If "content is King", then the mechanism for discovering content must be the crown jewels. So what's the best way to expose content and other services to end users?
It seems that interpreting just what constitutes ‘content discovery' depends on your particular perspective. While operators may view this facility as an integral part of a handset's capabilities, by contrast subscribers may see discovery as something which naturally resides on the mobile Internet like Google does on the web. Which viewpoint will eventually win out is currently the subject of much speculation.
The motivation behind the introduction of content discovery onto handsets is quite evident. Most operators now possess viable, high-speed 3G networks but handset owners are consuming content in other ways. For example, they are downloading MP3 tracks directly from a PC or even purchasing content pre-loaded on memory cards. This practice is sometimes described as ‘side loading'. Fortunately there are plenty of mobile search and discovery products in the market already. According to a recent report from Ovum – ‘Desktop search on mobiles: increase ARPU through efficient discovery' – leading operators are already starting to adopt search in mobile phones. "All vendors and operators should be now putting plans in place for implementing it," the report advises.
Within handsets, the boundaries between local search; portal search; and mobile web search are becoming increasingly blurred. Of the three, local search is often neglected, says Martin Garner, director for wirelss with researchers, Ovum. Users are starting to create their own content in terms of photos and videos, for example. With the very latest memory cards this ‘user generated content' can represent gigabytes of data. Locating a specific photo, for example, is typically problematic. How many users religiously rename individual photos from their originally given timestamp? With an effective search mechanism, Garner argues, content could be labelled by location – making it relatively easy to find a photo taken in Paris next to the Eiffel Tower. The advantage to efficient local search is that it can encourage the consumer to upload a ‘discovered' picture to an online blog or social network.
Portal view
Rather than local search, what most operators view as content discovery is the ability for subscribers to find their way straight to portal based content and services. If, for example, the subscriber wants to put a Formula One (F1) style ringtone onto the handset, the operator wishes to make locating and downloading that tone as simple as possible. In this scenario, the process of ‘discovery' will inevitably take the subscriber to the operator's portal. Alternatively, if the portal can't offer such an item, discovery will point the user towards a friendly content aggregator.
There is an implicit understanding that the act of discovering such content will also present the user with other services that are related to the subscriber's original search. So in the case of the subscriber trying to find an F1 ringtone, the search mechanism will also suggest relevant services – such as the ability to download games related to F1. Additionally, the search might offer the subscriber the opportunity to sign up for a text-based services which will ‘push' the latest F1 news down to the handset. It might even suggest downloading a wallpaper featuring a leading F1 driver.
Zero click
An easy way to entice the subscriber to buy into this definition of content discovery is to place the content ‘hooks' directly in front of the user's nose. This means putting an item onto the handset's idle screen – a location which is sometimes referred to as the handset's ‘home screen'; the ‘mobile desktop'; or the ‘phonetop'. The idea is that these ‘hooks' are effortlessly reached. Or – to use the appropriate industry jargon – these hooks possess a click-distance of zero. A pioneer of click-distance is specialist software house, Changing Worlds. What the company defines as ‘click distance' is the total number of clicks required to reach a particular item. An ordinary person would probably stop searching after maybe three or four clicks while a mobile phone aficionado could probably survive to five or six clicks. When Changing Worlds surveyed 20 leading mobile portals, it found that it took on average 16 clicks to reach a piece of content. Changing Worlds' answer is technology it calls ClixSmart which applies AI techniques to predict the kind of content for which the user is searching – thereby reducing click distance. However, ClixSmart's disadvantage is that its software resides on the operator's portal (such as Vodafone Live!) not within the handset.
Formerly best known for its mobile browser, Openwave, has lately become a champion of content discovery launching numerous products to aid operators. As Peter Galvin, senior vp with Openwave explained, "Today, most [handset] applications are buried deep with a catalogue of services." To combat this, Openwave has brought the concept of the ‘widget' from the PC world into the cellular world. Each widget provides access to mobile web based content. "Our mobile widget solution – combined with our [content discovery] solution, Mediacast, is designed to break down the current barriers to service adoption with an intuitive UI that pushes relevant content," Galvin stated. Significantly Openwave recently allied with GPS location specialist and chip supplier, SiRF Technology, to bring location based services to content discovery. Openwave vp, Nara Rajagopalan, claimed, "When combined with other existing content feeds and services, location adds the geographic dimension and filtering needed to create compelling mobile data services that can drive web content consumption on mobile devices."
File system
"Discovery should be an integral part of a user's mobile experience, both on and off the handset," says Mike Wehrs, chief technical evangelist with Tegic Communications (which supplies T9 predictive texting). The problem is that the typical handset's UI (user interface) design is a hang-over from the days when handsets had the look and feel of an old style PC. "Handsets today ship with an incredible amount of functionality, but it is often hidden in menu-driven file systems," Wehrs explained. "When you add the content that users store locally on their handsets, such as contacts, MP3s and documents, the difficulty of discovery goes up exponentially."
Predictive Search
Remembering where objects have been stored and the number of menus selections required to get to them hinders content discovery. "Discovery off the handset – be it the operator's portal services or the Internet – is no easier because users have to first go through the handset menus to find the browser; launch it; then wade through menu after menu on the portal or Internet," Wehrs pointed out. "Simply put, menu-driven file systems do not work well on small screen mobile devices." Hence attempts to shift a Google style of search over to the mobile environment have so far failed miserably. Given that millions of mobile users already use T9 predictive texting, extending the use of this familiar tool over to content discovery was a natural step for Tegic. The company's T9 Discovery tool adds predictive texting to an engine for content discovery. With Discovery, users start typing what they are looking for on a regular 12-key keypad or a Qwerty keyboard and have the engine present and narrow the results on the handset's idle screen.
Aside from Tegic, a recent report from Informa Telecoms & Media entitled ‘Activating the idle screen: uncharted territory' highlighted two products in particular which "are making their presence felt" in the field of mobile search and discovery. One of these is Qix from the Zi Corporation and the other is Mobile Desktop from Abaxia. According to Abaxia's CEO, Cedric Mangaud, the announcement of an implementation of its ODP technology with France Telecom/Orange with elements taken from Abaxia's Mobile Desktop offering is imminent.
Software which improves the accessibility, discoverability and delivery of data services on a mobile phone has come to be termed an ‘On-Device Portal' or ODP, for short. Mangaud argued that the best way of regarding an ODP is to think of Apple's iTunes service on the web. Itunes provides the catalogue of available music and provides the shopper with the ability to preview a particular track. Once the user has decided what to buy, iTunes provides the ability to purchase and download the content. At the same time iTunes will also notify the shopper of new content (the latest CDs) which might prove of interest in addition to highlighting relevant news. "In the mobile world exactly the same logic lies behind the ODP," Mangaud claimed.
The challenge lies with finding a way to implement the ODP on the mobile handset. Some suppliers, for example SurfKitchen, offer an ODP as a Java, Symbian or Windows Mobile application which can easily be added to existing handsets. US based mobile operator – Alltel – has taken a radical approach to offering an ODP function. It has adopted ODP software provided by Frog Design together with Aricent to provide a facility which Alltel has labelled ‘Celltop'. Although Alltel based its ODP on Qualcomm's OS, Brew, the same principles could be applied equally to , say, Nokia Series 60 handsets.
With Celltop, the handset's idle screen is split in half and shared between two individual ‘cells'. Typically the handset is shipped with 10 cells. Each cell provides a mix of text and images with direct links to content. The advantage to the Celltop design is that each cell is highly customisable by the handset's owner. Plus the order in which the cells are displayed can also be modified. A powerful feature of Celltop is that the application itself can store not only a user's preferences but his or her location, too. This information is then used to update a cell each time it is accessed.
Not everyone believes that ODPs are the answer, however. Iota Sphere's CEO, Bruce Eley, claims that ODP technology is not only wasteful because less than 10 per cent of downloaded content is actually consumed, but it is also expensive for the consumer who pays to download all the unwanted information. In reply, Action Engine's Jennifer Tarkiainen retorted, "Bruce Eley does not understand on-device portals, because ODPs actually consume far less data and bandwidth than if a consumer simply surfed a WAP site. Action Engine has been deploying ODPs for a while and we can see the popularity picking up rapidly this year. To size the market, researcher ARCchart estimates that the ODP market will go from $300 million plus in 2007 to over $1.4 billion in 2009."
As Tegic's Mike Wehrs believes, content discovery must be based on user input, not on menus. "Solutions that make it much easier for consumers to find what they want on their phones; on their operator's portals; and on the mobile Internet – without needing to know exactly where something might be located – will eventually enable successful content discovery," Wehrs claimed.