Open Mobile Summit

The second annual Open Mobile Summit was held in London this May. It’s one of Fjord’s favourite events in the mobile space, drawing influential delegates from operators, OEMs, software, Internet and media. Our very own Christan Lindholm took to the stage to speak about insights and evolutions in the Tablet category.

To make the event even more special, Fjord and conference organizer Open Mobile Media teamed up to document the summit and produce a unique set of conference notes – “The Conversation”. The Conversation portrays the speakers’ key messages in a rich way through visual notetaking, and fuses these images with the views of the audience from interviews and discussions.

Key themes and learnings that were detailed in the conference notes included:

USER EXPERIENCE:
The industry is aligned in saying that high quality, delightful, desirable, effective user experience is absolutely essential to the success of mobile devices, software and services.

SHARING MEDIA AND DEVICES DRIVES THE MEDIA EXPLOSION:
It is perhaps no surprise that delegates expect the explosion in data usage to continue over the next 12 months. Some believe network operators are no longer in control as devices like iPhone and iPad, rich-media services and social networks drive the growth in data demand.

BEYOND APPS
While some appear to be scrambling to catch up to the app marketplace Apple created, unsure yet how to monetize, many are looking beyond the walled garden towards new platforms, new devices, and structural changes in the eco-system to unleash greater integration of services and customer experience.

PLATFORMS
“Customers don’t care about the platform”. Delegates felt the platform potentialities were hard to predict, but many voiced a need for less fragmentation and a more open market space.

OPEN MOBILE AND OPEN WEB
As long as apps are the quickest route to market and monetization, and closed platform ownership is the most lucrative revenue stream, the mobile web remains a geeks’ playground. Will the logic of networked economy, and the structural shifts from small, distributed changes erode the frustrating fixities in the mobile ecosystem?

MONETIZATION
Delegates were confident that monetization will come via existing and new channels, and advertising in particular. However no one we spoke to had a clear sense of when or how.

OPERATOR OPPORTUNITY
Billing, billing, billing! Let’s sort it out. The best-placed players to deliver and see a return on this, benefitting the whole ecosystem, are the carriers.

Additionally, a huge opportunity is perceived in the coming year or so for operators to leverage their customer insight and deliver more personalised and location-based customer experience.

The conversation continues at The Open Mobile Summit ‘10 San Francisco – November 8-10. Mark your calendar – we hope to see you there!