Global

Abu Dhabi 17th January 2011 – Etisalat has today signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with MobileMonday (MoMo), to initiate a mutually beneficial strategic partnership. MobileMonday is a global mobile entrepreneur community originating from Finland.

Essa Al Haddad, Group Chief Marketing Officer at Etisalat said: “We are delighted to enter into this strategic agreement with MobileMonday, which is important not only for our 18 operations and our 110 million customers across our footprint, but also for the regional telecom industry as a whole. Etisalat and the UAE have developed a reputation for innovation and for taking new ideas and making them successful. With the shared resources and knowledge of MobileMonday, this partnership will see this reputation even further enhanced.”

WHAT does the most populous Muslim nation do in its spare time? Increasingly, it swaps gossip online. Indonesia is now the world’s second-largest market for Facebook and the third-largest for Twitter, according to several web research firms. For industry insiders, however, the most exciting statistic is not how many Indonesians use social media, but how many still don’t. Of 230m or so Indonesians, fewer than 20% are connected to the internet. Foreign firms see untapped potential. Facebook doesn’t even have an office in Indonesia, yet it has grown like crazy, to 30m users. In May last year Yahoo! ventured into …

The 2010 BizTech@ Wharton Conference was held on Friday, December 3, 2010 at the Doubletree Hotel of Philadelphia. The conference theme was, “What’s Next in the Mobile Evolution,” centering on trends and new developments in mobile technology. Over 250 participants represented the mobile technology industry and students eager to learn about the topic. Keynote speakers were Pankaj Kedia, Director of Global Ecosystem Programs, Mobile Devices, at the Intel Corporation, and Reed Peterson, Senior Director of Business Development at the GSM Association, the global trade organization for the mobile industry spanning over 200 countries. Panel themes included mobile advertising, the future …

So, as another year draws to a close we managed to get some face-time with the big guy in red recently and thought it would be fun to share with you all. Have you ever wondered how old Santa really is, what’s his middle name or that always somewhat pointy question about his jolly weight? Well.. it’s your luck day because we have it all right here – on video – along with a few surprises.. bet you’ll never guess what He Wants for Christmas.. And.. perhaps most importantly: is Santa from Finland or Canada..!?! Thanks to all for fantastic …

More than 500 people are scheduled to attend a MobileMonday Toronto event tonight. RCR Wireless News Publisher Jeff Mucci will moderate an open mobile operator panel with Alek Krstajic, CEO of Public Mobile, and Anthony Lacavera, CEO of Wind Mobile. “As December 2010 marks the first full year of new competition in the Canadian market, with multiple wireless carriers competing fiercely for customers, it makes sense to step back and look at how the market developed and look to where it could be headed for 2011. It’s an exciting time with new plans and offers, cool devices and creative marketing …

Following our week in Nairobi, I moved to Kampala (Uganda) to attend a couple of events, and sync back with all the people we met last year when we came with Tim. The week started with the Mobile Monday Kampala, aka MoMoKla. Impressive attendance, probably more than 100 people. I was a little a frustrated because the event was organized in collaboration with the M4D event, and therefore all speakers were foreigners. Surely a great opportunity for the local crowd and the format is fully understandable, but I would have loved hearing about local stories! That said, I really appreciated …

Delivering an appealing set of mobile applications to consumers is not without its challenges, even for a company with the scale of Vodafone Group. The developer ecosystem is characterised by a mixture of small and large developers, with a handful of the former complemented by large numbers of the latter, and with companies in both camps requiring different levels of engagement and support. And the introduction of new developer options such as WAC-backed technologies complicate the picture further. Vodafone has already used a number of methods to engage with the developer community, with Hemant Madan, Head of Developer Marketing for …

HONG KONG–In a muggy, overcast and polluted city like Hong Kong, it seemed somewhat apropos to gather together thought leaders from the mobile industry for a discussion on mobile computing and the cloud. That fluffy, shape shifting, overshadowing “cloud,” which has managed to escape proper definition for a couple of years already and which is becoming ever more amorphous as it floats onto the mobile horizon. “The cloud is the driver of the app economy,” declared one speaker, presenting a rather complex slide to better illustrate his point. Meanwhile, Cat Purvis, partner at consulting firm Exicon, preferred to describe the mysterious …

infoDev is pleased to announce the first six of eight grants for mobile social networking activities under the Creating Sustainable Businesses in the Knowledge Economy program, part of a partnership among infoDev, the Government of Finland, and Nokia. The awards will be for US $35,000 and will be made as follows: Kenya: Akirachix Uganda:  MoMo Kampala Tanzania: COSTECH Mozambique: Mobile Monday Vietnam: CRC Topica Nepal: Young Innovations Pvt. Ltd. These organizations will support preexisting or establish new social networking hubs and complementary online communication channels to foster collaboration among developers, entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, investors and other technologists working in the …

Kenya grabs a lot of attention with mobile money, but is all the innovation happening at the top of the food chain? We don’t think so. In fact, working with FSD Kenya and some great ex-Unitus folks, we’ve found a veritable hotbed of Kenyan entrepreneurs spinning out one exciting idea after another. But as exciting as their ideas are, nearly all these entrepreneurs are somewhere in the “valley of death”, past funding from friends and family, short of commercial investment. There are some good resources out there. iHub and Mobile Monday have surged into the gap providing a space — …