Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
We’re all used to ringtones and other “fun”—but entirely disposable—products that make up a bulk of today’s mobile marketing efforts. However, mobile consumers want products and services distributed over cellular networks to be practical, according to a new survey. dotMobi and AKQA questioned consumers in both the United States and the United Kingdom. They found that there was a “strong” desire for practical mobile content.
How strong? How practical? Consider:

When I was talking to a friend’s husband months ago, he asked me what mobileStorm did. I told him, “We provide technology that helps companies send out marketing messages.” He said, “Oh, like spam and telemarketing calls?” and proceeded to go off on one such annoying call he’d recently received. It took a while before he registered my cries of, “Permission-based! Permission-based!”
I went to Chicago last week for the long-weekend family reunion that my mom’s side holds every other year. The coolest thing this time ‘round was the yellow school bus my cousins and I rented to go from the ‘burbs to barhopping in downtown Chi-town! The second-coolest aspect of the weekend was the dominance of text-message marketing. Sure, it’s nice to really get away from work and anything related therein. But I gotta be happy when my industry is doing well, especially with the impending recession.
When Google’s Android platform—the technology behind so-called Google Phones—was announced late last fall, I immediately thought about the open-source implications affecting the mobile space overall. As I said in 



