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

I want mobile marketing!

Hi again, I'm back. Vacation is over.

I’m returning back home with my family after a month’s trip across Europe to Southern France. Roaming costs still being sky-high, I made a decision that I will not use cellular data connections during the trip to test if there are free WiFi hotspots available and whether that’s a real solution for connectivity problems. The answer was clearly “no”.

When traveling for business, one typically stays in hotels with network access and the offices also provide network access. For family trips the accommodation is more like bed-and-breakfast and private houses. And luckily there were no offices to visit!

When we walked the streets or visited cafes I tried to scan for open networks. Result was surprisingly bad and most of the networks I used were open by accident, I guess (most of them were named “linksys", “netgear” or similar). If there had been an open network for any cafe that I could recognize by network name, my promise was that I’d take my family there and spend some money. There was none.

Just letting customers and bypassers to use network for free is nice and might generate additional sales. However, often free WiFi is a lost marketing opportunity. Why not strenghten the customer relationship with some innovative solutions, like sending access password to customer's Twitter account as a DM message as soon as customer becomes a follower. After that the marketing channel is established and every follower has an existing relationship with the business. At least I'd be happy with this deal.

Another thing about mobile marketing that businesses should think about is the scope. Too often mobile marketing is just about phones and PDA's, but what about the navigators? Is your business visible in the common navigator placemark listings? When traveller needs a service (use case: hungry kids screaming at the back-seat), he most probably does a search with his navigator. If your competitor is there and you are not, that's bad for your business. I can confess that when we were in France, Casino lost a customer because their shops were not listed in the navigator database and instead we went to Intermarché, just because I was able to find their nearest shop from the navigator listing. Mobile marketing is business.

//Harri

Not a killer application

You are reading this posting, you are doing well. You have access to internet, probably a mobile phone and what’s the most important - you can read.

Save the Children has published its its tenth annual State of the World’s Mothers report and you can be sure that it is not a nice paper to read. What do you think about this:

• every year, around 50 million mothers in the developing world give birth at home with no professional care whatsoever. In Niger, only 33% of births are attended by health personnel
• the majority of children under age 5 in the poorest regions of the world do not get basic health care when they need it
• for the 10 bottom-ranked countries, 9 out of 10 women are likely to suffer the loss of a child in their lifetime
• in Sierra Leone 1 woman in 8 dies in pregnancy or childbirth. In Ireland the ratio is 1 in 47.000

How could the situation of the poorest be improved? The report gives recommendations and proposes actions, such as

“Prenatal and postnatal care should include counseling to encourage a safe birth, awareness of danger signs that require immediate attention, a plan for going to a skilled health care provider, counseling on how to care for the newborn, and help to ensure breast feeding. “

This is a matter of getting information to the people when they need it.

However, it is not an option to print booklets and deliver those to the people. Where the situation is the worst, there are also most of the people illiterate; usually the situation for women is even worse than for the population in general. In Chad female literacy rate is 13%.

You might think that internet is the way to deliver information, but even that doesn't reach the masses. Mobile phones looks much better option, for example in Sierra Leone there are 66 times more mobile users than internet users.

Mobile phone is the medium to reach people that are in need of information. In the developing countries mobile phone is often shared by a family or a community, making the potential number of users even bigger than subscription numbers show. For people living in places where medical assistance is not available, getting basic information with phone is certainly an option. What’s most important, the information should be available in their own language either from a live person or from a recording. When a pregnant mother uses the service, she can be instructed and also her phone number can be stored. Later the phone number can be used by the healthcare personnel to get back in touch with mother or she can be reminded with a message to get more information as her pregnancy goes further. After the childbirth she can get information about the importance of breastfeeding, and so on.

Does anybody know if this kind of a solution has already been made?

This is not a killer application. This solution saves lives.

//Harri

Recycling innovations

Some weeks ago Nokia and Technopolis published information about an interesting initiative that will recycle Nokia's unused ideas and innovations to Finnish companies. Any company doing R&D is bound to have such innovations and ideas that have potential but are not part of company's core business. Now Nokia will share such innovations for free and Technopolis will do the matchmaking with companies. So, there will not be an online form that you can use to browse through Nokia's innovation catalogue...

Primarily the shared ideas are about near field communications, environmental and energy related solutions, health care and well being applications, location-based services, mobile security and future internet services. Idea quality can be anything between an idea description to a patented solution. What's nice with this initiative is that there is also funding part included tightly to the process. Funds come from participating companies, local cities and Tekes (Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation).

Program has got really a quick start, first companies have already made a contract with Nokia and are now moving forward in the funding pipeline.

Must say all this sounds very good. Do you know if other companies have similar programs?

//Harri