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!

The thing is though, you gotta have good stuff in them stores. And guess what, there are only that many different apps and derivatives of them you can market. In this great post  by Timothy Hay we see one side of that. The funds set up about a year ago to fuel the growth of apps have slowed down the investment pace. This makes perfect sense. Since these funds are normal VC funds and not government grants they will not fund any guy with an idea and the iPhone SDK downloaded to their laptop. Matt Murphy at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the other VC guys are still in the VC game. Finding the next Google or twitter. Not clogging the pipes in these various app stores with more of the same. 

What effects can we expect then? The loss of the near monopoly position in distribution that the mobile carriers have had is becoming more obvious. Just in the last few weeks more of my partners at the big mobile carriers content groups are talking about widgets, on-device-portals, preloaded app with attached flexible billing more than the portal. Off the record comments like \”I don\’t care about the portal anymore. It is all about getting stuff in front of the consumer in all possible ways\”, are on my record. 

App Store the new black? No, but a great catalyst for the next phase of the mobile content/app/web/expereince industry.

It is obvious and common sense. Not in the mobile industry though. I am glad to see there was a “whistleblower” in action at MWC09 the other week. Steve Bell ex-Motorola is pretty bold but right in his statements. Read them here. Thanks Steve!

I feel like broken record sometimes, but this _is_ important. I feel like tearing every mobile service I have been part of creating apart and start all over again. Not a very rational feeling I know. Better maybe to work with what you have and listen to your customers. Make sure to pick up the important hints and ideas they give.

At Acemob , one of my companies in this space, for the last 18 months all changes made to one of our key services Lifestylers are based on support mails from the users. Feels risky at the time, but it is quite satisfactory to be able to offer services our users actually want. Sure, we mess up sometimes and have to reverse some changes. But that is done quickly since we pick up that sentiments pretty instantly since all check customer support mails every day. One risk is knowing if there are enough users out there wanting the feature in question. But that is the smaller of the risks. It is far riskier to sit in your ivory tower and produce what you think is cool. That’s not cool.

In that environment it might get even tougher for some of the newcomers to the show. The media execs. Well, some have probably been there at least once. But for most media companies the mobile channel is virgin territory. This will change. Is changing. Has already changed. There are more than anectdotal evidence for this. Which media outlet with some self-respect has not a twitter account today? By the way you find my tweets here. Yes twitter is a hybrid web and mobile service, but very much a mobile service. Twitter also makes it possible to be a one man news agency/editorial crew. One example being Thomas Crampton with his blog, mobile videos and tweets.

But beyond that? What else? Since the mobile phone is the item that stays with us for most of the day it is _the_ screen to be at. It starts with the wakeup call, most likley coming from the mobile phone alarm. Then checking what texts, tweets and news have come in during the night. On to the day with phone calls, picture taking, texts, surfing and some tweets. It continues like that until we go to bed. 

In a recent report from Strand Reports there are some interesting facts. This should make good reading and solid base information for some important decisions at the media commpanies. Even though the time spent for media consumption on the phone is still measured in minutes versus TV-consumption in hours, the growth is in mobile. If we include social interaction when we talk with our friends about media and entertainment, the mobile becomes even more important already today.

Mobile also opens up for co-creation, dialogue and participation. All magic keywords for creating strong loyalty. After some experiences are gained I am sure we will see entirely new production methods and shorter cycles for some media properties. 

The key here is to strike the right balance between mobiel add-ons and create for mobile from the ground up. And manage to do that in a multi-channels scenario covering for instance TV, radio, event, web and mobile to take a fairly common set of channels that one media commpany might use.

There are very cool ideas and facts coming out of some of the experienced players like Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore running Communities Dominate Brands blog. They are on top of the pyramid perhaps, but the pyramid is growing, the base is widening and there are new great talents added to the mobile media scene every day now. One proof of this is that the mobile content hall at MWC09 has grown substantially this year. And the porn companies are in minority. There’s hard work ahead but we _are_ on the fast track to become part of mainstream media. Oh happy days!

Dear Big Media Exec, did you get all that down with your Mont Blanc pen in your paper notepad?

I see that as a sign of maturity for our industry. As in any industry that matures each party specialise more and try to build on their competitive advantages. Mobile operators have made huge strides in this direction as well. They have practically given up to become the DreamWorks for mobile content and apps. Their USP is pretty weak compared to the entertainment industry. But EMI or the Guardian are not that strong in offering access to the internet, do the billing or provide localisation data either.

Lynette Luna at Fierce Wireless develops this theme very well in her recent post. Just as I mentioned the other day there are some anomalies hanging around though. Hope that some encounters and discussions outside the MWC09 bubble will make Nokia and some others scrap some plans that just seem a bit too far away from their core. Even though the mobile internet is new, cool, hip and part of a paradigm shift normal business and marketing laws (and even gravity!) applies. Few think Nokia or Samsung when they think social networking. But as a tool to get to the social network of choice Nokia, Samsung and all the others have a great opportunity to be in the game.

However efforts like Ovi Store and others (thanks Steve Jobs for letting the Genie out of the bottle). The Ovi publisher model copying Apple’s 70/30 model makes a case for content developers to actually develop new innovative services instead of porting licensed properties to mobile. On the distribution side Ovi also has the potential for mass market reach, even though downloading a store app to the phone before I can purchase things over the air seems a huge impediment. Is this really going to be the case? I am looking for more details following yesterday’s announcement at the Nokia press gathering at MWC09 in Barcelona.

Another observation to support the statement that the industry is maturing is the growth in the B2B mobile solutions niche. We see mobile solutions companies beyond premium sms providers is growing their business across the board. Maybe some caution is relevant if we include mobile advertising. But the general trend that existing media businesses are mobilising themselves seems to be valid. Here the companies that depend less on advertsing revenue are the ones I expect to take the lead out of the recession. In a short few years I am convinced we will be baffled over how primitive and insecure our baby the mobile web was back in 2009. Yes, I remain the optimist.

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• Nokia Unveils Ovi Store, Application Sales To Debut In May (techcrunch.com)
• Going mobile in Barcelona (bbc.co.uk)

1. Best networking opportunities, with over 46% C-Level attendees
   PF says: Yes, a lot them C-guys there, but the quality of the meetings can never be good in a setting like this and many meetings never happen since the agendas are re-shuffled several times a day. How many of your meetings and prior MWC’s have happened on time with enough time or at all?
2. On average over 18 new business leads for each attendee
   PF says: Eehh….and the quality of these leads? Often not much better than the expensive paper the business card is printed on. Target your prospects in more intelligent ways than trawling widely at the floor of MWC. 
3. Thousands of new products, and service announcements
   PF says: Exactly, and this vast information is much better digested and made sense of by searching and filtering information online. In addition it is pretty boring to listen to a all techno-marketing this industry has been stubborn enough to push the last decades. Nice, but what can this tech do for me and my customers in real plain non-corporate bullshit terms?
4. Over 2,700 press and media, generating thousands of articles
   PF says: Yes, about the same mainstream news that the large corporations manage to push out. I rather follow blogs and media in my niche. However, disclaimer here. I would go to MWC to blog and twitter about the more niche and smaller things. This is if I had the time and could afford it, but I got a few businesses to execute on and I can’t afford that luxury this year. 
5. Leading operators, and mobile companies are there.
   PF says: Yes, so what? Where are the consumers, test panels and other companies that can, are and should mobilise their business? 
6. Meet the finalists of the Global Mobile Awards, and the Mobile Innovation Global Award Competition
   PF says: Nice dinner on the stiff side my friends have told me. I konw, I have no first hand experence on this point, but I trust my friends. I get the winners list and motivations from the jury onine anyway. 
7. Learn the latest industry initiatives at FREE GSMA seminars
   PF says: If it’s free the risk is I already know it or can get the information easily elsewhere 
8. Network at the Mobile Money Pavilion, Innovation Zone, Green Power Pavilion, Mobile Media and Entertainment Zone, and GSMA Pavilion
   PF says: One reason to go. At least there is some segmentation so I can find some of the niches relevant to me. But still, my comments on points 1-3 applies. Reading the exhibitors list online gives me good info as well. 
9. Get a chance to see two-time Academy Award winning actor and film director Kevin Spacey as part of the MoFilm festival and MoFilm stand in the Media and Entertainment Hall
   PF says: The main reason I would go if time and money was not better spent on my business. As I have previously posted I beleive this is a sustainable niche for mobile entertainment. 
10. Enjoy the sights and sounds of the beautiful city of Barcelona
    PF says: Eeehh….No thanks! Great city I adore it, but MWC must be the worst possible time to explore Barcelona. Invaded by all the visitors, higher prices, not the best weather and locals who are fed up with us tourists.  

So if you care about your business and have things to do. And you should have things to do. If the execution list is not in place and pretty packed it is time to fear. In times like these execution count even more. So another sound way to “recession-proof” your business might very well be to stay away from Barcelona for MWC. Then you might have some success with your business and you can reward yourself with a well earned (but most likely short) vacation in Barcelona in May or June. That’s what I call a win-win.

It’s polling time!