* 'AwesomenessReminders' service top turkey
* 'iMussolini' takes app top spot
* 'Next' tablet wins devices category
Many of the innovations made it onto our Mobile Services Innovation Radar, which was published twice in 2010, but many other innovations gave us reason to cheer (or groan!), and some even sounded too good to be true.
Emeka Obiodu, Ovum* senior analyst, said: "Given the diversity of innovations within the industry, we have divided this year's awards into three categories: devices; mobile applications; and mobile services. The 'Next' tablet took the honours in the devices category and the 'iMussolini' app came out top among the mobile applications. However, the winner in the service category, and the overall winner in the 2010 Wireless Turkey Awards, was 'AwesomenessReminders' - a US$45 per month service where a real person calls you every day to tell you how awesome you are."
Ovum's first Wireless Turkey of 2010 is UK fashion retailer Next's exuberantly named Next Android Tablet. This was one of many cheap and often nasty Android tablets that flooded the market towards the end of the year, but one of the few with any brand credentials, hence its inclusion here.
"Described by the BBC's technology correspondent as both 'maddeningly unresponsive' and behaving like a 'spoiled child', the Next tablet undoubtedly deserves its place at the Ovum Christmas table this year," commented Obiodu. "However, as quality in the segment improves we expect consumers to increasingly question whether 'premium' tablets are worth the mark-up over their low-born counterparts."
Ovum's top prize goes to the cringe-worthy, poor-taste apps category, in which developers really should have thought twice before making their plans public. Here, it was a fight to the finish between the proposed application to ease gun license renewal in Sussex, England, and the iMussolini app, which allowed users to download speeches by the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
"The good news is that both apps are no longer with us," commented Obiodu. "The police force behind the idea of renewing gun licenses via an iPhone app has not followed up with its plans. Similarly, after apparently receiving legal threats, the developer of the iMussolini app has removed it. In any case, our votes went for iMussolini for its blatant crassness and lack of sensitivity."
This year, the Love Meter, launched by Maxis in Malaysia, caught Ovum's eye. It offers a caller the chance to gauge how much satisfaction the called party is receiving from the call. In profiling it for the Mobile Services Innovation Radar: January 2010-June 2010, we remarked that this tongue-in-cheek attempt to bring emotion into the mobile phone conversation can be neither a serious nor a sustainable service. No wonder it came second in the services category.
Other services to make it to the final include the 'Honey, it's me' service for lonely South Korean men and a catalogue of 27 therapeutic ring tones from the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory.
However, the undisputed winner was AwesomenessReminders, and it is easy to see why. "Offering such a service is wacky on its own; offering it for US$45 a month beggars belief," commented Obiodu. "The US-based organisation behind the service hails it as cheaper than taking someone out for dinner. But for mobile operators in India and elsewhere, which struggle with ARPUs of less than US$45 for the whole year, perhaps there is more money to be made by spreading happiness to customers."
*Ovum is part of the Datamonitor group of companies.
