Another year of Mobile World Congress has come and gone. We asked a few mobile industry execs to give us their thoughts on what the stand outs were.

Mobile Wallet and Automated Tickets

The outstanding application for me at Mobile World Congress this year is using the phone as a mobile wallet and automated ticket. The marketing implications have already proven to be enormous for this application as millions of people in Asia are already using this on a daily basis.

Major uses of this technology mean that with just three clicks on your mobile phone you can select the train ticket you prefer. The amount is then debited automatically from your mobile wallet and then the ‘ticket’ is sent to the handset automatically but not as a barcode ticket but as an invisible transmitted wave. The user then simply has to waive the handset near to a reader similar to the Oyster card. This system can be used for purchasing cinema tickets, concert tickets, vending machine products, car parking, purchasing goods from retail stores, airline tickets and also for gym or loyalty card membership.

The beauty of this being done through your mobile phone is that you can check the status of any of your accounts at any time through access via the mobile internet. The only sad thing is that while this has been an established business in Japan and Korea for a number of years, in my opinion, the UK network operators (with the exception of O2) are being remarkably slothful.

Craig Massey - head of mobile marketing
Glass
http://www.glasspartnership.co.uk

Signal-to-noise ratio

After another successful Mobile World Congress my main remark would have to be that there appeared to be a better ’signal-to-noise ratio.’ We also noticed a higher quality of attendees – those who were truly interested in the industry and the products and services accompanying it. This shows how the mobile world has matured from a business point of view.

There also wasn’t a great deal of innovation that actually stood out in my opinion. I didn’t spot any themes or revolutions in any of the usual areas (such as content, technological breakthroughs, handsets etc). It seems as if many are commoditising, even the iPhone is becoming mainstream on any device. I did notice higher interest in mobile advertising and one exception that attracted attention was the Modu launch and BD activity. It’s too early to say where this is heading though.

The trends we did pick up on focused on end users and what the industry predicts they want. This includes smart phones, navigation systems (GPS) and value added services. Tying into this is the ‘green’ movement, and how networks and products can and should be environmentally-friendly and conserve energy. This is something that will increasingly become important and a trend to watch, as pressure to conform rises.

Gadi Maoz, COO of EMEA, Comverse
www.comverse.com

PR Perspective

From a PR perspective there were just several stars in an otherwise ‘flat’ show. Firstly, Google’s Android managed to create some under current buzz. Rumours flew around the show floors of where it was being ‘let out’. From the manufacturers it was Sony Ericsson’s EXPERIA X1 which seemed to drive an excited media and a large amount of footfall to the SE booth……I wonder if any of the 100’s of reported robberies delivered an EXPERIA into the hands of a thief. The Zeemote JS1 mobile game controller generated some much needed positive news for the mobile games market and some good old PR cheese ensured that Modu Mobile raised some weary eyebrows

Andrew Durkin, MUSTARD PR
http://www.mustardpr.com

Mobile World Congress 2008 was a great success.

- A strong push by the industry towards LTE and next generation networks.
- Drive towards better Linux based mobile platforms with LIMO and OHA.
- Exciting new handset announcements from almost every manufacturer with greater use of touch screens and other user interfaces
- Integrated chipsets delivering functionality, speed and size improvements
- Massive increase in the number of applications being designed especially for mobile devices with strong focus on mapping and advertising

Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer, OMTP
http://www.omtp.org

Nokia’s N-Gage platform has taken its sweet time coming to market, and I think most were surprised to not see the platform officially released at the Game Developers Conference this week, where Nokia’s head of Multimedia Anssi Vanjoki gave a keynote speech. James Burland, at Nokia Creative, was able to spend a few minutes chatting with the Product Manager for N-Gage last week at the Mobile World Congress, and has put some thought into a few reasons why he believes that N-Gage could be like the current iTunes/iPhone gaming ‘platform.’

It’s yet to be seen if Nokia will have a way to manage N-Gage games on the PC, but I have to say that if they do, I could see that as a HUGE plus for the platform and getting users to purchase games through it. Personally, I think that N-Gage has some huge potential, assuming Nokia actually launches it sometime soon, and they don’t botch it somehow. Unfortunately, for Nokia, software has never really been a big strength.

I like, many, was watching closely to see what Pat Phelan of SMS Text News sponsor, MAXroam, made of Mobile World Congress. It was, I gather, his first event. I wondered what he thought of it. He’s a busy chap — a veritable tornado of energy and it’s always a challenge guessing what continent he’s traversing as he seems to change daily. I managed to pin him down for twenty seconds to answer these three questions:

1. Tell me three things that Mobile World Congress did brilliantly:

Pat says:

a. The event itself was amazing, the layout was simple and the flow was excellent.
b. Location, excellent, way better than Cannes.
c. Transport, Taxi queues were pretty manageable and transport to the venue was excellent.

2. Tell me three things that Mobile World Congress screwed up:

Pat says:

a. Queues for food, totally and utterly ridiculous.
b. The innovation zone, hidden away in hall 7
c. Queues for registration
d. WiFi

4. The most memorable point during the event was….

Pat says:

The MAXroam/QIK dinner

4. The hottest startup I came across during Mobile World Congress was….

Pay says:

Modu Mobile

Thanks for taking the time Pat.

If you were at MWC, knock me over your thoughts by email and I’ll get them up.

We last heard from Jote Bassi, VP Global Sales and Marketing for Anam Mobile, back when we did an overview of their money transfer service in June last year.

He was walking the halls at Mobile World Congress and sent me this summary:

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For me as a MWC attendee, it was better to travel in hope than to arrive in Barcelona!!

I was expecting announcements and products which are disruptive and offer a new perspective on mobile technology but instead had to settle for nicer looking phones, network-based software improvements, billing platforms, GPS and the entertainment on the CBOSS stand! Nothing new there.

However there were three things that I thought were worthy of extra note (as potential new propositions for mobile operators and suppliers): the convenience and importance of buying, selling and transferring money on your mobile phone – loads of interest and discussion on this with everyone we met; using mobiles to improve your health by monitoring your vital signs and encouraging you to exercise; mobile phones that are more touchy feely and enable users to express their mood via sounds and vibrations that accompany sent messages and calls – similar to gaming controllers!

So in a nutshell the things that I thought stood out from the show revolved around mobile applications which adapt to my lifestyle and are beyond making calls and sending messages ie transactions and money, my health and expressing my personality.

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Jote, thanks very much!

Eli Mahal, VP Marketing for Flash Networks has digested the MWC experience and sent me over this following summary — thanks Eli!

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Having walked up and down the aisles at this year’s show and having spoken to operators, vendors, the press and the analysts, what stood out the most is well, that nothing particularly stood out at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

It appears that the mobile community has given up its quest to develop the next killer application. I feel operators today are looking for a killer theme rather than a killer app. They are looking for a unique agenda that will improve their bottom line. This agenda is no longer about voice, messaging or sophisticated billing; the new agenda is the mobile internet and mobile broadband.

Mobile operators simply want to make more money from data. Some characterize themselves as the smart pipe, others as the bit pipe, whilst others still consider them selves as ‘media’ companies. But all operators sense that their killer theme is a smart and efficient network that can deliver fast and adaptive internet to mobile devices and laptops with wireless modems. If users do embrace the internet on the go, then a tangible increase in ARPU is on the cards for operators.

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Thanks Eli! You can read Eli’s previous diary entries here, here and here.

The elephant in the room: Have Google missed the mark with Android so far?

Now Mobile World Congress is over the flood of news is slowing enough to step back and assess what we’ve seen. S60 got a pretty consistent ‘C-’ grade for their Touch demo, but I’m a bit surprised no-one has taken Google to task for their poor Android showing… OK, we saw a few prototypes and even a demo running on some production hardware, but aside from some gripes about the interface the reviewers singularly failed to call Google out on the biggest issue… Android at the moment is looking like ‘just another mobile platform’.

This C|Net piece hints at the problem, asking if we really need 4 mobile platforms: Windows Mobile, Symbian, Mobile Linux (not sure I’d include that one yet) and now Android? But the question should be “What innovation are Google offering over the competition?” I’ve no doubt it will be a great open platform, making it easy for new hardware to come to market and encouraging a whole raft of applications, but that really should be a given… With the hind-site of watching Symbian’s development alone over the last few years it should be possible for a half-competent organisation to produce something more elegant and Google has the brains to do a cracking job. But I was hoping for so much more. Where’s the support in ‘the cloud’ that Google excels at that would make an Android phone more appealing than the alternatives?

Take a look here. It’s the ‘Google APIs and Services’ section of the Android site. What do you see? A Google Maps interface and (effectively) a Google Talk interface… and that’s it. Where’s the advertising, calendar, contacts, online storage or YouTube interfaces? Certainly all of those things will be available via the browser for the consumer, probably customised like the current iPhone ones, but that’s not new. Android could have really shaken things up by providing interfaces so that application developers could utilise these services right from the start.

I appreciate Android phones purely tied to Google services would lack appeal, but there’s no reason for any of this to be either mandatory or exclusive to them. Google just need to capitalise on what has already made them world-leaders in so many other areas. Still, here we are - Google are giving away $10 million for the best applications developed for Android and they seem determined to do this with one hand tied behind the development community’s collective backs for no apparent good reason…

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Android is dead, but someone needs to shift it up a gear.

Last month, I wrote about Paran Johar’s new appointment as Chief Marketing Officer at white label search and advertising provider, JumpTap.

They’re not hanging around, at JumpTap — this week, they announced a seven country integrated search and advertising deal with TeliaSonera (the leading network operator in the Nordics and Baltics). I asked Paran to send me a quick overview of his experience of this week’s Mobile World Congress:

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As the new CMO for JumpTap, I’ve well and truly received my initiation into the world of mobile marketing at Mobile World Congress this week. I’ve been to conferences, plenty of conferences, and I can tell you that Mobile World Congress is the ‘pinnacle’ of global mobile marketing - I haven’t seen this kind of energy and excitement since Ad Tech 1996.

The promise of what could be is enormous. At the perfect time when advertisers and agencies are begging for a new medium, mobile marketing represents the web wrapped up in a nice personal package that goes with consumers where ever they go. Mobile operators that are taking chances are reaping the rewards; the smart, bold and brave advertisers have been testing with the new medium and those who haven’t are beginning to realise that they had better get on it, and quick. In 2008, the top advertisers have eight -figure budgets allocated to mobile. That’s a lot of money, and a lot of money that could be wasted if not spent wisely. The mobile device is an incredibly personal medium and building relevancy is key. If mobile marketing is to be a success and make money for everyone in the value chain we need to provide consumers with a value exchange by serving the most relevant search results and the most targeted ads. Mobile operators, advertisers and publishers all need to work together to help consumers find what they want, where they want it and when they need it. The opportunities are endless for those that take them.

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Thanks Paran! Safe trip back to New York!

Closing out the Mobile World Congress, Ericsson has unveiled its Multimedia Communication Suite, which will be integrated into newer devices such as the W760. The suite is part of the address book and allows users to control the flow of information to friends, including presence with avatars, photos, and will even allow users to share applications.

According to Claes Odman, head of Multimedia Solutions at Ericsson, “We see from studies that the communication patterns are changing, messaging type of services is dominating and the demand for enriched communication is here. With our Multimedia Communication Suite we can take the consumer experience one step further, making it easier with intuitive interface and allow people to communicate in a richer way.”

Sounds good to me. Also encouraging is the fact that MCS is in line with the industry standard of Rich Communication Suite, which is a group of operators, infrastructure, and handset manufacturers which have joined up to make sure the future of mobile communications is interoperable between each other.

iMate just announced two hot devices at the Mobile World Congress, the 8502 and 9502 smartphones. One looks like a beefed up Sidekick and the other is the now-standard full QWERTY candybar form factor. Australia-based Telstra has announced an exclusive (for the continent) on both of these bad boys, and will also be the first on the planet to get these added to its lineup.

Not too shabby, Telstra, though the pricing (AUD$999 for the 8502 and AUD$1099 for the 9502) isn’t all that attractive. Hopefully that’s not with a contract or anything. Both handsets are rocking Windows Mobile 6 and tri-band HSDPA.

Eli Mahal, VP of Marketing for Flash Networks is back this morning with the latest installment from the Mobile World Congress floor:

Third day of the show and standing for hours on end is starting to take its toll on everyone’s feet!

So, talk about Mobile TV and its future has weaved into discussions once again and the debate about broadcast mobile TV vs. VoD on mobile rages on. With Plasma screens and surround sound technology being the norm, will someone actually sit down to watch an entire episode of 24 or Lost on their mobiles?

Broadcast-based mobile TV still has a number of stumbling blocks to overcome. Operators need to negotiate content rights, choose different broadcast technologies, purchase transmission spectrums and even subsidise new handsets, if they are to make the service affordable.

New handsets, which we have seen plenty of here at MWC, mean that Mobile TV services have more potential now than ever before - but the services need to fit today’s mobile lifestyle. People use their handsets on the go ’snacking’ on 5 minute sessions relying on it for news and entertainment or to read the latest blog posts…like SMS Text News!

Sites like YouTube make internet based video streaming a more viable business proposition than broadcast Mobile TV. These are still a few quality issues that need to be addressed. Firstly, handsets need easy web navigation coupled with advanced formatting of a web page - rather than simply cutting a site into strips to fit a small screen. Secondly, the video transmission must be smooth. Thirdly, operators need to safeguard vulnerable users like children when streaming video from websites.

There has been much talk about how in the same way that 2007 had been the year for social networking, 2008 could be the year of Mobile TV. Mobile World Congress 2009 will be the litmus test for that prophecy.

Eli Mahal

If you’ve not seen it, here’s the video on YouTube of Nokia’s S60 Touch UI, as demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress. Thus far, everyone I’ve read were appalled that it was so poorly demo’d. Personally, I’m more excited about S60 Touch now than I have been in the past. I’ve noticed four major complaints that I want to counter:

1. It was demo’d on a tablet, connected to a PC running an emulator. When you’re wanting to show off the UI of something, but don’t want to give any clues as to the hardware, how *ELSE* would you suggest demoing it?

2. It looks just like S60 does. Duh. It’s called ‘S60 Touch’, not “Entirely New Touch Interface”. As is stated in the video, one reason behind this is so that users can easily swap from a non-touch S60 device to a touch-enabled one and not have a learning curve. With over 6 years of history and millions of S60-based handsets on the market, and both Nokia and Symbian kicking butt, why on *earth* would you want to alienate your existing userbase? There’s just no sense there.

3. It doesn’t look like the iPhone. Again, duh. Nokia doesn’t want their products constantly compared to the iPhone, just the same as Jobs doesn’t want his iPhone constantly compared to the S60 handsets. Why not? Because they’re targeted towards entirely different market segments, with only slight overlap. The only thing that they have in common is that they both ‘do’ more media than most phones, and they’re both priced higher than most consumers want to pay for a phone, at least in the U.S.

4. ‘If this is how far along Nokia is, they’re in trouble.’ Personally, I don’t think Nokia/S60 sees touch as a necessity. Everything that I’ve heard points to Nokia/S60 looking at touch as just another input method, to be offered alongside hardware buttons as a convenience in some situations.

I think this is completely brilliant. MMCast, who specialise in delivering rich mobile content and targeted ads, have come up with a way to insert ads in the time between when a user clicks on mobile content, and the time which that content actually shows up. Also known as the ‘buffering’ time, this is the few seconds (depending on the speed of the network) in which a consumer is completely focused on their handset, waiting on something to happen. What better time to show an ad?

The next place they need to take this is to Cable Operators, to allow them to insert ads during the loading time of OnDemand video content.

I asked Patrick Smith of telecoms specialist agency, Sonus PR, to give a brief overview of how he felt Mobile World Congress was shaping up this year.

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What is the most interesting thing about the show this year is that there is nothing really interesting to see. Lots of people that I’ve met and spoken to have commented on this - no new announcements have really taken our breath away.

I think that this is partly a sign that the industry is much more mature than it was a few years ago. Not only has the event become more business like and slightly less exciting to visit now it is Barcelona (no longer in tents on the beach in Cannes), it seems that the technologies, devices and stories that are demonstrated, launched and announced are less exciting than they used to be. We used to see things that felt as if they were straight out of Star Trek, now we just see version 3.4 of whatever it may be.

Not that I think that the show is any less important than it was, but in the world of almost complete mobile penetration what we’re all trying to do is to improve on the current mobile experience, but not bring a new experience to people.

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Thanks Patrick!

(If you’ve got a view from the floor, email it to me).

Symbian took the liberty at the Mobile World Congress to let loose some numbers, and my, they’re staggering. Anyone who thinks Symbian is under intense competition from, well, anyone, check these stats out:

In 2007, 77.3 million handsets were shipped with the Symbian OS. Remember that both UIQ and S60 are based on Symbian. That means that every 3.3 seconds in 2007, a Symbian handset was shipped. Take a minute to soak that in. They shipped 53% MORE handsets in Q4 2007 than in Q4 2006, though the average royalty dipped slightly.

At the end of 2007, there were a total of 141 different Symbian handsets on the market, compared with 108 at the end of 2006. Symbian also increased its global market share by 2%, up to 7% of the market by the end of 2007.

Well done, Symbian. With Sony Ericsson’s new Symbian UIQ-based G-series and Nokia working on S60 Touch, there’s sure to be even more Symbian-based handsets shipping in 2008.

Yahoo really are pushing forward with their mobile efforts — it really is gratifying to see.

Let’s hear from Marco Boerries, Exec VP of Yahoo’s Connected Life:

“Last year we set out to reinvent mobile search with Yahoo! oneSearch, and today with 29 operator partnerships around the world covering more than 600 million subscribers, we believe we have certainly succeeded,” said Marco. “Now, we intend to reinvent mobile communications through Yahoo! oneConnect, a revolutionary new mobile communications service that will combine integrated mobile messaging with a socially-connected address book.”

The architecutre is open — plus it’s aiming to offer an entirely connected experience, whether your friends are on Yahoo, MSN or beyond. I think this ‘new level of convenience’ could be a real catalyst to converting hte normobs (”normal mobile users”) to use their handsets for more than just calling and texting. Provided, that is, they’re not being stiffed for unreasonable data rates.

Some of the key features of oneConnect include:

– Socially-connected address book - Provide users the capability to integrate activity from popular social networks, professional networks, and communities into their address book, keeping it always in sync. Consumers will be able to view status updates, photo uploads, and the recent activity (”pulse”) of contacts across all their networks.

Interesting, interesting. This could be rather smart, particularly given Yahoo’s ownership of the likes of Flickr.

– Integrated mobile messaging - Offer seamless integration of IM and SMS, including threaded conversations. Any messaging service will be able to use Yahoo! oneConnect’s open APIs to plug into the application’s messaging feature - enabling consumers to access a wide range of popular services, such as Yahoo! Messenger, Google(R) Talk, AOL(R) Instant Messenger and MSN(TM) Messenger.

I wonder how the application will function. I’ll definitely check this one out.

– Status - Give consumers the capability to view their contacts by their most recent status updates on popular social networks, as well as update their own status on their favorite social networks - in one easy step - and automatically broadcast it to their friends.

If they pull together Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, it could be rather compelling.

– Pulse - Provide consumers the functionality to see a dynamic overview of what friends are up to, including recent photos, their status, profile updates, and recommendations based on their most recent actions on popular social networks.

– Favorites - Keep the people consumers interact with most at their fingertips. Users will be able to set up messaging shortcuts to make reaching out as quick as possible.

– Social contact card - Allow users to aggregate the most relevant information on any given contact, including archives of past communications, detailed pulse history, and one-click ways to initiate communication.

I like Yahoo’s strategy of aiming to be the spoke in the middle of the myriad of services out there.

– Innovative location-sensing technology - Provide new ways to locate, chat with, and exchange contact information with nearby Yahoo! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify consumers when a contact enters their vicinity.

Proximity alerts? Coooooool! Can’t wait to see that working…

– An open communications platform - Give users the functionality to communicate via multiple communications tools - such as IM, SMS, and social networks. Widgets will provide users the capability to access their email across major email providers, such as Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail(R), Gmail(R), and AOL(R) Mail. Additionally, Yahoo! is in discussions with DataViz(R), a company that allows mobile users to access their corporate Microsoft Exchange(TM) email accounts and Microsoft Office(TM), documents, to work together on widget versions of its industry-acclaimed RoadSynch(R) and Documents To Go(R) applications.

Interesting, interesting. We just did a group test between Dataviz’s RoadSync and Nokia’s Exchange service. I know contributor Ben Smith is a huge fan of RoadSync so this news could be good.

It really does look like Yahoo have sat down and worked out a key selection of features that will appeal to the mobile majority. Let’s see how it actually functions, then… we’ll hopefully have more news from them soon.

Five million users are enjoying Orb Networks services. Nice! I suspect quite a few of those will be 3UK X-Series users (Orb is one of the X-Series services).

An overview in case you haven’t caught them recently:

Orb lets users stream — or share with their friends — music, videos, webcams, and any web content, from their PC to other internet-connected devices. Usage patterns indicate that many Orbers use the media center application and service to enjoy their TV, movies and other videos stored on their PCs or on the internet, using game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, Sony PLAYSTATION 3, and Microsoft Xbox 360.

Another popular use of Orb is to stream music from a home music collection (including purchased downloads from Rhapsody, Napster, Amazon MP3, and eMusic) to a mobile phone. With Orb, there is no need for sync-ing or worry about storage constraints on the phone. Orb works with many of today’s popular handsets including models from Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, LG and many more.

Joe Costello, Orb Chief Executive is, understandably, bullish:

“The public has spoken — content is King. And people want to enjoy their digital content — including locally stored music, photos, and videos, as well as webcams and content from the internet — on ANY device, not just the PC where they have traditionally viewed it,” said Joe. “No one wants to be tethered to their computer in order to enjoy their media. They want all that media, available to them on any screen, at any time.”

Here, here!

We’ll need to add Orb to our Application of the Week group test. Check it out — it’s a free download.

Just got Eli’s second diary entry from Mobile World Congress.

Second day of the show and Hall 7 is starting to fill up and it is not just for the free ice cream! Some of the talk today has been around the untapped potential for mobile broadband. This could be the year where we see mobile operators stand up and take real notice of this lucrative opportunity.

To tap this opportunity and kick start a mobile ISP revolution, operators will need to marry HSDPA + flat fee + acceleration to homogenize quality with value for money.

The good news is that mobile broadband is on the verge of matching the speeds you get on the traditional ADSL internet - but consumers are not going to ditch their fixed internet service provider just yet.

Going by today’s show, however, a mobile ISP revolution is brewing and real change seems to be just around the corner.

Thanks Eli!

Eli Mahal is VP of Marketing for Flash Networks.

mBlox, the world’s largest mobile transaction network, has launched a global WAP billing platform. It’s launching first in the UK where it’s Payforit accredited — meaning it’ll work cross-operator. This is rather smart.

The mBlox WAP Billing platform, powered by Valista’s carrier-grade billing system ValistaPlusTM Payments, is a robust and flexible architecture designed to support the global roll-out of mBlox’s WAP Billing service. With a uniform global interface, content and service providers can quickly and simply scale their services as mBlox rolls out WAP services in other territories.

The mBlox Payforit UK deployment will bring enhanced billing benefits to content and service providers including MSISDN Aliasing for identifying and tracking repeat visitors and cross-carrier Adult Verification for reliable consumer protection.

If you’d like more information, hit up www.mblox.com.

By 2011, Carriers will more than double their revenues from off portal entertainment, with total revenues growing to $8 billion by 2011 compared to $3 billion in 2007, due in large part to value added/enabling services to off-portal publishers. So reports a recent study by Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, in collaboration with mBlox.

The research found that new revenue will principally come from three newly emerging areas: WAP billing, sender pays data and handset/subscriber data. These services will help off-portal content and service providers to meet growing consumer demand for rich mobile entertainment on the mobile internet. The research findings highlight the growing value of the off-portal community to mobile carriers. Furthermore, this provides carriers with new ways to monetize their assets while creating additional value in the off-portal markets.

In 2007 alone, mBlox delivered over two billion application-to-person transactions — showing a rather wicked global appetite for mobile messaging-based services. (It wasn’t a bad year for mBlox either — they added nearly a customer per day last year).

Mark Street over at the Vodafone blog has posted up a new video featuring Jens Schulte-Bockum, Vodafone’s Global Director of ‘Terminals’ (or, ‘handsets’, as we say on SMS Text News), waxing lyrical about the company’s announcement of new handset initiatives. Key points being the introduction of Vodafone OEM handsets (one in six, I think Jens said, of all Vodafone handsets retailed are their own-brand devices) together with perspective on greater alignment between handset manufacturers (e.g. RIM).

I’m very much enjoying seeing Vodafone people talking — and, shock horror, displaying a degree of passion for their company and their activities — on this blog. There’s no media outlet in between cutting and editing away at what they think are the best bits. So when the chap, the interviewer (I’m afraid I still don’t know his name) asks if Jens reckons the Vodafone own-brand handsets are stylish, you can see Jens’

It’s particularly exciting seeing such a huge company experiment with the medium. I’m trying to think of another example of a comparable company doing this kind of thing. SMS Text News reader Ant reckoned I was a bit harsh on my comments about 3 dumping their X-Series blog (read his comment), especially when I described Vodafone as ‘leading the way’. 3 did, as Ant points out, ‘get the blog ball rolling’ only to dump it when they couldn’t be bothered to resource it. I’m very impressed that a behemoth like Vodafone is dipping a toe in the water. It’ll be fascinating to see how they manage and measure ROI and whether they consider introducing a continual blog.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying watching and reading.

The mobile music marketplace is seriously hotting up. Apple, clearly now just after bit-player status, have surrendered the mobile music territory to the mass device manufacturers. Omniphone’s way to domination is now clear.

Today Omniphone announced that they’ve launched their MusicStation Max unlimited mobile music handset programme. The key difference with ‘Max’ is that handsets are pre-licensed. That is, if you buy a handset, it’s already got 18-month’s worth of MusicStation license paid up front.

The first partner is LG. Their MusicStation Max handsets are due out in the first half of this year — so, when you buy a MusicStation Max handset, you automatically get MusicStation (irrespective of what your operator thinks about this) and you just need a decent data plan to work with it. No 2 pounds per week fees (like you pay with Vodafone’s offering).

MusicStation is obviously pre-installed on the handset and, I imagine, it’ll be integrated directly with the handset features.

But wait, there’s more! More Apple-killer news. MusicStation Max ALSO includes a full PC companion product that gives users an automatically synchronised experience across desktop and handset. Changes in tracks, artists, albums, playlists, friends and recommendations are automatically synchronised, without the need for wires or human intervention. FINALLY a service to rival the ease of use of Apple, iTunes (and iPhone).

A full back-up of your MusicStation Max ‘account’ is stored in real time on the data network, obviously — just in case you lose your handset. Fascinating.

I can’t wait to check out the service. This is a huge step forward for mobile music.

Yeah, sorry. I just can’t take any more.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to be reading Twitter and Jaiku messages from people brandishing top-of-the-line handsets as they walk around Mobile World Congress.

Whilst the content is fine, the experience is utterly shit.

Let’s be clear: It’s crap. Utterly, utterly rubbish.

Take, for example, Mr Whatley, dedicated mobile genius. He’s at Mobile World Congress with Spinvox busy networking and documenting the goings-on.

I’ve been reading his Jaiku feed. I replied to a post. Before long, there was a little conversation going between me, James and a few others. Conversation turned to weather.

I don’t want to read about it.

I want to SEE it.

I don’t want to go and see a QIK video either. I want it there, in my hand and on my browser. Integrated and working right-away. I don’t want a tinyURL to it. I don’t want Jaiku posting one shitty small picture per day from my Flickr feed either.

Text is over. It’s old. So old. Multimedia, please.

EVERYONE on my Twitter/Jaiku/Whatsit list has a top quality mobile handset with at least 3 megapixels on the camera. Yet these mediums — Twitter and Jaiku in particular, are nothing short of appalling when it comes to anything other than text.

Case in point: Mr Whatley posted a comment on Jaiku saying “I’ll have my flickr photos uploaded later tonight.”

At that point I thought ‘that’s it, I’ve had it waiting for Twitter and Jaiku to innovate’.

The fact that one of the most mobilised chaps on the planet is actually ‘GOING HOME’ (or to the hotel) to upload his Flickr photos highlights just how shit and how broken Twitter & Jaiku really are. There are, I suspect, a wealth of photos on his N95 that have been sitting there for almost 10 hours. When he uploads them, I will definitely have a look. But it’s hardly the same. It’s dull compared to real-time multimedia.

I want to see the pictures and video in-line as he posts his commentary. I ALSO want audio. Real time streamed audio.

The experience with the existing Twitterku is suffering heavily. I think we’ve done text. Now, photos and video please. I’m disappointed that I’m having to even write this text. What the hell are Jaiku and Twitter doing? You can’t just vomit out a platform and let it sit there. Text was great, it’s done now. What’s next? Photos, audio and video. It’s quite fascinating seeing the users of these platforms evolving their requirements — like watching a growing kid trying to fit into last year’s school jumper.

The old model of knocking up a service, launching it and adding slight updates doesn’t work. Not in this fast moving environment — and not when the users themselves are having to resort to publishing stupid notes like ‘I’m using QIK please have a look’ or commenting ‘This is a funny picture [click to view the 1.2mb picture on Flickr’ (an experience no one should be subjected to on a small Nokia browser).

Palringo does audio, text and pictures right now. Published in-line as you experience it. Yes, the Palringo interface isn’t quite, er, usable for the majority yet. But when they update the UI, and provided they do a good job of it, could everyone please PLEASE PLEASE stop using Twitter and Jaiku and use Palringo?

I hope Charlie finds his lost T610. Soon, I hope, with more and more handsets being fitted with GPS (that works indoors), we will, as a species, evolve from the age of the lost handset!

Link: Gadget Labber Loses Cellphone At Worlds Biggest Cellphone Event | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

It is also where I lost my phone. Somewhere in the mountain of crap is a little Sony Ericsson T610, curled up in a ball and rocking itself gently, hoping for me to find it. And when the halls close for the night, it’ll probably be set upon by the creepy bear-monkeys from the LG Viewty booth.

News in from Bluestreak Technology, the developer of the MachBlueâ„¢ platform for mobile phones and digital television. They’ve announced the latest addition to their MachBlue Mobile suite - a series of rich-media applications that can be integrated directly with Flash authoring tools to create dynamic user interfaces and content for mobile phones.

Essentially, if you’re looking to develop a mobile television application (or, perhaps, a converged mobile/television style service), Bluestreak’s MachBlue Mobile service will make creating media rich applications a piece of simplicity. There’s platform support galore — S60, UIQ, Windows Mobile, Linux, Brew and J2ME. So make an application with MachBlue and it’ll work on almost every handset out there. I’m going to try and find out a bit more about Bluestreak and how they’re applying their technology for the end-consumer.

I’ve asked quite a few people to take a bit of time out and send me their thoughts on a key theme (or series of themes) relating to Mobile World Congress.

Here’s the first diary entry — from Eli Mahal of Flash Networks:

I was delighted to see that the GSMA announced an initiative for mobile phone operators, to block access to child pornography websites - this coming on the very first day of the show. As a mobile industry executive and as a parent, I applaud the GSMA for tackling this issue head-on.

An increasing number of youngsters have the latest handsets and can easily browse the open Internet faster and unsupervised. Most parents, quite rightly, are concerned that new services like User Generated Content leave children open to indecent material and sexual solicitation.

To prevent undesired content from reaching children or for that matter a company’s workforce during office hours, mobile operators need to implement effective content control solutions. US mobile operators are already turning to personalized content control to fit different user segments - it is time for Europe to follow suit.

At the end of the day, protecting users from offensive material not only creates parental peace of mind, it also enables the operator to be perceived as socially responsible. In today’s litigious society, operators can ill afford a high profile lawsuit.

- Eli Mahal is the Vice President of Marketing at Flash Networks and joined the company in 2006 from Comverse

- Flash Networks is a leading provider of quality-of-experience (QoE) solutions that unleash the mobile Internet by empowering a fast, adaptive, safe and personalized user experience.

(If you’ve got an opinion or some observations from the floor of Mobile World Congress, email me over a diary entry like Eli’s and we’ll get it up).