I thought I would give you a few impressions of this year’s Mobile World Congress and some of the surrounding activities such as the WIP Jam session we hosted. It should also serve as a useful comparison to the other behemoth in the mobile calendar, CTIA Wireless, which is fast (too fast!) approaching.
Forgoing the first couple of days I missed a lot of the hype and launch hysteria that too often makes MWC so tiresome – sadly I also missed a couple of great parties! – but in between meetings on the Wednesday I did get the chance to stroll about and see a bit of the show.
First impression was that the numbers were down, noticeably down. The official count was down around 10% but it certainly felt like more. Perhaps many people only came on the first couple of days but Wednesday felt pretty quiet. That said, the mood was generally more optimistic than I was expecting. Now I’m not saying that it was full of people dancing about (actually, that was the case on the Cboss stand) but there certainly was positive energy and cool demos being given all over the place.
There weren’t too many show-stealing phones on display, my pick of them would be the HTC Magic (Android), Toshiba TG01 (Windows Mobile), Palm Pre (WebOS), Nokia N97 and the Sony Ericsson Idou (Symbian).
The biggest effect I saw was from the one notable absentee. Apple’s iPhone has really pushed the industry into embracing touchscreen phones – and possibly more importantly, into educating the average consumer about the ability to extend their phone through the use of third party applications. The results of this could be seen in the announcement of a bunch of new app stores, in particular Ovi from Nokia.
Symbian Foundation sings Lions Sleep tonite at Jameoke!
On the social side of things, just a special mention to the GoMo News Blender followed by the WIP Jameoke at Bel Chica on the Wednesday night. Great informal night in a really atmospheric bar (rated for 75 occupants but probably hosting upwards of 200 for most of the night – as you can imagine, it was quite intimate!). To make the evening even more fun, we had live music and an open mike with many guests joining in energetic renditions of songs such as “Brown Eyed Girl”. Thanks to Stephen King from Mob4Hire who was the lead musician and organized the songs for the nite. Almost as popular was the 6 meters of pizza that turned up (and almost instantly disappeared beneath a throng of hungry developers)!
Thursday saw the return of the WIP Jam event – a developer event with a difference. An informal gathering of developers, thought leaders and industry experts meeting with the genuine intention of networking and discussing issues that are important and relevant to the current developer community, regardless of platform, carrier or location.
Many of the issues that could be seen in the larger show were raised during the WIP Jam, and all of us at WIP would like to pass on our thanks to everyone who attended – as always the contributions were terrific. Special BIG THANKS to our sponsors: Adobe, Symbian Foundation, ACCESS, Sony Ericsson, Oracle, Windows Mobile, and O2 Litmus. We put some of the photos up on our Facebook Group site and will get more up soon!
Inpanel with Caroline Lewko (WIP), David Wood (Symbian), James Parton (O2 Litmus), Christopher David (Sony Ericsson), Jason Lim (Microsoft), Nicholas Landrin (I Source)
The proceedings got underway with the “unpanel” – a mirror universe version of a standard panel session, in which the panel quizzes and starts a dialogue with the audience. This session really set the tone for the rest of the day with a lot of discussion focused on app stores, not all of it positive. There were some very interesting points made about the long-term benefits of app stores, as the number of apps continues to rise and the ability to get noticed diminishes.
Another hot area of discussion during the unpanel was fragmentation. This was also followed up in the discussion groups in the afternoon with some very interesting debate focusing on the ONE-API and BONDI initiatives aiming to bring some consolidation and standardization to the scene.
After an extremely good lunchtime networking session, all of the discussion groups were well attended in the afternoon. In particular there was standing room only at the Maps Mashup discussion, with Laura Diaz from Navteq and Patric Nordström from Idevio giving really helpful advice about careful checking of T&C’ s when licensing map data.
The “Mak’n Money” discussion resulted in complex flow diagrams and some great ideas around how to look at alternative revenue channels such as “freemium vs. premium”, ad-subsidized apps and discovery apps thanks to discussion leader Harald Neidhardt of Smaato, Raj Singh of Skyfire and Sean O’Sullivan from Dial 2 Do (check out his MWC wrap up here).
Overall, the mood of the WIP Jam was constructive and positive with some real innovation and networking taking place. In particular, the afternoon sessions had the theme of collaboration about them – a point that was rightly picked up by WIP’s own Caroline Lewko, who chaired the day and Larry Berkin of Access who co-hosted the wrap up session.
A couple of questions were left hanging as rhetorical questions, but perhaps developers would be well-advised to keep in mind:
What does a successful ecosystem look like?
What is a successful go-to-market strategy?
Now the answers may be different depending upon who you are, but I suspect that with the spirit of collaboration there may be more commonality in the answers than there has been in previous years.
Looking forward, the next WIP Jam will be taking place on Thursday, April 2, 2009 in Las Vegas at CTIA Wireless and we intend to incorporate some of the MWC hot topics in that event. Carrying forward, the theme for our event at CTIA will be the many aspects of collaboration for the developer community.
Vegas, WIPJAM Yeah Baby! See you there!
Team WIP: Ed Kay, Caroline Lewko, Teresa Ostman, Arv Singh
