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Russell at MobHappy is starting to gather input for his prediction for 2009. The start of the end of the mobile operator portal is my safe bet for these predictions. I would be surprised if there are any major MNO portals that operate the way they do today in two years time.

The second prediction is a condition for the first – mobile internet becomes a mass market product/behaviour. Not just mobile broadband for your laptop, but for the phone. People can now afford and manage the discovery issues to find what they really want with their mobile phone. They will not need to be guided by their operator in the discovery of the services, apps and destinations they want.

I will get a full set of my predictions out here in the coming days. It will be worth reading. Below you see some articles that are hinting at what I will include in my predictions for 2009.

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In the mobile world creative commons thinking is a huge driver for growth. Content contracts and costs are a huge barrier to growth. But unfortunately there is no active discussion at the moment aroudn applying creative commons licensing in business deals in mobile. The beneits would be huge. Especially in the music arena where full length tracks today are in many cases sold at a loss using the traditional models where a record label takes a large cut, the mobile carrier takes his unreasonably big cut for handling the transactions and offering a bit of distribution. Then the broadcasting rights have to be paid. Take away the VAT and there is not much left for the company operating the service.

If the general reasoning among the promoters of new business models for the music industry is right, how can mobile enhance that model? First the model – give the individual tracks away and make money on all other things such as limited edition special boxes (like the example Joi brought up – Nine Inch Nails), concert tickets (the most common example given I have a feeling of), t-shirts and even selling the master tracks for a song and let the listener become producer and remix the track like Ace of Base is doing it at their site. I understand and respect the fear for change and the leap of faith it is to let go of the traditional model. Here mobile maybe can offer yet another way to bridge the digital and physical (in this case as in hard core cash) worlds and make it less emotionally painful for the music industry as a group.

What if a free download over your mobile with a creative commons license also generated an SMS from the artist when they sell something real to you such as that limited edition box, a concert ticket etc? It can of course be done in more or less suttle ways. Maybe even charging for hooking you up to people who appear near you who have dowloaded songs from ths same artist/category? Here we are also talking social networking 3.0 I think. We are not 100% suited for one network. We fit many niche networks. Our individuality as a person is better matched with several niche networks than one mega-one-size-fits all. And best of all if they start to become automatic. That is when the conversation becomes everything as well as  the driver for innovation. Use case: I am walking in to a cafe and get to know that there are 5 others who have downloaded the same track as I during the last week. I get an invitation to make myself known if I like to. Or not.

One of my key stand-points are that mobile often is the perfect “bridging device” from the digital to the real world simply because it is always on and always with us. Seen in this perspective I think mobile entertainment and services has seen nothing yet. It is mobile web 3.0 really. Do I know this for sure? No, but I am willing to bet the house on it and possible loose it all in the process. But that’s why I am an entrepreneur. Does this make sense at all?

Thanks Joi for the spark that ignited this riff!

Overall impression: Very professional production. Beats most things I have been to in Europe and the US. But a nice wrapping is not enough. To give you a hint, check out the great clips produced by Radon here. What about the content?

The high: Hans Rosling, professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet (KI) but also the father of Gapminder, a program that helps us get a fact based view of the world. Professor Rosling is a presenter par excellence. Catch a glimpse here at his performance at the TED conference. The take away: The world is not globalising, it is modernising. We are all converging in terms of life expectancy, income, health etc. So, yes there is convergence -
1. but not for the last billion who still live on 1 USD per day or less. But they can be given help if we pull together.
2. but it is not sustainable currently. The average US citizen emits 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The same number for the Chinese is 3 tonnes per capita. And in this reality the US is allocating 300 bn USD to grandpa in pensions and health care whereas only 3 bn USD to grandskids, i.e. R&D in clean tech and energy saving technologies. This has to change!
3. but there is not one power – we are entering a multi- power world

Another high was Tom Crampton and Dan Dubno talking about how politics will change with the Internet and new media strategies and tools that the Obama campaign unleashed.  I will discuss this in a separate post since it has a huge bearing on mobile web.

The low: The advanced presentation technology and system was messing up a few times and there were a good few short and shallow presentations about things we already know and hear daily wince we work in the industry. But then again, whatever the event, the real value is the meeting place it is and the opportunity to meet people. It is more up to yourself than the event organisers really is my feeling.

Well, it would not be fair not to mention Mia Rose and her fairytale story that we will see more of in the music industry I think. From home video on YouTube to signing with Universal Music. Her humble approach and choice of wording calling her followers supporters rather than fans. Ace of Base, the hit selling Swedish pop music machine from the 90’s, is attempting a comeback 2.0 style. New website where fans can remix tracks. The most popular ones will be recorded by Ace of Base and put on coming albums. That’s participation, or in the words of Ulf Ekberg, “the fans are the fourth band member”.

Well, no mobile so far. I will come to that in the coming posts. I will try to structure a story around this and serve up in some logic clusters.

Now I need to soak in a bath and have a cold beer to chill down my brain that is near overheating after all meetings and the inspirational kick SIME08 gave me.

For direct reporting and info please go to the SIME08 blog and have a look. For excellent coverage in Swedish (and also broader than my niche focus on mobile) go to Disruptive.

So, FINALLY!, at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment 2008 event in San Francisco they brought seven youths up on the stage. They are between the ages of 13 and 19 answered questions about their mobile digital lives. Some nice factoids from this panel and a survey made by CTIA together with Harris Interactive:

- 1/3 of teens now play mobile games or browse the mobile web

- 1/5 use the mobile for social networking.

- 47% think their social life would stop without mobile communications

- 1/3 said they’ve used their phones to help others in trouble.

- Most desired features include shock and water proofing (81 percent), endless power (80 percent), privacy screen (58 percent), flexible material that folds into different shapes and sizes (39 percent) and artificial intelligence (38 percent).

Read the entire story over at Fierce Wireless.

I am pleased to see this happening. We are lucky enough to have a vivid dialogue with users in our services through the feedback function directly in the mobile interface. We owe much to our users for many of the great features in services like Lifestylers. It is frustrating to feel that we sometimes can’t keep up with the users comments and feedback though. The pursuit of creating great services and experiences is a job that is never done. Kids are the best source of inspiration and requirements here. Talk to them, sit with them, learn from them!

For this very matter we have been very slow in developing any apps over at Acemob. We focus mainly on browser based services to be able to offer the right balance of great experience and a viable model for us. Being bootstrapped we have to earn the money we want to spend, and we have rents to pay and families to feed. But I would love to release cool apps as well but that takes some guts these days. If there was more transparency and clarity around the AppStore process and average cost to launch something there it would help. I agree with Michael as well that a proper ecosystem would probably give a huge boost to invention as well.

Happy Friday all!

On the note of innovation, David’s company Glubbin is a great innovation both for consumers and night club promoters using the strongest USPs of the mobile – it is always with us and always on. They operate in their native Denmark for now, but look out for this to spread.  In a way they create a new market place and very efficient distribution channel for club promoters to sell tickets to their events with the chance of adding optional VIP packages for the night out. To me the business models I understand are the ones that intrigue me if they also make life easier and better for the participants in the value chain.