With the market saying 'no' to Nokia's Ovi Store, what do you think can be done to change this?I sat down last night to edit the 6 hours worth of footage that I took at CTIA, together with Ben’s stuff from Beijing and James’ stuff from Helsinki. There’s a lot. A LOT. I recognised that I wouldn’t be able to finish the edit in one fell swoop.
So I took a break. The net result, standby for our piece-of-brilliance later this evening.
The video coverage that I took this week at CTIA 2008 is safely digitised and ready to rock.
I’ll be editing it into easily digestible chunks so do keep your eyes peeled.
First up? A brief visit to the Buzzd/Skyfire party and a coverage preview. Soon!
Thank you for your continued patience. Updates are sketchy. Alas, I’ve squeezed meeting after meeting into my days here and whilst that’s super in terms of acquiring good, interesting content, it leaves little time for actually getting stuff up online here.
But we’ve got a veritable riot of stuff for you coming. Here’s a taster:
* Comverse, Comverse, Comverse — yes, three different chaps, three different subjects.
* Wade Vasey, top chap of Movial
* A look at Swype, the new on-screen keyboard interface from the makers of T9
* Exclusive video footage of an upcoming Star Wars game from THQ Wireless (it runs beautifully on iPhone)
* Sean Moshir, CEO of CellTrust talks about securing SMS
* A super overview of Nuance
* Overview of Tier-2 US operator, Cricket Wireless
* Stan of Movius gives us a summary of their services
* I interview a lot of people over at the Smaato party.
* Finally, I head over to the Skyfire/Buzzd party. Tons to see from that.
I’ve been choc-a-bloc with meetings all throughout CTIA but every now and then, an interview has been finishing early.
It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, I’ve been indulging in a spot of holsterwatching. That is, observing the mobile use of the industry itself.
It’s terminally depressing on one hand — and on the other hand, excellent news.
For example, there are Blackberries *everywhere*. Every second handset is a Blackberry. This generally bodes well, but I’m still seeing rubbish handsets being brandished by folk who really should know better.
Take, for instance, the countless executives walking around with Motorola RAZR handsets stuck to their heads. It really shouldn’t be allowed. Unless you work for Motorola — in which case, our group-wide sympathies are with you.
CTIA should be a place of mobile brilliance — a celebration of all things mobile. Push the mobile boundaries. And all that jazz.
There’s absolutely no excuse to be walking about with a Motorola RAZR first edition handset nowadays. No excuse. Wear it on a holster and you really deserve a good slapping.
I’m not keeping it to myself though. Oh no.
I’ve deployed the video camera. I am aiming to bring you a series of examples — live video examples — of ridiculous folk sporting ridiculous handsets. These are people who are formulating wireless policy. I’ve pointed the camera at anything that caught my attention. I haven’t quite managed to get the guy walking about with THREE mobile holsters on his belt yet. Every time I see him, it would look rather conspicuous of I started fumbling for the record switch.
Bluetooth-sodding-headsets are also captured in their full glory. Particularly the chap who was sat having a drink with his friends in the ‘W’ Hotel — The W of all places — wearing his rubbish Jawbone.
Bluetooth headsets are for chauffeurs, Fedex chaps and plumbers. Everyone else? No.
I’ve got some good video footage — about 70 gig’s worth. Luckily I brought along my 1TB drive. My brand of choice? Western Digital. Although I’ve also got an Iomega 1TB back in London. You need that when you’re doing video.
Today was action-packed with meeting-after-meeting along with some impromptu connections with folk.
My modus-operandi, dear reader, is this. I turn up. I smile. I thrust forward my hand to the chap or lady I’m interviewing. I then present them with my somewhat oversized mega-memorable business card — it’s the size of a postcard and contains lots of information about Mobile Industry Review.
Then I check that they’re ok with me filming them. I expected quite a few people to be put off by me sticking a camera in their face, but no. Not once.
I’m looking forward to producing the output. It should make for interesting stuff.
So, to this morning.
Enter Pierre-Emmanuel Struyven, Chief Executive of Streamezzo. They’ve created a common platform (”Rich Media Software Suite”) that makes the developing of good looking, swish media services for mobile. I’ve got some good video of some examples from Pierre-Emanuel.
Next up was Alykhan (”Aly”) Govani of MX Telecom USA. Aly was recently appointed top dog in North America and as such, he was mobbed. Mobbed. We had a 1130am meeting but he was being pulled in five ways at once by a load of folk from all sorts of big companies when I arrived. Understandable. MX have alway been a hot property in the mobile space (they’re a leading provider of mobile aggregator services) — however they’ve clearly decided to up their public game. For years they’ve been terrifically well known amongst the closed circles of men sporting beards of questionnable origin (”Telecommunications Executives”) along with first edition Decon Blue LPs. You know. Uber telecoms geeks. It’s always annoyed me slightly that the wider market hasn’t necessarily known much about MX’s capabilities other than being the people who ‘make-the-text-system-work’.
There’s be a change of focus recently. They’ve pulled their finger out. I suspect it’s the top dudes (everyone in San Francisco seems to call each other ‘dude’) finally relenting on the marketing front. About time!
The net result? MX have a stand right next to Microsoft on the ground floor right by the entrance to the exhibition. So after you dodge the Microsoft groupies trying to persuade you that they CAN write a reliable operating system without having to have 7 goes (Version 7 just might work) - you’ll immediately hit the MX stand. Which is what a lot of folk are doing.
So I arranged to meet with Aly on Friday when it’ll be less busy.
I rocked up to Colibria in good spirits, eager to hear more about what they’re up to with Syniverse. Syniverse provides seamless mobile services for carriers — the concept being that most carriers operate with a heck of a lot of different (and usually incompatible, or annoyingly compatible) technologies and standards. As a consumer, I don’t give a toss. I just want my instant messenger to work, whether I’m in France, Belgium or Boise. Syniverse sort that out.
And speaking of Instant Messaging, Colibria are all over that. Multiple device messaging, multi-point, multi-everything. As Colibria CEO Keith Gibson explained, “The end-user doesn’t care whether the recipient of their message is online at home via MSN, on the bus or the like — they just want the message to get through.”
Colibria’s services, as well as offering the usual instant messaging facilities to mobile users, intelligently routes communications between your platforms as needed. So whilst you might be using IM to talk to someone, your messages could actually be being transmitted to the recipient as text messages — yet you’re able to chat away with your IM client. I haven’t seen this live yet but I’m looking forward to doing so.
I now need to sleep — but I’ve got conversations with the following in-the-can:
Naushad Huda, Textopoly co-founder
Robert Chavez, CEO of DIDMO
Thomas Garland, President, Snaptell
Mike Concannon, SVP Connectivity & Wireless, Qualcomm
Eric Lamarechai, Mobile Distillery
Orang Dialameh, Founder & CEO of iVisit
Paul Savage, Visibility Mobile CEO
Brian Lent, Chairman & CEO of Medio
Dinesh Saparamadu, CEO of hSenid
Nitin Bhandari, CEO of Skyfire
Plus our first look at the all new Blackberry Flip. Ooooh.
I was wondering whether I would have to pay 600 dollars for a ticket for my assistant to get her in to the event to help me. You know how some conference organisers are highly anal about these things?
It was with some trepidation that I approached the event PR team and asked.
Cheryl Delgreco and Karen Blondell, sitting by the media center sorted me out wih an extra badge. Excellent service. I’m going to need the help.
Now then, time for the Nokia event…
For the avoidance of doubt, I’m now at the CTIA Wireless conference.
Today is an OK day… but it’s gonna be a shocker tomorrow. Back to back meetings every sodding hour. But, you know, that’s why I’m here. I’m just aiming to stay as organised as possible.
I shall be walking the show floor if time permits, camera and video camera in hand. Like an overzealous Japanese tourist. Although I won’t be wearing my rucksack on my front.
I came across this rather neat CTIA local hot-spot guide from Moderati this afternoon. It lists some of the best ‘hidden gems’ in San Francisco. If you’re heading to CTIA this week, it might be of use.
Or if you’re hoping to visit SF shortly, it’s worth saving the URL.
Check it out here. It’s laid out in a flash-based book style format.
Updates from Mobile Industry Review are going to be intermittent over the next few days whilst I meet, film, edit and write-it-up.
Standby.
I’m looking forward to CTIA. MIR will be coming atcha from there with a series of MIR Show special reports next week.
I’m scheduled to meet a whos-who of mobile there. If you’d like to meet so I can feature you, knock me over a note.
