Steve Follmer consulted in Silicon Valley for many years, where he co-founded live365.com.  He is currently between startups and analyzing opportunities in the mobile space. Steve  holds a BSE degree from Princeton University.

15th MobileMonday Taipei Event Report - Mobile Coupons and Price Comparison -By Steve Follmer

Vpon.com

Victor Wu, founder and CEO, demonstrated Vpon, a coupon browser service which is up and running in Taiwan. Vpon was born from an award winning entrepreneurial project he created while completing his MBA in London.

Users install Vpon’s coupon browser, which runs on java and up to 80% of the installed base of phones. Technologically, Vpon has taken steps to economize on bandwidth, and depending on your data plan it costs less than $1 to receive 30 coupons. They also offer a form of location based service to filter coupons for your specific neighborhoods. Mr. Wu values the user relationship and has avoided pushing too much data at the consumer, even on an opt-in basis. There are plans for internet browser based management of the coupons as well.

Vpon has also been responsive to the needs of their advertisers, allowing them to target their coupons to specific demographics, and collecting post-sale customer satisfaction surveys via their mobile app.

In less than a year Vpon has grown to 10 employees, deployed their application, and inked deals with Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and Mister Donut. They have acheived break-even; an infusion of working capital would fuel expansion to additional countries.

Smart Buyer

Smart Buyer has launched Mprice, a cell phone based price comparison service. They presented a very insightful chart comparing web-based shopping/buying with brick & mortar (B&M) shopping. In the USA 93% of consumer purchase remain B&M, a number which approaches 97% in Taiwan. mPrice forges a unique solution that offers the best of both worlds: the convenience of network based price checking, with the convenience of B&M shopping.

The business model contemplates charging the consumer 15 cents per use. They also gather useful buying data which is sold to the channel. They are signing deals with the top chains, thus offering a countrywide solution. And they have initially singled out the low hanging fruit of 3C products.

Smart Buyer has vision and has made some good decisions. It goes without saying that their spreadsheet is driven by their installed base and daily use. If only an affilliate marketing program were offered by the local chains or could be negotiated, user fees could be eliminated.
Or if any user fees could be made more invisible through some package promotion with their carrier partners like CHT.
Smart Buyer is partnering with CHT and 7-11, and various media outlets.
These firms are on board with their vision and will prove essential in
increasing the installed base.

Commentary

I always stop to ask: list every step needed to get my parents using this product, every mouse click, every keystroke, every credit card authorization, every download, every install. Tonight’s presenters can benefit from carrier distribution deals that pre-install their application and bundle a data plan. Failing that I would set up kiosks with technical staff to install the app along with a pile of v-coupons or free trial incentives.

There has to be a viral angle here too. Let people share coupons with their friends to spread both the app and the coupons virally. Where one users tells their friends that the app is safe and useful, and even helps them install it. With an incentive e.g. “10% off on dinner. If you and your friend BOTH present a Vpon 15% off”. The merchants should also step up to the plate and help seed.

To get these and other products to turnkey simplicity, where not only our parents but our grandparents use them daily, it takes an ecosystem. Japan remains an intriguing example, where indeed parents and grandparents use many advance mobile apps.As with wasabi, Japanese ecosystems don’t always take root in the West. But I have a feeling Taiwan could forge a solution that bridges East and West.

You can see the photos from the 15th MobileMonday Taipei event here.

14th MobileMonday Taipei Event Report: Location Based Services: Where Are We Going? -By Steve Follmer

ABI Research projects that worldwide shipments of global positioning system (GPS) enabled mobile phones will reach 550 million units in 2012, up from 240 million units in 2008, representing handset revenue generation growing from $50 billion to $100 billion over that time, with installed base penetration approaching 40%. Who will seize the opportunity this creates?

To find out, the 14th MobileMonday Taipei invited presentations from three location-based services providers: jMap.cc , Cogini and GPSStar, to discuss how LBS is relevant to our daily life, the innovation they will bring to users, and the value LBS provides.

This industry has been simmering along for years, confronting a chicken-and-egg dilemma, no hardware no solutions, no solutions no hardware. But these presentations made clear that we’re long past the tipping point.

Soon every commercial vehicle will have a GPS. -Cogini

Cogini provides consulting and product development, combining transportation/supply-chain and communications, for vertical market and B2B applications, developing solutions which integrate hardware, software, and services. Their leadership in bus route management is a concrete example. Cogini was at home with extending the stack from hardware, protocols , software, and turnkey solutions, through the abstract and creative aspect of LBS and the myriad possibilities unlocked by ubiquitous and precise real time location data.

In the dawning world where all buses, taxis, and cell phones have GPS, savings in time and energy add up fast. The recent spike in energy and commodity prices will surely accelerate GPS awareness and deployment.

Next imagine extending what Cogini has done for business through a customer portal or directly to the consumer: realtime LBS not only for trucks buses and taxis, but for your laptop and cell phone automobile, and scooter. Your cell or PDA will deliver directions, find parking and gas, and summon taxis.

jmap.cc - Express yourself and share with others.

jmap.cc enables you to log and share your outdoor adventures: Biking, hiking, motorcycling, mountain climbing, etc. helping you gather and share collection of GPS tracks, geo-tagged photos, and threaded discussion. As the camera is to Flickr, as the camcorder is to YouTube, so GPS is to jMap.cc. They are rolling out planned coverage of 50% of GPS handsets, including Android.

jmap.cc is perhaps the most exciting service I’ve seen since KP-backed meebo. I always like sites that take a proven part of our lives in the real world and enhance it with technology. And when the service can naturally leverage viral network effects, and the human compulsion for tagging, it becomes yet more compelling. They are doing a lot of things right, keeping the site simple, and branding it as adventure. Keep an eye on this one.

GPS Star

GPSStar turns your cell phone into an interactive map. Already serving 10mm users each year in Japan, they have localized their Navitime product to Taiwan, and inked a partnership with ChungHua that rolls out next month with plans a mere NT$100 a month. Their Total Navigation provides not only for driving routes, but also integrates buses, subways, and hopefully gondolas.

Technically, their flexible client architecture supports all major Handset OS’s: JAVA, BREW, Symbian and Windows. Geographically, their service encompasses not only in Japan but also Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, US, Thailand, and Germany. They vectorize the maps to minimize bandwidth, cutting costs and improving responsiveness.

GPS Star demonstrates the convergence of fixed and mobile services. I support this not least for possibly more powerful user interfaces on a laptop or desktop computer with a larger screen. Our data lives in the cloud and we can use it from any location. I particularly like them for developing a turnkey solution that is sold in partnership with a carrier; this is one of those win-win-win scenarios Californians like myself seek.

The Big Question

The evening concluded with a presentation on social entrepreneurship from “The Big Question”. My big question: Why can’t we all just get along? What’s yours? This is a dynamic organization that thinks big. Check out their website at http://www.thebigq.org/

Conclusion

Asia continues to push the envelope for LBS. Cogini delivering B2B solutions which rapidly amortize themselves. jmap.cc with compelling execution of a B2C user play with a truly global upside. And GPSStar next month launching a proven service with a local carrier at a winning price. Users may soon be able to use their carrier subsidized GPS map phone not only for directions, but also to log their travels on jmap.cc, and summon buses using Cogini.

All this, and we haven’t even talked about the iPhone 3G’s GPS, the location services in the gPhone, and mobile advertising which Google has predicted will exceed their website revenue.

LBS is taking us to places both known and unimagined, and when we get there we’ll know exactly where we are.

Resources

jMap.cc - Your Adventure to Explore! http://www.jmap.cc/
GPSStar - Leading Your Way to the Global http://www.gpsstar.net/
Cogini - Mobile Business Applications http://www.cogini.com/
LBS Zone - Delivering information on Location http://www.lbszone.com/
The Big Question - Create. Inspire. Change. http://www.thebigq.org/

You can see some photos of the event here