Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Is 2009 the year for mobile B2B?

I have asked this before quite a few times, wondering in particular why the B2B world has been so slow to catch on to mobile. But, I'm thinking this really might be it. Three things have caught my eye (and my delicious bookmarks) in the just the past few days:

  1. On 30th January, Marketing reported that "The Financial Times has added mobile as a new channel through its website aimed at reaching out to a younger demographic". That must be me then, "younger", as I immediately bookmarked the new site at m.ft.com. The killer duo of iPhone and Crackberry are obviously the key drivers here. The piece goes on to note "The site works for all phones but is optimised for the iPhone and BlackBerry which together account for over 60% of FT.com mobile traffic. A dedicated iPhone application will follow, incorporating more sophisticated graphics and charts and the ability to quickly share FT content with the integration of the address book".
  2. On the same day, MinOnline featured Steve Smith's Top Five B2B Mobile Sites. He also mentions the FT site, as well as those from WWD, AgProfessional and Mining Weekly. But, he particularly highlights the Bloomberg site (although claims their iPhone app is spectacular). I looked at it and he's right. It's the clearest and quickest I've seen. Much better than either the FT or Reuters' offerings.
  3. Finally, yesterday exchange4media in India reported that "If 2007 was the year of broadband penetration in India then, 2009 could well be the year of the mobile Internet. This year is set to see high usage of Internet via mobile". It quotes Star India’s Viren Popli saying, “The trend to watch out for will be far more content and services on the mobile platform. Second trend will be the launch of newer products and services on the mobile platform.”
Let's who, if anybody, in Asia picks up on this. The big players have, so far, been suprisingly quiet about all this.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

nice entry