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Time precludes me from going into more detail about my Mobile World Congress experience, but as a second part of my earlier post, here are some observations about the past event:
NOTABLE ABSENCES
It was widely announced prior to the Congress that Nokia (and later LG) would be absent as exhibitors at the event. Nokia’s cheeky move was to locate their Barcelona event HQ 100m from the entrance to the show at the ONCE Building on Gran Via. It is anyone’s guess whether this actually was a money-saver (hiring a whole building is not cheap) but perhaps the bigger irony of the location was lost on others. In fact, the ONCE building is the Spanish Association for the Blind. Given Nokia’s loss of traction in the key smartphone market, it was perhaps apt that they should be headquartered in a ‘blind spot’.
LG’s absence was hard to understand, but allowed Samsung to take all the glory from fans of Korean technology. Their App Store strategy is even more baffling, as LG launched a LiMo App Store (in some countries) but is looking to scrap that for a more generic store.
Another notable absentee was Palm.Those present last year, will have witnessed a great hoo-hah over their Palm Pre..clearly, all is not well at Palm, as they were near-invisible at this year’s event
IT’S GOOGLE TIME!
It was to be expected. Google stole a great deal of the limelight at the show. Partly, it was the excitement caused by the NexusOne giveway (want to get developers frothing with excitement for hours?Give them a new bit of hardware to play with!). Partly, it was Eric Schmidt’s captivating keynote speech, where he laid a clear stake in the ground (and is continuing to do so in Abu Dhabi at the Abu Dhabi Media Show) when it comes to mobile. Simply put, Google is now placing mobile at the centre of its strategy.Could not be clearer than that. Everyone else playing in the yard has been warned!
Published by Ric

BARCELONA -I met Eli Katz, XConnect CEO, during the Mobile World Congress two weeks ago, for a priviliged insight into the VOIP star that is looking to shine bright in the new universe of digital voice and IP communications.
Eli discussed some of the XConnect’s innovative products and enthused over HD voice. Today’s analogue calls lead to a deterioration of sound quality which is notable to VOIP users when they make peer-to-peer calls (as on Skype, for example). With HD voice, intonations are much clearer and the jump from analogue to HD voice can be compared to that between mono- and stereo- sound: once you upgrade, you don’t feel like going back.
XConnect also signed a deal last year under the GSMA Pathfinder initiative to enable interoperability between mobile operators and fixed telephony registries. This basically opens up next generation IP networks to telcos with legacy network infrastructure.
With Tier 1 VC funding of $22m, XConnect is well positioned for further growth as it seeks to out-compete companies like Synverse in its key markets of South Korea, Netherlands, USA and South Africa.
Published by Ric

There have been some rapid changes over the last few years that those in the digital broadcasting community face. The 2010 NAB Show is the place to discover new opportunities for all those in the broadcaster world.

The NAB Show is coming up on April 10-15 in Las Vegas.

For a taste of what the 2010 NAB Show has to offer, check out what Destination Broadband and the Broader casting Conference has to offer in 2010 and discover the latest trends and gadgets in broadband technology.

In particular, Destination Broadband will feature the latest in mobile technologies, including mobile video, networks, and content delivery.A must for anyone in the mobile media distribution space.

Destination Broadband: See site here
Broader-casting Conference: See site here

Oh, and just because you are reading my blog, I’m giving out a code for FREE ACCESS to the exhibit floor at the show. This free Exhibits Only pass includes:

- Access to the Opening Keynote and State of the Industry Address
- Info Sessions
- Content Theater & Destination Broadband Theater

Visit here to redeem or register here with the code A913 (and feel free to pass this along).

You can check out more information and register on the official show website here


Published by Ric

BARCELONA-With the MWC maelstrom over, now is a good time for me to reflect on last week’s show and share my thoughts about the experience.

This was my fourth Mobile World Congress and while it may not put me in the Veterans Club (and my repeated meetings with mobilists from the ‘Cannes days’ made me keenly aware of this), it does give me some insight into how the mobile ecosystem is evolving, at least since the dawn of the ‘Mobile 2.0′ days.

Overall, attendance was probably lower than last year and the fill-rate of the trade floor was below 100%, but this was no surprise. What surprised me was the general positive feeling (especially compared to last year) amongst participants that ‘the worst was over’. In fact, the show was buzzier than many people had expected and there was clear evidence that while some incumbents were still in the doldrums (read mobile operators), newcomers were seeing decent growth (read content developers).

The App Planet may have been physically located at the far end of the show but in terms of buzz, it sat squarely in the centre of the show. Ok, there were some companies in Hall 7 that could only loosely be associated with Apps, but it was here that the various developer conferences took place and that the smaller, innovative content companies were to be found.

The WipJam event on the last day of the show tackled many of the challenges facing developers in the increasingly competitive world of apps (kudos to Caroline & the team for a great event):

-how do you get your app to be discovered

- how do you monetize your apps

- how do you create addictive apps

-how do you sell cross-platform

and many more issues.

I took part in two discussion groups on ‘Marketing Apps’ and ‘Features of Addictive Apps’. Both were extremely valuable. From the first one, I took away some interesting points on ‘app discoverability’ using Pinch/Flurry tools as well as a pointer to the presentation below from Mobile Monday Silicon Valley:



Mobile Monday Silicon Valley App Store Secrets Increasing Sales Feb 8 2010View more presentations from mario tapia.

…to be continued…
Published by Ric

BARCELONA -The coming week in Barcelona is set to be as buzzing and intense as ever during Mobile World Congress time, with an agenda packed chock-full of seminars, development days, meetings, parties, PR stunts and more.

The key to success as always will be to pre-select and prioritise carefully which events to attend (there are simply too many good ones to attend, unless you happen to have a body clone out there!) . This will depend on personal and company preferences and your specific objectives for the event. I recommend jotting down between 3-5 things you want to take away from the show (and side-events) and then matching that to your planned timetable. Is your key objective to learn about open development environments but have no time booked in to learn about Android? It could be worth re-jigging your agenda.

A few events on my agenda so far:

Innovation Exchange 2010

I’ve been invited to take part in a Panel Discussion at the Innovation Exchange 2010 (Applications & Monetization) event hosted by Qtel with support from the GSMA and MEF on the 13th\14th of February at the Hotel Skipper.

Social Media Round Table

I’ll also be taking part in a Social Media Round Table discussion on Monday 15th February hosted by ACS at the Gran Marina to talk about “Capturing the Power of Social Media to Revolutionize the Customer Experience”

App Planet

I’m looking forward to the App Planet event in Hall 7 at the Mobile World Congress on Weds February 17th where SonyEricsson will have a ‘Creation Day’ for developers. The Xperia X10 Android device has had some rave reviews, so I’m interested to see whether developers are excited about generating content for it.

WIP Jam

The WIP Jam session at the Congress (registration now closed) on the 18th will feature a discussion panel on Augmented Reality applications and will help answer the question of whether the hype is justified. As AR is a hot topic, this is an unmissable session (more info here).

TechCrunch Europe

Finally, there is the Techcrunch event on the 17th Feb (offsite from the Congress) featuring Ilja Laurs of GetJar amongst others, and bringing investors and start-ups together (more info here).

I’ll also be exhibiting in the Innovation Zone of the MWC at the GeoMe Stand: if you’re a blog reader and you’re at the fair or one of the other events, come and say hello! If you can’t find me, send me a tweet @ricferraro.
Published by Ric