Mobile banking is nothing new, but it has been stuck in the stone age until recently. USSD services are handy, but hardly intuitive and most attempts at mobile banking websites, while sometimes functional, have left much to be desired. Today, however, First National Bank (FNB) in South Africa is unveiling a breakthrough – and it goes beyond just banking.

The FNB app is now available for iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices and will soon hit Symbian too. I’ve been testing it for the past week and putting it through its paces as a consumer that has my bond, vehicle financing, credit cards and cheque accounts all with FNB.

Before we dive into the app, a disclaimer. I used to hate FNB. Anyone who has followed me on Twitter for the last two years will likely have witnessed me spitting mad at the bank on more than one occasion. And then things changed. FNB started innovating under the guidance of its CEO, Michael Jordaan. They’ve managed to win me over, so if I sound overly complementary it’s because your strongest allies will always be converts to your cause.

Through innovation the bank has put in place the best loyalty system of any company I’ve dealt with, and certainly the best of any bank in South Africa. It has found a way to legally discount fuel in South Africa and get me a personal banker, business-class lounge access at airports and other benefits that I would only have gained before through banking with a stuffy, grey-haired institution – and many more that not even the boring old zebras and lions can manage.

The FNB app is the next milestone along the bank’s path of innovation. And it’s a big one.

With the app one can bank; access account balances, do transfers and pay beneficiaries. Nothing remarkable in principle, but in practice it’s amazing in its simplicity and efficiency.

Other features include the ability to locate FNB branches and ATMs using location data from your phone. Very handy. The app also provides up to the minute forex information.

And then there’s the integration with FNB Connect – the bank’s internet service provider and telephony arm. With this customers can call the FNB contact centre for free, excluding data costs. And if you have an FNB Connect account then you can now make calls and do messaging from the application, paid for with credit on your account, which can be topped up with cash or the eBucks that one is rewarded with for banking with FNB.

But the really exciting stuff is coming down the line. Farren Roper, who heads up FNB Connect for FNB and spearheaded development of the new app, was good enough to disclose the roadmap to me. And unfortunately I can’t reveal any of it yet. But a lot of it relies on previous innovations that FNB is now pulling together.

That’s the great thing about innovation – it’s contagious. And it leads to more innovation.

Part of the significance of the FNB app is in its security – something banks take very seriously, of course. FNB has handled this by requiring you to link your device to your online banking profile before you can access it and this is bolstered by the SMS systems and other innovations the bank already has in place.

It’s a bigger step than just bringing banking to a mobile application – which is in itself more complex than one would think. And it puts FNB even further ahead of the retail banking pack in SA where the others now look more like dinosaurs than ever.

A short video FNB produced for the app is below;

A trusted source in the telecommunications industry tells me that Microsoft has been planning the acquisition of Nokia for over two years. According to my informant Redmond is waiting for the Finnish mobile phone provider to shed more of its market cap – currently sitting at around $22 billion – before tying things up.

I don’t believe it.

Firstly, Microsoft already has everything it needs from Nokia following the signing of an agreement between the two companies that opens various avenues of opportunity aside from Nokia licensing the Windows Phone operating system – which is the most significant part of the deal for Microsoft.

Secondly, Microsoft doesn’t do hardware unless it has to and can clearly differentiate – such as in the case of the Xbox and Kinect. It’s a software licensing company. You don’t make healthy margins from hardware unless your surname is Jobs. For everyone else it’s a tough volume game that I’m pretty sure Microsoft has no intention of playing.

But while we consider the marriage of these two technology giants, we were recently provided with a glimpse of what Nokia could’ve been sans Microsoft.

Windows Phone has been a failure to date. Its predecessor, Windows Mobile, had a pitiful market share in the smartphone arena, ending up with 5% last year according to Canalys. Since launching Windows Phone 7 Microsoft’s market share has actually deteriorated, falling to 3% in the first quarter of 2011.

Look at leading manufacturers’ operating system approaches and there is no question as to why Microsoft has fallen behind. Samsung and HTC are fully committed to Google’s Android operating system and their releases of Windows Phone devices have been little more than experimental. Microsoft is yet to win over handset vendors and it remains to be seen whether they ever will.

A source at one of the world’s largest handset manufacturers recently confirmed what I had suspected: nobody wanted the Windows Phone 7 device that their company launched in SA. Stock was returned by operators who could not dispose of it, while the company’s Android devices sold like hotcakes. The market has spoken.

Nokia will be the first manufacturer to go big on Windows Phone, but it remains to be seen if it can turn the tide for Microsoft.

And while Nokia prepares to enter the market with Microsoft onboard, the fruits of previous engagements are about to launch.

The Nokia N9 was announced in recent weeks running the MeeGo operating system that Nokia created in partnership with Intel. This was part of the strategy that the old Nokia regime put in place to regain relevance in the smartphone market. And it might have worked if their shareholders had given it a chance before displacing the CEO and alienating other key executives in the company like Anssi Vanjoki.

The N9 looks spectacular, although I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet. MeeGo seems to address all of the crippling issues that users had with the Symbian operating system. It also utilises the powerful services Nokia has built via its Ovi brands, such as Maps and Music Store. These services used to be differentiators for the company, but are now being tied into Windows Phone to the benefit of other manufacturers too.

Earlier this year I met with the new Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, who explained that if Nokia was to be successful as a Windows Phone manufacturer it first had to work to improve and grow the Microsoft ecosystem. This makes perfect sense and I have faith in Elop’s strategy and ability to execute, even if I am skeptical of Microsoft’s mobile prospects.

But the N9 and MeeGo could’ve been the renaissance Nokia needed. The once fiercely contrarian Finnish company may well have clawed its way back to the top of the market without Microsoft.

Of course, now we’ll never know.

The N9 will soon have to compete with similar devices running Windows Phone, from the same manufacturer. Any success it does have will be weighed down by Nokia’s commitment to Microsoft. Marketing resources, etc. must be split. You won’t hear Intel’s take on this out in the open, but you can bet they’re fuming. The Nokia that Intel originally partnered with is no more, its attentions split and its strategy transformed – not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your perspective.

So while we wait to see whether or not Microsoft and Nokia can redefine themselves in a market obsessed with Apple and Google, let’s take a moment to consider what could’ve been.

Check out the promo video for the N9 below. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

I recently wrote a column for Fin24.com looking at the science behind claims of electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) and news relating to radio-frequency electromagnetic fields and cancer. It’s a controversial issue and I could easily have made my article twice as long, but had to sacrifice some facets of the argument in order to keep things within column-length. One of the issues I wanted to address, but had to omit, was the logical mistake made by many who write-off studies on the topic of cellphones and health risks because those studies are paid for by mobile network operators.

As I suspected, the comments below my article on Fin24 were used to express the usual logically flawed arguments that pervade any discussion on the topic. I was accused of being paid by a cellular operator to write the article and was told that I didn’t understand the topic. Of course, the people accusing me of not understanding couldn’t explain where I went wrong – they just said I did. Someone also made the comparison between smoking and cellphone use.

It seems ridiculous to any thinking person, but the use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields is often compared to smoking. People love pointing out that smoking used to be widespread and people didn’t understand the health risks until it was too late for many of them. That is true, of course, but the comparison is just silly.

For one, we do understand the risks of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields. Despite what some of the protestors will tell you, we can very accurately measure the output of radiation sources. A demonstration of this point was made by XKCD when the site published a chart of radiation dosage around the time of the Fukishima crisis in Japan.

If we couldn’t measure the output of radiation sources we wouldn’t be able to build cellular networks in the first place.

Times have changed since the 60s and companies have become more concerned with their futures. Car manufacturers spend millions on studies into the safety of cars – because it isn’t good business to sell things that kill people.

Only someone of questionable sanity would accuse the car manufacturers of evil intent and employing flawed scientific studies to trick the public. So why should cellular technology companies be any different?

I discussed this with Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Ericsson – one of the largest suppliers of cellular telecommunications – on one of his visits to South Africa. Vestberg told me what I expected to hear, that his company spends a lot of money researching the safety of its products because it would be stupid and unsustainable to sell things that hurt people.

My, how evil.

I have just finished a column for Fin24 on the performance of Microsoft since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and how its mobile strategy may elevate the stock for the first time in a decade. If you like numbers then look for the article on my columnist’s page. Here we’ll stick to why I think the mobile market needs Microsoft – but we need to look at some numbers.

The current status quo in mobile is represented by the pie chart attached to this post. It shows the market share of leading smartphone platforms in the second quarter  of 2010.

Nokia is still the market leader with its Symbian platform and ships more smartphones every day than any other manufacturer. Android is the fastest growing mobile platform and Research in Motion is losing ground with BlackBerry – although it is doing the right thing by opening up to developers. Apple is happily occupying 14% of the market and is making more revenue from that slice than Nokia does in its entirety.

Microsoft has a relatively tiny 5% of the market despite having one of the first “smartphone” platforms with Windows CE that presented itself as Pocket PC in 2000 and since rebranded to Windows Mobile and now Windows Phone.

Too many technology enthusiasts are dismissing Microsoft and writing off Windows Phone 7 before it is even available. I’m not suggesting that Microsoft is guaranteed success in the market, but I don’t believe you can write it off. And whether Windows Phone 7 makes it or breaks it, I believe it will introduce a healthy dynamic.

For one, it will offer a true convergence of Microsoft services, bringing together the Zune Marketplace for content, Xbox Live gaming division and Microsoft’s productivity offerings. This is a win if you use these services and holds promise for gaming. Xbox Live is launching in South Africa before the end of the year and I suspect Microsoft will unleash Zune in the local market soon too – especially if it wants to meet and beat Nokia that already has its Ovi services, including music store, up and running in SA.

Love or hate Microsoft most of the market uses its products and services and will welcome a mobile platform that integrates with these. We get caught in bubbles like universities or tech fraternities where Apple is ubiquitous, for example – but in the real world Microsoft still owns over 90% of the computer operating system market. It also has the second biggest gaming console brand and dominates productivity software.

The ecosystem play by Microsoft is going to force its competitors to think about how they integrate with customer’s existing environments. Not that they aren’t playing that game already – but they’re about to be schooled.

Nokia has maps and music. RIM has BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Messenger. Apple has the lion’s share of applications and content retailing. Microsoft has its Live services, including mapping, it has Exchange, Xbox, Zune with music and video – and the list goes on. We all know the market is currently about service integration and nobody has more to integrate than Microsoft.

The Redmond giant knows how to convert and retain developers and has more experience with third party supporters than any of the other mobile players. Windows Mobile was open to apps years before the app store was invented and allows for development in one of the most familiar environments in computing with its Microsoft Visual Basic CTP for WindowsPhone Developer Tools.

RIM recently opened up the BlackBerry platform to a rang of development environments, including a very competent take on web applications that plug into the BlackBerry API stack with WebWorks – it’s a great move and don’t doubt that it was, at least in part, prompted by the loom of Windows Phone.

The race is on like Donkey Kong when it comes to enticing developers. Apple has nothing to worry about in this department thanks to the ridonkulous revenues it has shown via iTunes. Microsoft has already cleared the biggest hurdle – getting them trained on the tools.

Mobile platforms are going to have to open up and innovate in the race for developers if they want to stay ahead of Microsoft and this is all good news for consumers.

Microsoft is going to get the competition on their toes and keep them there – hell, it’s already started doing this. It will take the fight for developers to a new level and will further educate the market in terms of smartphone usage models.

And it might fail. But I doubt it will. Even if it does – it will have an overwhelmingly positive effect before it fizzles out.

iPhone versus Windows Phone 7

The problem began, well – at the beginning. Negotiations between operators led to ridiculous roaming agreements that make the bubonic plague look like a good idea. They collectively realised that they could get away with rape by holding travelers hostage and fleecing them for cellular access.

When you get home from your travels and receive a bill that resembles Jacob Zuma’s porridge budget they will simply tell you that they can’t help because the network you were roaming on tallied your usage. Contact that network and they will guide you back to your home call centre. You get the idea.

Still today, in 2010, it is possible to travel to destinations where it will cost you more than R200 for one megabyte of data to travel from the interwebs to your mobile phone and more than R25 for one minute of voice.

I’ma say that again – over R200 for one (1) megabyte.

What the operators apparently fail to realise, however, is that while making R200 per measly megabyte is great trade when you have a captive market there are now other ways to connect.

I am currently in London where I would have to pay Vodafone UK ridiculous roaming fees despite the fact that they own the mobile network I subscribe to back home . Oh sure, I can get data for R17.50 per megabyte thanks to the ownership, but calls are still heinously expensive and even R5 per megabyte would be R4.75 too much as far as I’m concerned. Especially considering that the cost of delivering that megabyte to me is probably too small to calculate.

Instead of paying them to compromise my children’s education I have rather been making use of the many WiFi hotspots spread throughout London by BT, ex British Telecom. The BT Openzone hotspots are more plentiful than boiled peas in London and I can access them using my Internet Solutions (IS) WiFi credentials from back home. Better yet, you can pay a mere 5 pounds for a month of access to BT Openzone.

And then. Skype.

In this equation, thanks to Skype’s many charms that include the ability to call anywhere in the world at local rates and even get a landline number for people to call you on, the cellular operators make squat.

I connect to WiFi, the interwebs and Skype. No 3G. No R200 per megabyte and other nasty surprises at month end. Disintermediation in all its splendor.

BT also turns the home routers of its landline subscribers into Openzone hotspots, so I was even able to connect from a friend’s house in Windsor, outside of the city. That’s right – they don’t have Telkom here.

If I went back in time to 1995 and explained to people that the mobile phones making their way into the market around then would offer everything from email to fart applications one day in the future, but that you couldn’t use them overseas because of ridiculous roaming charges, people just wouldn’t understand.

Flying skateboards were more plausible than a reality in the 21st century where you have a mobile phone that magically carries communications through the air but you can’t use it overseas because of cost. And yet here we are.

Instead of charging reasonable roaming rates and making a modest profit our cellular networks are rather risking making nothing as more and more savvy travelers make other plans. You only have to have one horrible scare after a short business trip abroad to learn better than to use cellular access in other countries.

So until the world’s operators wake up and smell the 802.11n, I’ll say more power to Skype and companies like BT that have put WiFi everywhere we need it. And I will go to the ends to ensure that cellular operators make jack out of me while I’m overseas. If any of them are reading this: kindly stop halting our progress as a species and make it possible to communicate from anywhere. That’d be nice.

Today I spent some time with the folks from Nokia South Africa and got to play with the N8. This is the second time I’ve checked out the device, but I’m not allowed to talk about the first.

The N8 is a make-or-break play for Nokia. The Finnish cellphone manufacturer is the dominant mobile device vendor in the world but has been lagging behind in the smartphone market where it has had its ass handed to it by the likes of Apple and BlackBerry. The Nokia N97 was a bit a of a fail, but Nokia has astutely focused on services such as Ovi Maps and its Music Store – and services are key to winning in the smartphone space. That doesn’t mean you can get away with having crappy hardware, however.

The N8 is Nokia’s answer to the iPhone and the plethora of Android devices that are flooding the market. After playing with this device and seeing it in action these are the most important things I think you need to know:

• It’s cheap. And I mean that in a good way. The N8 will go to market in South Africa with a retail price of R5500. That’s almost half what you’ll pay for an iPhone. I can’t actually believe a phone this awesome will be so cheap. Win.
• It’s a little underpowered. The N8 runs a 680MHz ARM processor which is a little slow compared to the 1GHz Qualcomm and Apple A4 processors  in use by its competitors. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it provides better battery life, for example. That said, the phone is a little sluggish when using multitouch and doing other more demanding tasks and I think the processor is to blame.
• The battery life rocks (apparently). Real life users of the device claim they can easily get two days of battery life out of the N8. I obviously couldn’t test this in the short time I had with the phone but I have good reason to believe them. Hey, they smiled while they were talking. And the hardware setup of the N8 definitely lends itself to improved battery life.
• It’s open. The best thing about the N8 is how it doesn’t hold back on features. It comes with an adapter that gives it a standard USB port and you can attach cameras and external drives to the N8. Rocking. Another adapter enables it for full HDMI output which will take video and sound from the N8 to a television monitor or projector. I watched a 720p video being played from the N8 on a 42″ LCD monitor and it looked amazing. Imagine using this in a hotel room…
• The camera pwns. The N8 has a 12 megapixel camera that will knock your balls flat (if you have a pair). The only downside is that the camera lens protrudes from the casing a bit. But the xenon flash and radical results are worth it. It also shoots video in 720p. More win.
• Built like a brick shithouse. The scratch-resistent, carved aluminium casing of the N8 is awesome. I like the way it feels and can be used as a weapon. Pity about the camera protrusion.
• It’s a media monster. With support for just about every video and audio codec that matter, the N8 is a media powerhouse. Plus you can plug in an external hard drive and access media from that. Win, win, win.
• Symbian^3 is not fail. Besides for the user interface that could use more intuitiveness, the Symbian^3 operating system is surprisingly good. I’d need longer with the device to fully rate it, but there are vast improvements in responsiveness over S60 and there are less annoying prompts.
• You can touch it. The screen on the N8 finally brings Nokia on par with Apple and Samsung in the touchscreen space. Resolution isn’t quite as good as the iPhone 4 and touch isn’t quite as slick as Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays, but the N8′s screen is good enough. The only feature that doesn’t keep up with the competition is multi-touch. It just isn’t as responsive when pinching in on photos.
• Browser needs work. The N8 has a new browser complete with Flash support. It does a great job with rendering web pages closely to how they would look on a desktop or laptop monitor, but it was pretty slow and chunky at scrolling around this website. What I did like was having full support for Flash containers and players, allowing for web media access on par with full-blown browsers. But performance comes first and I hope Nokia sorts out the sluggishness of the browser before launching the device.
• You can use your old charger(s). The N8 has support for the new standard micro-USB chargers in use by the entire industry apart from Apple, but also has a port for the older Nokia chargers. It’s worth mentioning, I guess.
• And, most importantly: It should be available in SA by end October.

Those are the key takeaways I have after my session with the N8. It’s good to finally see Nokia getting with the programme and the company has a services stack that rocks. I’ll need more time with the N8 to draw conclusions as to how it stacks up against the competition but first impressions are good. I’ll be at Nokia World in London next month and look forward to spending more time around this sexy newcomer.

Check out the official promo video:

Shuttleworth is a South African philanthropist and internet entrepreneur who started the company Thawte in 1995 and went on to sell it to Verisign at the turn of the century in a US$575 million deal. He then became the second ever self-funded civilian astronaut traveling to the international space station as a member of the Soyuz TM-34/TM-33 missions. Upon his return to earth Mark formed the Shuttleworth Foundation and Canonical.

Simon Dingle recently authored a chapter on Mark Shuttleworth for the book South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs. The publication will be available in September 2010.

Use the audio player above to stream the interview or click here to download the mp3 file.

The streets of South Africa are awash with hawkers selling cheap flags and drivers that have turned their cars into mobile shrines for whichever football team they support for the 2010 World Cup that gets underway in June. It’s a generally tacky affair, but I’m prone to letting people do whatever the hell they want as long as it doesn’t involve imposing on anyone else’s freedoms or punching me in the face.

The World Cup is a goldmine. For FIFA. But also for the other companies that manage to slip their own brand into the mix. Chinese company Huawei has used its relationship with MTN – an official sponsor of the sporting event – to do just that, launching the Huawei F@stlink E2010 3G modem in the shape of the official ‘Jabulani’ soccer ball designed by Adidas. And you know what? I like it.

This isn’t a flaky, cheap piece-of-crap gimmick. It’s a well-designed, compact and, dare I say, classy piece of memorabilia. And a very good modem.

The E2010 is about the size of a billiard ball and flips open to expose a USB cable concealed in the device. It is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux and has software loaded on internal storage to get it up and running.

The device handles HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps, HSUPA of up to 5.76Mbps and has a Micro-SD slot for storage. It will be available at MTN retail stores from 1 June 2010 with a 75MB contract for R79 per month.

This is just a 3G modem, even if it does have a memory card slot, which is handy. But the soccer-ball shape and fold-away cable makes it very portable and perfect for chucking in a bag with your laptop.

Huawei owns the lion’s share of the 3G modem market, especially in South Africa. The E220 was the little modem that made big inroads for Huawei and they’ve kept up the lead since then.

At the launch of the E2010 MTN also announced South Africa’s first uncapped 3G contracts, details over here.

Telecommunications group Vodacom has launched its Linkbook into the SA market – a super-low price netbook that will go for R199 per month on a two-year contract, including a monthly bandwidth bundle of 300MB.

The Linkbook is running a customised Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, and ships with OpenOffice, some games and other applications. It has 2 USB ports, WiFi, a 8.9″ screen, 16GB of embedded flash storage, integrated 3G modem, webcam and a microphone. I can’t tell what processor it is running, but I’d bet it’s an Intel Atom. There is also no indication of battery life.

Vodacom says that R40 of the R199 monthly subscription is attributable to the laptop, while the remaining R159 covers network access and the 300MB data bundle. The Linkbook is exclusive to Vodacom at this stage.

Mark Levy, co-founder of Linkbook (I’m not sure if this is the same Mark Levy from Blue Label Telecoms), says, ”Linkbook is an idea whose time has come. It’s compact and highly intuitive and will bring easy-to-use wireless internet to millions.”

Levy says that users shouldn’t be mislead by the low cost of the Linkbook; “Development doesn’t stop with the hardware. We are working with a number of partners to create exciting applications and dynamic content that will further enhance our customers’ experience of the web.”

Given the price, I’d say this is a breakthrough and I look forward to getting my hands on the Linkbook to try out. I certainly hope that the education sector is paying attention as this seems like a decent solution for schools and other institutions.

Nokia says that their Messaging service is easy to set-up and use with push e-mail services that support up to ten personal e-mail accounts on one device.

Nokia Messaging supports all leading consumer e-mail solutions including Gmail, Windows Live, Hotmail and Yahoo! mail as well as local email services from MWEB, MTN Play and Webmail.

Says Sarah Crowe, head of marketing at Nokia South Africa, “The Nokia Messaging Service is the consumer pillar in Nokia’s overall messaging strategy … also includes Ovi Mail for free emerging e-mail services and Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Traveler for corporate e-mail mobilisation. This three-pronged approach positions Nokia well to provide quality messaging solutions to all of our consumers”.

Sounds good – but I don’t see how it plans to compete with other mobile platforms that offer much of the same for free, or as part of a service agreement, ala BlackBerry. There also isn’t much incentive to upgrade from the free beta to the paid-for service. And if you’re on another network, say Vodacom or Cell C, then you can continue to use the beta.

As for ease-of-use and partnering with local email providers – setting up email on a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android device is already a simply process of inserting your username and password. It doesn’t get simpler than that, surely?

As part of its agreement with MTN, Nokia will be offering the Messenger service as a bundle on the Nokia E63 combined with a 10MB data plan. The E63 is pretty sweet, although its S60 operating system is getting seriously long in the tooth. And 10MB? In 2010? Seriously?

The Nokia E63 Messaging bundle will be available at participating MTN stores from the end of April 2010 at an approximate retail price of R119 per month on MTN AnyTime 100.

Nokia has shown strong prospects in the smartphone market with the N900 and the move to make Ovi Maps an entirely free service. I also think the agreement with Intel to co-develope the MeeGo platform is a step in the right direction.

But the Nokia Messenger announcement is underwhelming.

For, like, R20 more than the MTN deal you could get the BlackBerry 8520 on contract, with unlimited connectivity (which is quite a bit more than 10MB), including messaging and simple set-up.

Even at the low-end of the market this service and, more so, the contract from MTN makes no sense. Unless I’m missing something?