I’m very much looking forward to attending my first EyeforTravel Mobile conference next month in San Francisco.  Mobile is playing and increasingly central role in the travel sector and while we’ve seen amazing impact so far, I think the best is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what people are doing and hear how they’re looking to further integrate mobile into their business. There’s so much potential to reduce transactional friction, enhance traveler’s experiences and change business processes — it’s very exciting.

Even more so I’m looking forward to my role as one of the judges of the Mobile Innovation in Travel awards at the event, alongside execs from AT&T and the Mobile Marketing Association. Should be fun.

Voting is currently taking place online to decide who the lucky 9 finalists who will present at the event to the panel of judges will be.  Don’t forget to cast your vote for your favorite mobile initiative. Vote early and vote often!

If you see me there, please stop by and say hi. Or better yet, give me a shout and let’s make sure we meet.

As we ended 2011 many people were asking me what I thought was next in the world of mobile and whether I had any predictions. My response was that companies should focus on getting the basics right first (develop a coherent mobile strategy, create mobile optimized versions of their websites) before even worrying about “what’s next”.

I’m a big advocate for creating native or hybrid apps, depending on the type of engagement you desire with your customer (a topic for a whole other post), but creating a mobile optimized website is pretty much a must these days, considering how much search and browsing is done on mobile devices.

It seems a recent report from L2ThinkTank bears out my view. The report, focuses primarily on luxury brands, what they refer to as the Prestige100 (though I’m quite sure how Macy’s makes the list; but I digress).  Though the report is limited to luxury brands, it’s my impression that the results are at least directionally applicable to the overall state of mobile maturity across various sectors. Their research shows that many of these brands are not yet mastering the basics, as indicated by this chart recreated by eMarketer:

Takeaways for the Travel Sector

As I am ensconced in the travel sector these days I wanted to highlight the results from hospitality brands.  In many ways the results don’t differ much from what I had noted 10 months ago in a post I wrote over at Tnooz.

The only companies that fit into the Prestige100 were luxury hotels (one might hav thought that airlines like Singapore or Emirates or luxury cruises like SilverSea might have made the cut, but alas, no).While Intercontinental made the “Gifted” class and as a whole, the “Hospitality” segment averaged a score of 86, which falls in the “Challenged” category.

The good news is that it puts Hospitality as the second highest rated industry, behind retail, but also shows there’s still a long way to go. And I would further speculate that the scores for the non-luxury hotels would come up even a bit lower still.

You can find the whole report from L2 available at SlideShare below:

Now, I’m not saying that Meg Whitman reads my blog or calls me for advice, but I’m glad to see they followed my suggestion last month to make WebOS an open source project.

Open sourcing WebOS and HP’s statements of continued financial support to the project, really gives WebOS one last chance to fulfill its promise.  Although it’s hard to really know what the plan is from Whitman’s and Andreesen’s recent comments.

When HP originally bought Palm, I thought it would give WebOS a chance to be embraced by the developer community.  I figured the combination of HP’s resources to both take the product to the next level and make it a mainstream alternative in the enterprise (both via HP’s market position in desktop and mobile devices) plus the strong developer relationships it had accumulated via its other software products would push WebOS into a viable competitor to Apple and Google, or at least to the top of the second tier among RIM and Microsoft.

If I were a handset manufacturer, WebOS could give me cover in case the litigation between Oracle and Google or Apple and the Android OEMs goes the wrong way. Or as a way to differentiate its devices from the other OEMs instead of developing it’s own OS as Samsung has done with Bada. I’m not sure however, as some have suggested, that WebOS would provide any leverage for an OEM in discussions with Google or Microsoft.

Personally I hope the open source community throws its efforts behind WebOS. I think it is at worst the 4th best platform alternative out there (iOS, Android, WP7, WebOS, then QNX). But one of my favorite quotes is “Hope is not a plan” (h/t @michaelombardi), so I hope that Meg and Marc have a plan.

What’s your POV?

In a move that was a long time coming and not terribly surprising, Adobe announced today that they will drop all future development of Flash player on mobile devices. Instead Adobe will put most of its energy behind HTML5.

During the past year, Adobe has steadily moved towards embracing HTML5 and refocusing its efforts on continuing to create the world’s best design tools and less on propping up a legacy, proprietary technology.  Putting HTML5 first is a continutation of the path they committed themselves to last month at their MAX 2011 conference when they announced the acquistions of Nitobi (maker of the PhoneGap cross-platform mobile development framework) and TypeKit.

It’s also not surprising given the fact that for all their protestations, and pronouncements about hardware acceleration, Flash was a dog on mobile devices. Performance was poor and battery life suffered even more.

Adobe is saying that to ease the transition of Flash developers that they will still be able to leverage their skills for mobile development using the AIR framework which is approved on iOS, Android and Research in Motion platforms (BlackBerry OS and BBX née QNX).  Adobe will also continue to support Flash on the desktop into the future with a focus on “advanced gaming and premium video”.

However, the move could spell the end of Flex as a framework as noted by this tweet from Forrester’s Mike Gualtieri:

That would suggest that anyone who’s made an investment in the Flash/Flex world better start to think about how to transition to solutions that leverage the open web standard trinity of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3.  I’m sure that Adobe’s tools will support HTML5 output making the transition easier without retraining.

So now that that’s settled, what will the Android phone makers use as a differentiator from Apple’s devices now that they can’t trot out “support for Flash Player 10.2” anymore?

What’s your POV? Does this announcement affect your approach to mobile development or had you already moved off of Flash-based development?  Please let me know in the comments below.

Recently new HP CEO Meg Whitman announced that the company will keep Personal Systems Group as a part of HP’s core, undoing the decision that caused great consternation about the technology giant’s future and essentially led to former-CEO Leo Apotheker’s ouster and Whitman getting the job in the first place.

What’s a little disappointing is that it looks like WebOS may not survive, even if the computer and peripherals business does. And that’s too bad.

I used to have a Palm Pre and thought very highly of WebOS, even if the hardware disappointed. When HP decided to buy Palm last year, I immediately thought it was a great decision and that HP had the ability to make WebOS a force in the mobile community — something that Palm couldn’t accomplish on it’s own — because if HP’s place in the enterprise.

I still think that WebOS has a lot going for it. If HP does abandon it, I hope that they might donate the code, to an organization like the Apache Foundation, and see whether developers would build off a strong core and create a TRUE open source mobile operating system.   It’s clear by speed at which WebOS tablets sold at $99 that it’s not a matter of the quality of the OS, just the opportunity it was provided.

What do you think?

In a somewhat surprising announcement one the first day of their MAX 2011, Adobe Systems announced that it was acquiring Nitobi Systems, the creator of PhoneGap.

At Ness we’re big supporters of PhoneGap and have used it for clients in some cases, so we’re happy to see this deal happen (not at happy as the Nitobi guys are ) as we think it will lead to more enhancements to an already strong platform.

I think this is an important development that mobile devs needs to pay attention to.  There are three things that I think mobile developers should take away from the announcement:

1. Adobe is Looking Forward

With the purchase of Nitobi and Typekit, Adobe signals that it is unequivocally moving to reorient their development tools and “Write Once, Deploy Anywhere” strategy around Open Web standards of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS and moving on from the legacy of Flash. This is great news for all developers for two reasons: first from a skills development perspective it simplifies things. Secondly all of Adobe’s energies will be to ensure that their industry-leading tools will stay there. Certainly this is part of a plan to re-engage and re-energize the developer community who on average prefers an open, rather than proprietary approach.

2. It’s a Great Fit

This was a surprising deal to me only because I didn’t think Adobe was shopping for one of the mobile cross-platform framework companies. But it makes a ton of sense. Now developers can create the apps in HTML5 using Adobe CS5 and then deploy that code into native binaries via the PhoneGap framework with the click of a button. Dead easy (oversimplification, but you get the idea). I expect that the integration between CS5 and PhoneGap will improve over time to make it a seamless experience.

And I expect that this is the end of Adobe’s Packager for iPhone to translate CS5/Flash files into iOS compatible code. Good. I hope they put the extra development dollars from that project right into PhoneGap.

Further Adobe also released the third public preview of Adobe Edge a HTML5 motion and interaction design tool that enables Flash-like animation to websites and mobile apps via the Open Web Holy Trinity (HTML5/JS/CSS3, not to be confused with onion/celery/carrot for you cooking fans).

This has a chance to really get devs excited about Adobe again…not that Adobe hasn’t had great products all along  – they have – but with all the posturing over Flash in their spat with Apple, they haven’t generated the excitement with the developer community that they had in years past. That should change now.

3. Adobe Continues PhoneGap’s Open Source Culture

Initially I wondered whether Adobe would continue to keep PhoneGap open source and include the developer community in enhancing the platform or if it might simply make the code available as Google does with Android. But Adobe was pretty emphatic in its support of the Open Source community as the code was donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

The Open Source nature of PhoneGap is part of what made it so popular with developers.

Now if I was cynical or suspicious I’d think that the donation to ASF was the final effort of the Nitobi management to ensure its legacy is maintained. Perhaps the Nitobi founders made it a condition of the deal?  You only have to modestly parse the statements in the press release to say that Adobe endorsed the decision post the transaction, not encouraged it.  Who knows and who cares. What’s important is that it’s done.

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Are you using PhoneGap already? Does this announcement make you more or less interested in it as an option for mobile development?  Let me know in the comments.

Oh, and one more thing. Do you think Samsung, Motorola and RIM will stop advertising Flash compatibility as a reason not to buy an iPad now? God, I hope so.

In case you were at the beach, shaken up by an earthquake or lost power during a hurricane this summer (I did all three in the past month) and somehow missed our webinar on mobile strategy, fear not. We captured the whole thing for you watch on YouTube.

In the webinar, Jean-Noel Lau Keng of Amadeus and I cover

• The state of the mobile industry (for those of you looking for stats)
• Common challenges in approaching mobile development initiatives
• Why mobile has become a critical channel in the travel sector, and how Amadeus are integrating mobile into their products and services
• How Transaction v. Engagement objectives may impact the approach you take to mobile
• The approach Amadeus has taken to address the mobile imperative, unexpected challenges, and the results of the company’s mobile initiative
• What are the 5 key steps your organization should take to implement a successful mobile strategy

If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments.

The DOJ deciding to challenge the AT&T/T-Mobile merger is a significant announcement but not necessarily surprising.

The part of the argument that I buy is that ”AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low- priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.” Yes, T-Mobile is cheap, but there are even lower cost options like MetroPCS, US Cellular and Boost Mobile.

But the one element of the DOJ statement that I’m not buying is that the merger would ensure that customers would receive “…lower quality products for mobile wireless services.” Lower quality than AT&T and T-Mobile already deliver? Is that even possible? I understand that in a networked system QoS degrades based on the weakest link and that in some cases the multiplication effect in is play. But increasing the density of the network should improve QoS.

Further to network quality, I think that this DOJ statement is disingenuous too:

“AT&T could obtain substantially the same network enhancements that it claims will come from the transaction if it simply invested in its own network without eliminating a close competitor.”

It does not take into consideration the time involved in building out said network and therefore the opportunity cost (lost revenues, market share declines, profit efficiencies).

But the most galling statement came from FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, sharing his concerns about the deal:

By filing suit today, the Department of Justice has concluded that AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile would substantially lessen competition in violation of the antitrust laws. Competition is an essential component of the FCC’s statutory public interest analysis, and although our process is not complete, the record before this agency also raises serious concerns about the impact of the proposed transaction on competition. Vibrant competition in wireless services is vital to innovation, investment, economic growth and job creation, and to drive our global leadership in mobile.  Competition fosters consumer benefits, including more choices, better service and lower prices.

This coming from the same guy who supported the Google-Verizon proposed rules to shred network neutrality on mobile networks – which assuredly would deliver the deleterious impacts that he attributes to this transaction, to far greater effect.

Perhaps this just goes to show the benefit of having good lobbyists and how government still manages disappoint, making Alan Freed appear to be a paragon of virtue.

NB: I am not an AT&T apologist. Personally, because of QoS concerns I have studiously avoided AT&T mobile for the past several years using Sprint and now Verizon Wireless.

Join me for a webcast on August 11 at Noon ET/9am PT/6pm CET with our client Amadeus to talk about the latest trends in mobile development!

Mobile technology is the center of customer interaction for competitive businesses today; spurred by the always-connected customer, mobile has become the primary channel for business and consumer communication. While pushing applications to mobile devices is (or should be) on every company’s agenda, it can be difficult to know where or how to begin designing new capabilities and user interfaces for smaller, mobile devices.

Join this webcast featuring Jean-Noel Lau Keng Lun, Senior Manager, Mobility from Amadeus, the leading transaction processor and provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel and tourism industry; and Glenn Gruber, AVP Mobile Solutions from Ness Technologies.

Jean-Noel and Glenn will discuss current trends in the mobile market and the most effective approaches for companies to develop and implement a sound mobile strategy. The discussion will include:

• Why mobile has become a critical channel to Amadeus’ business, and how they are integrating mobile into their products and services
• How Transaction v. Engagement objectives may impact the approach you take to mobile
• The approach Amadeus has taken to address the mobile imperative, unexpected challenges, and the results of the company’s mobile initiative
• What are the 5 key steps your organization should take to implement a successful mobile strategy

We will be monitoring Twitter using #nessmobile during the event. Please tweet questions, topics you would like covered and other comments. We will try to incorporate as many as possible into our session.

1. Concur continues its investment binge with $5M for Yapta and integrates the air and hotel price tracking tool into TripIt.
2. Isis, the carrier-led near field communication (NFC) mobile payment platform has signed up Visa, MasterCard and American Express along with original partner Discover, who will join the carrier initiative when it launches next year. Interesting development, but a long way to go still for Isis and any NFC payment scheme. PayPal still seems to be in the lead IMO, but perhaps this puts Isis ahead of Google Wallet.
3. Cisco laid off 6,500 employees which was greeted much more warmly by the investment community than the actual workers. And who knows if any of this will actually help restore Cisco’s former glory.
4. Evan Konwiser always has an opinion – this time it’s on Google, ITA and disruption of the travel industry.  Nice post, but the best stuff is in the comments. Lots of great dialogue.
5. Zillow, the real estate site founded by ex-Expedia chief Richard Barton, had a rollercoaster of an IPO. First the share opened at $60, twice the value it was initially priced at, only to see its shares tumble down to the $30’s.
6. American Airlines orders 460 jets from Airbus and Boeing. Flightcaster’s Evan Konwiser asks the question that many others are thinking.
7. There was a lot written about American Express’ new Link, Like, Love daily deal program launched with Facebook (the deals you see are influenced by what you and your friends “like” on the Web). It doesn’t provide the same deep discounts as you might find with Groupon or LivingSocial, but seems a heck of a lot healthier for merchants (MUCH better financially, real stats/analytics about redemption, no impact for employees at point-of-sale).
8. TripAdvisor finally got what it wanted as Google drops [scraped] web reviews of hotels on Google Places.
9. Cloud security is kind of an evergreen topic. Take a look at how Google secures it’s cloud services. I’m guessing this doesn’t resemble your infrastructure operations.
10. Microsoft can’t seem to figure out the online space and the problem is only getting worse as evidenced by the latest earnings report. Microsoft’s online division LOST $2.5 BILLION last year. I can’t imagine what their cost structure looks like.