Qualcomm, Telephia partner for new metric system

By Jason Ankeny Mobile market research firm Telephia announced a partnership with conference host Qualcomm to launch a pair of new tools designed to track mobile content consumption and behaviors. The tools, dubbed MobileView and Applogger, are functional on all new Qualcomm chipsets that support BREW APIs; while MobileView accesses Qualcomm network diagnostic info, Applogger records consumer application and content usage patterns. “A better understanding of what consumers are doing is required to win in the marketplace,” says Telephia’s Senior Vice President of Business Development David Petersen. “These tools will help drive new product development and drive new revenue and business models.” According to Petersen, MobileView and Applogger are embedded on Qualcomm chipsets, and ship to OEMs while dormant—“There’s nothing live on the phone recording information on anyone at anytime.” Telephia will then recruit a panel of consumers, offering a financial incentive in exchange for monitoring their handset behaviors—the MobileView and Applogger tools are turned on solely via opt-in service message, and from there, any data collected is aggregated to further eliminate privacy concerns. “Everything happens in a very consumer privacy-friendly way—we never want anyone to say ‘I didn’t agree to that,’” Petersen says. MobileView and Applogger promise insight into a host of application and content provider questions, including: • How many consumers download or sideload an application or title? • How frequently is an application or content used or played? • When do titles wear out? • What is an application’s share of screen time? • How many ads were viewed during use of an application? • How many mobile websites did a user visit? How long did they stay? What did they look at? While the tools currently gather data on the presence of games, music, wallpapers and related content across handsets, Petersen says additional information—e.g., frequency of use, start and stop times, and website and advertisement views—will be accessible only with the cooperation of network operators. MobileView and Applogger are now shipping to OEMs for integration. “These tools become incredibly important to understanding what consumers are doing,” he says. “Our relationship with Qualcomm allows us very wide penetration into the marketplace.”