Venture capitalists, start up’s, operators and established application developers sat closely alongside one another in San Francisco. I was one of a relatively small number of Europeans at the event, and it was clear to see the benefits of such a closely knit community both in terms of
collaboration and ideas. 

The topic talked about the most at Mobile 2.0 was what gives mobile applications the ‘X Factor’.

Many of the questions from the floor insinuated that many developers were still working hard to find sustainable business models for mobile. Many were looking at ad funded as the potential solution to their problem.

However the view from the VC panel was as clear as it was stark. Mobile applications which solely rely on advertising revenue are consistently failing to attract any interest from the Bay Area VC community. This is due to high levels of cynicism that mobile will be able to generate the CPM rates & volumes required to sustain a VC investable business.

“VC investable” is the key term here. All on the panel were at pains to state that many app developers will be able to create a business in Mobile via Ad funded, with the potential to scale to single figure millions of dollars per year. However, of course, the VC community are looking for exits of substantially more than that, and you got the sense everyone is still searching for the Mobile poster child company to emerge.

Secondly there was a detectable frustration with a lack of innovation coming through. Too many ideas being presented to the VC community were seen as line extensions, simply taking an existing concept and adding one or two new features – not breaking fresh ground or coming up with differentiated & unique propositions. This view was backed up by Sarah Lacey in her talk entitled “Secrets from Silicon Valley” held in London on 7th November.

An great tip for anyone going in front of these guys was be prepared for the “why now?” question. In these increasingly tough times the entrepreneur must be ready to convince the VC that they can’t afford to just sit back and let some other guy take the risk on their idea.

The theme of negativity on ad funded models was articulated by Tim Chang from Norwest Venture Partners, citing companies like GetJar who are building a sustainable business in Mobile. In anticipation of this focus on monitisable transactions, Tim was particularly supportive of micropayments and companies in the payments space.

I’m not an application developer though, so although the sweet spot for hot applications right now was compelling to see, what I found more insightful was the appetite for the industry to collaborate to create better things in the mobile 2.0 era.

I can see too that it will be important for Mobile operators like us to help bring customers and application developers together and step out of their way to let both parties get the most out of one another.

Consumers want cutting edge apps and developers want to reach an audience more easily. I see no reason why this won’t be the future model, and we will all be able to learn a lot from the journey.

This focus on customer satisfaction and customer experience has been the cornerstone of O2’s recent success in the UK market. However this focus on quality can come at a price. Speed to market and consistent innovation is challenging when you operate within a risk adverse, quality first, environment.

Their light bulb moment was observing the behaviour of internet companies who know nothing else but Beta testing with customers and following agile development processes – it’s in their DNA as entrepreneurial young businesses. So they wanted to create a way to allow application developers to interact directly with their high value customers. I feel this collaborative approach is the only model to drive innovation and adoption of mobile data services. In fact, I must declare my interest – I’ve been working with O2 on this project.

Therefore it is a significant step in the world of telco to launch a Beta service with the coming of O2 Litmus. They do this with the intention of another first, effectively turning O2 Litmus over to the community of its users, allowing them to shape future iterations.

What is O2 Litmus? It has been developed to address four key objectives:

1. Develop a way to drive mobile innovation and provide a fast route to market for successful applications
2. Create an ecosystem where all players in the value chain benefit. Developers have to be able to make money via O2 Litmus.
3. Find new ways to provide O2 customers with unique experiences, building on the success of The O2 venue and the iPhone.
4. Empower their leading edge customers – put them in the driving seat to help set the future direction of O2’s mobile data services.

O2 Litmus will provide the framework for collaboration, co-creation and experimentation between developers and O2 customers. I hope a move on this scale can only be good for the digital industry as a whole, by driving awareness and an appetite for the co-creation approach.

If you would like to be part of the journey, please register at at www.o2litmus.co.uk

So, here’s the breakdown…

Interview with Ofcom

• How are the quad play and triple play offerings affecting regulatory strategy?
• Managing spectrum: ensuring that auctions are fair and technology neutral
• Protecting the customer: does convergence mean more complexity?

Ed Richards, Chief Executive Officer, Ofcom
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Media Editor, Financial Times

Panel Discussion
What legislation and regulation is necessary as convergent services increase?

• What will be the impact of the spectrum auctions?
• Rights and content: how should content be protected?
• How should next generation networks be handled?
• Will competition issues arise as a result of M&A activity?
• Assessing the degree of competition: how will regulatory strategy develop as markets change?

Yvonne Fern, Regulatory Counsel, T-Mobile UK
Andy King, Director of Regulatory Policy and Compliance, Virgin Media

Understand the customer: The key to success
Communicating communications: how telecoms marketing must move with the times

• Challenges facing telcos in understanding customer needs
• Multi-channel marketing in the move to multi-play services
• Beyond churn – the pitfalls of a badly balanced campaign
• Winning new customers whilst growing existing relationships
• The winning formula: telecoms best practice

Clare Morgan, Director of Telecoms and High Tech, Acxiom UK

Panel Discussion
Reaping the rewards of convergence: exploring opportunities for advertising

• The power of the Internet: how has advertising changed?
• Is advertising effectiveness more measurable and consumer behaviour more measurable in the digital world?
• The red button: increasing the impact of interactive TV advertising
• What is the potential for advertising on mobile TV and IPTV?
• Will revenue splitting for user-generated content increase?
• Which services should be funded by advertising and which should be subscription based?

Tess Alps, Chief Executive Officer, Thinkbox
Jim Marshall, Chairman, Starcom MediaVest Group & Chairman, Media Futures Group, IPA
Jimmy Maymann, Chairman, GoViral
Clare Morgan, Director of Telecoms and High Tech, Acxiom UK

The next generation of communications

In this session, three panelists will give short presentations to explore the potential of next generation networks and assess what the communications landscape of the future will look like.

Exploring the potential of 3G
Professor Ed Candy, Chief Technology Officer, Hutchison ‘3’ Group

Understanding 21cn: how will Britain’s communications landscape change?
Cameron Rejali, Managing Director Products and Strategy, BT Wholesale

Exploring the potential of WiMax
Brendan O’Rourke, Chief Operating Officer, FREEDOM4

Questions and discussion forum

• What investments need to be made if media and communications services are to succeed?
• How is current infrastructure coping with delivering convergent services?
• Just the beginning: where next for 3G services?
• How will the growth of social information structures affect communications operators?
• What will be the impact of WiMax?

I’ll then bring the afternoon to a close with my enlightening overview of the day. I’m glad I didn’t have it as easy as Michael Nutley who Chaired today. Michael had straightforward presentations. Actually, I take that back. Talk about shuffling the pack on Walshie!

I’m reading more and more reports coming in that O2 is going to sell the Apple iPhone in the UK. However, this doesn’t make sense to me because it’ll mean users will have open access to the Web and quickly realise that iMode (premium content which makes up for most of O2’s data revenue) isn’t what they want. What they’re looking for is the ability to access whatever Web site they want and not just what O2 want them (you) to see.

Then again, if O2 is to ship the all singing and all dancing device, they’re likely to either remove the Web browser altogether, or make it difficult to find. This approach isn’t unusual for Operators when installing their own ‘variant software’ before distribution to retail outlets. Just because mobile vendors include specific applications, it doens’t mean Operators will include them when selling on to customers.

O2 is certainly not likely to place the Web and iMode browsers where they have equal prominence. Or are they? Perhaps they productised iMode to make it’s proposition more attractive to Telefonica and now realise it’s time to offer off-portal content.

The last time I wrote about the Mobile Web vs the Mobile Internet (cough; premium WAP stuff) I received a stunning word count of more than 17,000 words in comments alone. That’s a small book. To add to this, they were from very qualified people I trust at organisations such as Google, MobileAware, .mobi, WURFL and Opera. As a founding member of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative Steering Council, this is a subject close to my heart. It’s an area which attracts a lot of much needed debate too, which I quite like.

In short, I haven’t seen the iPhone yet, but I’ve always believed (before Apple announced its launch) that it will revolutionise how people perceive, consume and create content for small devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. It will demonstrate that the Mobile Web is not only about train timetables and weather information for business people traveling from Slough to London, as most mobile specific experts seem to believe.

There are more people in the world without access to the Web than there are who do. Most of these people live in developing countries. They’re likely to use mobile devices as their primary access point to the Web as it’s cheaper to roll out mobile networks than it is fixed line. Don’t be fooled into thinking users in developing countries don’t use the latest devices either, because they do. They’re fantastic early adopters.

If we were to sneeze in the European mobile market today, the US would catch a cold 2 to 3 years later. However, this may soon change with the release of the iPhone if the yanks finally realise the full potential of mobile devices and how they can engage consumers. As I see it, the iPhone is on par with the release of the first Intel Pentium chip, which helped to revolutionise our thought process regarding the capabilities of personal computers and the applications that could run on them.

If you decide to take a look at my original post about Mobile Web vs Mobile Internet, make sure to read the comments as they splintered off into a separate conversation to the original post. Even the original title is a little different to the main conversation.

So, if you want to hear more about Mobile Web 2.0 then you’ll have to make your way to Internet World at 12:15 TODAY. Sorry for the short notice It’s free to get into the exhibition but you’ll need to fork out £300 to hear me, sorry (again).

Which of these two images do you think will come true in the coming 12 to 24 months? In short, Mozilla are of the opinion that the first picture is a more likely outcome. However, I, alongside companies such as Apple, Nokia and Vodafone Group believe that the mobile web is soon to be a reality (or at the very least, more real). What do you think?

I was astonished to read (on Dan’s blog) that Mozilla doesn’t think users want to access the Web on mobile devices. Hence my picture above of what Mozilla must have in mind when it comes to the Web on the move, anytime, anywhere.

Dan was commentating on the Browser Panel at SXSW which was run by Arun from AOL (a colleague of mine from the W3C MWI). My buddy Charles from Opera took part too.

Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla is the reason for this post though. According to Dan, Brendan said

I don’t believe people are going to browse the Web on their phone. I don’t believe people want to use Wikipedia from their phone.

I’m absolutely amazed by Brendan’s view and I sincerely hope it’s his personal view and not Mozilla’s. Otherwise this $300m business faces the prospect of ending up in the bin alongside it’s parent, Netscape. For a guy who’s incredibly smart working for an organisation that has gained a market share of 10% to 12% of desktop browsers within 2 years, his comments are a little surprising to say the least. Brendan’s comments in my opinion, lack vision. Hell, they lack logic.

I couldn’t disagree more with Brendan. There are more people in the world who don’t have access to the Web than there are people who do. Of those people, most of them are in developing countries. The vast majority of them are extremely likely to use a mobile devices as their primary access point to the Web as it’s more difficult and more expensive to roll out fix lined networks than it is mobile.

Google announced some statistics recently that back up my view. BANGALORE, India (AFP) – Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf has predicted that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide web as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly.

From 50 million in 1997, the number of people who have logged onto the Internet has exploded to nearly 1.1 billion, Cerf, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, said Tuesday.

Yet, the Internet only reaches a sixth of the world’s population, Cerf told reporters during a visit to this southern city, known as India’s Silicon Valley, where Google has a research and development facility.

Worldwide there are 2.5 billion mobile-phone users, whose numbers are growing rapidly in developing countries led by China and India, the world’s most populous countries, Cerf said in his presentation.

India, a country of 1.1 billion people, alone is adding seven million mobile-phone users a month, a powerful enough lure for British telecom giant Vodafone to pay 11.1 billion dollars for a controlling stake in local mobile firm Hutch-Essar this month. Read the original new article.

I feel so strongly about helping to bring the Web to more people, irrespective of their disability, location or hardware, I decided to become a founding sponsor of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). One of the goals of the MWI is to create best practice guidelines to help developers build Web sites that will work on desktop computers, but importantly, work better on mobile devices too.

Other founding sponsors include Vodafone Group, Nokia, HP, Opera, MobileAware, ftgroup and Volantis. Other active participants within the initiative include companies such as AOL, .mobi, Google and Telefonica.

The mobile web is a hot topic and there’s always room for disagreement. However, I’m still amazed to hear the fastest growing desktop browser say that it doesn’t think people will want to use a mobile to browse the Web. Perhaps they should have a chat with Apple as they have a knack for creating technology to make content consumption extremely easy.

Half way through writing this post I checked my mail to find a note from a close friend. Ian from Glaxstar asked if Brendan’s comments were perhaps taken out of context. In short, I don’t know. I can only go by Dan’s commentary which I take as trustworthy knowing Dan as well as I do – he’s a well respected individual within the Mobile industry. That said, Mozilla is working on Mini Mo according to Ian…

Thanks to Keith Waters (France Telecom) for the picture (with man) above.

Thanks to Lbi, we didn’t have to worry about sore bums on hard seats. The room was nice and relaxed with big comfy two-seater sofas, helping to set the informal tone for the evening. The sofas reminded me of the good ole days of going to the cinema with a new girlfriend.

Mirage Islam, Head of Development Programme, BSkyB (and BIMA Executive) did a brilliant job at facilitating the debate, providing his own thoughts intermittently throughout the evening.

I can only give very small sound bites as BIMA dialogs and dinners are ‘off the record’, providing speakers and members of the audience, an opportunity to have a discussion in an open forum, without worrying about being quoted in the press. So, what happens on tour stays on tour.

Firstly, I’ll explain what a walled garden is in case it’s a term you’re not familiar with. Walled garden refers to the premium content that Operators sell to consumers. The content is either created by the Operator or supplied by a list of preferred suppliers who are obliged to give a cut of profits to the Operator.

According to some of the vocal attendees, this approach has made it extremely difficult for innovative content and application providers to sell direct to the consumer because it generally means they have to spend a lot of money on marketing. Some would argue that it’s not healthy for the consumer either, as it limits their choice; hence one of the reasons mobile content is so expensive.

Could you imagine BT (broadband provider) only permitting consumers to access its content and thereby restricting access to the Web? So, as you can imagine, it’s a sore spot for most providers and it’s a no-go for most investors who feel there are too many obstacles for innovative companies to break into the mobile space.

The theme lived up to my expectations with an interesting evening of direct questions being fired at our esteemed guest speakers, who I may add, provided decent answers under the pressure.

Our 3 speakers gave succinct introductions, leading them nicely into the lion’s den where numerous hungry content providers awaited to pounce. It’s very easy to take a shot at Operators for their control over consumer choice, but as our speakers demonstrated, this is, to a degree, done with good reason. Personally, I think Operators’ control was in the consumers’ best interest, but perhaps it’s now time to share the honey with the rest of the value chain.

The first of our speakers to stand up to the mark was Stephen Wolak, Web Technologies Manager, Vodafone Group R&D UK. Stephen’s main focus was on the user experience. He opened up with a quote from a book he read recently (sorry didn’t catch the name!)

When a person walks into a DIY shop to buy a drill, they don’t buy one because they need a drill, they buy one because they need holes.

This is very appropriate as I believe we sometimes forget what customers actually want and need. We tend to give them what we think they want and importantly, without asking for feedback so we can make further improvements.

In the Operators’ defence, Stephen came out with a great argument that demonstrated why he thinks Operators were (are?) right to control access to content.

We needed portals like AOL in the early days of the desktop Web. It helped to ensure users could easily find the content they were looking for in a user friendly environment. I feel the same can be said for mobile, WAP provided a user friendly environment for users in the early days. Now we can look to providing access to non-listed content.

Next up was Andrew McGrath, Director, Design and Usability, Orange. Andrew talked about Orange’s position in the market as a media owner and not just an Operator. According to Andrew

We simply want to give customers want they want. We believe Orange is in a position to do this as we have a trusted brand.

Last but by no means least, Peter Ford, Alliances Director, EMEA, ATG was under the spotlight. Peter, like the previous speakers, was very articulate with his answers. He was probably the most vocal (and to the point) of the 3 but perhaps that’s because Peter doesn’t work for an Operator. He came across as a very honest guy, so I’m confident he wasn’t there to agree with his peers for the sake of it.

Peter was also focused on the user experience. I don’t think I’ve been to an event where the customer is centre of attention for everyone. Is the customer at the centre of attention in reality though?

One of Peter’s comments which stuck out in my mind was

I don’t want to watch TV on my phone, I just want to do simple things.

This is almost ironic as Ken Blakeslee demonstrated to Adrian McMahon how he accesses his sky box using a pair of glasses and a mobile phone.

I’m sure there are lots of people who don’t want to do anything other than make voice calls. However, there’s huge chunks of revenue to be gained through data and users do consume massive amounts of it through music and video downloads, amongst other services.

Amongst the audience was Jeremy Flynn, CEO, D2SEE. Jeremy was vocal throughout the evening making some excellent comments and raising tough questions. One of Jeremy’s points was

Standards and standardisation are two different things. I don’t care about standards as long as we have access to standardised APIs. At present [company x] makes it virtually impossible for us to provide content to their customers. They don’t provide standardised APIs and their age verification system is virtually impossible to work with.

We need all Operators to work together.

There were other members of the audience asking plenty of questions but as I’ve said, I can only provide a few sound bites.

The networking afterwards was relaxed and informal. Hooking up with pal and veteran mobile expert Ken Blakeslee from WebMobility, was of course great. Ken never ceases to amaze me with the gadgets he pulls out of his pocket. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the rest of the attendees and hope to see them at future events.

You can see all the photographs on Flickr.

The walled Garden …will mobile operators’ walls tumble in 2007 (or do they know something the rest of us don’t)?

Join BIMA’s expert panellists’ debate about how mobile operators continue to have a walled garden. Is there potential disruption of the apple iPhone as an apple walled garden experience? What attitudes surround consuming operator content versus premium content providers versus portals provided by the manufacturers themselves? What is the impact of premium content consumption on operator branded handsets versus vanilla handsets?

Even though there are opportunities for advertisers to subsidise content why is it not mainstream? Are there threats to premium content providers playing alongside operators with triple play and quad play offerings – sharing and consuming content over integrated web and mobile offerings? What will the impact on broadcasters entering the mobile space really look like?

Date. Tuesday 6th March 2007
Time. Arrive at 5.45 for a 6:15 start
Venue. LBi, 1 Naoroji Street, WC1X 0JD Map
BIMA members: £23.50
Non-members: £39.95

• Steve Wolak, Web Technologies Manager, Vodafone Group R&D – UK
• Andrew McGrath, Director, Design and Usability, Orange Group
• Peter Ford, Alliances Director, EMEA with ATG

After the debate, continue the discussion and network over a glass of wine (or 2, or 3).

Email Janice to book your seat now!

Speaker profiles can be found by clicking through to the full post

Stephen Wolak
Web Technologies Manager, Vodafone Group R&D – UK

Stephen has worked in the mobile industry since graduating from Imperial College in 1985. His career kicked off at Motorola Communications in Basingstoke where he helped get their mobile exchange working with BT’s System X exchanges. Next stop was also in Basingstoke, Orbitel Mobile Communications – which later became Ericsson – working on the software for the new digital base stations. There followed a short diversion into academia as a Senior Lecturer in Software Engineer at Portsmouth University.

Software development was resumed at NEC Technologies in Reading, where he worked as a Software Group Leader on NECs GSM mobile phones and in particular the new WAP stack before joining Vodafone.

At Vodafone Group R&D in Newbury Stephen set up the Service Enabling Technologies Team to research into new technologies for mobile services. Projects have included; IMS, NFC, moblogging, mobile communities and more recently Vodafone Betavine (see www.vodafonebetavine.net ) and online collaborative R&D space for Mobile and Internet Communications.

Andrew McGrath
Director, Design and Usability, Orange

Since June 2006 Andrew has run the Orange Global Design and Usability team based at Paddington Basin in London. The 18 strong team has a remit to deliver Group design solutions and specifications for the whole of Orange. Current design activities encompass Mobile Handset UI, Mobile application UI, WAP, Web and TV experiences.

Prior to joining Orange in 2004 Andrew ran the UI team in 3 UK for 4 years and before that he worked for 9 years in BT as a Designer in their Research and Development activity in Adastral Park Suffolk

Andrew studied Product Design at Glasgow School of Art and then at Manchester Metropolitan University

Peter Ford
Alliances Director, EMEA with ATG

A 25 year industry veteran, Peter joined ATG in January 2006 and has been at the forefront of developing the go-to-market strategy with the Partner Community in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The transformation has been rapid with significant revenue returns to ATG Europe inside the first 12 months. Balanced between conventional Alliances and Sales Management/Business Development disciplines, he’s spent the last 12 years in International Alliances and Channels, of which the last 8 years has been in the Internet and Web Services market with organisations including management roles in the European Operations of OpenMarket and Interwoven.

At OpenMarket, the Alliances strategy there saw the European Operations outgrow those of the US with a 350% increase in revenue. At Interwoven he developed the Partner model in Continental Europe to increase revenue contribution by over 600% whilst restructuring the business across the EMEA region.

Prior to this Peter held a number of Senior Sales Management positions in organisations including Comshare and Xerox.

Register now!