Signals of a turning point?

Read this very good opinion article about the current state of play of the mobile entertainment market by Sue Marek. Three interesting elements of Sue’s analysis are:

• the mobile industry is maturing quickly
• large infrastructure vendors & portal giants are looking for acquisitions
• mobile players that have survived on a stream of funding have now high-profile investors on their boards who are putting aggressive M&A strategies in place.

Now, who will survive at this turning point? Sue makes it very clear ‘Scalability.’ To directly quote her: "The investments also highlights a growing divide between the companies that can scale and those that can’t and will end up having to be acquired to move to the next stage. Over the next few months I predict we’ll see lots of shakeout among mobile entertainment companies. Thanks to an influx of investments, some firms will thrive, while others will struggle to stay afloat."

Mobiya has at least been driving scalability into its business:

1. Scalability as an organization (country organizations – outsourcing)
2. Scalability of our technology (infrastructure side as product development)
3. Scalability of our business model (today’s revenues vs. future new revenues)

In my modest opinion, scalability is a driver towards acquisition (read as ‘being acquired). The consolidation wave will result into the shake-out of the industry. Companies that never put together a scalable business or business model, won’t survive and will never be a target for acquisition. They will just dissapear!

Mobile Advertising & Marketing USA

Evolving partnerships to advance the industry and maximise revenue from new business models. 6-7 March 2007, Warwick Hotel, New York, USA. As always, the focus of mobile advertising seems to be around consumer brands, traditional agencies and operators (see pdf). What about the media companies?

Google investors’ focus shifts to new ad markets

Total Content & Media summarized the reported fourth-quarter earnings of Google into following article, highlighting the importance of Mobile within the giant’ search for future revenues. Schmidt  singled out the mobile arena as a potentially large future business that the company is investing in now."It is clear that 2007 will be the year that mobile search query traffic grows substantially," he said, but added:"You won’t really see its financial impact until 2008."

Content from 9 newspapers made available via mobile application in India

MoCoNews reports: We’ve written earlier about a mobile paper application from Cellnext being piloted in India. Now Pressmart and IMI Mobile have launched something similar with content from 9 Indian newspapers: The Hindustan Times (Mumbai and Delhi editions), The Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad and Chennai editions), DNA, Indian Express, Asian Age, The Financial Express, The New Indian Express, The Telegraph and the Pioneer. The mPaper offers archives, search and the option to save news reports. More…

10 wireless predictions for 2007

Mobiya is not into predictions, but nice list to share:

1. Social networking gets mobilized
2. Mobile tv: now showing for early adopters
3. Multi-function devices become cheaper and more versatile
4. Location based services: and the winner is… GPS
5. AOL, Yahoo! and Google multimedia platforms challenge IMS
6. China and India tilt equipment market
7. Mobile advertising breaks loose
8. Wireless providers more into home entertainment
9. Wireless security moves to forefront
10. Enterprise mobility, it’s for real now

All detail: See site of 160Characters or InCode Insights.

Startups broadcasting on YouTube

I am a die hard Plaxo user and Plaxo watcher. This startup (although 7 years in business now) has released its first tv commercial on YouTube, following a wave of startups doing the same: meebo (2500 viewers), Meez  (500), Multiply (400), RockYou.com (1200), and Technorati (500).

BTW. Mobiya got 1200 viewers in a week on GarageTV and started broadcasting its trailer on YouTube also.