As consumers, our mobile devices are used to pay for different services but mainly mobile content. There are different models that enable people to perform micro-payments to non mobile related products and services using their phone (via premium SMS or Premium calls). These payment methods are very expensive in comparison to a magnetic card for example. The fact that these are such an expensive methods caused that it is almost impossible to get a sustainable business model based on these payment methods. As a result, mobile payment is well familiar to people but it doesn’t mean they use it for things outside the mobile experience and habitat.
In specific markets we do see some interesting solutions but these are usually limited to a specific geography as they require a lot of infrastructure and of course an active engagement from the operators and usually the device manufacturers. The dominant solution in this category is the i-mode felica in Japan which is based on an 13.56 MHz RFID in the NFC standard (later models only).
Research firm Gartner had concluded that at the end of  the year there will be 74.4 million mobile payment users, and that it will exceed the 190 million users, almost 3 percent of the mobile phone user base.
190 million users are yet to by categorized as a mainstream product, who are those that use mobile payments?
First we must  remark that mobile payments are not related to mobile content, although carriers are deeply involved.
Mobile payments been used widely in developing countries where ATM, banks and credit cards can not be found easily,  opposed to mobile devices.
That seems to be the reason why mobile payments are so popular in China, and Africa with an estimated 100 million Chinese will be using mobile payments by the end of 2009.
But Mobile payments are often  used as  complementary payment method for example at a drink machine or for buying movie tickets.
When money is part of the picture everyone wants to take part, the carriers, the banks and transaction companies that are taking there coupons.

Becoming a mainstream service is seemed to be far  in the future but two recent developments are evidence that proves that this day is soon to come. It is required to say that many of the mobile payment companies (including several Israeli start-ups) started with a big investment and with a big buzz only to close the doors of the companies several years later.
First is Boku , the company that raised 15 million dollars and purchased two competitors named  Paymo and MobillCash (which shows how many failed companies are for sale for ridiculous amounts).
Secondly is Accells a new Israeli start-up company that have developed a mini transmitter that  is placed in a store, parking place etc, users do not have to install any software, and there is no need for NFC or RFID chip to make a purchase.

The interesting part is the “behind the scenes” battle between the banks, e-commerce companies like PayPal and credit card companies that want to keep managing our banking accounts and the carriers that are looking for new ways to make money, becoming a credit card company is not too bad for their financial reports after all. In Japan, the different players combined their forces and created a service that was a cooperation between the bank, the credit card company, and the mobile operator.

The concept of paying with your phone is very nice but the customer needs an incentive to move from using a credit card to using a mobile. Nokia’s reports show that people forget more their wallet than their mobile phone that in most parts of the world is one of the three things a person carries in his pockets. So availability is not a big differentiators and incentive (the wallet is also available). Mobile payment technology and solution providers need to find that factor that will push the use in mobile payment forward or we are doomed to write many more articles about mobile payment and nice concepts and technologies but with no significant success.

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Waze the company we covered only days ago, released today a new version which is the first to support the Nokia 5800. This version is a significant addition because they created a new UI to match the Symbian touch interface.

* Supported Symbian devices

All issues we raised in the previous coverage remain the same but hey, another device gets to be supported by this cool client.

Tunewiki the social music player that displays and syncs lyrics, has recently released a WMP plugin and a Blackberry version of its application.
The app gained a huge success with more than 40,000 downloads on Blackberry devices, and is ranked 1st on Blackberry “app store” called app world.

Moreover the iPhone version has also been quite successful, and it is placed in the 6th place under music category at the App Store.

Some of the new features of the Tunewiki iPhone app: Skins, Radio Lyrics, translated lyrics and more.
We will keep track of Tunewiki for new developments.

Israeli start-up Waze aims to revolutionize the GPS and GIS services for mobile using you. Waze is a GPS client that lets users navigate and view maps just like any other service. They also provide the users to record new roads (in case the maps are not updated), to report traffic jams, accidents, police cars, speed cameras, and other warnings that are shared online with fellow drivers.
Every session is recorded and transmitted to the company servers so they can report the information to other drivers and also to recalculate routes and arrival times in real-time to drivers that may be affected by the information received.
The concept of the service is really nice, the usability and UI are also very practical but when you use the service, it is not without problems.

Maps – maps lack different details occasionally like circles, small streets and even small villages. There are streets with mixed up names and facilities that do not appear in the program’s address data. Another significant issue is the inaccuracy of the streets numbers.
A destination on a long street can bring the user to another point on that street which is several kilometers from where he navigated to.
In newer versions, there is an option to report about numbering problems but after reporting, we saw no change even after a month.

Traffic reporting – When a traffic jam is reported, the system adds it to the map.
There are many times you can see that there are traffic jams 2 hours after the jams disappeared or even reports of a traffic jam of 200 meters for a minute because of a traffic light. The system encourages drivers to report and they do, too much in our opinion.
The lack of an automatic system to clear irrelevant reporting is also apparent.

Meta information – the program doesn’t include information about restaurants, café, and other facilities you would expect a navigation software will have. The lack of such information requires users to get specific addresses on the internet prior to the planned drive which makes the process very cumbersome in some cases.

User feedback – algorithm bugs can be found many times in junctions where the program directs you to turn right and then left instead of going forward, taking you through very small and slow streets instead of a logical way, and other issues that can cause you lose your way or valuable time.
It is very strange that the company did not provide a way for its community to report such errors on site for them to check and fix in later releases. Such an option is a must have if the company plans to move out of Israel to much bigger countries with much more complicated roads.

Our summary to the service is that it is a very refreshing breeze to the navigation services but that the client and the concept should get a significant development in order to attract the audience and get them use the service regularly.