Palm Treo 680 Added on Cingular Site

Yesterday, we reported that Palm has finally put the Treo 680 on their website. This morning, I find it added on the Cingular Site as well. The price is $449.99. With a 2-yr contract, it will cost you $299.99. An additional $100 rebate is available. Happy Thanksgiving!

VISA to Test Mobile Payment Program

MobileTechNews reported a story on VISA's pilot mobile payment program. The test will begin with 500 VISA employees and gradually roll out to a public trial throughout 2007. More importantly, VISA's online survey revealed 61% of the respondents are interested in making a purchase through their mobile phone as well as 64% of mobile users are interested in receiving coupons via mobile devices. To me, this sounds like the smart folks at VISA are taking the mobile commerce very seriously. Good to hear.

Mobile Wallpaper from Import Racing Magazines

While researching for automotive products for TunerBargains.com, a website my friend and I owned, I ran across several auto magazines offering mobile wallpapers as a free incentive. While ring tones, screensavers and wallpapers are nothing new in the cell phone world, I couldn’t help but drawing similarity with the early internet days when websites would offer free desktop wallpapers.

This is significant to the mobile world because of how the desktop world has evolved. In the beginning, websites didn’t know how to make money on the internet, so they offered free incentives such as free desktop wallpapers. The goal was simply to hope that free incentives can bring returned traffic. While free mobile wallpapers may not revolutionize the mobile industry, it is a good start.

However, the lack of a universal standards will make it difficult for content providers as mobile phones don’t all share the same basic specs, OS, screen-size and application support. This makes a universal rollout of anything free more costly as it has to be tailored to each phone specifically. For instance, I tried to download a wallpaper just to find my phone not supported in their database; same thing happened when I tried to sign up CellFire.com, a coupon service endorsed by my carrier Cingular, yet my phone was still not supported in their phone list.

The sooner the wireless providers, manufacturers and mobile software community come to a standard, the faster this industry will grow. So far, I like what I see from Microsoft in that at least all devices running Windows Mobile 5 shares the same uniformed standard whereby I can install the same mobile applications from Pocket PCs to Smartphones.

Only 3% US Mobile Users Browse the Web...

In a CNET article covering Yahoo's recent testing of image ads on mobile phones, I found some interesting statistics on the current state of mobile internet usage in the U.S. The statistics are provided by JupiterResearch:

"JupiterResearch estimates that 10 percent of U.S. mobile users browse the Internet on their phones. But only 2 percent to 3 percent check the Web on their phones at least five times a week--a key measure of active Internet use and advertising readiness."

Two thoughts came across my mind after reading into these statistics. 1. I am one of the three-percentile who surfs the web with a mobile phone at least five times a week. 2. There is not enough audience surfing the web on mobile handsets to justify any advertising through the mobile browsers (yet). With the onset of new 3G phones coming out soon, the statistics will surely increase exponentially in the next 6 to 12 months.