Then a virtual worlds fanatic from Stockholm School of Economics who spoke fast enough to make you think she was on speed. However, interesting points and a bit of perspective of cycles of revolutions and changes in society as well. Her presentation is live here. Well worth to go through. The networking and co-creation points are interesting. What will the impact of learning be?

I had my hopes set high for the last keynote – Google on the mobile internet. But it all came down to the Claes Eriksson preaching to the choir at a level more as if he was trying to explain to his grandmother what mobile internet is and all the “cool” things you can do. Well; The Axe wake up call was more sexist than cool, the pint app is not the next big thing and the “1+% of un 25s think it’s ok to send sms during sex”, stats just….well….weird…. I hope this is not representative of the thought leadership I hope Google has on mobile. So I have nothing really to report or think about from this mobile part which was the reason I watched the keynotes. Just one last thing: I thought shameless advertising of own products did not happen anymore at keynotes on serious events. I was wrong, there was a lot of Google pushing as well.

At the end of it all the moderator summed up all these three keynotes brilliantly with the words: The three previous speakers want old people in Småland (county in Sweden) to use their mobile phone to access a virtual doctor.

Well, most efficient markets are developed when companies can focus on their area of expertise and compete on fair terms. Search was never the reason mobile operators were created. Just like they were not meant to be media companies or game developers.

To be open and get a part of the apps pie mobile operators should focus on their core and unique assets. Most notably data traffic capacity would be key. A spot of harmonisation of interfaces and standards on top of that and we’re rocking.

Another large area that use location data is of course augmented reality (AR) services. Layar is probably one of the more prominent ones. It is only with good use of positioning that we unlock one of the most hyped values of the mobile. So sorry for  uttering these words that would generate “boo!!” cheers and tomatoes if mentioned from the stage at any mobile conference. “The mobile is always with you”. Well, if the service knows where you and your mobile are, the service can do more for you. Pretty basic stuff. As often with new technology entertainment is the first area of application. Therefore we see gaming and online dating as the first obvious areas of application. Search is the first utility type application and it makes sense. (Try the wikipedia layer in Layar for instance and you will get a good WOW feeling!)

Many express fear of breached personal integrity with LBS services. That is often a misconception, especially with all the services I have mentioned so far. They are all location aware only and are not revealing to anyone else what your location is. As mentioned above, the service you use need to know where you are to deliver real value to you. This is all seamlessly happening in the background.

Take the dating scenario. For the user the end goal is to meet a new person in real life. With location in the matching algorithm you get more value. Now you know the persons on top of the list fits your criteria best and is nearest to you. If you want to send an invite to meet up for a coffee this afternoon it is likely you are near enough to make that possible. Disclaimer: I am the founder of Souldate, a full-blown dating service in your mobile with positioning.

Games and communities with location involved has a large potential. From the location information you can extend that thought to RFID and touch based things to prove you have been at a place or met a person. This opens up for scavenger hunts, detective/mystery games to mention a few. Stand alone titles/services in this area or even more interesting maybe is to extend this into advertising in sponsored games.

There are some impediments of course. The cost of LBS data from providers of the data, be it operators or aggregators. A cost per location request will kill most ideas. Companies building business model on monetising location data sold wholesale are doomed. Way forward via APIs to data from handsets with apps for positioning or GPS. Examples are of course Android, iPhone and Vodafone 360 API. This is also one great example why carriers do not have to become dumb pipes. They can be smart pipes by offering these APIs and others.

What are your thoughts on LBS? Is it still BS or will it really happen in 2010?

I continue my short series of telecom and wireless in a larger perspective than just mobile entertainment and apps. It must be the effect of watching our garden explode with new life again that triggers this.

In the environmetal debate the mobile industry is not very present. Despite the graduation from only offering token “green telecoms” slots at conferences, to being a real subject, wireless has not made it to the main stage of the climate discussion.

What’s worse is that at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December wireless is not even on the agenda. At MWC in Barcelona, claims were made that the CO2 emission in connection with “running” a mobile operator’s customer for one year corresponds to the CO2 emission from one hour of car driving. I will not argue the facts but if we assume that the order of magnitude is somewhat right, the implication is pretty substantial.

We need to get beoynd “let’s use more energy efficient servers and low energy bulbs” when it comes to seeing what telecoms can do for the environment. It still seems like most of the discussion is on renewable energy etc. Even though some sober calculations show that some so called solutions are completely unrealistic. David MacKay’s book Without the hot air reveals has some good examples for you.

In the light of the fact that telecoms already do a lot for the environment, but surely can do much better, it feels criminal not to make use of this and create some impact. Politicians, time to talk to the telco execs? Telco execs, time to talk to the politician about other things than radio spectrum and license auctions? The self proclamied recovered politician Al Gore has started to bridge the gap somewhat. His keynote speech at CTIA in Las Vegas in March touched on this. Hopefully he will be able to drag telecom as a climate changer for good onto the world stage.

A final word goes to the hosts at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December – please put telecoms on the agenda and invite the key players from the telecom industry!

Well in my mind,  we are finally seeing less hyperbole and more realistic estimates. There is a point in the Juniper report that is key though. The cost of mobile data. We are seeing flat rate “all you can eat” offers becoming the norm. This is great to drive consumer adaptation. However, there is a huge conflict brewing here with “all you can eat” packages and increased use of data from more data consuming services like video for instance. At some point the production cost will be more than the revenue. The operators have created a dilemma for themselves in a way. We should not stop at the mobile network operator though. The network infrstructure suppliers have a stake in this as well. As does creative network sharing deals among the operators.

Get me right here, I am a huge fan of consumer friendly business. Not only for the consumers sake, but for the sake of building profitable companies. It all starts with the consumer who pays the bill at the end of the day. We do need cheap data traffic with a high degree of transparency. But no ecosystem survives if one link fails. So here we need to find good suitable pricing models. Wholesale data traffic sold from operator to content provider who in his turn sets a price for the service that includes the data traffic. At CTIA these arguments were elaborated upon by Andrew Bud of mBlox in a very clear way. 

The long and short of it is that we will see growth in mobile entertainment through this recession and beyond. The rate of growth will very much depend on an orchestrated effort from all participants in the ecosystem to help lowering the production cost and allowing for transparent profitable models all the way so we together can deliver attractive services at price points were get mass adoption.

There were a few thems the I picked up. Mind you I went to CTIA with my mobile social networking, advertisig and multi-player poker glasses on. That was my mission to learn and sell. As you might know I am one of the founders of both Acemob and Souldate, and these ventures are what pay the bills these days. Here we go:

1. Business models

Everywhere I went, the theme was business models. On the panel I sat in on, on the show floor at the parties at night, business models where a common theme. What’s happening here then?

One big change is the on/off deck distinction is about to fade away. On-deck is not the only way to get distribution these days. Operators are realising this and are opening up for easier access to their portals. They can thereby also cut some staff costs as well.

The effect of this is that the content provider will have to carry more of the marketing cost and get the full responsibility for discovery. It also means the operators will have to stop milking their abuse of the billing monopoly they have. Stealing 30-40% for a transaction that Visa charge 5% for is not viable in the long run and is hampering innovation and growth. Please read this great post buy Steven Spencer on this subjet and app stores etc. 

2. Advertising

Advertising is cool, but in most cases will not be enough. Additional revenue streams with virtual goods or freemium is needed. There are probably some arbitrage possibilities or rather timing gains to make to go build a user base in a virgin market when CPCs are very low but rising. However you are then banking on that you keep the users long enough to make money on them when the advertising market is more valuable. A risk, but it might work. It’s about timing and guts I guess.

3. Role of Social networks

In our panel we had some interesting exhanges about social selling. Both Glu and iPlay see the social networks as a distribution channel. Nothing is more powerful than word of mouth, so they try to tap into social netoworks or use social networking infrastructure to give their fans the tools to sperad the word. One cool service I came across here was mpowerplayer. Baiscally it is a social seling tool. Web based play of java games with community features built in to facilitate spreading the word. iPlay use this for their recent launch of their Fast & Furious game. With links to the portals and decks where the game can be bought. This drives revenues and is one way to facilitate discovery, one of the main challenges in selling stuff in a small screen world.

4. Health

I also noted mHealth being a trend. This came from other reports (and here) and comments from people I talked to in Las Vegas. Unfortunately this was an area I missed to cover entirely personally, but hey you can only do so many things. The good thing is that it is now on the radar. My personal belief is that it is a huge area where mobile really can make the world a better place. The formation of the Wireless Health Institute in San Diego is one milestone.

With these words I will head for the ol’ egg hunts and whatnot. See you after the weekend!

Regarding CTIA, I will also write a full roundup here.

Big brands trying mobile marketing need to be aware of that they are about to invade the most private and intimate screen in the world of marketing. As MobileYouth point out the strongest position you can get is if you provide a social fabric and a lot of bang for the social currency buck for your customers.

Get out there, participate instead of pushing broadcast marketing messages. This will put marketing and communications departments in tailspin, since you need to be 100% transparent as well. The marcom departments have often taken the gatekeeper role here. Mobile internet offers the world’s largest and most powerful  direct response machine. Twitter, texts, Facebook mobile and Bambuser are only the tip of the ice berg in terms of tools the consumers have to talk with, about and to you.

As you can see I am warming up ahead of today’s panel at the mobile marketing seminar here at CTIA. It will be fun. You will read more here about it as it happens.

I like all honest trial-and-error efforts. I rather trust someone searching the next big thing rather than the person who says he already has. This is all about testing and listening. Test. Listen. Test. Listen What do the users think of it? What works? Are the users we care about saying this? The latter is the hard part of course. Anyway, I really hope Telia is on to something to spread mobile social networking to the masses.

Short and sweet this post. But hey, its Friday. Enjoy the weekend! I am heading out to Las Vegas and CTIA next week. Drop me a line if you want to catch up.