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A couple of days before the event, some 150 companies registered to attend MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE event, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, mobile application and service providers, bloggers, press and web technologists. If you want to attend the event to connect to industry leadership and broaden your C-level relationships, you can still buy tickets here.

NOTE there’s also a Mobile 2.0 Europe TechCrunch Party at the Shôko Lounge Club in front of the beach, all details about this after event meetup here.

Here’s the list of the companies attending the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference in alphabetical order:

24 Access Solutions
7 Syntax
Acquamedia Technologies
AdMob
Ajuntament de Barcelona
aka-aki networks GmbH
Alcatel-Lucent
AlpinaSearch
Altaide Valley
Alumnus Software
AMF ventures
antrak capital
Atlas Venture
Atos Origin
Avui
AZ Interactive
Balderton Capital
Bango
Barcelona Digital
Barcelona Media
Beabloo
BeepMarketing
Between Brackets
bluenove
Blyk
Bullnet Gestion
CanalPDA
cellity AG
Centro Español de Servicios Telematicos
Channer Medianet
cirici new media
Clicmobile
CommonSensus
Comunicano
Coreobjects Ltd
DD&H
Debaeque Venture Capital
Dial2Do
dotopen
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
eBuddy
Economic Promotion - Barcelona City Council
Eden Ventures
El Paìs
Ericsson
Esade
European Commission - Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)
Facoria de Canales
Five minutes
Fjord
France Telecom
Futurlink
GeoMe Communications
Getjar
GoodmintonPartners
Google
GSM Association
Halmstad University
Hewlett-Packard
Hiwave GmbH
Ideal Interfaces
Interactive McCann
IT University of Copenhagen
Itinerarium
itsmy.com (Gofresh)
Jaeson Associates
Jupidi GmbH
Kalerion Computing
Kimia
kooaba AG
La Vanguardia
Longreach Mobile
Lorem Ipsum
M:Metrics
Materna GmbH
mikamai
Mobiclip SL
Mobifriends
Mobile Distillery
Mobile Economy GmbH
MobileContact Software
MobileMonday PL
MobileMonday Ltd.
MobiLuck
Motorola
Motricity
mSearchGroove
my247.mobi
MyFrame Inc.
MyVocal
Nauta Tech Invest II SCR
NextWell
Nimbuzz
Nokia
Nova Ventus Consulting
Onetomarket
Orange
Oxynade
Ozmota
Palringo
PBS MediaShift
Peperoni Software GmbH
Plugg
Qelp
Qualcomm
Quodis
Refresh Mobile
Route Forward Ltd
Rummble
Safiratec
Samtel Consultores
Service Innovation and Interaction Design
SFR
Simba Technologies
SMS Text News
Some Bazaar
Spinverse Ltd
SPRXmobile
Stanford HCI Group
Stradbroke Advisors
Sun Microsystems
Sydes nv / Arkafund nv
Ta with you
Taptu
TAT AB
TechCrunch
Telecom Italia
Telefonica I+D
Telefonica Moviles
Telgraph Hill Group
Tertius Advisory Services
T-Mobile International AG
Tooio Mobile
Treasuremytext
Trutap
Trutap Ltd
Uniteddogs and Cats OY
Universal McCann
University of Salzburg
University of VIC
Unkasoft
Valoris
ViaMobility
ViiF Mobile Video GmbH
Vodafone
Webwag
Worldwide Rights Management Ltd
Yahoo!
Yiibu
YouLynx
Zipipop
ZYB

Whilst the whole industry is looking at location-based technology solutions as the new nirvana, Louis Vuitton enters the digital mobile space with a series of value-added content products using low-tech location. Creativity at its top!

The Louis Vuitton Soundwalk, a unique location-based urban soundtrack, produced in collaboration with Soundwalk is a cutting-edge audio guide, available in six languages, offerring a vibrant portrayal of three Chinese cities – Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai – following the footsteps of the three greatest icons of Chinese Cinema: Gong Li for Beijing, Shu Qi for Hong Kong and Joan Chen for Shanghai.

Ideally for people travelling to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, each hour-long soundwalk features a story whose narration perfectly synchronizes with the itinerary - the voice of the narrator geographically guides the physical visitor in real time through an area of a city or a district - accompanied by the signature sounds of the city.

Original soundtracks composed by Kubert Leung and Albert Yu. Shan Sa (”The Girl Who Played Go”) and Mei Feng (up-and-coming young Chinese author), have written these journeys much like film scripts —- subtly blending reality and fiction to offer a cinematic experience in the heart of the city.

Each Louis Vuitton Soundwalk are available in six languages: English, French, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. Each Louis Vuitton Soundwalk can be purchased separately in six different currencies: 17 USD, 12 EUR, 8 GBP, 2 000 JPY, 140 HKD, 130 RMB.

The mobile Java MIDP 2.0 client, powered by Clicmobile, will be released on July 4th; this version adds exclusive mobile content such as images, texts and maps to the audio lifestyle experience.

Love it or hate it - do or don’t - but many of us Personalise and Customise our phones - whether it be internalised modification - wallpapers, ringtones, screensavers, or through external modification - stickers, express-clip on covers, mutilation (yes in Tokyo I met a guy who melted his phone “making it individual” and it still works), graffiti tags, mutation (by gluing or sticking extras on to the gadget), to one of the most prevalent forms of individualisation - the strap attached to the phone, “keitai
strapu” - (branded by Chupa Chups!)

…or even leaving the mobile in a “pure state” as it was when the mobile was box fresh - we all express ourselves - the mobile is an expression of our innate need for tribalism or individualism - the mobile is an extension of ourselves - a reflection of our persona…

In today’s global village whether you are on the fashionable streets of Cheongdam-dong/Apgujeong - Seoul, Sibuya/Aoyama - Tokyo, Fashion Street - Mumbai, or Sloane Street - London the mobile phone has become the most personalised gadget ever and has become the defacto device we use to show off our style and cultural identity.

So what’s out there?

What are you all doing with your mobiles to personalise and customise it into something intimate, individual or tribal?

Here are a few examples of what is going on out there on the streets of the global mobile village…whether you call it a mobi., handy, cell phone, handphone, or keitai we are expressing ourselves through this digital
“remote control of life”

EXAMPLES
Sticker-Flashers

Custom covers

Asia Bling Bling

In some circles such as with P.Diddy it’s all about the Bling Bling

Mobile design is advancing further into style and trends - and many of the mobile phone brands have spotted the trend of consumers personalising and customising - the “Fashionista” designs - with an array of styles from urban street to the luxury sector - we have the fashion phones from Vertu, BenQ Siemens (ooops!), Apple, Nokia, LG and Samsung - and at the top end of the mass market we have the Samsung/Bang&Olufsen phone - followed by LGs Chocolate range and their ultimate trend setting latest creation to hit the urban catwalks with the LG Prada - mobile has become style ubiquitous and with it comes the desire to use it as a social device not only in communication but as a symbol - a symbol of who I am - a signal to the culture around…

“I like modern design aesthetics” - the Samsung/Bang&Olufsen Serene

“I am a Fashion whore” - The Devil carries an LG Prada

“I am a Design guru” - Apple iPhone

“I am affluent and super rich” - Vertu’s “signature Cobra”

“I am all bling bling” - Motorola D&G V3i - also now with Fashion icon - Kate Moss as their new “role model” for the Razr range. Hellooooooo Moto

“I am off-the wall and unconventional” - Hulger (formerly Pokia)accessorise the Mobile

The trend-setters and the fashionistas out there are setting the pace in mobile Fashion - mobile has become the “Fashion accessory” with personalisation and customisation at the forefront of the trend. The fashion houses are now carving out a position in the markets as with sunglasses, parfums, the “you name it stick my name on it” approach - now mobiles are becoming the desirable accessory fashion brands want to own - the ultimate brand icon - that the consumer wants to worship!

Personalising the mobile with a “fashionable and trendy” ringtone is a social bonding mechanism (even those more obscure ringtones) - are a mating call - to bond with those around us - this is my ringtone - you like it - we are part of the same tribe! “Social audio branding”

Whether you get “crazy frog” on Jamba - the hottest ringtone in S.Korea/Japan Rain - or seek something more exclusive or obscure by Brian Eno or Ryuichi Sakamoto - ringtones are a social tagging system - like or not you are carrying the modern equivalent of a “brixton briefcase” - you are an urban “ghetto blaster” you are making a statement

just it’s miniaturised…

We make the mobile become an extension of ourselves - the “Brand You”

Whether you hang them round your neck - make it bling bling - strap it to your belt geek stylee (a fashion no-no!) - or simply “slap-out” your mobile on the table at meetings - you are using your mobile to make a “fashion” and “social” statement…

So I am curious: What have you done to your phones out there?

save your comments with examples if you think you are making a statement!

UPDATE 1: the next speculation hype will be whether those smart guys over at BMW Design Works will design a “fashion” mobile/gadget to compliment the luxury lifestyle of the post-modernist mainstream 30something!?

UPDATE 2: the New Zealand Herald has an interesting report: ‘What does your mobile say about you?’

This is Sophia Berglund. Right now she is 25months old and growing so fast in her capabilities in communication - already she can muster small sentences in English, Korean, Japanese and some German! She can even translate! Sophia can create lines, shapes and forms by way of painting her communication…

But what makes me the most excited is seeing her grab technology with an incredible desire to learn and experience - she explores, she examines, pushes, prods, de-constructs the technology in some cases (i.e. she breaks my expensive “toys”)

Part of her 1st and 2nd years were spent in S.Korea where she was born into one of the most advanced mobile “handphone” cultures in the world - literally 5minutes after birth her first ever picture (and video) taken by a mobile/handphone and sent to our friends and relatives, she made her first mobile location based phone call at 5months and at 6months she was surfing mobile internet and watching mobileTV! She had her first “co-location” experience in 2006 when friends “broadcast” the 비 / Bi (Rain)**concert live over their handphone to my handphone - Seoul - to - Jeju…

Sophia is growing up into a digital world. Already she has a real-demo phone given to her by a friend at LGe - which she mimmicks her immediate social circle in making calls and surfing data.

Wow! Yes but today we question what is next - we talk of ubiquotous computing, mobile internet, mobile2.0, mobileTV, mobileGaming, mobileAdvertising, mobileMarketing, Location Based Services, Bluetooth, Proximity Marketing, smartphones, convergence, m-YouTube, moblogs, iMode, 3G, 3.5G, CDMA, FOMA, RFID, Flash-Lite, SVGt, mobile-Image recognition, mobileCameras, mobileVideo, Vlogs, iPhone (iPhone aka LG Prada), mobile UI, touch-screens, thumb-tribes, handy, handphone, keitai - blah blah blah and all of this jargon and often mind boggling marketing “psycho-babble” has made me think - where is it all going - how much “smarter” will the next generation of “phones” like my SonyEricsson P990i become - how much more can we cram into one single device!?

How many more times can my P990i crash - a victim of its own “smartness” - Yet I put up with it as when my P990 is alert and working it blows my mind with all of its functions and how they are symbiotic* to my daily needs - I can Wi-Fi (well not in Germany they lock their Wi-Fi connections), Google movie reviews before entering the cinema, take videos and pictures and Flickr them, I can use Googlemaps when lost or curious, watch movies, RSS Feed news and blogs, email, VoIP, Messenger, listen to music, video call whilst on business trips, bemuse my wife, and entertain my colleagues like I am a mobile guru! Seriously though what is next?

So - I think “convergence” will continue as a trend for maybe the next 2-3 years - not only in hardware but in software and services that we can ever expand the phones capabilities - with it computing power, battery power and size! Multi-media will play a big role - motion graphics - advanced touch-screens (iPhone aka LG Prada)
smart phones that know what you use and like and build a UI around your user preferences - broader personalisation with iTunes music and video, enhanced imaging and editing functions, more Bluetooth functions in urban locations, free ubiquitous Wi-Fi - oh I could go on with a list of endless options I could do with…

Sophia in 28years time will be 30 and the date will be 2035 - what do you the mocom (mobile community) think will be next and what will “mobile” have become - we all see attempts at mobile technology in clothing, e-paper (with Wi-Fi connectivity), cyborg like integration of receivers/chips into our bodies, organic and nano-technology - but really I would love to hear your thoughts!

* BTW thanks to Bear in the Big Blue House
on Disney Playhouse for re-introducing me to this brilliant word “symbiotic” Children’s TV is great!

**비 / BMW Meets Truth**
and www.bmwmeetstruth.com

I would like to introduce you to Andrew Berglund, another regular guest blogger next to Yasmine Abbas and Martin Sauter who joined me here a couple of weeks ago. More great contributors will be joining M-Trends soon, if you would like to become one of them, drop me a line. If you have any ideas, comments and feedback on the contributions made or presented here, let me know; we’re covering different opinions on various topics in a ubiquitous mobility era, written from different locations, by people who are always on the move… If there are any subjects you would like to have covered here, feel free to suggest.

Andrew will cover the “creative” side of mobile society and the culture that surrounds it. In his contributions he will report on new trends that IHO push boundaries within the digital realm. Check his profile at his very - as he calls it - “un-web2.0 and un-mobile friendly” website. Just recently he left Interone as the Executive Creative Director - Worldwide working mainly on BMW (Global - EU, Asia, North America markets) and Unilever (Europe) digital media communications. As of April 1st he will have moved to Framfab and LBi as Head of Strategy & Innovation - an exciting remit to push boundaries of newer / emerging interactive medias such as mobile and social networks. Andrew has extensive experience in mobile development, concept, and creative communication strategies within the European and Asia markets - with the majority of his mobile work in S.Korea and Japan for clients such as NTT DoCoMo, MTV, Samsung, and LG (Cyon)

I know Andrew for a couple of years now and admire his work, his original views and valuable opinion, needless to say I am looking forward to his contributions!

This morning my last order arrived from Amazon.com. I am all excited since the package includes some of the books I’m really looking forward to read this spring like Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Adam Greenfield, Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins and Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century by Alex Steffen.

Wonderful coincidence when Fabien pinged me yesterday evening if I was in for a drink with Adam who was on a brief urban transit in Barcelona, inbetween a flight from Sevilla, where he assisted Microsoft’s HCI 2020 conference, and a flight back to NYC. We went for a drink in Pipa Club, once the social gathering place for tobacco fans, now the mood setting for urban creatives, loungers, movers and groovers and people like us.

We talked about Agharta and Pangaea, some of the finest recordings from the least-understood period of Miles Davis’s career, Richard Horowitz who worked with Brian Eno - coinciding with a installation I went to see this week of 77 Million Paintings, about Paul Bowles and Jean Genet in Tangier, about Douglas Rushkoff and Psychic TV, and the link to Throbbing Gristle (hadn’t heard that one in a while!), about our network of people we happen to know both, including Kelly Goto, Yasmine Abbas and Nicolas Nova - the latter will be present at the next MobileMonday Barcelona on Mobile Gaming and Beyond.

In short, too much to discuss in such a short time, so we promised to continue the discussion somewhere soon. Maybe XTech 2007: “The Ubiquitous Web” on 15-18 May 2007 in Paris, France might be another occasion… Yasmine? Meanwhile I’ll start reading Adam’s Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, for sure, I’ll cover more of the book and its topics here soon.

I asked: “Blade Runner?” [Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, 1982 (the Director’s cut!)]
_ “Sci-fi” section!
_ “Sci-fi? Really?”… [I think: “Weird!”]
Because I feel awkward to borrow the movie [it is a must have after all… but I am a nomad so I don’t like carrying things] I say:
_ “I have seen it five times [true!]; I am showing it in my class on digital culture and mobilities… Cyborgs, you know…”
_ “Do you think they are among us already?”
_ “I think so!” [That is why I find it weird it is classified… sci-fi!?]

I have been for a long time interested in cyborgs for that I feel the cellphone is a prosthetic, embodied, we can’t deal without it, it is part of us. Because we are hybrids, flesh-machine or flesh-network, identity is blurred, a mix. Hybrids always live in between, in a third space, denied or absorbed, embrace one, the other or both cultures, often long for recognition. I find it powerful that in the movie the doubt on Rick Deckard’s identity subsists, though many clues suggest that he is a replicant:

In the script:

_ “3”
_ “4”… “Didn’t you know she is a replicant?” [The number of replicants left to kill]

_ “How long have you lived for?”
_ “Four years! … More than you!”

_ “This test of yours, have you taken that test yourself?”
_ “…” [No answer]

_ “She doesn’t know, right?” [That she, Rachael, is a replicant]

_ “It is quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?” [Said twice in the movie]

_ “It is too bad that you won’t live… But then again, who does?”

Visually:

Deckard’s dream of the unicorn (it is the only dream of the movie, hence stands as important) which is singularly brought to mind again by the paper unicorn that the shady Gaff produces and leaves in front of Deckard’s apartment (seen as both Deckard and Rachael run away)… As if he knew it all…

But why does he know it all?

Is he a replicant?

Aren’t we all?

People are consuming music on their mobile phones in an increasing way. The way most people do this now is through their operator, downloading realtunes straight to their phones. Innovative companies like Futurlink have a different idea how people will do this in the (very) near future, using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and soon NFC, I wrote on this before in my Proximity Marketing post.

At 3GSM, Futurlink presents Wili-co-ITS, a new technology to distribute and sell content on the point of sales directly to the end consumers mobile phones using an interactive touch screen with an advanced Bluetooth and Wi-Fi application platform. Dig?

Wilico-ITS includes an advanced software called Suite which permits the creation of flash movies on the touch-screen and advanced interactive mobile music catalogues to be downloaded in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi mobile phones (all versions of Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc.), all in an automatic way without the necessity of having advanced programming skills. Wilico Suite permits to personalise the design of mobile phone music catalogues incorporating multimedia content (images, texts, music, videos, etc.). The solution allows obtaining real time statistics remotely through an Internet connexion or GPRS/UMTS.

Just think about putting this kind of screens in a MacDonald or other FMCG POS and the possibilities of uploading and downloading content within proximity through mobile phones; think a YouTube+MySpace+Wilico-ITS combination scenario for example… get the picture?

CEO David Masó showed me a demo this week, very impressive! Make sure you check them out at stand Hall 2 - 1A05, if not I’m sure you’ll hear more about this innovative start-up this year.

On May 29-30 you can join me in Girona for a LAB on MEDIA and Human Experience, organised by the Club of Amsterdam. I will join this “immersed experience of a Do-Tank” together with Laurence Desarzens, urban communicator at beatmap.com, Paul F.M.J. Verschure, ICREA research professor at the Technology Department of the University Pompeu Fabra and Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Director, Yahoo! Research and moderated by Humberto Schwab, Director, Club of Amsterdam, Innovation Philosopher.

We have an urgent need to construct via dialogue a coherent frame of meaning. Consumers need to get a grip on the driving forces that media exercise on them. Business wants to anticipate the impact of technological driving forces on media innovations and media producers want to anticipate this as quickly as possible. Above all there is an explosion of new and hybrid media and of new users-media relations. It is important to exchange meta-knowledge of experts from different fields, to draw some sketches of the real character of this phenomenon.

The underlying question is:

“What is the meaning of media innovation on the quality of the human experience?” If we talk about human experience we mean the inner- and outer experience. So cognitive technology knowledge, related fields of neuroscience and anthropology are essential in these matters.

We start from the knowledge we have about brain and computer games, television and our psychological state, Internet and communications, identity and images. We use the experience we have with the relation between media and mobility, learning, politics, power etc.

Given the ubiquity of media, the change to read and write media, the nano-technology revolution and the open source movement: we have to determine the burning questions. With different brainstorm tools we will innovate al these concepts so we can integrate these new hybrids and innovations in strong human oriented meanings and human values.

All related info to participate to this LAB can be found here at the website of Club of Amsterdam. Check also their bi-weekly insightful journals and past events, really interesting stuff!

I’m looking forward to this do-tank, double-thinking my daughter surfing YouTube on her PSP, a conf call with Katrin Verclas from N-TEN last week on mobile appliance in Africa, the evolution of GSM, UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and WiMAX, from web 2.0 to mobile 2.0, sensuous gear, Negroponte’s $100 laptop for the world’s children education, the kinetic elite, Babel from Alejandro González Iñárritu, global warming, sustainability, the Mobile Web in the Developing World, lift, aspiration tech, while listening to the ‘The Awakening‘ of Ursula Rucker (check the lyrics!) on 4 Hero’s -btw- excellent new ‘Play With The Changes‘ album.

The term has been coined by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, himself a “kinetic elite”, to describe a certain kind of population on the move, the new aristocrats of the mobile world, these who earn bonus points and airport privileges (like going faster through the customs) because also they travel extensively…

I have my students read excerpts of Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintered Urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition (London; New York: Routledge, 2001), a book which examines the territorial divides engendered by technological mobilities.

I wrote many times that examples like the $100 laptop express a consistent belief in technology and its inexorable spread. Surely, the chairman’s brother is the director of National Intelligence of the GWB administration (fact that prompts to question the underlying objectives of these green objects, hence the territoriality at play).

I also read in Courrier International that in Osaka, the homeless wanted to provide cellphone carriers with an address which was that of the park they slept in… because having a cellphone is essential to get a job. Taxi drivers commuting between Abu Dhabi to Dubai rely heavily on their cellphones. These people are not “kinetic elites”. But again we are talking about places where the infrastructure for roaming exists.

With non-profit organizations like NYCwireless which “advocates and enables the growth of free, public wireless Internet access in New York City and surrounding areas”, we may then hope a decline of territorial divides defined according to whom has access, better access or no access to the technologies of information and communication.