Lonely Planet’s Mobile Plans

MocoNews: MocoInterview: Bob Hitching On Lonely Planet’s Mobile Plans

Lonely Planet are planning a smorgasbord of mobile content for its readers, ranging across SMS, WAP, downloadable Java apps and rich content. A couple of years ago mobile versions of the guidebooks were released, but the new efforts will take a slightly different tack. “It was (a success) but we now know a lot more about how travellers are going to consume these services,” said Hitching. “It’s more obvious now how to provide services that work across both mobile and web.”

Death by data roaming: Pretty much by definition, the people who use Lonely Planet’s mobile services will be doing so in countries other than the ones they live in. “Probably the most significant piece that we believe is coming soon but isn’t quite there yet is data roaming costs,” said Hitching. “That’s probably the biggest barrier to these applications that exists right now.”

Should be quite interesting to brainstorm about mobile application with those guys with very pertinent content for the mobile users.