Mobile Entertainment Market: Cannes - first update

I'm at the Mobile Entertainment Market in Cannes and would be posting live tweets BUT once again there's no free wifi in the conference room.

To be fair, there is in the lobby – but that's not where the speakers are. I think the word I'm looking for is doh! No back channel here!

So here's my compromise – a few highlights from the first session. I know it means you can't join in with the conversation but at least you can latch on to the broadcast of ideas and maybe join in the comments here. Gah! I'd rather be twittering.

Anyways a few highlights:

Lee Fenton COO at Jamba reveals his animated rabbit ringtone has become the biggest sellng physical cd in Germany.

Love to know what the demographics are. My daughter is 3 and pesters for princess comics. I'll make a wild bet she won't buy her own newspapers when she's older.

Jamba is also going to offer downloads from MySpace artist pages.

Jamba spends $100m on marketing. Less than 10% is spent marketing on mobile yet it is their most efficent ad channel. They'd do more but they can't get the inventory.

During Alistair Mitchell's (RIM, ie Blackberry) keynote someone pointed out how poor the Iphone is for typing (and therefore text). Much prompting about a touchscreen blackberry with a keyboard led to no confirmation.

Interesting to me this fascination with typing – given the increasingly less text heavy internet and increasing numbers of new mobile users globally who can't read, much less type their queries. I guess that may not be relevant in the business user smart phone world?

Brief discussion of the long tail of places people seek content from makes me think that this alone should make operators tear down their walls.

What do operators make money from? Conversation. What prompts conversation online, peer-to-peer, by voice or text or IM or etc? Content.

It's another example of the because effect. Operators can make money because of content but not with it.

Finally, BBC's controller of mobile Matthew Postgate says Beeb is both a content and and an engineering company. Early adopters are into news which is why its popular on mobile internet. Mobile will be mainstream for Beeb before too long.

News translates well across different platforms. Drama may not (on tv well shot and lavish, etc) take that and put it on mobile and it can't elicit the same emotional response). It will take time for people to use the medium most effectively in its own right.

BBC has about 17m uu on fixed line a month, 2.8m on mobile. He thinks 40% are a new audience which they hadn't reached before.

He says Beeb is planning to roll out the iplayer on mobile and that devices like the iphone bring the fixed and mobile internet closer together.

A version of iplayer is in beta on iphone and itouch. Plan is to roll it out on more handsets this year.

Beeb worked closely with the isps for iplayer to be "sensitive to their issues" about demand on bandwidth, that same dialogue is going on with the mobile operators.

"We can create demand, which drives Britain towards a digital economy," says Matthew.

More to come later today.

User Generated TV show - shot on and sent from mobile

Another of my predictions for 2007 gets to be ticked off (well, very nearly). And no, I had no idea this was in the pipeline when I wrote this 'A citizen-journalism TV channel made up entirely of video shot on and uploaded from mobile phones will launch.' (click for 2007 predictions in full.)

I'm pleased to say it's emap (the company I work for) which is delivering this one.

FLASHBOX is a 100% user generated programme which will be aired on TV channel The Box.

Nowt particularly unusual about that (hello Current TV). Where it ticks my 2007 predictions' box is in being created almost entirely of video shot on and sent from mobile.

From the release: "viewers (can) upload personalised video clips via sms (really?), mms and online and will be shown around the music video playlist. This is a natural step for The Box, the first UK music channel totally dependent on consumer interaction."

It will be screened daily from March 19 at 4pm for 1 hour.

Emap programme Controller, Phil Poole said: "We all recognise the change in consumers media consumption habits and our programming needs to reflect that. We are excited by the new format and hope that our viewers are too!"

I'm interested to hear whether or not there's a revenue share for our new content providers? And can the show also be viewed on mobile - that would close the circle beautifully for me.

Mobile: The 7th mass media - and the best yet

Tomi Ahonen (Co-author Communities Dominate Brands)writes a brilliant and compelling argument for the mobile as an inherently BETTER medium than the fixed line lap-top focused world of the web.
It's a message FasterFuture has been banging on about for some time on a series of post. But this is a great summary of why the digital future is mobile. And why you should make it your digital present.
Do yourself a giant favour and read it HERE

If you'd like to get a pdf of Tomi's thought piece in full; email him here: tomi@tomiahonen.com

I'd like to think the CEO of at least one major 'traditional' media company has already 'got' this.
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Digital media predictions for 2007

This will be my last day in the office before the New Year. I will attempt to resist updating this blog until then (about as likely as resisting the temptation of more Christmas chocs, to be honest...). However, I thought it would be a good time to make some predictions about 2007 - all of which you are very welcome to contend, add to or dismiss via the comments below.

So, I say, 2007 will be the year in which:

1) Access to the internet via mobile will surpass 40% of all internet use (globally).
2) A UK national newspaper will close its print operation. And a series of one-time print only magazine brands will become digital only (pick a number between 25 and 100).
3) Broadcast TV on your mobile will become commonplace. Sky will offer it as a bolt-on upgrade to your home services.
4) Microsoft/Google/Yahoo (one or all) will launch a mobile phone.
5) All mobile operators in the UK will follow 3 and offer fixed price mobile internet access.
6) A mobile operator will seek the edge by launching a fixed price for all services (ie £40 a month for all-you-can-eat internet, voice, text, mms...TV(?)
7) More than 10% of internet users will blog.
8) A citizen-journalism TV channel made up entirely of video shot on and uploaded from mobile phones will launch.
9) TV on demand will revolutionise how you consume TV and send advertisers into a blind panic.
10) A slow-burn campaign for users to claim back their digital identities will turn to a riot of noise by the end of the year...

Expert content does have a role in social-networked success

Social networking has been a huge success on the web. Tomi T Ahonen (Communities Dominate Brands) has called it the killer application of 3G. It's certainly going to be one of them.

But one of the difficulties for media companies (or at least, those which existed before the internet took off) is that these sites (orkut, myspace, faceparty, youtube etc etc) attract huge audiences, offer compelling propositions - and manage all this without going to the trouble or expense of providing expert-created content (though, it has to be said, often without troubling themselves about such trivialities as profit, at least in the short term, either).

So it might be easy for us to spit our collective dummies and assume no one wants our fantastic creative genius any more. They just want an opportunity to show off their own.

Maybe. Maybe not.

What if we gave them our fantastic, crafted, creations AND engaged them in a vibrant, co-creation-rich, social-network?

So far, I haven't seen anyone doing both really well - great content to give you reasons to arrive, keep coming back, sample other media etc, combined with a killer social networking function which results in communities with the freedom to interact and form groups in the way they prefer.

Why not? Perhaps because recognised brands create instant 'them and us' in the communities which could form around them. Perhaps it's as simple as the proposition hasn't been right so far?

So let's not give up just yet.

Expert content (off the top of my head...):

• gives advertisers confidence,
• presents a touchstone/testing board for the community,
• is initially more compelling and (if you get it right) trustworthy,
• offers access everyday users can rarely acquire (exclusive)
• provides an historic archive of great content (UGC can't be retrospective!).
• Offers an assurance of a certain quality standard
• er... I'm sure you can think of some others (please post them below)... that expert content is and which UGC isn't

Its addition to a cracking social-network application has to be a bonus, doesn't it?

I'll throw in a third and a fourth strand to this proposal:

• It must be optimised for mobile
• And it must have its commercial thinking rooted in engagement marketing.

Old style interruptive ads just won't work on the optimised mobile environment (and one in which, don't forget, people will be used to watching TV on within two years)...

So, if you can tick all those boxes (and check it against recently identified trends - particularly among Generation-C) you really ought to have something worth investing in.

Ericsson predicts mass global mobile TV by 2008

Interesting to see Ericsson predicting mobile TV will go mass-market global by 2008 (here for the full story).
Given that other sources were predicting a mobile TV audience of 25 million in Asia by 2008 recently, you'd have to think the Sony Eiricsson tie-up has even more up its sleeve.

Add this to predictions of primary access to the internet being mobile by 2008 and that thing you text and call with becomes ever more valuable.
Nokia referred to its latest handset as a 'computer' rather than a phone throughout the launch of 3's fixed-price 3G browsing deal.
Makes me wonder how long it'll be before Microsoft (and others) come up with a rival device.
Bottom line is that the convergent technology of the mobile has to make it your primary consideration in any digital launch. And it's no longer the future calling...

Two years until mobile internet is bigger than fixed line

I use this blog as a thoughtpad as much as anything else - and so - here's some thoughts about mobile internet pulled together from the many blogs and brilliant minds I access - so credit to you all (see recommended blogs and links):

By 2008 more people will access the internet by mobile than by PC* (Tomi T Ahonen).
By 2008: Mobile TV reaches 25m users in Asia Pacific (72m by 2010). (3g.co.uk)

Mobile on internet delivers things you can't get on PC:
i) a mobile phone-based internet is totally personalised. Our PC is often shared (family, work restrictions etc)
ii) The mobile phone is always on. Alerts can always be delivered at the moment they are needed.
iii) The mobile phone is always within hand's reach. No other technology is so close to us physically at all times.
iv) Mobile phone offers a built-in payment mechanism. On a fixed line internet we need to set up something like Paypal, or need to submit a credit card. On the mobile we can pay with a click.

v) Give the above it's inevitable that the internet big boys will optimise for mobile RATHER THAN pc.

For Content providers:

Users on the traditional PC-based internet expect content to be free, but mobile phone users expect mobile content to be paid-for.
Collecting money on the traditional fixed wireline internet is very cumbersome. Collecting money on the mobile internet is built-in.
The world's biggest internet company by revenues is not Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon or AOL. It is Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo's domestic mobile internet arm, i-Mode. i-Mode alone makes bigger profits than the five internet darlings combined.

Where will you put your best content? On the mobile internet of course.

Merge the above thoughts with the following trends I've identified re social-networking - and the idea that social networking is the killer app of mobile internet (ie 3G) and we seem to be building an increasingly compelling case for putting mobile internet at the heart of content provider strategy. See below (previously published)

• Users want to tag their world (3G, geolocation)
• People are making use of new social networking tools to re-establish a ‘we-species’ (as in communities everywhere, but with 3G geolocation these communities can be focused on where you are right now, with the fluidity to allow you to connect with new communities as you move through your world).
• Users want to remain permanently connected to their communities (through text messaging if not ‘online all the time’.)
• People are (naturally) creative and want to co-create their content if we give them the tools.
• People want their opinions to matter – and will rate things (including content others have created).
• People are increasingly used to using several channels, increasingly at once.
• They demand speed of response.
• They have an open-minded approach to change and to experimentation (creative hacking).
• Convergent technology is helping to drive much of the above.
• Crowd-sourcing draws on all these to create contributory communities willing to help develop products which can self-perfect. This can inform all digital development.