Paying with your mobile

Paying with your mobile has been around for ages, but the market has never really emerged nor exploded in Finland. This recent example by the Swedes is "practical". You simply add a card reader to your mobile phone and then you can pay with any credit card in your wallet. http://www.taloussanomat.fi/informaatioteknologia/2011/05/26/ruotsalaiskeksinto-tekee-iphonesta-maksupaatteen/20117532/12
The next question is of course why do you need your wallet and why do you need to carry in your pocket a card reader. A brilliant idea would be to omit both the card reader and the cards.
This however has not been easy to implement. NFC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication is one solution, but despite promises e.g. Nokia has not been able to introduce the product on their mobile phones http://www.puhelinvertailu.com/uutiset.cfm/2011/04/20/nokia_lipsuu_nfc-sirujen_lisaamisesta . It is not just about having another technology on your phone. It is all about building a net infrastructure.
I guess sometimes you need to go through a step by step process. For this reason the swedish invention is rather fun. Maybe I should go and get myself one of these new gadgets. Then I will go to the local supermarket and try to pay with my new gadget phone. I am sure that the cashier will not accept my payment method - they will want to use their own. It is all about who has power in the network.
The supermarket chain wants you to have their customer loyalty card, they do not want you to combine your customer loyalty cards on to your phones memory chip. They want you to pay using their cash register. New infrastructure such as electronic payments do not emerge easily, because they need to shift the power balance of existing systems.
One way to adopt e.g. a nfc electronic payment method would be for a major player like the local transport system to adopt it. Then it would be followed by small shops and kiosks. In Japan the railways have adopted the nfc system. In Finland a different system is used in local transportation and hence it is preventing the emergence of the nfc system.

Forget your PC, switch to a smartphone

I spent last week in Poland as a visiting professor at the Budcoszcz University of economy (http://www.uk.wsg.byd.pl/index.php?id=53&submenu=1). I flew from helsinki to Warsaw by plane and then traveled four hours on the train to Bydgoszcz. I decided to experiment and travel lightly with a backpack and no pc, just my Nokia E7 smartphone.

I was very carefull with the data roaming and continuously monitoring the log file to see how much data I had used. The Nokia map application was not practical. Downloading the map required so much data and was actually rather expensive. I turned to using sports-tracker.com. On the return trip I walked around the old town of Warsaw with the sportstracker on and taking pictures. These were easy to upload onto my facebook profile and hence share my route and pictures. I also tried to attach the link here, but sportstracker is presently not available (I wonder what is happening).

During my stay in Poland and whilst lecturing, I made a YouTube video of an experiment I wanted to show my students. this video is available at http://www.youtube.com/user/Villesaar?blend=7&ob=5. The size of the video is c 380 Mb. Uploading this by a mobile connection whilst roaming in Poland would have been very expensive c 400 Euro´s. Hence I believe the Eu comission will still have to do something more to ensure that dataroaming prices will become more reasonable http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/data/index_en.htm . In the airport I saw people switching sim card on their I phone. I also heard that there are good applications which will allow you to switch of 3 g and allow wlan only whilst abroad. I did not find this application on my NokiaE7 (yet), but I am sure there is a strong market need for it.

I also used my mobile phone as a memory stick. However when connecting it to a computer in Poland the computer did not recognise the phone. This was a pitty and means that in practice I can not rely on the mobile phone as my only datastorage device whilst travelling.

All in all, I was satisfied having left my pc at home, when travelling. Will also do the same when travelling abroad next time round. I am sure the data-roaming tarrifs will come down or my ability to choose wlan only will become better. I am sure service focusing on a traveller with a mobile device (mobile tailored pages) will become more common. there is a huge market opportunity, which the operators and service providers could tap into, if they get their act right (i.e. data roaming prices and mobile tailored pages and services).