November 19, 2008
Future of Mobile
So, the start of this week was Future of Mobile, which brings together the pioneers of the mobile industry to talk about browsers, devices, standards, user-interface design and more. I was fortunate enough to go as one of my colleagues was speaking on a panel at the event. I was quite excited - I've been watching what the Carsonified crew have been doing since back when they were Carson Systems, and it seemed to me that FOWA, FOM, FOWD etc. may just be the gold standard of conferences, injecting a little bit of rock star and excitement into a world where conferences had become dull and boring.
I guess with expectations like that, it was going to be a tough challenge for FOM to live up to. And, for me, it was a somewhat hit and miss affair.
The good news is that FOM managed to attract some awesome speakers.
Rudy de Waele from mTrends talking about threats and opportunities of increasing openness in the mobile ecosystem had some great content though I think the slides (particularly the transitions) made the talk a bit difficult to follow. It also seemed a bit like two talks - one on the importance of openness for fostering ecosystems and innovation, and the other on what the future holds for mobile. But there were some good nuggets of information in there.
The panel session, led by Simon Rockman of SonyEricsson, was a lot of fun. Alongside my LiMo colleague were a bunch of other mobile movers and shakers. Tom Hume has an excellent write-up, but if I were to pick out some key quotes, it would be these:
David Wood, Symbian: "co-operation and collaboration rather than competition [...] too much competition [...] too many operating systems, too many variants [...] too long to realise phones and services", with which I totally agree. Also "open source only succeeds from strong stable mature basis", which I disagree with. The ASF has consistently proven that careful governance and meritocracy can be more important than code - indeed, a little bit of buggy code and a lot of great people most often leads to fantastic communities and powerful open source collaboration.
Rich Miner, Google: "it's important to build an open platform not controlled by one entity". I agree - but I am still waiting to see how the Android community governance model will shape up, above and beyond the invitation-only closed doors of the Open Handset Alliance (which, with Google as benevolent dictator, looks a lot like one entity to me from the outside). Also, "delight and deliver value to the user" - definitely! "Then deliver ads." Oh well...
James McCarthy, Microsoft: "intend to be one of the key players [...] no one dominant operating system". I guess Microsoft's brief in the mobile space is to depose Nokia - only then can they focus on being the dominant OS? Also, "18,000 apps but not brought to market in as simple a way as iPhone". This is quite significant - apps will become a key differentiator between the platforms, moving forward. If a neutral third party could offer an app store experience on a par with iPhone, but fully open, we'd see a runaway success. I think (hope) everyone in the industry now recognises that what you deliver to the phone on an ongoing basis is as important as what you deliver on the phone at the start.
After the panel, Doug Richard from Trutap did a great presentation on understanding development for emerging markets. Again, Tom has the scoop. Perhaps the key takeaway from this talk was that for many people the mobile will be the first and primary computing platform they use, rather than a mobile version of their desktop computer. It's something even I've been realising as I leave the laptops behind in favour of surviving the weekend on the iPhone. Indeed, TruTap looks like an interesting product - though when I tried to download it I was told my iPhone was not a mobile phone. A colleague had to fight with Vodafone's content rating system (which I grumbled about 3 years ago) before being allowed to view the TruTap site. These two data points quite nicely sum up the whole mobile experience...
I was somewhat disappointed by the 6x6 UK bloggers perspectives. It was great that they were there, but I'd have liked more of "wouldn't it be great if ..." rather than "mobiles are shit". Still - most of the bloggers spoke well and were at least entertaining. And yes, I promise to write a "wouldn't it be great if ..." post real soon now.
I think the Carsonified crew were let down by the venue. It was a nice enough place, but they were delayed in starting due to being let in late to set up, and this led to some annoying sound problems during many of the talks. There was no WiFi except BT Openzone, and no lunch provided. I don't mind them not providing lunch, but it would be smarter to provide people with pointers to local restaurants (not a problem for me, it's round the corner from where I live, but not nice for many other delegates). Also, sticky labels for name badges - no thanks. It's all about attention to detail.
Posted by savs at November 19, 2008 8:36 AM