Just got back from a whirlwind week in London having participated in the MIPS 08 conference as well as meeting with a number of customers and potential customers. It was inspiring but also tiring as I spent 2 of 7 days at the back of a Boeing 747!
The conference was disappointing in terms of attendance given the strength of the agenda and speaker list. There was around 40 participants made up of operators and content publishers with a few vendors thrown in for good measure.
There was cautious optimism on the growth of mobile internet use but general agreement that useability was a key issue which covered a range of potential barriers such as price perception, handset configuration, content rendering and user interface design.
Operators and content publishers parried over the role of the operator portal vs the attractiveness of off-deck content but both parties acknowledged the importance of each other in the
A number of other themes were also discussed including:
- The need to dynamically and intelligently optimise content depending on the handset
- The emergence of mobile advertising as a geniune monetisation strategy, for both operators and off-deck content publishers
- The opportunity presented by emerging countries such as India and China where people have more ready access to the internet via their mobile phone compared with a fixed PC
- The need for accurate and relevant analytics to support ad-funded business models as well as help content publishers to understand how subscribers are interacting with their sites
From a personal perspective, I also met some great people who are doing really interesting things in mobile!
