MediaFuturist

Announcing my new book on Lulu: "Friction is Fiction" - write a review and get the free PDF!

I have been very busy compiling my best essays, blog posts and other writings from the past 3 years, and have finally uploaded the most recent version to Lulu (my favorite print-on-demand book store). The new book is now called 'Friction is Fiction' and is available in 3 versions:  1) 158 pages, 6x9 inches / U.S. trade format, full-color, for $60.40, here (yes, it's quite pricey because of the cost of printing 4-color, on-demand)  2) the same dead-tree version, but in black & white only, for $19.98, here (much cheaper but a lot less cool;) 3) as a PDF, for a token price of $7.50, here.

I would be delighted if you would consider buying whatever works best for you - what better Christmas present could you possibly think of!   Please note that this book will be updated every 3 months, to include my latest writings. If you want to share the book page please just send people to www.frictionisfiction.com - thanks.

As to giving away the free PDF, here is the deal: you can contact me anytime (via email, Facebook or Twitter) to request a free copy of the PDF if you just don't want to (or can't) spend the $7.50, and I will send you the download link. In return, what I ask from you is to pay me with attention, i.e. to write a review on Lulu, a blog-post, or a tweet about my book, with a link (all 3 is best;). Deal?

As to the title: I used to simply call this compilation 'The Best of Media Futurist' but while looking through all those posts - and spending a lot more time revising them - I found an important thread that goes through almost all of it and which therefore has become the new title: Friction is Fiction. So what does that mean? It means that if you are currently basing your success on maintaining or even constructing hurdles, difficulties or other bottlenecks somewhere in the system - i.e. if there is something that impedes the flow of information, or a transaction or purchase so that a higher price point or some other form of control over the can be obtained - then you are very likely to face diminishing revenues in the next few years. Building obstacles for users (fka consumers) used to work just fine but... no longer. Building walls is the fastest road to suicide in the digital economy.

The web has been utterly ruthless about finding these glaring points of friction, such as paying for eMail (remember that?), paying a ton of money for long-distance phone calls (remember those pre-skype days?), or consumers not having any access to travel booking systems, flight information or seating. These hurdles are being removed, one-by-one, and those 'people formerly known as consumers' are getting more powerful every single day. Banking on friction to increase your revenues has become like throwing matches into the river and asking it to stop - it's useless.

Friction was, of course, the main money-maker in the media, entertainment and content business, for a long time: certain CDs were only available in certain stores at certain times in certain countries, DVDs with those movies you really wanted were only available in certain countries and within certain 'windows', books had to be printed and shipped, and ring-tones could only be purchased from your operator.  Basically, at every turn the consumer encountered have-to's  and must's which essentially allowed a substantial level of control by the media and content companies - and thus, higher prices. In many cases, the more friction the higher the price you could ask for.

No longer. Read the book!

Related: my blog-book "The End of Control": download the first 6 chapters here. Also: My Music 2.0 book is available via Lulu, here

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The Mobility Revolution and the Power of Social Media (presentation at the ACTE09 conference in Prague)

Here is my presentation from the ACTE09 event in Prague, today, where I also had the great pleasure of meeting a very interesting fellow speaker and like-minded 'change agent', Michael Jackson, from South Africa, who served as MC for the whole event.

The topics of my presentation: how mobile and social media trends impact business, in general, and the corporate travel industry, in particular; how the social media and mobile Internet explosion is resulting in unprecedented changes in communications and commerce. The need to reduce CONTROL to get more SHARE is evident... but how can this be done within large organizations? How can social media add value, and what are the risks?

The Mobility Revolution and the Power of Social Media (Gerd Leonhard at ACTE09 in Prague)

View more documents from Gerd Leonhard.

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Good Morning: great visualization of how global Twitter already is

Saw this on the Trendtracker twitter stream this morning, via Vimeo: "GoodMorning! is a Twitter visualization tool which shows about 11,000 tweets collected over a 24 hour period between August 20th and 21st. The tweets were harvested to find people saying 'good morning' in English as well as several other languages.

The tweets appear as blocks and are colour-coded. Green tweets are early in the morning, orange tweets are at about 9am, and red tweets are later in the morning. Black tweets are 'out-of-time' messages (sent at times that aren't in the morning at that location)"

This made me think... so... over to you, out there.

GoodMorning! - Full Render #1 from blprnt on Vimeo.

Will people for online news?

Nice interview via ZDNet Australia i.e. Twisted Wire and Phil Dobbie, with some voice-bites from me, as well;). 

"Back in May, Rupert Murdoch said News Limited would start charging users for access to sections of its online news content. Is it a business model that will work, when web users have got used to getting the news for free? In this edition of Twisted Wire we look into the user-pays model. We might pay for content if it satisfies our specialist interests, but are the major news publishers geared up to provide such a wealth of content.."

Contributors:

• Jack Matthews, CEO of Fairfax Digital
• Peter Cox, principal of Cox media
• Gerd Leonhard, futurist in the media, technology and communication industries

 

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A key topic for 2009: EGOsystem becomes ECOsystem, yelling becomes talking, traditional Marketing...dies!

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

I touched upon this in my presentation at the Mobile Monday event in Amsterdam: I think we are going through a totally amazing and very challenging paradigm shift, right now (and this may still be a somewhat delayed consequence of the Internet (r)evolution and the first .com bubble): From EGO to ECO, from Control to Openness, from Domination to Collaboration. A few examples:

• The amazing shifts in U.S. policy and America's new global role: when President Obama implements his far-reaching plans to rewire how America works we will see this new trend towards win-win solutions rub-off everywhere else, too, and kick off chain-reactions in many other, traditionally more dominance-focused countries such as Russia, as well (and the reverse is also true). The old Bushinator mantra 'You lose - we win' has simply become unsustainable in today's networked economy, and America will doubtlessly struggle with this shift from domination to partnering for quite some time. However, I definitely anticipate a strong trend towards open systems and open platforms in the global economic and political spheres - as well as in technology and content / media - with utter transparency and TRUST becoming the key requirements for success, everywhere. There will no doubt be considerable debate on what this trend means for copyright and patent laws, globally, too, since these laws have traditionally been used for shoring up market-shares and protecting the interests of the large, dominant players in many industries.
• The music industry: the decline - or shall we say gradual vaporization - of most major record industry players due to their amazingly persistent obsession with control, makes a great case study. Rather than to finally permit new revenues to be co-developed via collaborating on win-win scenarios, the IFPI and RIAA are still looking for new enforcement and protection mechanisms such as the now flamed-out '3 strikes & out' legislation - it does make you wonder if their 'leaders' have lived under a rock for the past 5 years!  In any case, the music industry is the prime example why monopolistic and totally centralized structures will simply not work in the future, and why we need governme

  I

  nt intervention when a market place is clearly dysfunctional. Many of my readers know that I have been talking about this for a looooong time, but now we are finally seeing it take shape: the music rights organizations and their related content licensing processes will undergo significant and sweeping changes in the next 2-3 years; everything is moving from a 'not allowed / not possible' default mindset to a more collaborative, open, flexible, transparent and public rights licensing logic - and they must adapt or get out of the way. The bottom line: If it's not based on a web-centric and connected logic it will cease to exist. As an example, the current conflict between the Music Performing Rights Organizations (PROs and MROs) such as PRS, GEMA and Youtube is based on this basic paradigm disparity: PRS and GEMA are thinking of the music rights still being firmly and exclusively their business (i.e. an EgoSystem), and Youtube/Google think of music rights as being a crucial component of a new, 21st century content ecosystem that concerns everyone and should not be governed by monopolies and cartels.  Therefore, for Google I reckon that the music rights issue is  something that must go far beyond the traditional structure that's based on 'I own the rights, exclusively, and you'll need to pay whatever I ask for'. My prediction is that if the traditional rights-holders and the many societies that represent them don't materially change their thinking on this very soon, they may wall see a wide-spread revolt of their younger, more progressive members, because they know that not permitting the use of music on Youtube (and Google!) is simply a suicidal move, in terms of getting attention and building your brand. Get off the Ego and think Eco!
  

  Image by gleonhard via Flickr

• Microsoft's Windows OS is becoming less and less dominant (and relevant, too) as 'free' and cloud-based operating systems are gaining ground everywhere (Linux, Google)
• Most telcos, mobile operators and ICT companies are trying to switch from the traditional 'total control of the network, the infrastructure and the users' to open platforms as fast as they can (e.g. AT&T's open source plans, Skype's open Silk codec, Nokia's Open Symbian Foundation, Google's Android Mobile OS)
• In software, the continuing trend towards open-source and crowd-sourcing is clearly visible everywhere (e.g. the huge success of Firefox vs IE, and the rise of open-source DMBS)
• Many large corporations are starting to move into crowd-sourcing, wanting to pursue increased openness in return for a chance to realize network-economy benefits. E.g. Glaxo Smith Kline's recent move to release a huge amount of cancer research data into public domain (Note: in this context, I highly recommend Yochai Benkler's fantastic book "The Weath of Networks")
• The mind-boggling popularity and global success of API-driven web portals and platforms (Twitter's amazing growth, Friendfeed, the new Facebook 'River', widgets, the UK Guardian's open API etc)
• For many large companies as well as for SMEs (small medium size enterprises),  Social Media is quickly becoming CRM (customer relationship management) - rather than running expensive ads that talk about 'Me' and how great the new product is (i.e. Ego), the switch to 'having conversations with the customers aka users' is visible everywhere: Ford's new Fiesta campaign, Kraft's cool iPhone app. Brands can no longer be just BIG EGOs - they are part of Ecosystems, too.
• In Advertising, the entire paradigm of 'we'll yell until you listen' is finished - this concept was all about the Ego of the brands, and about us, the people formerly known as consumers, listening. Now it's all about the Ecosystem: Do you come recommended?  Who trusts you? What makes you worthy of my consideration? Why should I pay attention to you? Who vouches for you? Who has told me about you? Are you open and transparent? Here, too, Egosystem has become Ecosystem, and a Trillion $ industry is changing as a consequence - from Push to Pull, from Yelling to Talking / Listening. Tough gig but... a gold mine if you can make it  ;)

 

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The Future of Content & Creativity: my presentation at the RSA in London (April 8)

Here is the PDF (incl. some slides I did not actually get to show due to time restraints;) of my presentation at the RSA: download Future of Content and Creativity Gerd Leonhard at RSA London PDF 16MB

About the event (tweets here)

"The internet is radically disrupting most of the traditional content distribution and selling models, starting with music and games, followed by TV, film, books and print publishing. Once everyone is always-on, mobile and hyper-connected, and everything is available everywhere, how will content be created, distributed, marketed, consumed, and paid for? Who will do what, for whom, and how will the traditional players such as broadcasters, record labels, publishers and distributors adapt? If new players, starting with telecoms, device makers, advertisers and brands, indeed move into the content business, what will be their challenges and opportunities?

Given the challenging financial climate, how do we reconcile the need to reward enterprise and secure sustainable revenue streams, with the expectations and demands of the “freeconomics” generation? What kind of legal, regulatory and cultural framework do we need to ensure that this new eco-system of creators, consumers and intermediaries generates more benefits for all involved?

Speakers: Gerd Leonhard, media futurist, author and blogger; Richard Titus, Controller of Future Media, Audio, Music & Mobile, BBC; David A. Smith, chief executive of Global Futures and Foresight (GFF).
Chair: Ralph Simon, CEO, The Mobilium Advisory Group and Chairman Emeritus & Founder, Mobile Entertainment Forum - Americas.

 Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsamedia

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RSA London: The Future Of Content And Creativity Gerd Leonhard @RSA London March 2009

View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard.

8 key trends and some foresights for the next 5 years

Every now and then I get tempted into actually formulating some fore-sights. This time, the preparations for my upcoming speech on "New Media Futures" at the RSA in London have egged me on to share a few key points with you:

1) We will soon see the emergence of many different kinds of iPhone-influenced Netbook-like devices; some will be Apple-made but most will not. These devices may be 2-3 times the size of an iPhone and will connect to the Internet in every conceivable way, i.e. 3G/4G, LTE, Wimax, Wifi etc.  They will be touchscreen, zoom-interface enabled, cloud-computing, speech-controlled, location-aware, mobile-money equipped, socially hyper-networked, always-everywhere-on, HD-camera equipped and possibly project images and audio or even support basic holography.

In addition to the high-end, fully-loaded and perhaps still rather expensive versions that many of us in the so-called developed countries will gobble up, low cost and more basic editions for the developing markets will be sold in the 100s of millions (think India, China, Indonesia...). These smart gadgets will have very low energy consumption and therefore extremely long battery life, may even sport basic solar-power options, and may ultimately cost less than 30 USD, or even be 'free' (why bother to sell the box if you can make a lot more $ with selling services.... Nokia?).

It is these mass-market yet very smart and networked devices, together with cheap or free wireless broadband that will really revolutionize reading, newspapers, books and education; not to mention our music, TV and film consumption habits. Content commerce will be completely redefined as a consequence. As BTO told us a loooong time ago: "You ain't seen nothin' yet"

2) Very cheap or free wireless broadband - at fairly high speeds, i.e. at least 2MB / sec - will be available in most places, particularly in the booming new economies of Asia, India, Russia and South-America, and a bit later, in Africa. Funded by the likes of Google and by the future 'telemedia' conglomerates, governments, cities and states, wireless broadband will probably reach 3-4 out of 5 people on the globe within 5-8 years. User-generated & derived content (UGDC for those of you that must have an acronym ;), virtual co-production, mobile editing and instant network sharing will explode by a factor of 1000, making control of distribution a very distant concept of the past. UGC or UGDC may make up to 50% of the global content consumption by 2015. Consumers will be (co)-creators, marketers, sellers and buyers, and come in a hundred variations, from totally passive to totally active. Then, indeed, filtering, culling and curation will be the key to success.

3) Collective blanket licenses that legalize and unlock legitimate access to basic content services via any digital network will emerge, and are likely to take over as the primary way of content consumption, around the world (but in Asia, first). Just like water or electricity which is readily available when moving into a new home, the basic access to content will be bundled into access to digital networks, i.e. via ISPs, operators, telecoms, portals etc. This shift is starting with music (as already done by TDC in Denmark, and Google in China), and will be quickly followed by films, TV, books and newspapers. Access may often - but in local variations - 'feel like free' to the user but will in fact generate 10s of Billions of $$ via blanket licensing fees (yes... those pools of money), next-generation advertising and branding, data-mining & sharing, up-selling, re-packaging and many other new generatives. This topic will, btw, be the gist of my RSA presentation tomorrow - if you can't be there in person, you may want to listen to the live audio, via this link.

I think that governments around the world will call for and / or support the implementation of collective content licenses that wil finally legalize content usage on the Internet, similar to how governments pushed for the radio and broadcasting licenses  approx. 100 years ago. Whether these blanket licenses will be voluntary or compulsory remains to be seen - in any case the only alternative is to perpetuate a severely dysfunctional telemedia ecosystem that criminalizes almost all users and stifles innovation while generating virtually zero new revenues for the creators.

4) Fuel-cells and other next-generation mobile energy sources are a certainty. A serious increase in mobile device power (and therefore, its use) will be achieved by employing next-generation technologies such as fuel cells that could provide for up to 500x the usage time that we have today. This is likely to become a reality in 3-5 years and will revolutionize how we use - and how much we rely on - our mobile devices, especially in countries where there the fixed-line power infrastructure is much less developed or non-existent.

5) Completely targeted and personalized advertising, delivered largely on totally customized mobile computing & communication devices, will turn the the $ 1 Trillion USD advertising and marketing services economy upside down. Behavioral targeting and user-controlled advertising will, of course, become an even hotter potato and a much discussed challenge, but the good old deal of 'I give you attention & personal data and you give me value e.g. content' will be even more pronounced on the Net. In fact, advertising as we knew it is already more or less outmoded and will, during the next 2-3 years, be completely reinvented. Privacy and Trust are the #1 issues here.

The implication is that if your data (within your specific sets of permissions and opt-ins)  is used to bring you perfectly synchronized advertising, than advertising really becomes more like content, too. Watch this play out in the mobile advertising space, starting this year, and quite possible boost the global value of advertising-content by more than 100% by 2015. Google will be the main driver here, plus Facebook, Nokia and yes... Twitter (soon to be = Google).

6) We will witness the more or less complete decline of most forms of physical media within 7-10 years. The very definition - and thus the core economic business models - of newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs and books will be completely re-written, and new forms of content packaging will rapidly emerge. We can already see a preview of how this may work in the current mobile applications boom: content as part of software packages; paying for the packaging, the curation, the bundling, the personalization - not just for the zeros and ones that are 'the copy'. This trend is important not just because it will reflect the users' (or better... followers') new consumption habits but also because because of the increasing need to save energy and material costs - and moving from content products to content services will certainly go a long way in this regard. The total decline of printing in people's homes, and for personal use, will commence, as well.

7) Paying for privacy will become a distinct option. Today we pay to go online and connect; in the future we may end up paying for the luxury to go offline, disconnect, enjoy the quiet, and give our brain some rest. Maybe if we don't want to share our click-trails and usage data, we will be able to make cash payments instead - and the more you pay, the more private you can be..?

8) Travel 2.0: alternatives to 'actually going there' will explode: immersive, 3D video, virtual rooms, holography. This is a key development that will nurture new forms of entrepreneurship, education and group working.

Please talk back!

Some Internet companies are becoming more like Public Utilities and integral parts of our Social Infrastructure

I have observed a recent trend that I want to share and get your feedback on: some Internet companies and platforms such as Google / Youtube, Facebook, Nokia, Slideshare and Twitter are becoming so important to many of us that we would be severely challenged if they went away or materially changed their services. This makes them both very powerful but also very vulnerable - for if we chose to no longer trust them, they would quickly face their demise. Some examples:

• Google already provides the digital toolbox and 'cloud computing' infrastructure for a 100s of Millions of people: free email, domain services, calendars, docs, widgets, blogging, videos, voice (soon!) - and of course: search and advertising services. Youtube has become the de-facto next-generation TV for a lot of people, already. My slightly futuristic view is that pretty soon Youtub

  

  e and the many other video sites (and of course the 100s yet unlicensed video download services) may start replacing Cable TV as the prime source of entertainment for a lot of digital natives. A fast net connection + AppleTv + Boxee + Miro ...pretty soon, that should do it!
• Facebook provides a key social platform that, for many users, has already substituted email or phone calls,

  

  and is well on the way of becoming a cyberspace 'home' for many of us, a digital meeting place and key part of our social lives. My prediction is that Facebook will become as important as Google - and they will reinvent advertising in the process, just like Google did.
• Nokia is heading in the same direction: Comes with Music is looking to provide a seamless, all-inclusive music experience

  

  that is build-in or shall we say hard-wired into our mobile lifes, Nokia's OVI is gearing up to compete as the preferred destination for sharing things, and their handsets i.e. mobile computers are well on the way of becoming remote controls for our lives.
• Flickr, Slideshare and Twitter - to a lesser degree, for now, compared to Google and Facebook - have become crucially important to Millions of people

  

  already (I can attest to that) because they are great platforms to share stuff; and shar

  

  ing seems to be what gets a lot of people excited - not a surprise but certainly an important realization.

A bit like the good old BBC, these companies may soon face a double duty and somewhat of a conundrum: 100s of Million of people have grown accustomed to using them, and their services have become so crucial that they have become not only valuable businesses but also public utilities that we are increasingly depending on. My feeling is that once a company has reached this position, its value is much higher than the actual revenues could ever warrant, since it's no longer just about monetary value but also the social capital they have accrued, and the corresponding TRUST that we put into them.  So this is, as a result, the most important mission for those companies that make it to this point: Earn and keep my trust, every single day, with everything you do. And then, I will keep paying attention to you, give you my data to use, send my friends to you. Don't mess with the terms of use without asking me (>Facebook), ask for permission to use my clickstreams and cookies (see Google's approach to behavioral targeting), and don't ask me for $ too early (see Twitter's yet to be defined revenue strategy).

The End of Control and the Future of Content: new Video of my Authors@Google Talk in San Francisco

The Google guys have just published a video with my talk at Authors@Google, in San Francisco, March 2, 2009 (see the details here Pdf: The End of Control Gerd Leonhard at Google SF PDF *22MB). Due to some technical issues my fancy slides (i.e. the stuff on the screen) come across very nicely in this video while I am left a bit 'in the dark' - but if you use the HQ version on the Youtube site you can still get a much better idea of what my face actually looks like (I guess always wearing black is not ideal when the lights are bad;).  Anyway, I do think this is one of my best talks, so... watch the entire 55 Mins 22 Secs.  As far as the End of Control Book is concerned, I will have an announcement on my plans within the next 10 days...stay tuned.

Here is the official Google Talks description: The End of Control & The Future of Content:  The tough issue of control emerges, again and again, as the key contention point within TV companies, publishers, record labels, and broadcasters: How can a commercial venture that is based on so-called intellectual property thrive and prosper in an environment that seems to continuously and progressively remove control from the creators/owners/providers of content, and hands it over to the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users), effectively making them more powerful every single day?  But the reality is that every click inadvertently makes another case for the consumers ever-increasing rise in importance. Within all the conversations I have had about things like commercial content versus shared content, about the read-only or the read-write web, and about copyright versus Fair Use, the crucial question always seems to boil down to WHERE IS THE CONTROL HERE, i.e., questions such as Who will control this new media universe and How much control do I need to run a revenue-generating business?

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Cool video: Microsoft's 2019 Future Vision Montage (and more via Officelabs)

This video provides a nice summary of some of the key computing and communication developments that we can expect in the near future. Whether MSFT will be a big part of that... who knows, but they did a great job with these videos; be sure to check MSFT Officelab's other cool stuff, here, as well - quite impressive, I think.

The Future of Content & Telecom: my presentation at the Emerging Communications Conference in San Francisco

As promised, here is the PDF with the slides from my presentation at today's eComm Conference in San Francisco (sorry for the delay in posting this - had to have dinner first;)

Download Future of Content & Telecom Gerd Leonhard @ eComm Conf 2009 PDF

Summary: " Imagine a world where unfiltered and limitless access to content is bundled directly into your access to the networks. A world where 'your cloud' holds all kinds of content, your social network connections, your community, and your context (i.e. meta-content), your meta-data and your interaction-trails, and where access to all of this is feels-like-free, legal, always-on and fully mobile, on any and all platforms. This is the future we are heading into, and telecoms, content-owners and brands / advertisers must forge entirely new partnerships.  We are starting to see content creators and rights-owners aborting their long-standing quests for total control, and instead looking to build their audiences and share revenues. So where is this trend going to take us, what do we need to do in order to turn content (music, video, TV, news, games, books...) into a new and truly growing business that is really web-native, where are the big opportunities for telecoms, operators, social networks and rights-holders, and what will the new business models look like? In this context, Gerd will also address topics such as the flat rate for digital music, ISP/Operator + Content bundling examples in Europe and Asia, copyright 2.0 and the future of content commerce, the shift from control-economy to attention &  trust economy, the latest developments in next generation advertising, and the growing economic power of those 'new generatives' (> Kevin Kelly)..."

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The End of Control and the Future of Content: My presentation at Google San Francisco (March 2, 2009)

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

As promised, here is the PDF with most of what I presented at my Authors@Google Talk in San Francisco, today (March 2, 2009). Hopefully we will have a video available very soon as well.
The End of Control Gerd Leonhard at Google SF PDF *22MB

Some snippets: Bottom Lines: The fight for Control was a fight for Distribution. The flight for Attention is a fight for Trust. The beneficiaries of Control were Monopolies. The beneficiaries of Trust are those that Collaborate. Advertising 2.0: Information becomes Conversation.  Interruption becomes Engagement. Annoyance becomes Entertainment. 'This is an Ad' becomes 'This is Content'.  The Sharing Economy Logic: Sharing...the Output (i.e. publish, re-mix, co-create, life-stream...) the Input  (i.e. remuneration in cash, attention, reputation...) ... the Thruput (i.e. usage data, meta content, attention trails >> New Data Economics)

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The End Of Control and the Future of Content: Futurist Gerd Leonhard Authors@Google (San Francisco)

View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard. (tags: gerd gerdleonhard)

IBM: Telecoms will need to do more to prosper in the emerging 'TeleMedia' chain

IBM's Institute for Business Value has published a brilliant new study entitled  A future in content(ion): Can telecom providers win a share of the digital content market?  A lot of what they are saying in this study is amazingly close to what I have been trying to tell the telcos for the past 2 years: you MUST get involved with content and media, no 2 ways about it.  Read this study!   The 3 biggest eye-openers:

 

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• 

  The Future Of Media And Content Gerd Leonhard at TIME 08 Istanbul (slideshare.net)
• 2009: The year of Re-Designing the Content Business (mediafuturist.com)

FT.com Report from the 3GSM show in Barcelona - The world in your pocket

Great read:  FT.com / Digital Business / Digital Britain - The world in your pocket.

“In 2009, mobile phone users are expected to download more than 10bn applications to their mobile phones – the majority from sites managed by mobile device manufacturers, consumer electronics firms and software houses.”

"After years of disappointment and false starts, mobile data and the “mobile internet” it enables, finally seems to be taking off. “Global sales of mobile broadband ‘dongles’ [plug-in gadgets that control wireless signals] exceeded 4m a month during 2008 and are expected more than to double in 2009,” says Deloitte. “The resulting stress on networks, particularly backhaul connections, could be significant..."

“We do expect to see a proliferation of music, video and gaming applications being consumed on mobile devices...In all of these cases, next-generation services utilise the broadband networks from the mobile operators, but importantly bring together the capabilities of the communications network and the web to create next-generation experiences"

Marty Beard: “We will see voice over the internet (VoIP), video messaging, streaming, cross-operator presence and other new and innovative services. The expansion towards an all-IP mobile economy has begun.”

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