MobileMonday’s next position is in Rome — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Etnoteam, LaNetro Zed and sms.it presented in Milan} MobileMonday’s next position is in Rome

28 Apr 2005 at 18:41 GMT Timo Poropudas

Positioning services constitute a wide sector that utilizes technologies ranging from client server solutions to RFID, and from Wi-Fi to 3G. The next Italian MobileMonday will face the successes and failures, as well as the future and present state, of the LBS business. Forerunners like Nokia and Autodesk will share their views with the audience.

The LBS MobileMonday will take place at Cafe Renault in Rome on May 2nd at 18.30. Further details about the coming Italian MoMos can be found at www.netikos.com

The Netikos newsletter reported on Milan MobileMonday:

The latest MobileMonday gathered mobile community to Milan ‘s exclusive Corso Como for an ICT aperitivo. At Cafe Casablanca, the moderator Andrea Lawendel from Corriere della Sera discussed the content business together with the audience and speakers from Etnoteam, LaNetro Zed and sms.it.

The speakers noted that users are willing to pay for content and that the demand for content is growing persistently. As the CEO of NETikos and one of the Etnoteam directors Ornella Fouillouze brought up, the Italian content market is still small in comparison to the entire ICT sector (1140 M€), but it grows not less than 30% per year. LaNetro Zed’s country manager Vittorio Maffei referred to the ‘Research and Markets’ originated data, which forecasts revenues from mobile data services to reach 2.1 billion cellular subscribers in 2009 and USD 318 billion in 2010.

In her opening remarks, Fouillouze reminded that content generates a huge business which involves many sectors from portals and media to system integrators. And as we know, from the times of wired World Wide Web, the development is going increasingly mobile, as well as convergent.

Because of the convergence, the place and means to access content will not be that fixed anymore: Thanks to multiple channels, the content will not be produced for one single means of delivery, and neither there will be just one particular place to access certain content. This way, the digital content keeps on running as an engine of the innovation, Fouillouze stated.

LaNetro Zed’s country manager Vittorio Maffei noted that the brands are coming up strongly in the mobile content business, and thus he posed a question about whether IP Owners, Entertainment Brands and Carriers are going to close the loop and kick off WASPs from the mobile business. His insight on the situation is that of an unlikely scenario, because a deep knowledge of consumers’ needs and behaviours is what makes WASPs still necessary.

As an example of the recent tendencies Maffei brought up consumers’ needs the growing mobile music business that is becoming immense especially on the ring tone frontier. He also noted that all big game brands have entered in the mobility business during 2004 - but yet, the best sellers are games for the mass.

Sms.it’s general manager, Daniele Preda, created an electric atmosphere when he started interviewing mobile operators’ representatives within the audience. He asked how the content and solution providers could increase their business with the operators. The answer was diplomatic but encouraging: Continue ideating persistently - the operators surely will get interested when they see appealing innovations.