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If you hadn’t heard or read about it yet, the 2008 MobileMondy Peer Awards recognized 27 companies from 18 countries at its annual awards event held at Espacio Movistar facility during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Buzzd from New York, a provider of local real-time search information for bars, clubs and restaurants on the mobile device, cleaned the table by winning jury, audience and community awards under the early stage category.

In the Emerging Community category, Taptu a search and sharing engine from London won the award with jury award Funambol, an open source email and messaging company, while local favorite Kimia, a rich media content provider, clinched the audience choice.

The event had 2 great keynotes, one from Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO of Blyk Corporation, and another from Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefónica España. More than 700 participants attended the event during the afternoon and reception.

Kudos to all start-ups who participated in the very challenging competition in front of a great jury compiled of mobile industry savants.

You can download ALL Early-Stage and Emerging Start-Ups presentation slides at the MobileMonday Barcelona website here. If you are not registered, just enter your details to access the documents.

(NOTE: some of the embedded animation’s or video’s have been lost or could not been transferred for PDF document creation).

Some personal thoughts and possible improvements:

The overall quality of innovation and disruption this year was not as great and surprising as we have seen during last years’ event, though I believe that the winners and some other finalists have some promising technology indeed. We’ll definately here more about these companies in the near future.

The event this year was too long, 27 start-ups to present in one afternoon is way too much. In respect of the MobileMonday diversity and leaving an opportunity for start-ups coming from another corner of the world to present is great but managing that many needs pre-selections in order to preserve quality of the start-ups presenting and to be able to focus more on the quality of the presenters and presentations. Have you noticed that the best presenters with the best presentations won the awards?

I would love to hear some of your feedback and suggestions for improvements, leave a comment here.

I created a MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona Flickr Group with event pictures, anyone who has pictures of the event, feel free to join and post your pictures in the group to share with the community.

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While the Mobile Sunday gathering passed the +250 registrants, and the Mobile Jam Session - a developers focused event, announcing its final program, speakers and topics (check also list of companies attending), the Mobile Monday Peer Awards Barcelona event is heading for another exceptional roll.

+700 attendants signed up already to attend the event. There are some 100 entries left. Don’t wait any longer to register and to be part of this unique networking event. The awards will be issued at 6:30pm (18H30) following our - not to be missed - MobileMonday networking cocktail including walking buffet - between 5pm and 6:30pm (17H-18H30)
The finalists presenting in the 2 categories (early stage and emerging start-ups) have been selected now, as well as the jury panel members for each category. Each finalist has 3 slides and 3 minutes to convince the jury of its great idea and business model. You can download the agenda in PDF here. Also a PDF-file with directions how to get to Espacio Movistar (only 10 minutes with metro line 3 from The Mobile World Congress at Plaça Espanya).

Also on the agenda two great keynotes: Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefónica España, and Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO and Co-Founder, Blyk.

There will also be a premier view on barcelona.mobi mobile website.

Below the finalists presenting:

3:00-4:00pm - Category 1: Early-Stage Start-Ups

Amsterdam - Movels
Bangalore - Mobisy
Barcelona - skuair
Berlin - ViiF
Boston - SnapMyLife
Brussels - Mobixx
London - The 3G Dating Agency
New York - BuzzD
Paris - WebWag
Rome - Nanology
Shanghai - DuoGuo
Singapore - mBit.tv
St. Petersburg - 4Mobi.TV
Taipei - Toro

4:15-5:15pm - Category 2: Emerging Start-Ups

Chennai - Mobile-worx
Dublin - Sentry Wireless
Dusseldorf - Cellity
Helsinki - Fromdistance
Istanbul - Mobinex
London - Taptu
Madrid - Kimia
Milan - Waymedia
Mumbai - Ziva
Munich - Qiro
Oslo - Adactus
Silicon Valley - Funambol
Stockholm - Momail

See you on Monday!

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2007 was a very prosperous and exciting year for mobile technology in general, still we’re just at the beginning of a new era of more magic to come in the mobile and web convergent area’s. So, traditionally I’m writing down 10 Mobile Trends for the coming year, always a good personal excercise how close one is predicting mobile market trends and an indicator of what I think will matter in 2008.

Read my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2007 and check for yourself my gut feeling on what happened yet and what is still to come. It seems very obvious and easy but predicting trends can be tricky, just try it for yourself! Check also my del.icio.us for some interesting predictions from other technology blogs I bookmarked during holidays. One of my favorite readings during holidays is still Carlo Longino’s and Russell Buckley’s yearly predictions at Mobhappy. Do check them out!

So here are my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008:

1. Google’s Android and the Open Handset Alliance will definately take off in 2008. While the iPhone is doing probably the best job embracing mobile and web convergence, the Apple OS is still a closed system and used by a rather small market segment of users. Nokia’s Nseries - though all remarkeable devices - didn’t produce any breakthrough Symbian OS changes last year and is still too buggy to go mass-market - I don’t see my sister or father perform a device software update; which leaves the opportunity for Google and the Open Handset Alliance to get the new Linux-based operating system Android on several cutting-edge smartphones before year-end. Mobile OS, a truely competitive space in 2008!
   
2. The Rise of the Mobile Social Networks. M:Metrics released some promising data mid-2007 on the rise of the Mobile Social Networks. With the big social media networks all going mobile in 2007 (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Bebo, …), this trend will continue to rise in 2008, sustained by more flat rate introductions on different markets.
   
3. Apple will be seriously attacked by the music industry on its own, once disruptive, iTunes business model. 2008 will be the year of further downfall of DRM and the raise of watermarked audio-files. With Sony BMG planning to drop DRM - the last of the Big Four record labels with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music, to throw in the towel on digital rights management. The end of DRM might embolden a host of new, online download venues initiated by the Big Four in its searches for a successful digital strategy. Note also the rise of new business models (!) giving away DRM-free, ad-supported music downloads, like the recently founded Rcrd Lbl by Peter Rojas. Read my DRM Free at Last! for a recent overview and links to previous posts on this topic.
4. Telefonica will introduce the 3G iPhone. To be announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February?
5. The return of the Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. A new wave of mobile services and applications build on the location of the user (cell-ID and/or GPS) will see the light this year, driven by the open Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function. Read also my early 2005 coverage on the formerly known MoSoSos.
6. First iPhone competitors coming to market. Nokia will introduce a serious competitor for the iPhone. It has the hardware manufacturing intelligence and knowledge to come up with its own multi-touch screen interface. Biggest challenge for Nokia (and other manufacturers) will be to keep the OS user-experience as simple as the iPhone. Expect some great innovating devices from HTC too in 2008! (checkout the HTC Touch Dual).
7. Mobile Video Blogging starting to taking off. Though still to be used by early adopters, mobile video blogging tools such as Kyte.tv mobile are already doing a great job with Floobs and KaZiVu also looking very promising (both still in beta), not to forget about YouTube Mobile. All eyes will be on Seesmic however that has the right start-up vibe - instigated daily by its impressive experienced shareholders (and web 2.0 icons) and its very active beta-testers community. Imagining Seesmic to be used on your mobile phone is an easy one, the challenges for Seesmic are to bypass the complex technical issues and delivery of its great idea.
8. Mobile search, as already predicted last year will continue to be one of the most important and most used mobile applications. I keep this one in my list adding that some new players might disrupt the big Search market players, not having figured out the real mobile search issues such as accuracy, context, relevance, latency and the correct display of local and niche results.
9. PRM (Personal Rights Management) and Privacy policies and procedures will be high on the agenda for every entreprise and conscious connected individuals. Already talk of the connected crowds at LeWeb3, opening the Social Graphs might appear cool in your social media community but has to be done right! As a starter, check out Dataportability.org and watch Robert Scoble explaining his recent portability issues with Facebook.
10. Twitter and the breakthrough of the ultimate Mobile Presence Tool. Yes, Twitter is the utlimate mobile presence tool, since it’s the easiest to use (through SMS and mobile web access), and most accurate to stay connected at any time from anywhere… Jaiku has a definately a richer client but Twitter is the most easily integrated into most of your social networks, checkout MoodBlast that can simultaneously update multiple chat clients and web services presence tools. 2008 will also see the rise of lifestreaming apps like Tumblr, surprisingly simple on the web and looks great on your mobile phone.

Some of the downers of 2007:

- the sudden death of great blogger Marc Orchant - my deepest sympathies to Marc’s family.

- the whole blognation’s saga - one nation, many bugs…
- and just recently Om Malik’s heart attack - wish him strength, get well soon, Om!

Definately an urge for all bloggers not to forget about their daily excercise, no less!

I wish all my readers a great and magic 2008!

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Not sure who ever organised 3 MobileMondays in 3 weeks - no I won’t advice it, unless it is to come and watch of course but it’s the way we had to get our act together to start the events in Madrid and get the rhythm right. All in all, I think we were able of keeping the right quality level we’re aiming at for every event…

After the succesful opening event of MobileMonday Madrid and the Mobile Web Applications topic covered in Barcelona, the next MobileMonday Madrid event on November 12 covers experiences from the UK Mobile Market. The UK has one of the most active emerging markets in next generation mobile data services, together with France, Germany, Italy and Spain. We want to learn about the experiences from some of the best positioned people in the UK Mobile industry and explore new market opportunities.

For this event we brought together Mike Short, VP Research and Development at O2 - Telefonica, Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango and Christopher Moisan of Taptu to share with us about their experiences and new business opportunities. The panel will be moderated by Ricardo Pérez from IE Business School.

All details and speakers’ bios at MobileMonday Madrid website. If you’re in the neighborhood, don’t wait to book your seat, the opening event was fully booked after 2 days only.

2.0, alcatel lucent, Announcements, bango, business school, carles ferreiro, dotopen, events, ie, innovation, instituto de empresa, madrid, mike short, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, mobile marketing, Mobile Search, mobile web, mobile2, mobile20, mobilemonday, mobilemondaymadrid, mobileweb, Operators, r&d, ray anderson, rudy de waele, startups, taptu, telefonica, Trends, vodafone

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is edited by That Canadian Girl Véro. Check edition #94 hosted for the occasion at Taptology. As usual great posts from some really great bloggers writing on anything mobile.

This edition also includes a sneak preview for Carnival readers to have an early look at the Taptu mobile search beta, before their public launch anytime soon now. But you’ll have to head over to find out about the details

Carnival Of The Mobilists, carnivalofthemobilists, cotm, mobilists, taptology, taptu, vero pepperell

Here’s my presentation on the Mobile 2.0 Start-Up Ecosystem I did last week in London at the Mobile Web 2.0 Conference. Many people in the audience seemed to like the presentation, including Jeff Barr from Amazon. I decided to share the presentation with you here on my blog, comments more then welcome of course.