Update to Nokiagate

After the summer it's good to catch up what has happened for "Nokiagate" lately. For those who don't know what Nokiagate is, read my posting that started it all and follow the case from here.

I did receive a couple of calls from Nokia during the summer and they were interested to hear my opinion about how they managed the situation and how their processes could be improved. I told them that it appeared as if there was no process at all to handle security reports like this and it took far too long from my initial report before action was taken. After the starting difficulties things began to go smoothly when the conversation channel was opened.

I just ran a quick test with some updated terminals I had available and here are the results (device / firmware version / result):

• E75 / 110.48.125 / Opens connection without asking permission, content unknown.
• 5800 / 30.0.011 / Opens connection without asking permission, content unknown.
• N96 / 30.033 / Account can be created in offline mode, OK.

It looks that E75 and 5800 still go online without asking user's permission. However, new firmware ensures the validity of server certificate and doesn't anymore let me examine the contents, but the connection goes to ccds.serviceactivation.ext.nokia.com. Let's hope they have removed password information form the request as they earlier promised, unfortunately I cannot verify that.

//Harri

Are SMS alerts an opportunity or an expense?

Just now there are two major factors that shake the ground under the (postal) logistics business; first is the economic downturn and second is the almighty internet. The combination of these two means that the volumes in their business have fallen significantly and will continue to do so. As an example, volumes for Finnish Post have decreased between 9% to 16%, depending on the product category.

Someday the economic situation will improve, but internet and electronic communication are here to stay.

There is a major trend to move away from paper invoicing to electronic invoicing because of the huge cost savings. Deutsche Bank estimates there is a potential of €54 billion savings if invoicing process is improved, and that’s just in Germany! It is safe to assume that volumes of paper invoice are going to drop dramatically in favor of electronic invoicing.

Let’s leave business-to-business invoicing aside and concentrate on business-to-consumer invoices. In the B2C world the problem is how to send the electronic invoice to the customer, the scene is very fragmented and solutions are many. The selected media should be reliable, fast, common and cheap.

Assume that someday electronic B2C invoicing is working flawlessly and you will in some digital way receive the minimum information that’s needed to accept the invoice. What’s missing from the business’ point of view? Today paper invoices come with customer newsletters, marketing material, offers and so on - invoice has become an “advoice” that carries much more information than just the invoice. At its best advoice concept is so powerful that customers are delighted to receive the invoice, because of the attached content. When everything is electronic, what will happen to advoices and this media? The progress reminds me of the banking business in the 90’s - banks created products that allowed customers to do self-service instead of visiting the offices. Later banks understood that maybe they succeeded too well in allowing self-service as they had lost contact to customers. Now banks and insurance companies try to get customers sometimes visit the office, but results haven’t been good. How to sell new complicated products to people without personal contact?

Ok, what’s my point? Finnish Post has a service that allows companies and organizations securely send messages (e.g. invoices) to customers; it’s like an email system that allows only pre-approved senders to send messages. When new message arrives, user will get an alert to his email inbox and he can login to see the message.

This summer system was upgraded with an option to send also SMS alerts when new messages arrives to inbox, end-user price is €0.25 message. This is a mistake, messages should be free and here is the reason why.

I can easily understand why there is a price tag in the alert message, it’s just the easiest way to secure the decision maker’s background in the current economic situation. "Customers want SMS, let’s put it there and charge for every message" goes the easy rationale. Last year there were total 2.1M messages sent through the system. Just taking list price from an SMS-aggregator shows that if they had sent alert for every message, the cost would’ve been about €72.000. I don’t think that is much if compared to other media that they use for marketing: with that sum Finnish Post can’t even get two front page ads in a major newspaper - and that's just the printing cost. Comparing a print media ad to a highly engaging SMS message with a call to action and immediate return channel is like comparing a steam train to a sports car. Studies have shown that Blyk’s answer rate for SMS’s has been around 25%! If Finnish Post were able to do the same, they (or their customers) would have received 500.000 replies from end users. (Yes, this is not a fair comparison because Blyk’s model depends on having a very homogenous user base with information about personal preferences, but that’s still an evidence how SMS marketing works at its best.) Can you see the business here: trend towards electronic invoicing suddenly becomes an opportunity instead of a threat, but that needs some new thinking.

In short: it’s is just wrong to punish users who want SMS alerts. If that channel is used well, Finnish Post could in fact reward users who accept SMS alerts with information about new message and a short ad with a clear call to action.

//Harri

Quick study about media companies' mobile sites

In my previous entry I wrote about a small study I made to see how top 100 Finnish companies have arranged their mobile presence. In short they havent done much with it, as only 8 companies had some kind of a mobile website that I could discover.

Frustrated about the bad results I made a second test, this time I took ten Finnish online media houses. The companies tested were not picked from any top-ten list, but those were the sites I use myself.

I tested for the existence of .mobi site, site with m-prefix and possible device detection with automatic redirection to mobile site. For more information about the tests, please check my previous posting.

Results

This time I was able to see more mobile sites than before. Two sites had mobi-site and three had registered the domain but there was no service. Four companies haven't registered mobi-domain and one domain name was taken by some other company. The sites that had mobi-service were Yle and MTV3.

From ten tested sites seven had mobile service available in m-address (e.g. m.yle.fi), one redirected to original desktop browser site and two didn't use this server name at all.

Device detection and redirect to mobile site seems to be the most difficult test. In the top 100 company study only one company had deployed such a system, this time two sites (Digitoday and Taloussanomat) were able to detect mobile device and redirect user to mobile site when he tries to access the base service with his mobile.

This time there were three sites that were able to score 2 out of 3: Yle, Digitoday and Taloussanomat - kudos to them. Previous test round didn't find any company that was able to score more than one out of three. It looks that media companies have far better understanding about mobile browsing than top 100 companies do.

List of sites tested (random order)

• yle.fi
• mtv3.fi
• nelonen.fi
• helsinginsanomat.fi
• iltasanomat.fi
• iltalehti.fi
• digitoday.fi
• taloussanomat.fi
• kauppalehti.fi
• uusisuomi.fi

//Harri

Study: Top 100 Finnish companies and mobile websites

Lately I’ve had many disappointments with corporate mobility especially in customer care. There had been situations when I have wished for a mobile access to some simple information, just to discover that it doesn’t exist or is not discoverable.

Because I started to feel that Finnish companies are not up to date with mobile solutions, I made a small study that reveals big companies are really missing the mobile opportunity. No mobile marketing. No mobile customer care. Just mobile silence.

I took a list of biggest (by turnover, excluding bank and insurance) 100 Finnish companies from Kauppalehti’s site. The things I wanted to verify were:

• does company have a mobi-server (e.g nokia.mobi)?
• does company have an m-server (e.g. m.nokia.fi)?
• does company have an automatic device detection (i.e. mobile users are automatically redirected to mobile site when accessing the main corporate site)?

The reason for these tests is that whenever I don’t know if a company has a mobile site, I try these two combinations (m.company.com and company.mobi). If those don’t match, I practice wishful thinking and try the main company site, just to see if there is some smart redirect to mobile site. After these three tries I usually will give up and understand that the company will not deliver information to mobile devices.

Test setup and results

Tests were conducted between June 19th and June 21st. Original list had 100 companies, but one of those doesn’t seem to have a website (or it is down all the time), so the results below will sum up to 99.

Mobi-domain

In this test I tried to access the company’s mobi-website (e.g. nokia.com) with a desktop browser. If site was found, I also tried to access it with a mobile device (Nokia N96) to verify the contents. For found mobi-domains I also verified whether those really were registered for the company.

Domain not registered	33
Domain not registered by company	29
Domain redirects to desktop website	5
Domain is registered by company but has no website	27
Mobi domain has a mobile website	5
	99

From the list of top 100 Finnish companies only Elisa (operator, content not available for non-Elisa customers), Lassila-Tikanoja (password protected internal service or CMS console?), Nokia, St1 and Valio had a mobile website.

M-service

In this test I tried to access company’s website from address m.company.com. Because mobi-domain solution is often criticized for some extra costs for registering and administering the domain, I expected to see more mobile sites this time.

No m. service	97
Mobile site available at “m.company.com”	2
	99

Only two companies (DNA and Toyota) from 100 had mobile site available at m-address (m.dna.fi and m.toyota.fi). Note that none of the “mobi companies” from above are in this group.

Redirect to mobile site

Because there is a possibility that company puts its mobile service to some other address and automatically redirects mobile user there, I also tested top 100 companies for automatic redirect. Test was made so that I accessed company’s main site with desktop browser and mobile browser (Nokia N96) and verified whether the content was the same or not.

No device recognition and redirect	98
Mobile user redirected to special page	1
	99

The result was that only Hewlett-Packard has deployed mobile device detection and redirect to mobile website.

Notes about the results

The results are poor. Using this criteria only 8 companies from 99 have really thought about mobile access and the potential benefits. Of course some companies may have mobile sites at mobi.company.com, mobile.company.com, www.company.com/mobile or something else. Those were not tested, because as a user I don’t like to guess many times just to see if there is a mobile site or not. Why not use “de facto” names or automatic redirect? Comparing “mobi” and “mobile” to “m” means 8 or 13 extra clicks with phone’s keypad when writing the website address, for example.

None of the companies was able to score more than 1 out of 3 and the list included 3 operators and 1 device manufacturer - they should know how to do the trick.

It looks that 32 companies have some plans with mobi-site, because they have registered the domain but not yet published a mobile service there. I hope they understand the possibilities and didn’t just register the domain to protect it.

Size doesn’t matter in mobility. World’s largest company Shell has a subsidiary also in Finland and they scored zero points in this test. No mobi-site, no m-site, no device detection. Ironically, Shell’s chairman of the board is Jorma Ollila, Nokia’s previous CEO and current chairman of the board.

This survey was only about the companies, not about the brands, trademarks or such. I’m aware that many corporations have mobile sites for their brands, but that was out of the scope.

//Harri

Great product, but so hard to get

It's often said that Finns are good in technology but poor in marketing. Let me give you an example of that.

Nokia has long time ago created Sports Tracker, an application that will record and store your exercices. The solution is one of my favourites and I use it regularly to track where I've been when running, cycling and rollerblading. During excercises I use Polar heart-rate monitor to ensure that intensity is at optimal level and I don't start with too high speed. Sometimes I've dreamed of combining mobile phone and heart-rate monitor into one.

Good news is that Nokia and Polar have now created the solution that does exactly what I've wanted. With a special Polar heart-rate chest belt you can send the information to Sports Tracker application and later upload the training info to the website. You can see where you've been and how effective the exercise was. I have tried this combination and and it is - literally - breathtaking experience. Wow!

There's only one problem: this solution is almost impossible to buy!

First when I heard about this product, I went to Nokia flagship store to buy just the chest-belt - after all I have N96 that is same generation product than N79 that comes bundled with the chest-belt. I learned that chest-belt is not sold separately and I should buy the bundled N79 if I wanted this small piece of hardware. Didn't want to do that.

Then I went to the Polar website to see where chest-belt is available, maybe Nokia just doesn't want to sell that alone. Result was the same, belt is not available and their support forum has some angry discussion because of that.

Nokia's own customer website doesn't seem to know anything about this combination anymore, N79 product page is silent about Polar integration, Sports tracker site promotes other N-series devices and so on. From one Finnish webshop I can see that by ordering the N79 + chest-belt bundle I could get the product in one week with 45€ extra price compared to standard N79.

Nokia and Polar, can you hear me: you have created a superb product, please put power to marketing and start selling! It's not good business to play hide'n'seek with customers. To Nokia: this is something that makes digital convergence and internet services real, not just hype. To Polar: don't be afraid about cannibalizing your traditional market, this combination doesn't compete against your high-end heart-rate monitors.

Great engineering, poor marketing.

//Harri