Reactions to Mobile Business ideas II

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

April 11, 2005 [4509 views]

It has taken some of you a long time to come up with your ideas and as promised I said I would give feedback only when sufficient new ideas had been added to the survey. That time has now arrived.

As you will see from this week’s lecture I am trying to provide you with as much help as possible. Many of you, I think, have got it into your minds that your idea has to be totally unique and revolutionary. This is wrong! It simply needs to be sensible, well thought through and technologically possible. It also needs to be mobile!

Here are some potentially good ideas (modified versions of things you have suggested)

• Allowing programming of your television viewing from your mobile. But be careful, streaming video is expensive to send so I’m not sure watching TV on your handset is the answer.
• Sensible limited e-commerce for products that people want immediately particularly following an invitation to purchase that is time sensitive.
• Paying for something like the congestion charge now. Of course you can already do that so you’d need to think of similar urgent payments (as some of you have).
• Working with the internal IT needs of an organisation you personally know very well and helping them with mobile opportunities (that need mobile).
• Imaginative multiplayer games
• Location sensitive information for people who would value that information rather than being irritated by it.
• Health and fitness applications designed to keep people informed for a small regular fee.
• Translation service.
• Secuity/theft alerts.
• Replacing IT cards and visitor passes with RFID tags in controlled security environment.

Here are some (possibly) bad ideas

• Voice over Bluetooth. The distances would allow you to shout!
• Buying holidays over WAP. Does this really need to be mobile and will the interface be usable?
• Poorly thought through multiplayer games. What is the gameplay? Why will people want to play?
• You cannot suggest to an airline that they introduce mobile flight if they already have them

Technology and business issues: make sure that you can answer the following questions

1. Where is the information for your product or service actually going to come from? If you were going to offer travel information over mobile phones, don’t just say “from local hotels and restaurants” because I assume they will not be set up to do that. You need to find real information sources and make sure that they can provide what you need.
2. How will the information be processed, categorised, searched and how will value be added to it? Once again, I want specific suggestions. Will you be providing new information every week or every 10 minutes?
3. How does the data get to the terminal and will the terminal be able to display it?
4. What will be the actual mechanisms of security, identification and payment? Will they work and will the customer find them satisfactory?
5. How will you promote the service to potential users?

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