using a real image you’re proving you’re a real person or are at least making an effort.
No. 2: Be interesting. If you start following us and your previous Tweets are nothing but self-promoting (spam), we won’t follow you.
No. 3: List your location. It’s interesting to follow back users in our own backyard as well as those in other cities and countries. By leaving out your location you might as well add “Spam Robot Planet” as your location.
No. 4: Follow and be followed. Have approximately the same amount of followers as those you follow. If you’re following 2,000 people and only get followed by 10 that’s a pretty good sign you’re a spammer.

As far as getting hacked, never enter information into a spoofed screen – you can usually tell by looking at the URL or if you click on a link and you’re already logged in and are asked to log in, again. But, you knew that, right?

Is an $800 DVR worth it? It’s a pretty risky move during a rocky economy, but after 10 years of work Digeo is now offering its newest HD DVR to compete with Tivo - but it will cost you. Priced at a cool $800, the dual-tuner Moxi HD DVR can store 75 hours of HD programming and boasts no monthly fee or advertisements.

But with the TiVo HD DVR only priced at $299, will the Moxi be as big of a hit as Digeo expects? Would you pay $800 for an HD DVR?

In the air and on demand. In air on-demand entertainment isn’t just for the traveling elite anymore.  Continental Airlines just announced that it has almost completed installing audio and video-on-demand entertainment systems in coach class for the airline’s Boeing 757-200 aircraft.

The new entertainment system will allow customers to choose from up to 25 movies, 25 short-subject programs and 50 compact discs.

We’re glad to see more features being added to airplanes in a time when scaling services back or changing an extra fee for them seems to be the norm. Remember when JetBlue announced that it would be charging for blankets and pillows?  It’s safe to say that didn’t go over so well.

With with announcement and others, like in-air Wi-Fi access coming to major airlines like Delta, we are wondering what will they come up with next?  In this case, the sky really is the limit.

Good ol’ fashioned TV watching increased in 2008. Nielsen recently reported that U.S. usage of TV, Internet and mobile, also known as the “three screens”, has increased across the board- with the average American reportedly watching 142 hours of TV, viewing three hours of mobile video, and going online for 27 hours.

The A2/M2 Three Screen Report states that “the average time a U.S. home used a TV set during the 2007-08 TV season was 8 hours and 18 minutes per day, a record high since Nielsen started measuring television in the 1950s.”

You CAN take it with you. A morbid yet interesting report from MSNBC earlier in the week says many people under 40 are requesting that their mobile phones be buried with them when they pass away. Some even want their cell phone to ring as their casket is being lowered, like a modern-day Taps. We can’t dig it. Really. Unless you plan on making a few phone calls from the other side, what’s the point?

Well, for one, according to the article,

“People want to surround themselves (or their loved ones) with the things they hold dear, whether that’s their cell phone and headset or some family photos, a fishing rod, a piece of treasured jewelry.

We can only think of one reason to be buried with our mobile phone – and that’s if we happen to wake up, in a casket, several feet below the surface. Hopefully the battery – and signal – would still work.

Video for your iPhone? Well, sort of. 12seconds has released an iPhone application that lets iPhone users shoot video. How? Users take three pictures, record some audio and submit it. 12seconds then turns the photos and audio into a video and post it for you. We couldn’t find any examples of an iPhone video on the company’s web site but we will download the application, give it a try and report back. Until Apple relents and starts offering video on iPhones, this might be our only hope.

We’re famous! In case you didn’t hear from us via Facebook, Twitter or email, here’s our appearance on Good Day Oregon last month that featured our Museum of Mobility History, all seventeen minutes of it. Watch it below or click here.

Watch MuMoH on Good Day Oregon in Game Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Monday saw satellite juggernaut SES AMERICOM pull the plug on its IP-PRIME service. A telco equivalent to the cable industry’s popular HITS (Headend In The Sky) service, IP-PRIME gave telcos everything they needed to deliver IP-based TV. A telco just had to install two racks of equipment in its headend, align a satellite dish to receive the programming, rollout the set-boxes to its subs, flip the switch … and count the money rolling in.

Despite signing 70 Tier 3 telcos (e.g. small rural phone companies) throughout the country, SES AMERICOM just wasn’t getting the ROI it expected. So they’re shutting IP-PRIME down, though they’ll keep it operating through July 31, 2009 so customers can “transition.”

So that was Monday and the future for IPTV seemed uncertain, if not bleak.

Then first thing Tuesday morning AT&T (truly a Tier 1 telco) announced that it passed the one million subscriber mark for its U-verse IPTV service.

Why the disparity? I think it has to do with patience.

When AT&T launched U-verse it was to great fanfare and miniscule subscription numbers. Many prognosticated that AT&T would grow tired of the tremendous cost of U-verse and the seemingly unreachable ROI. However through dogged perseverance AT&T is now the thirteenth largest provider of TV services based on subscribers, and its numbers are still growing. Only the nine largest U.S. cable operators, Verizon, DishNetwork and DirecTV serve more subs – for now.

So why couldn’t SES AMERICOM stick it out as well? I believe it’s because the revenue model for IP-PRIME just never fit. With a few exceptions – IP-PRIME being the most notable – SES AMERICOM’s traditional business model has been that of the “fat pipe,” in which a network operator carries the content of others. They maintained an intricate satellite network and charged handsomely for companies and governments to transport their “content” over it.

Unfortunately for IP-PRIME it was to make money in a different fashion, with much of it coming from subscriber revenues. With less than 10,000 total subs – and the numbers growing sloooowly – this revenue stream was not nearly enough. I’m guessing the argument went something like: “we’re a fat pipe people, why do we need a loss leader when we can use the IP-PRIME capacity to expand our existing profitable businesses?”

It’s easy to understand the logic – especially in the current economic climate – and yet, it’s hard not to think a great opportunity is being lost. While it may not fit with SES AMERICOM’s traditional business model, IP-PRIME itself is a proven technological marvel that currently allows some three dozen telcos to provide their subscribers with premium quality TV services, including a substantial amount of HDTV. Hopefully a new owner with the resources and patience can be found because IPTV is clearly the future and rural telcos need just such a turnkey solution.

If I don’t sound very objective on this topic it’s because I was on the Mobility PR team that represented both SES AMERICOM and IP-PRIME. I toured the facilities and worked with the people behind IP-PRIME and I know what a jewel they created.

Every year, CED Magazine compiles a list of the 50 most compelling and important technologies, people and trends influencing the industry.  For 2008, their writers again consulted the industry’s leading technical minds to craft their list.  Not surprisingly, we immediately noticed three trends on the list that strike close to home based on our clients and our own experience.

1. Targeted Ads: This was listed as No. 2 on the big 50 list.  Needless to say, targeted ads have swept the industry and the technology behind their delivery has exploded. RGB Networks announced back in May 2007 their revolutionary approach to targeted advertising with the use of digital overlays and it would seem as though the industry has caught on.  The ability to deliver ads to an advertiser’s specific target demographic is where the operators are making big money these days.
2. Customer Retention: Listed as No. 4, this topic has been arguably the most popular subject for 2008.  As Brian Santo writes, “It’s desirable to play good offense and good defense.” And how to do that?  Monitor, monitor, monitor! Mixed Signals has been at the forefront of this trend- having pushed for content monitoring back at its inception in 2004- and have remained a strong proponent for content monitoring as way for operators to retain subscribers.The need for cable operators to ensure that their subscribers enjoy the highest Quality of Experience (QoE) is a key priority as subscribers are being wooed aggressively by satellite and telecom. Closely monitoring their programming to quickly solve video and audio glitches is a primary way operators can improve QoE.
3. Show Mergers: Combining the big trade shows comes in at No. 18 on this year’s list, which might not be a bad idea, especially to keep travel expenses down as travel budgets are increasingly dropping.As Traci Patterson writes, “In April, Washington, D.C., will host the NCTA’s The Cable Show, CableLabs’ conferences and the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies (ET), all at once. And in October, CTAM Summit, the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, the Cable Center Hall of Fame Dinner and a CableLabs seminar will come together in Denver.”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if it works. But for now, we’re thinking this has the potential to be very convenient and hopefully successful show.