The MEX Mobile User Experience Awards are the premier awards for the mobile user experience community. The Awards are announced at a special evening reception on the first night of the MEX Conference in London each year, attended by 100 of the leading thinkers in mobile telecoms.

All the entries have been received and it’s time to help the judging panel reach a decision by rating your choices.  So please rate Mobyko with 5 stars now if you’ve appreciated it’s great user experience.

The winners will be announced at the 2009 MEX Mobile User Experience Conference in London on 19th May.

Mobyko.com – a five star experience

According to pcworld, the latest carrier to opt for opening their own applications store is none other than the world’s largest wireless carrier, China Mobile. ‘Mobile market’ as the store will be known, is still in development and doesn’t have a Web address yet!  Let the battle commence.

Mobile phone companies are now looking to differentiate their products and in an increasingly competitive marketplace have cottoned onto the latest product offer that is … ‘The App Store’.

Apple, which launched its iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod touch users last July, has sold more than 800 million software downloads from its service, and later this year Microsoft will unveil a new Windows operating system for mobile phones with an app store as its centrepiece.

Here at Mobyko, we believe that there is a real requirement for thinking about how consumers are presented with apps for their mobile phones. Apple currently do set a good example. They drive awareness and provide one location for users to find pretty much everything they’re looking for.

So, it’s all about offering extra services to customers from one place where they can browse, search and have apps suggested to them. We think that customers want attractive apps at fair prices but there is a danger that too many app stores will complicate the process and create too many locations. Saying that, however, more competition should produce better quality or better value applications. That’s got to be good for the end user. We do think that devise specific stores are holding themselves back though! The newly launched Blackberry App World for Blackberry’s for example, which apparently provides an unparalleled mobile experience… why not share that unparalleled experience with other handset users!?

The battle for first place in the App Store race will most definitely be an interesting, fast moving, exciting area.  Watch this space!

SJ Wood – eCRM Executive – Mobyko

It’s simple:

1. Invite your friends to Mobyko
2. They accept
3. Their updates are automatically added to your Mobyko address book, and yours are added to theirs. Sync and you’ll see the updates on your phone.

Imagine, never being out of date again…

Try AddMe today.

Claire Reid
Head of Product

- Upload contact / group pictures from desktop
- Sync Blackberry with Mobyko – by downloading an application for FREE
- Import photos into Moo.com for printing on cards
- Log into iPhone app using Mobyko username & password
- Faster loading speed of address book

Mobyko, however have been drowning and battering mobile phones for ages… it’s the perfect body guard to water, hammers and big boots!

1. For singletons, why not go on a 16 hour bender like Lilly Allen did last year.

2. For the film makers among us, why not launch your latest movie like Paris Hilton did with her movie  ‘The Hottie and the Nottie’ released on Valentines day 2008
Upload your mobile movie to your Mobyko gallery and release it to friends via email.

3. Flirt a little! Take note of Brad and Angelina and the way they positively beam with each other.  Or perhaps it’s just the fame and fortune….

4. Send a Valentine’s Day message from Britney Spears!  During the promotion of Britney’s fragrance, Midnight Fantasy, last year, the website offered an alternative valentines gift.

5. How about giving yourself a make over – get fashionable like Lindsay Lohan loving her leggings last year.

At Mobyko, we’re all hoping that a groundhog emerged from it’s burrow
and failed to see it’s shadow on Monday just gone, as we’d quite like
the onset of spring!  In the United States and Canada, folklore tells
if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on February 2nd and fails to
see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If
on the other hand, it is sunny and the groundhog sees its shadow, the
groundhog will supposedly retreat into its burrow, and winter will
continue for six more weeks.

So sod off winter, we’ve had enough.  Bring on the daffodils.

61% of the 4,000 people interviewed, compared setting up a new phone to changing a bank account, that doesn’t sound great, we all know that changing a bank account is like undertaking a marathon in the Gobi desert.

95% claimed that they would try new services if phones were easier to set up!

You can read more about the findings here.

Mobiles are becoming more complex, but for me, it is not necessarily the new functionality that is giving the user a headache, it is the lack of simplicity in customer communication and limited focus on the experience for a mass market mobile phone user.

I am sure manufacturers invest a huge amount of resource into optimising the handset experience, however you have to question whether this optimisation has been conducted with an average mobile phone user in mind.

Mobyko has invested heavily in usability to ensure that the customer experience is at the forefront of everything we do, our goal is to deliver the best experience for each individual handset, no easy task when each phone has different menu and navigation structures. One of the core benefits of the Mobyko service is the speed and ease users can switch their contacts to a new phone. If manufacturers can strike a better balance between functionality and user experience then the mass market phone user may be more inclined to adopt additional mobile services.

In 2008, 20% of all Mobyko customers who changed their handset opted for an iPhone, apart from it’s aesthetic appeal, there is obviously high value placed on the ease of use! It’s not rocket science, simplicity and speed are key to driving customer gratification.

Everybody loves getting a new mobile, but how do you currently move your contacts to your new mobile?

Designed by Austrian jeweller Peter Aloisso, the phone is made of solid 18 carat yellow gold, white gold and rose gold.

This is bling with a capital B, it has a white gold line encrusted with a total of 138 brilliant cut diamonds of the best quality.

The home button features a rare 6.6 carat diamond.

If you are due an upgrade, the phone comes with a price tag of £1,636,000.

If Manchester City fail in their bid to land ‘Kaka’ then they could look to buy 100 of these new phones, to be used in crackers at the next Christmas party.

The world has truly gone mad!