Pankaj asks what do you think has had the most impact on the mobile industry. He runs through a list of points including the rise of the app store, the introduction of mobile web browsing, convergence of social media and so on.

These are all highly valid. Pankaj finishes his post, challenging readers to give their opinion. Well here’s mine.

In more recent times there’s no doubt that the ‘app economy’ has been significantly influential, however back-in-the-day, it was BlackBerry that had the most impact for me. Even today, I still feel it.

To properly understand the impact, it’s important to try and form a view of how things were in the mobile industry at this point. EDGE was a glint in the milkman’s eye. GPRS was more or less available across most of the United Kingdom but it was also highly temperamental.

I craved mobile email. My business — as a former ‘dotcom’ chap — was heavily geared around email. So I was forever having to dash across London to check my email after meetings.

For the longest time, I actually used the EasyEverything Cafes dotted around central London to check email when I was on the move.

I used ultra-new services like GoToMyPc to login remotely to my inbox. I sometimes used web-based services to retrieve the email from my proper POP3/IMAP accounts.

It was a flipping arse.

A TOTAL arse.

Nowadays it’s very easy to complain about ‘being chained to the BlackBerry’ but back then, goodness me, mobile email was simply impossible.

Handsets couldn’t handle anything but the most basic web browsing. Well, WAP, really. If you had a lot of patience and a £500 handset, you could sort-of check your email with your T68i.

It was difficult.

One of the most effective things I used to do was carry my Compaq iPaq along with my Ericsson. I used to then have to place them next to each other so that the infrared ports lined up. And I would then try and get the iPaq to use my infrared-enabled 9.6k GPRS connection to check email.

Believe it or not, it did work.

You had to patient. It would take maybe 5-10 minutes for the IMAP/POP server to work through the messages and then download just the headers.

Actually downloading the full message was a bit of an ask. And you had to worry about the crazy per-megabyte data costs.

The BlackBerry arrived. I heard about it from a few people, first. Then I saw it working. I couldn’t believe it. You had to have a lot of infrastructure though.

o2 would sell you BlackBerry service, but you needed to buy the Exchange service too. Or a minimum of 5 accounts. I almost considered doing that.

And then T-Mobile hit the market with BlackBerry service. It was simply fantastic. I loved being able to get on the train and review my emails. I really liked knocking out replies on the tube and seeing them queue up ready to be sent the moment I came out.

I relished being able to transact business absolutely anywhere, especially when abroad.

It’s really easy to forget that just a few years ago, being able to get off the plane in some foreign clime and have your mobile email work properly was virtually impossible.

This ‘connectedness’ that I associate with BlackBerry email laid the ground work for the next generation of mobile infrastructure.

To be fair, it wasn’t just BlackBerry — for a long time, I relied heavily on an Exchanged based solution powered by Good Mobile Messaging running on a series of Nokia devices.

I think BlackBerry — or, from a wider viewpoint, mobile email — has had a huge, huge effect on the mobile industry. The legions of corporate types all addicted to instant email conditioned the marketplace for next generation ‘connected’ services like Facebook, Facebook Chat, Gmail, Google Chat, Android, BlackBerry Messenger and so on.

Instant email: I still love it!

What do you reckon has generated the biggest impact in the mobile world?

My name is Ewan and I’m founder and Editor.  You can find out more about me here.

After Mobile Industry Review turned subscription-only back at the end of March, I’ve been looking around for other projects to commence.  Mobile Developer TV started off as a concept in the back of my mind about 6 months ago.

Here’s the Background

I’m founder and editor of Mobile Industry Review (”MIR”), one of the world’s most influential commentators on the mobile industry.  The site published daily news and opinion for almost 3 years, reaching a core audience of 250,000 industry executives and fanatics.  MIR’s feed is integrated directly into the intranets of many mobile operators, handset manufacturers and mobile service companies.  Super reach, super influence.  Witness, for example, our ground-breaking video of the never-before-seen Nokia Test Labs in Farnborough (Over 175,000 people viewed it within days of publishing). Or take a look at the recent post I published about iPhone centric developer mindset in Silicon Valley, picked up by MocoNews, VentureBeat and the Washington Post.

I thoroughly enjoyed producing the site with a team of brilliant contributors.  In March 2009, I turned MIR subscription-only, providing the site’s on-going feed to one company.  The nature of the company’s requirement developed to the point that I was able to engage a small team of writers to deliver the on-going service.  I still retain all MIR rights and content — including the domain names and the site’s extensive reach — so I’ve been looking for another project to put these resources to good use.

Why Mobile Developer TV?

I really, really enjoy producing online video features. There’s something about ‘TV’ that you just can’t match with the written word.  It’s about seeing the person (or people), visualising their excitement and seeing just how passionate they are about their products and services. I did a lot of experimenting with the Mobile Industry Review Show — the MIR Show — and after a good few hundred hours of stress and learning, I think I’ve more or less perfected the art of brilliant online video production: Top quality HD cameras, excellent HD video hosting, super-expensive microphones — in fact, the best equipment you can buy, a bit of creativity in the editing studio (Final Cut is excellent, but iMovie, although frowned upon from the professional sector, is extremely quick).

Marry this passion for online television with my fascination with the mobile industry — and more specifically, with mobile development — and it didn’t take me long to hatch the concept.  And here it is!

The Aim

I’m going to meet the best and the brightest in mobile development — and I’m going to put them on camera.  I’m aiming to publish one TV show per week to start with.  Each show will centre on one or two people in the mobile development space.  iPhone App developers, certainly.  But I’m interested in the whole spectrum — from Blackberry’s App World, to Nokia’s Ovi, to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace and beyond.

If you’ve ever seen any of the interviews I’ve produced in the past, you’ll know I like to keep myself out of the picture. It’s not about me, it’s about the interviewee.  In some cases I’m aiming to do a straight interview — me to the right of the camera pointing the microphone and asking questions.  In other cases, I’ll do a walk-about or a show-and-tell with the developer.

I’m interested in talking to and profiling:

• Mobile application developers
  (Platform agnostic: iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia/J2ME/Samsung/Microsoft/Android)
• Companies whose primary business is NOT in the mobile space — but who have developed or are developing mobile applications.
  (For instance: A travel company launching an iPhone app, dotcoms launching their own apps — eg. Lastminute’s FoneFood app)
• Companies who supply services to/work with mobile developers
  (Example: Providers of mobile advertising, debug/testing)

Video will comprise most of the content here on Mobile Developer TV — however in my research over the past months, it’s clear that, whilst there are a lot of developers in Silicon Valley and London (my two primary locations), there’s a considerable geographic spread of developers.  Only today I was talking to developers from Ohio, Johannesburg, New Zealand, Ukraine, Paris and Scotland.  I’d like to be able to fly into meet each — that might be a bit of a challenge in the short term though.  So to supplement, I’ll aim to publish text interviews and profiles regularly.

One developer I spoke to suggested recording his own interview on video, answering my questions to camera with his own facilities — and sending it over to me to publish.  I think it’s a super suggestion and I think we’ll do that.

Can I profile you?  Contact Me!

I’m based in London and San Francisco so I’ll be producing the majority of in-person videos from those locations.  If you’d like to feature, drop me a note.  I’m ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv — this is the best way of contacting me.  But you can also phone/text me.  My mobile numbers are:

+44 7769 658104 (UK)

+1 415 200 9515 (US)

… (I’m happy to hear from PRs too.)

Don’t Be British

Please don’t be British — that is, sit at the back and hope I’ll come across you.  I really will do my best to find mobile developers and companies to profile — I’ve already got a big list from working with MIR — but I am most certainly no genius.  So I need your help in order to profile you — I need to know you exist. So please do drop me a note if you’re keen to be profiled.  At the very least I’ll aim to send you out a list of questions to answer by email that I can turn into a profile piece here on the site. (Who are you, what are you creating/have you created, what platform, why, what challenges have you had, and so on).  Ideally I’ll arrange to meet physically to interview you on-camera and perhaps produce an application walk-through.

Got News?

If you’ve got a particular topic of announcement that you think mobile developers and those working in related fields should know about, knock me over an email right-away.

Design

I’m doing a Robert Scoble at the moment — that is publishing with a default WordPress Theme.  I’ll update it as we progress.  The content is way more important than the theme and that’s where my focus is at the moment.

Editorial Policy

As for editorial policy, I’m aiming for a macro view of mobile development.  I don’t plan on publishing code level discussions, or discussing the finer points of the Symbian operating system.  Instead, I’ll be looking at the commercial aspects of the mobile applications development sector along with the trends I’m witnessing.  The overriding focus is, of course, on profiling developers.  I’m particularly interested in talking with one-man-bands:  The chaps (and ladies) who’re single-handedly driving the massive change sweeping the industry.  That said, I’m also keen to talk to the business people — the product managers, the executive teams — about the challenges and successes in the field of mobile applications development.

This is a work in progress so I’d welcome your feedback, either below or by email.

I’ll be syndicating the output through the public feed on Mobile Industry Review so if you’re already a MIR RSS subscriber, you’ll start to get updates shortly.  You can also catch blog updates via the new Mobile Developer TV Twitter account @mobdevtv.

Standby!

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