racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Sony Ericsson is known for its quality design and built. Last year’s Xperia X10 and X8 were formidable Android smartphones, and this year, Sony Ericsson is introducing the Xperia arc at CES 2011.

When LG launched its KU250 three years ago, their marketing mantra was 3G for the masses. True enough, 3G-enabled phones were quite expensive back then. The KU250 phone aimed to break this barrier by offering a phone that could be used for mobile browsing and also computer-tethering (connecting the phone as a 3G modem) for just above PhP 6,000.

Fast forward to 2010, mobile manufacturers have realized that social networking applications are the killer apps for mobile, and that WiFi has become commonplace, even in developing countries. And so, Nokia has come up with the C3, somewhat a lesser-featured sibling of the E72 and E63.

The Nokia C3‘s biggest highlights are the QWERTY keyboard and WiFi connectivity. An additional feature would be the built-in social media applications, which enable mobile use of FaceBook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Google Talk and Yahoo! IM, among others. This makes it easier (and cheaper) for mobile netizens to manage their online presence and communicate.

Perhaps the best feature of the Nokia C3 is its price. Nokia announced it at about 90 Euros in February, 2010. Locally, it’s available at official retailers at PhP 7,290. Nokia ran a one-day promo that gave buyers a PhP1,000 discount last July 31. At PhP 6,290 for a WiFi-enabled Nokia phone with QWERTY, the promo sent people lining up for their C3 at retailers, even up to closing time. The promo seems to be a success.

My only gripe with the Nokia C3 is that it runs on the Symbian Series 40 (or S40) platform, instead of my favorite S60 platform. This means that the installable applications will be a bit more limited than if it were running S60 or even S90.

Still, with a price like that, the C3 gives more users the opportunity to stay connected through more means, in this case WiFi. Dubbed “Blackberry for kids,” The Nokia C30 is sure to be a hit with mobile phone users who want a shift from the usual candybard with numeric-keypad form factor, or those who prefer a physical QWERTY keyboard to a soft on-screen keyboard like those on the iPhone and Android phones.

Find more of the latest mobile phone reviews at the Dialaphone website.

I’m sometimes lazy with charging my mobile phone. These days, with weeks-long battery life for phones you tend to forget to plug in at night. So sometimes we use a car charger when on the road. I didn’t realize car chargers weren’t so good in terms of battery care.

Chris Pirillo quotes:

Any charger that goes into the car is bad for the device battery. Why? Because the power is not regulated like in your home. In my line of work, I have seen many batteries die because people use their car chargers WAY too much. A car charger should be a LAST resort. I try to explain to customers that when they get home they obviously (well I guess 99.9% of the world) take out their wallet, keys, coins, or whatever is in their pocket before going to sleep. Make it a habit to charge your phone with your home charger.

The same goes for purchasing cheap home chargers just to save a buck.

Last I wrote about mobile phones it was about my Nokia 1112 (which I reviewed here), the basic but decent mobile phone I’ve been using for almost a year now. Looks like I’m not alone in opting for basic, no-frills phones. Jeremy Wagstaff writes of a recent experience one Loose Wire.

The Nokia 1100, according to Wikipedia, is the world’s best selling handset, having shifted 200 million units. It seems to cost about $20, often less, and has a battery life of about 400 hours. And, crucially for my friend, sports two important features: It makes and receives calls and SMS. Beyond that, in the words of Bryan Ferry, there’s nothing. (Well, actually there’s WAP, but who uses that?)

The point about the Nokia 1100 is that it’s a phone. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else (except a flashlight, if you press and hold the “c” key down (presumably “c” stands for torCh or flasChlight or “come into the light where I can see you, Mildred”.) It’s designed for conditions in developing countries — dustproof keyboard, non-slip sides — but for many of us that could describe an ordinary day in the office (dusty, slippery, in need of illumination).

For my PIM and mobile Internet needs, I use my laptop!

Last Saturday, my wife and I had lunch at Makati Shangri-La’s Circles restaurant on the invitation of Ms. Karla Maquiling of Pinoycentric.com. Apparently, the people behind Aryty.com (said to be pronounced like “alrighty”), CEO Nils Johnson and Creative Director Daniel Neumann, were in town and they wanted to introduce their company and services to Filipino bloggers.

The concept behind Aryty.com is strikingly simple, but with lots and lots of potential, in my opinion. Aryty basically lets users send prepaid credits to Philippine mobile phones–be it Globe, Smart or Sun Cellular. They don’t even charge any fees in excess of the actual credit amount. Users just have to go to Aryty.com, sign up, and send load to any prepaid number in the Philippines using their credit cards to pay.

And why does it have lots of potential? Get this. While internet penetration rate in the Philippines is at a dismal 10% or less (most of which access at public access points like internet cafés), mobile penetration rate is around 50% of the population, or around 50 million people. And what’s even better for Aryty’s business is that a good majority of Filipinos have friends or family members living abroad either as immigrants, expats or migrant workers.

So that means Aryty saw great demand, and they’re now filling in that gap. The competition is not actually other companies doing the same thing, but the behavior of the consumers themselves. Here in the Philippines, a good majority of mobile users are on prepaid, and credits can be bought just about anywhere–including stalls or shops in the malls, small corner stores, convenience stores, gasoline stations, and even your next door neighbor. You can even ask someone to pass or share load from his cellphone to yours, if you run low.

The prevailing preference is for micro purchases (say PhP 50 or about $1 a pop), but larger amounts are available (like PhP 300 or 500–about $6 to $10). These are still cheap by US standards, mind you.

But Aryty says it’s tapping the remittance-sending market, meaning those Filipinos who usually send bulk of their earnings back to their families here. So instead of them having to worry about their relatives back here who might need a few bucks to buy credits, they can just send them load at the comfort of their own Internet-connected computers. Remittances aren’t instantly sent and received, after all, but load can be sent in a matter of a few seconds.

What’s even more convenient is that once a user is registered, he/she can send load to mobile phones in the philippines not only from their computers, but even from their cellphones thru SMS.

And taking into account that not all Filipinos abroad are professionals with bank accounts and credit cards, Aryty will be opening stalls (or affiliating with shops?) where Pinoys can pay cash for credits to be sent here.

The group (composed mostly of bloggers) fielded a lot of questions and suggestions to the Nils and Daniel, and these were mostly about how secure the system is, and whether there’s room to improve or expand to other fields, like remittance, and even micropayments using prepaid load. Nils said they invested a lot of money and over a year’s effort of working on the back-end, so the system is solid and secure.

And as to their business model? We wondered if they will be sustainable, given that they won’t be charging fees on top of the actual prepaid load. The answer: they’ve purchased the credits in bulk, so they must have bought these at a huge discount. Note that local retailers also rely on the bulk discounts to earn. So for instance small retailers probably get about 10% discount on the prepaid load they sell, so they earn about PhP 10 for every PhP 100 they sell. The more credit or cards they buy for resale, the bigger the discount (I hear the larger retailers get about 30% discount or larger).

A summary

Let me summarize the good points and the bad points I see with Aryty so far.

The good points

* You can send load via the Internet.
* First time users get a free PhP 150 or about US$ 3 to send to Philippine mobile owners.
* Users need verification using a US- or Canada-issued mobile number, so the potential for abuse (i.e., multiple sending of PhP 150 load) is lesseneed.
* Local users can send text to foreign mobile numbers to request for load. Foreign users (US and Canada for now) will then receive the request on their mobile. If the number is registered already, they can just respond to send the load (and debit their debit/credit card). If not, they can login to Aryty.com to send the requested load.
* As mentioned, both sender and requester can use their mobile phones to ask for or send load, so there is no need to have access to a computer (as long as the sender is already registered).

Things to improve on

* For now, the service is only open to the US and Canada, hence a limited reach. Pinoys live and work all over the world, and this would be a good market to tap (which Nils says they are planning to do soon).
* The service is yet to open here in the Philippines. However, whether there is a demand here is still debated, since there is a low percentage of Filipinos with credit cards, and most who do are not very comfortable with using credit cards to transact online.

Suggestions

* Prepaid credit as currency? Can be a legal/technical hassle, but it’s probably doable. “Vmobile”:http://www.vmobilesolutions.com tried this before. I wonder if they got any success.
* Of course, more countries.
* More payment options (like PayPal and even cash).
* Aryty as a remittance service?
* Have a button for bloggers/web publishers who might want to be “tipped” by prepaid load. Micropayments via PayPal aren’t here yet, but perhaps you can get rich by receiving thousands in prepaid load!

So if you Are in the Philippines and you have friends and relatives in the US or Canada, or vice versa, go try out Aryty.com !