The panel was made up of the following panelists:
- Rebecca Hanson - Vice President of Strategy for Sprint's XOHM Mobile Broadband Business Unit - www.xohm.com (Just launched in Baltimore and coming soon to DC and Chicago)
- Terry Hsiao - CEO of Hook Mobile - www.hookmobile.com
- Jon Jackson - CEO of Mobile Posse - www.mobileposse.com
- Matt Jones - Director of Mobile Strategy and Operations for Gannett Digital - www.gannettdigital.com
- Gregg Smith - CEO of Acuity Mobile - www.acuitymobile.com
I will share the highlights of the questions and comments from today's event. The first question for the panel was to name their top 3 trends they see in the mobile industry over the next 3-5 years and to name their most overhyped trend.
Mobile Trends Next 3-5 Years
- Handsets - more powerful smartphones. Touch screen devices are the future.
- Speed - 3G and 4G with 3G representing 30% of the market.
- Cost - plans with fixed rate and unlimited data usage plans continues to grow.
- Merchandising Content - the adoption of the Apple AppStore is proof of this upward trend.
- Prices - they will go down for consumers but the cost for providers will stay the same or rise.
- Wireless HD - the demand for high speed video continues to rise.
- Innovation - not much innovation in mobile over the past 10 years until the most recent 2 years. Hopefully this will continue.
- Ad Support - should grow over the next 3 to 4 years.
- 3 Screen Integration - computer, TV and mobile device - current challenge for content providers but demand is there to show same content on 3 different devices.
- Mobile Messaging - the most used and most profitable service for providers and it will continue to grow.
- Ultra Mobile - devices such as the Nokia N810 could be the happy medium between a smartphone and notebook computer. It sports a bigger screen and querty keyboard.
- Rich Data Apps - the demand for more "like Internet" experience on mobile phones. The Apple iPhone is driving this upward trend.
- All of the above in the near term in 2009
- Bluetooth
- Openness in 3G carriers
- Mobile Commerce
- Apple iPhone
How is the current economic crisis affecting the mobile space?
Overall most of the panelists remain bullish on the mobile space and agreed with a top industry executive that mobile is virtually recession proof. People are less likely to give up their mobile phone and Internet service as compared to their cable TV service when times get tough.
Here are the results of the following questions from moderator Paul Sherman to the audience. Here is how we responded.
- How many people use Twitter? less than 10%
- How many Blackberry users? approx. 75%
- How many iPhone users? approx. 25%
- How many Android users? One person
- How many people are on LinkedIn? approx. 99%
- How many people are on Facebook? approx. 98%
- How many people are on MySpace? One person
Most Interesting Stat
- 10% of the population have a smartphone with an unlimited data plan
Other Cool Stats
- 13 million iPhones sold worldwide
- 6-7 million iPhones in U.S. alone
- 2 million downloads per day from the Apple AppStore
What Device Do the Panelists Carry?
- Apple 3G iPhone - favorite mobile app - Pandora
- Blackberry Curve - favorite mobile app - Brick Breaker - soon will be moving to new Blackberry Storm
- Blackberry Pearl - favorite mobile app - Facebook
Final Thoughts
The main take away when it came to mobile content is that if you are providing services on the mobile platform there are 3 major questions you need to make sure your product/service addresses. They are relevance, targetability and metrics. If it isn't relevant and you don't know who your customers are and you can't measure what you are doing you are going to fall short. Isn't this true about any business?
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