Mobile 2.0 Paris March 10th

From an overall perspective today was very intense and the speakers were interesting and some of the panelists were extremely sharp and pinpointing the right issues (Jerome Bouteiller, Frederic Dumeny). One of the major challenge I found is to take out from our minds that Mobile users are not always PC users and that services need to be conceived only for a mobile usage! I think that in some cases comparison with the web makes no sense… Take the e-commerce, it’s been years users are downloading ringtones with premium SMS, or are using paid adult services and this is truly a mobile service.

I am going to give some remarks on the different panel I attended:

1. Widgets Panel

Duality between Applications (connected apps reachable in 1 click and widgets in container what webwag or goojet is doing reachable in more than 2 clicks) and Widgets Containers. What I understood at the end, by discussing with WebWag is Widgets in a container is targetting Joe “The Plumber” and Maggie “the Hockey Mum” i.e low-end mobile phone users.

Container of usual services (weather, news, mails, social networks, local information, traffic) target low-end phones and provide a very easy and intuitive way of consuming information. How do they make money by providing White Label widgets to companies, Revenue Sharing on advertising, or Value added services.

I, now, understand why VCs are so attracted by these companies.

2. Mobile Advertising Panel

Nothing really new. There is a strong shift towards the mobile internet from the brands. Applications are a hot topic.

Nevertheless the environment is still very complex, no tracking system (though marvellous, nokia interactive, microsoft, sofialys, phonevalley are implementing solutions). Cellfish summed up very well: bottom line what still work pretty well today is Push SMS.

All the panelists saw a strong demand in Geolocalization.

3. Mobile Social Network

I was very disappointed by this Panel, as the panelists did not speak too much of Social Network…Gemalto released their new Multimedia SIM Card, project name UPteq.

I am suprized by Orange, they are very proactive in different mobile services areas with my Social Place, Jingo and of course Studio 34 their content arm.

4. 2 Platforms, 2 Strategies: Iphone vs Android

The best Panel by far.

Visuamobile created 18 apps, have more than 1 Million download, 14 persons, 9 developers, 11 servers and 200 mb of bandwidth.

There is a problem of Search Engine Optimization on the app store – not a new topic but so true… Visuamobile manged to drive traffic through PR with bloggers, newspapers online and offline…

I discussed also with Mr Silberzahn from Digital Airways. It was a pleasure talking to him, as I guessed this company is healthy, well managed and have good on-going projects. For him Android is the way to go, it is a fact most of their new projects are on Android. DA specializes on developing UI on any devices, Mobile, Netbooks, Set Top Boxes and PND. Historicly their competitors are Purple Labs vs Streamezzo or Bluestreak (client lead solution)

5. mCommerce

Same comment as for the Mobile Social Network…it was very bad we did not talk about true transaction based model implemented in Europe whether in NFC or through Mobile Operators. I am thinking of Austria, Germany….or even the best example which is M-Pesa in Kenya where fishermen sold their fish before coming back to the harbour…