Posts Tagged ‘CTIA’

CTIA Day 2

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

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.

CTIA: Sybase 365 announces International MMS delivery hub

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Sybase 365, the subsidiary of Sybase, Inc, the global leader in mobile messaging services today announced its global multimedia messaging exchange system at CTIA in California, USA. Christened MMX 365, the system is designed to nullify operator and country borders so that globally, subscribers can enjoy seamless delivery of MMSs. 

Marty Beard, Sybase 365’s President, says:

Today, businesses operate as part of a global economy—so providing our customers with seamless mobile services regardless of geographic location is paramount.

Sybase 365 is the global leader in SMS and with the launch of MMX 365, the company expands its North American leadership in MMS into the global MMS ecosystem.

Key features and benefits of MMX 365 include:

  • One point of access to deliver to multiple destinations. MMX 365 ensures multi-media messages reach the desired recipient, regardless of which operator is sending or receiving the message or whether a message originated or is received domestically or internationally.
  • Flexible connectivity options. Operators can choose to connect to MMX 365 via a secure IP connection or via GRX.
  • A future-proof number resolution infrastructure. Sybase 365 operates one of the most comprehensive phone number resolution databases deployed today, meaning operators can rest assured that all information is up-to-the-minute accurate.
  • Several value-added capabilities, including automatic scanning of all in-bound MMS messages for known mobile viruses.

 

We’re hooked onto more news coming in from Ewan present at CTIA.

Day One… CTIA

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

I’ve just got back from an array of parties and I shall shortly begin to piece the content and coverage together into a viewable and publishable form.

Our team is going international tomorrow. That is: Ben Smith flies out to Beijing and James Whatley heads off to the ‘mothership’ (as he calls it — Nokia Central in Helsinki).

Why Nokia decided to hold their get-together during the same week as CTIA, I don’t know. I’d have loved to have gone along and put some viewpoints to the team there.

I had an interesting time at the Nokia event this evening. There was a good turn out and their North American Chief Executive did his best to paint a positive picture of the marketplace in the region. (“We’re launching a phone with Verizon shortly,” “Rogers will take our Ovi services”). Nokia is nowhere in the States and that’s it. Period. Thanks for coming. I filmed his piece so I’ll put it up soon. Make up your own mind from his body language.

At ShowStoppers I bumped into old friends DeviceAnywhere and got some good overview video footage from them. I connected with Cascada’s top chap and was rather impressed to see they’d already created a demo Mobile Industry Review application for us here. I’ve got footage galore.

Then i packed away the camera and headed to the VSC Consulting ‘Ocean’s 30′ meal on the waterfront at Embarcadero. This featured (tellingly, from the event name) 30 of the most influential, talented mobile geniuses on the planet, in one room. A chap from Reliance. A chap from RIM. A chap from Buzzd. A chap from a leading venture capitalist.

Vijay spotted me as I arrived and plugged me into a chap sat opposite me, “This is Omar Hamoui… Omar, meet Ewan,” said Vijay.

“Hi Omar, what is it you do?” I asked politely and … yes, rather stupidly.

“I’m with AdMob,” he says. My eyes light up.

“Big fan, BIG BIG fan,” I tell him.

“What do you do with AdMob, Omar?” Was my follow-up dumb question.

To his credit, Omar took my question with super grace and explained that he was the founder.

Right.

Nice one, Ewan.

I.. er.. I knew this. I just didn’t connect Omar to AdMob *in person*.

I did present him with a really cool Mobile Industry Review flyer though. They’re going down a storm. They’re postcard sized and feature a rather large can’t-miss-it MIR logo on one side and then some site information on the back. There’s also a screengrab from the MIR television Show featuring our very own Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley. I heard lots of tales about Whatley actually. None of them publishable.

I bumped into Raj from Skyfire who — like many — follows the Mr Operator series here on MIR. He was particularly taken with Mr Operator’s recent discourse and total annihilation of WiMax as a going concern. (I note Intel and other WiMax proponents have yet to supply a response to that piece).

Alex Andronikov (his business card says ‘Chief Mobilizer, CEO’) of MoVoxx took me through his rather extensive SMS marketing business. He’s done it the right way.

“We went straight to Madison Avenue,” he tells me, “That’s where the money is.”

Nice one. They’re delivering brilliant results, using text as the point of contact for their clients. They’ve developed an astonishingly large opted-in profiled base of North American consumers.

I sat down for a moment next to Brad Witteman, COO and Co-Founder of SkyClix. They’ve come up with a rather cool method of querying information via audio. As their site puts it:

SkyClix lets consumers get the information they want, when they want it. Using the ubiquitous mobile phone, consumers can dial #SKY (#759), hold the phone near a speaker and get connected with advertisers, stations and music.

Listening to a track you like on the radio? Dial 759 and you’ll get pushed to a mobile web page with an array of information and options including the ability to bookmark the song in iTunes for later perusal. Love it.

Amit Khanduja is the Executive Vice President of Jump Games. One word for you: Reliance. Yes, Reliance, the massive Indian powerhouse, are the folks behind Jump. Amit’s on the hunt for relevant companies to acquire and do business with. I’m going to see if I can do a profile of Amit himself and find out a lot more about what Jump are doing.

Moderati licenses, produces and distributes awesome mobile content. We’re responsible for the good stuff on your phone!” — So says their site and I don’t doubt it. I had an all too brief chat with Cindy Lundin Mesaros, SVP Marketing at Moderati. I’ll need to see if we can get Cindy on a special report podcast or the like soon. They’re doing some excellent work in mobile content.

If I can get back to the hotel room early tomorrow night, I’ll get some video up…

The CTIA PR team are really smart

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

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…

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

Right then.. that’s me at CTIA

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

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.

CTIA San Francisco beckons

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

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.

Mobile Industry Review Show – special report from CTIA

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

We’ll be producing a special report Mobile Industry Review (“MIR”) show from CTIA.  I’m hoping to include Sybase, Sierra Wireless, Nuance, Zumobi and Cell Trust so far.  There’s a lot more on the schedule.

If you’re heading to CTIA and you’d like to feature, drop me a note and we’ll sort schedules.

To qualify, you have to have something interesting to say and show the MIR audience.  Special priority goes to the smaller startups.

If you’re PR or marketing for a company heading there, we’re PR friendly so get in touch as soon as you can.

CTIA September – Got my first email

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

I’ve had my first email about CTIA in September. From MX Telecom, no less, asking if I’m up for an interview / briefing.

That I am. With nobs on. And with a large HD camera in tow.

We’re going to be doing a lot of wicked coverage from San Francisco this coming September.

Are you coming?


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