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Is the Mobile Web slowly leaving its’ infancy? Or is this really a start of something big coming our way? Googling the “mobile web” gives us 1.920.000 results, that’s pretty convincing something is happening. Using terms such as ‘mobile web‘ to ‘Mobile Web 2.0‘ and ‘Mobile 2.0‘ has raised many discussions amongst colleague bloggers; with the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs introduced the ‘real internet’ on a portable device, so it’s really still an ongoing discussion… One thing we all do agree on is that’s it’s all about the world wide web becoming accessible on mobile devices, initiating a new wave of ‘next generation mobile services’.

Informa Telecoms and Media had the bright idea to gather some of the best thinkers and doers in this field and organize a real summit called the Mobile Web 2.0 Conference on 18-19 September 2007 in London.

Do check the agenda of the 2-day conference, the speakers line-up is really impressive: participations include web companies such as Yahoo, Skype, Amazon (Jeff Barr!); speakers from MNO’s including 3, O2, T-Mobile International, BT Global Services, Telia Sonera, Orange, Vodafone; by now well-known startups such as Shozu, AdMob, MyStrands, Eyeka, Widsets, Tariq Krim of Netvibes, in a unique mix including a lot of blog pals who explored the Mobile Web possibilities since it’s inception, like Daniel Appelquist, Ajit Jaokar, Tomi T Ahonen, Tom Hume and Russell Buckley, definately a unseen line-up so far of industry experts dedicated exclusively around the Mobile Web 2.0 topic in Europe.

Lots of essential topics will be covered, such as:

• Examine the impact of Mobile Web 2.0 on traditional mobile and web business models: Interaction of web, mobile, media, broadcast and telecom spheres
• Discover what services will bring Mobile Web 2.0 to life for the mass market
• Discuss how user interface strategies and widgets facilitate discoverability
• Determine market demand for mobile communities across global markets and demographic segments and understand how to capture target audiences
• Pool experiences of existing challenges to user experience and drive browser and device solutions
• Mobilise the Long-Tail to enable the move of Web 2.0 applications to mobile
• Determine who will own the user’s digital footprint

I have been invited to do a talk on the Mobile Web 2.0 Start-up Ecosystem, one of the topics I have been researching on an ongoing basis since I started this blog. Here’s what I will focus on for my talk at the conference:

• Integrating mobility: what mobility features are start-ups concentrating on?
• Where do we see new start-ups : Who is investing in what?
• How do Mobile Web 2.0 propositions differentiate?
• Evaluating new propositions: showcase of launches in recent months

So, to any start-up who recently launched and who is active in the Mobile Web 2.0 space, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me (click my name in top of my sidebar) to share your experiences, who knows you might become a showcase in my presentation

Note there’s also a pre-conference workshop on ‘Understanding Mobile Web 2.0′ the day before the event. To create discussion and to give delegates an idea of what to expect at the event, the organizers also launched a conference blog. Ajit Jaokar - who recently came to explain his views on the topic at MobileMonday Barcelona will be interviewing conference speakers and will post more thoughts on this blog.

I’m really looking forward to this one!

2.0, Announcements, apple, browser, browsing, conference, convergence, events, informa, innovation, internet, iphone, london, long tail, mobile, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile web, mobileweb, Operators, social media, startups, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, usability, user experience, w3c, web 2.0

My apologies for the use of another “2.0 meme” but after my participation in a debate on the Future of Mobile Music at the Digital Music 2.0 Conference in Barcelona this week I felt I needed to update you briefly on some new thoughts on the subject. Since my writings during the MuLiMob project, my piece on “Connecting Cultures through Music“, and “DRM, free at last!” I haven’t been writing on the issue anymore.

Last Tuesday, in a Lab on Media and Human Experience, a filosophical flow excercise in between media, technology and philospophy, we discussed about ‘connected and un-connected spaces’ … media convergence is happening but the media industry is still pretty much off-line as of now, so the question is: where’s the bridge? And where is it happening?

I must admit I was pretty amazed that during the Digital Music 2.0 Conference comments and questions coming from the audience were still of the type such as “CD’s are still the major part of the business, digital music distribution only 9% of the market”, and - a couple of times - “How can you become so big without spending budget on marketing, I mean really “0″ on marketing?” and my favourite “Will mobile phones replace MP3 players one day?”… Us speakers had a though job to bridge our message of the indepth changes that are currently happening the way we consume music and the business surrounding it.

Trying to stay humble, I realized one more time there is still a lot to do to bridge the digital connected (internet connected tools, things, people and services) with the more unconnected world of tradional TV, CD’s, DVD’s formats.

When Edgar, the organizer, asked me in November to participate to this conference, I was quite sceptical since I had my made my conclusions on music 2.0 a couple of years ago while finalizing the MuLiMob project, it would only need some time for the industry to realize the curve of the long tail and that something profoundly was changing the music industry due to the innovations happening in web technologies and the way communities were influencing the way we consume music. Communities like last.fm were adding new ways to discover and listen to music opening opportunities for people to meet others with similar music tastes. This community has now grown to 15 million users and Claire Levy had the pleasure to anounce CBS bought last.fm for $280 million, real good news for recommendation technologies and online communities involving music in general

Mobile Web 2.0 or Mobile 2.0, Music 2.0 or Mobile Music 2.0, people say these are all hype terms, in a way they are but there are some real changes and differences to be finetuned, so why this title?

In my panel with operators Telefonica and Orange, it seemed as I was coming from another planet with my presentation on the current state of Mobile 2.0 and the the next generation data services for connected devices. Understandable knowing it took them (the operators) a couple of years to outcompete the SMS Service Providers (selling ringtones and wallpapers), and the same operators have been positioning (= investing) the last couple of years as music retailers to start selling realtunes… meanwhile another range of competitors are coming in their field.

While the new generation of phones and devices - Nokia Nseries up front - a new set of opportunities to consume music is arising, with the possibility to sideload or download music directly to your phone, whatever connection is it that you use (3G, wifi, bluetooth, usb, etc). At the conference, the operators were still defending the classic model - a song downloaded on the mobile has much more value and has thus a defendable value of 3€ including restricted DRM (!), adding the argument that NSeries and iPhones as the high-end range phones that are too expensive for the masses anyway.

My argument was that those phones might be more expensive but a simple calculation of my personal consumption learns that I buy average some 3 albums online/month (approx. 30 songs). So, on iTunes at 0,99€/song makes 356,4 € a year spend on digital music… while downloading over an operators retailer shop at a 3€/song rate, the same amount of content would costs me 1.080€ + additional download costs… the difference in 1 year would pay me a new phone, think about!

Also I would like to emphasize one more time that DRM has to be free - buy once, use everywhere - as it used to be with LP’s and CD’s. Amazon.com announcing it’s latest deal with EMI and 12.000 labels to sell DRM-free that plays on any device is another major step into Digital Consumer Enablement

I think that’s another reason why Apple is going to surprise a lot of people soon again… If I can connect my iPhone over a WLAN or to my computer to buy my music, it’s another great advantage for the iPhone users, from there I can carry it with me everywhere…

2.0, 7digital, Analysis, Barcelona, Bluetooth, convergence, digita music, drm, emusic, events, festival, innovation, ioda, iphone, iptv, itunes, last.fm, mobile 2.0, Mobile Content, mobile music, Music, Operators, primavera sound, startups, Trends, web 2.0

On May 31st I will be participating in a debate on the Future of Mobile Music at the Digital Music 2.0 Conference in Barcelona, organised by the Catalan Institute for Cultural Industries during the Primavera Sound Festival. I’m looking forward to this debate, specifically to better understand how the music industry and the mobile operators are dealing with the dramatic changes the industry is going through to adapt towards a Long Tail economy.

I have been presenting my ideas on this topic during the MuLiMob project in 2005, it’s always interesting to doublecheck vision and reality regularely, things are really changing at an incredible fast pace in our industry.

The panel will be moderated by Ramón Castán, CEO of Creative Associates and is composed of speakers from Movistar, Orange, Carles Campdelacreu, CEO of Acquamedia, Mario Fernández of IMI Mobile and myself.

Here’s the thematic and some questions set forth for the panel:

Can Mobile Save the Industry? Focus on the Growing Importance of Mobile Phones for Buying, Storing and Listening to Music. Is the mobile phone only a passing hype when it comes to music services? Are the telecom’s walled gardens working? Is the mobile just another data pipeline at the end of the day? Why is a song so expensive when purchased on a mobile? Is mobile technology vulnerable to piracy? Is the personalization to music fans the main reason for mobile products success?

The conference hosts many other sessions and speakers like Isaac Monclús, Director of cultural programmes, FNAC Barcelona; Richard Gottehrer, founder and chairman, The Orchard; Shira Perlmutter, executive VP, Global Legal Policy, IFPI-International Federation of the Phonographic Industry; Shelley Taylor, CEO, All Dig Down; Horst Weidenmüller, Impala’s and VUT’s VP, member of Merlin interims board, and CEO of !K7 Records; Clair Levy, head of business development, Last.fm. Javier Lorente, Portal and Applications Development Manager, General Manager of Technology and Services, Telefónica España; Alex Murray-Leslie, musician, Chicks On Speed; Kevin Arnold, founder and CEO, IODA – Independent Online Distribution Alliance; and many others, really interesting program, check it out!

2.0, Analysis, Announcements, Barcelona, convergence, digital music, drm, festival, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile music, Music, podcasts, primavera sound, Trends, web 2.0

Here some impressions from the excellent Under The Radar: Mobility Conference from November 16 in Mountain View, CA. Debbie Landa and her team are doing an incredible good job creating this type of events bringing together various types of quality (!) value chain players in mobility. Just seeing the number of VC’s around per square meter shows that mobility is definately on the radar in Silicon Valley. You can view some of my UTR pictures here as a Flickr set.

The number of company pitches one could view in a day was pretty impressive: 32 companies, divided in 8 tracks in 2 rooms; The 2-track system however made me skip some presentations I would have loved to see too. Anyway, on the overal side, this was a very smoothly organised event and a chance to meet loads of new people in the industry, mainly focused Silicon Valley. It was very interesting for me to get a better notice of the US mobile market and understand better between the differences US and European markets.

The overal tone of the conference was all about web 2.0 going mobile, there has been numerous blogposts and discussions lately on the topic… Daniel Appelquist has one of my preferred mobile 2.0 definitions so far:

Mobile 2.0 is not “the Future.” it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry.

I started with the first session on VIDEO with ComVu, Juice Wireless presenting JuiceCaster, Nexage and Veeker; a very potential set of companies. My favourites are ComVu because I can stream (imagine a good flat rate deal somewhere of course) and geotag automatically, and JuiceCaster has it’s community building stuff together. I can’t really remember about Nexage, neither can I found notes back and the Veek Video Peek from Veeker just doesn’t sound right.

Then I went off to the other room to see Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob (excerpt here below); everytime I hit their homepage, I’m always impressed by the number of incoming live ad requests coming in, and they are not fake - as some suggested inside the Microsoft building… Correct me if I’m wrong.

In this ADVERTISING/MARKETING track Greystripe won the audience award for it’s great presentation and idea - inserting ads into mobile game downloads, ok but that’s too American for me, I just don’t believe a cell phone is not a TV and in the long run kids will just skip the ad whenever avaiable or possible.

Meanwhile I missed the session on MEDIA SHARING and SharpCast who won the audience award here. SharpCast is doing what everybody else forgot to do well between the desktop and the mobile: it’s all about syncing your life! I also missed the transactions track but you can view winner Mobo’s pitch here below by CEO Noah Glass himself:

During lunch I catched up with Scott Rafer from MyBlogLog and Dave Harper. Dave (here below) presented in the next MOBILIZE session his WinkSite project. Moderator Rafe Needleman from CNET made a very true review of that session. You can read Dave’s presentation here, don’t forget to check their pitch!

Meanwhile in the other track Loopt was winning the overall audience choice. Loopt is doing what Plazes (and some others) are doing for a while now yet, somehow Loopt chooses resolutely mobile and seems to have spend a lot of time on usability and user experience, stuff not the least to be underestimated on the mobile phone. I’ll check the new stuff Felix will show us next monday for an definitive update on MoSoSo.

In the IMAGING track Daem Interactive was to me way ahead of the others but I may sound too subjective here The key in the image recognition technology sector will be how fast the companies presented can go to market with the right solution. Japan is leading innovation and ideas in this area but the companies in this track at UTR showed some very mature technology and solid business ideas behind.

In the Galileo room, TalkPlus was showing what voice 2.0 is all about and convinced judges and audience with it. Get a grimp of it yourself here in demo and interview I did the day after with TalkPlus CEO Jeffrey D. Black.

Jeffrey explains the voice 2.0 concept (left) and demonstrates a SIP Call

Jeffrey D. Black, CEO TalkPlus explains TalkPlus

My list of companies to watch has been growing quite fast now, here below the ones I recently added - check back in a year or so and let me know what happened with these companies

ComVu
JuiceCaster
Loopt
Plusmo
WinkSite
Mobo
Sharpcast
TalkPlus

You can view all the Under The Radar: Mobility judges and audience winners here.

Note: all video shooting done with a Nokia N93, thanks to vpod.tv for hosting - actually you should check their portal, Rodrigo is currently live reporting from Nokia World in Amsterdam.

And as an extra for the incrowd fans: hear Peter Vesterbacka (Some Bazaar) explain his “to found 100 companies in a year” pitch. Way to go, Peter!

2.0, admob, Analysis, ComVu, daem, GreyStripe, image recognition, innovation, juicecaster, juicewirless, Loopt, m trends.tv, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile20, mobility, Moblog, Mobo, mtrends, n91, n93, nokia, Nokia N91, Nokia N93, Operators, Plusmo, Predictions, ScanR, Sharpcast, silicon valley, social media, spanish startups, startups, TalkPlus, Trends, Under The Radar, utr, vc, veeker, web 2.0, web20, winksite