Both these deal crashes are signs of old school thinking. Let’s hope we’ll see less of this in 2012 and the true innovators build new businesses and partnership constellations that are more sustainable.

A nice double message from a store in Vietnam – a christmas tree made of recycled phones.

On that note: Happy Holidays!

2011 was a busy year for Mobiletribe and we have now set the table for a very exciting 2012. Part of the plan is to increase our visibility for the blog and the exciting projects we have in development. Watch this space!

Well to be honest I only have one of three required assets. The other two – great content and an audience – will take a lifetime to acquire.

That’s some food for thought – what will the mobile handset market look like in the future? What do you think?

So why do I find Neer interesting?

They have made smart and simple use of location. On top of that privacy and safety is very well played here. The user is in total control and no actual address is published to others. They go beyond only setting who can see your whereabouts, but also what days of the week and at what times. The locations you set up are then named by you, but without the address.

User interface is very simple and looks good.

Downside? Only Android at the moment, but for Neer that should be ok since it is the platform that’s really growing at the moment and it should be large enough to make it interesting. However no networked service can really flourish if it is not truly cross-platform.

And then of course – show me the money. I would love to hear their thoughts on how to make a business out of this. Sale of apps? Deal with carriers to bundle it in family plans? There are a few options, but they need to get to critical mass of installed apps as well which makes it tempting for them to just give away their stuff.

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.

Landbased casions are one of the main reasons online gambling is not allowed in the uS: The lobbying power from the casions is thought to be massive. I think they make a major mistake in stopping online gambling. The reason is simply one of the foundations for any commercial success – trust. Some of the strongest brands in gambling are the land based casinos and they have a huge advantage here in trust and loyalty.

- What about offering guests free downloads of mobile games when they make their reservation?

- Use news ticker in game for offers when they are in town.

- Keep them playing when they are not in town.

- Combine a loyalty system with mobile and you cut costs for producing cards and consumers only have to know their mobile number to have the loyalty ID. Push news and offers in the for-fun and/or gambling games you given them on the phone. Give access to new games and content as they play more.

Endless opportunity here.

“Regarding the pace of change, we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within five years.”

–The Mobile Internet Report, Morgan Stanley, 12/09

So, what about specific niches then? I have looked into the mobile gambling arena for a while. (Disclosure: My company Acemob offers a mobile poker product). As I see it the logic is easy: Gaming as entertainment in short bursts is huge in the mobile. Gambling is huge online. Merging entertainment and gambling into your portable entertainment central is bound to happen. If you do it right and can handle the jump to mobile from desktop.

Remember we are talking gambling here. Gambling requires legislation so yes, that is also on the list. But before that the number one thing to make mobile gambling the next big thing is mindset - Online gambling companies need to broaden their mind and views of the world.

Mobile is accepted for sports betting and some simple casino style games. What I hear from people in the know is that mobile betting is really taking off. Some of the bigger European online gambling companies have as much as 15% of the betting revenue from mobile.

For connected real time gambling the view is different. Many have seen online poker in the mobile as impossible. Too poor interface, unreliable and not big enough screen to sit in at 6 tables at the same time to wait for the right cards etc. Well, positioned as a kill time 3 minute game with the extra spice of a few bucks in the game with the potential of winning a total of maybe 10-20 bucks is a different proposition. It speaks to another target group as well who never will be big stakes rollers online. If the online gambling industry could handle this new customers there’s a chance for a second period of growth.

There are two big hurdles to overcome though:

1. Legislation – going from grey to black and white regulation in Europe and from illegal to regulation in the US
2. User interface – both a technical limitation and a trust issue.Therefore mobile gambling proposition needs to be positioned differently than desktop gambling.
When these hurdles are overcome growth will be explosive. Plenty of knowledge and skills out there to deliver.

Market outlook: In Europe mobile gambling is starting to grow spearheaded by betting. Pokerstars purchased Cecure gaming to position themselves. Passing new legislation in the US on gambling will open the flood gates.

One area that is not explored much at all is to use mobile as digital give aways and customer acquisition vehicles. I think that will feed both existing online business and help grow the mobile channel. The Trojan Horse you have inherently in a client-server solution means that you can give a way a play-for-fun app and later offer upgrade to a gambling version when the time is right for that.