I have written about pros and cons of mobile marketing, bluetooth marketing and gphone, but what is the future of mobile marketing now where Skype, Google, Yahoo! etc are trying to push the limits and bring it to the new level? It seems that 2008 may be a breakthrough for mobile marketing, but experts are in other opinion. David Verklin, CEO of Aegis Media Americas, has said that 2008 isn’t the year of mobile, 2009 will be. I think it is partly because things in mobile field have developed rapidly and people/companies just have to get use to that. At the same time majority of companies and people still don’t have a clear understanding, that is why we would need a year to digest all this information. Here are some key points why 2008 won’t be a mobile’s year.
1. Data prices are too high
2. To use newer products you can target only to people with new devices
3. Engagement post-click. Lack of ecosystem partners and campaign integration
4. Buyers still say it’s hard to make a deal
5. 2.5G isn’t fast enough
6. We still need to use mass media to drive people to concentrated places, i.e. from TV to web

But these are just a few aspects. Manish Jha the CEO of Vantrix said that his company deals with interoperability issues - they have a database of 13,000 phone types. Think about it. You may have enough of a headache building your website for PC and Mac. Or just on PC, for IE and Firefox. Or just in IE, 6 vs. 7. Think that’s bad? Try 13,000 phones.

It seems that 2008 will show us will mobile marketing stay in puberty or do a breakthrough in marketing field.

Usually people picture SMS-services as part of web 2.0 or just web based solutions, but actually it is just one side of the SMS-services. Since the number of mobile devices in increasing all the time, SMS-billing has become a value adding solution. Cell phones are always with people and that is why people can pay for park, pay in shops, order a lightening to ski-track etc all the time notwithstanding how much cash does they have in their wallet.

Finns have came out with a great idea (read a whole article). From January people who are driving along highway 1 can open public toilets by sending a SMS. They explained that as a result of continued and endemic vandalism, the Finnish Road Administration has developed a system which allows travellers to open the doors to roadside toilets only by sending a SMS message to the number given by the Road Administration. So if you want to smash the toilet you’ll have to pay for that, the best part is that it is also possible to find out who as behind the vandalism. But if it was me I would use prepaid card