Have you come up with something radical on mobile?

If so, you have just a a few days to get your entry in to Supernova.

Supernova in San Francisco and Techcrunch are looking for the next great mobile ideas...

"There are plenty of mobile devices and services, but the possibilities are even
greater. For Mobile Connections at Supernova 2008, we're looking for game-changing innovations that provide a glimpse of the wireless future. This is not a startup contest -- it's a search for ideas. We're challenging anyone to make submissions... but, please, NO commercially-available products/services. We DO want to hear about innovative concepts, prototypes, research lab projects, hacks, and business ideas. If your submission blows us away, we'll invite you to showcase it at Supernova 2008. You'll also enjoy coverage on TechCrunch -- the leading media site covering emerging technologies and companies today; and the Supernova Conversation Hub. There will be no charge for those selected."

Seems like a good opportunity to me as the usual entry fee to the conference is $1695. The closing date is 23rd May 2008 and you can find out more on their website. Good luck!

MobiTV passes 4m

At least that's what Mobile Entertainment Magazine tells us this month. MobiTV claims to have over 4 million subscribers which is more than all of the IPTV customers in Europe. MobiTV is now adding a million subscribers every 6 months by whitelabelling their streaming TV services for mobile network operators globally.

Bearing in mind that MobiTV isn't the only mobile TV service out there either on or off-portal (Rok for example), I find this very encouraging. And I expect we might find a European surge in interest during Euro 2008 (I'm not sure what impact it will have on the UK market since England isn't playing...).

Yes, mobile TV is still small fry compared with some other mobile services. And implementation and execution to date by the network operators has been poor but it's another of those things that isn't going away.

Update 8 May 2008: Mobile TV is spreading in Europe and to the US (NY Times). "Every day in Switzerland, 40,000 people watch a 100-second television news broadcast on their cellphones. In Italy, a million people pay as much as 19 euros each ($29) a month to watch up to a dozen mobile TV channels."

Did you miss the mobile marketing forum?

I didn't make it to this year's MMA London mobile marketing forum for the conference, but I did manage to say hello to pals and colleagues in the evening courtesy of Admob. It sounds like it was an interesting day and worth going to. So, if like me, you missed it, then you can read all about the 'What Agencies Want panel session' here. It's well worth a read if you're an agency, working with an agency or want to work with agencies.

Via mobhappy.

The Mobile Web is live and kicking

Oh yeah baby! It surely is. When I walk down the street or sit on the bus, folks are casually chatting about doing stuff on the mobile web. The combination of the launch of the iphone advertising campaign for O2 (which shows lots of commonly used websites rendered beautifully on the iphone) and the launch of facebook's mobile web version, it feels like the mobile web is taking off.

However, not everyone is singing from the same hymnsheet. The much respected Russell Beattie has closed down Mowser, his reasons being that it wasn't making money and he no longer believed in the mobile web anyway. Or words to that effect. I read his blog post on the topic thoroughly and chatted with a few colleagues on the topic to get their reaction. They were both pretty bullish about the mobile web and felt that Russ had got it wrong this time and that maybe Mowser was always destined to fail. Bad news for Mowser, but good news for the mobile web in general.

And it would seem that the latest round of statistics from the GSMA, Admob and m:metrics would suggest that all is well in the land of the mobile web.

First off, the GSMA announced that there are 3 billion active mobile subscribers globally. Yes, that's right THREE billion.

M:metrics shows us (full press release and tables here) that consumption of mobile media is pretty healthy too with 36% of 18 to 34 year old males in western Europeaccessing mobile media and 9% of them responding to a text message advert (versus a 4% market average).

Interestingly, U.S. mobile users are more active consumers of mobile media, as unlike Europeans they use SMS less frequently for news and information retrieval and are more likely to have data plans, which directly impacts mobile content consumption. Among Europeans, the UK has the highest percentage of mobile media users, at 26.8 percent, while Germany and France lag, at 18.4 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.

And in the UK, mobile media is attracting a highly desirable audience that is 44 percent more likely to be defined as ‘cash rich, time poor ‘than the market average and data from TGI M:Metrics confirms that one third of all UK mobile media users agree they are tempted to buy products they’ve seen advertised.

Meanwhile, over at Admob, they've just released their March report where traffic is up 10% on the previous month, 24.5% of ad requests globally were from smartphones and the Nokia n70 moved into the top spot for India. Interesting stuff. Read the full pdf report here.

And if those stats aren't enough, then check this post out from mjelly. 10 reasons why the mobile web isn't dead including the fact that 17 million Brits played on the mobile web in December 2007, 500k sites have been built on Peperonity, Admob publishes 2.5billion mobile web adverts monthly, flirtomatic mobile traffic triples their pc web traffic and getjar has delivered over 100m mobile downloads in the last 2 years.

Pah, doesn't sound like the mobile web is dead to me Mr Beattie.

What's the buzz at MWC? A Women in Mobile Data Association event in Barcelona

It's the annual Mobile World Congress a chance for us ladies to get together for an informal meet-up to discuss the buzz at this year's MWC in Barcelona. There'll be wine, women & informal chat. This will be a welcome chance to sit down & escape the bustle of the exhibition & relax for an hour or two, networking with women within this luxurious hotel bar.We have a great sponsor this year, Airwide Solutions who will be providingthe first few drinks. The lovely Brenda Suarez from Airwide Solutions marketing team, will be joining the session so this is a great opportunity to get to know more about them..

What: Women in Mobile Data Association meet-up

Where: Café Viennese bar at the Casa Fuster hotel. Passeig de Gracia 132. Barcelona. +34 932 553 000. The nearest Metro station is Diagonal and it’s just a few stops from Congress or a short taxi ride. Casa Fuster is gorgeous posh hotel. The Cafe bar is on the left as you go in.

When: Wednesday 13th February 2007, 3.30pm to 5.30pmIf you would like to come, please RSVP to Gillian Kennedy putting WiMD in the subject field of your email. This is so we can get a rough idea of how much space we might need to reserve in the bar.

Please feel free to forward this invitation on to your female colleagues and friends who work in mobile data, content and associated sectors – we’d love to meet them too. Men are welcome on the arm of a lady; we like to keep the numbers balanced.

About our sponsor: Airwide Solutions
Airwide Solutions is the global-market-leading provider of next-generation mobile messaging and wireless internet infrastructure, applications and solutions, Airwide Solutions has one focus: To enable your revenue to keep pace with the burgeoning consumer-driven mobile messaging and wireless internet market. Find out more at their website and listen to some podcasts about different aspects of the industry including mobile marketing and mobile messaging.

More about the Women in Mobile Data Association:
Web: http://www.womeninmobiledata.com
Join us on facebook -The WiMD group is live and kicking and find out more about this WiMD event.

Swedish Beers in Spain in a Belgian Bar on Tuesday 12th February

Just in case you haven't heard, Swedish Beers is coming to Barcelona for MWC. Yes, it's that time of year again and everyone who is lucky enough to be heading to the sunshine and frolics in Barcelona is organising their MWC social life. The Swedish Beers crew *will* be in town as many of you already know and we'll be living it up at Belchica courtesy of our very generous sponsors Trutap - David and Carl, PINoptic - Colin and Jenny, MyMart - Adam and Ben, and Admob - Russell and Andy. So the first few beers will be on them. The proceedings kick off at 7pm and will go on until late (the bar's open very late so we won't get kicked out) so feel free to drop by and say hello, or should I say hola, during the evening.

Like last year's Swedish Beers in Spain in a Belgian Bar, on the night the very generous sponsors (this year's are David, Carl, Colin, Jenny, Russell, Andy, Adam and Ben) and the Swedish Beers crew (that's me, Steve, Anton and Gillian) will be the ones armed with the beer tokens. So come and search us out to claim your free beers.

It'll be the usual eclectic mix of media, marketing and mobile types but since we're in Barcelona for the night, it's a chance for our friends from outside the UK to join the fun too. There's sure to be lots of familiar faces as many of the London regulars will be there, but we're looking forward to welcoming new folks too. So if you fancy a drink and a chat and a mingle with the nice Swedish Beers folks, then come along and join in. You don't have to talk about mobile and you don't even have to drink beer if you don't want to, but it would be nice if you were friendly and enjoyed hanging out with other friendly folk who happen to have a passing interest in things mobile. There's no RSVP required unless you'd like to. If we're full when you arrive, don't panic, just come back a bit later. Folks will be coming and going all evening I expect.

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THE LOWDOWN:

Where: Belchica, Villarroel 60, 08011 Barcelona. Entrance on Gran Via de Deputacion. Metro L1 Urguell (so very near Congress).

When: Tuesday 12th February 2008 19:00h onwards

What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking Drinks

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ABOUT OUR LOVELY SPONSORS without whom the night wouldn't be possible

*Trutap* is an easy-to-use free mobile service that for the first time, globally, combines all the elements of a young person's social life into one application. With trutap users can easily connect and converse with friends and family, wherever they are, whenever they want. trutap currently operates in over 200 countries across the world and will operate in more shortly. Carl and David will be with us and if you want to know what they look like, their pictures can be found here! I'm quite sure David and Carl will keep you amused as well being Swedish Beers old-timers.

*PINoptic* applies its Visual Probabilistic One Time Password (VPOTP) next-generation software to high security authentication applications. This delivers an easy to implement yet innovative, universal security solution with the strength required by even financial institutions. PINoptic maintains user simplicity through the use of pictures and symbols which appeals to a global market with differing literacy levels. Applications range from financial through to internet, mobile telecoms, corporate IT and access control. PINoptic's vision is to become a defacto security standard and replace 99% of existing pin and password systems by 2012. Jenny and Colin will be on hand to explain all and it's pretty cool. Oh, and they'll have tokens for free beer.

*MyMart* is leading the way in mobile retail by providing mobile shop technology and services for operators, agencies and retailers. Adam and Ben are looking forward to building strategic relationships at the mobile world congress. They're also interested to chat about wheree mobile retail may be heading. Adam and Ben will have beer tokens in hand and are generally fun to hang out with too. And no, they won't try and sell you anything on the spot via one of their mobile shops... Well, I don't think they will anyway ;)

*Admob* Founded in 2006 (on my birthday as it happens! Ed), AdMob is the world's largest and highest quality mobile advertising marketplace, serving more than 2 billion mobile banner and text ads per month. Founded in January 2006, AdMob allows advertisers to reach their customers on the mobile web and enables publishers to increase the value of their mobile sites. AdMob offers advertisers the ability to target and personalize advertising to their customers in 160 countries. Sample AdMob customers include Coca Cola, Starbucks, MSN, Paramount Pictures, Reuters, MTV and many more. AdMob serves ads for over 3,000 mobile web sites, including ESPN, CBS, Weather Underground, Maxim and Peperonity. Russell (genunine old skool mobilist and blogger), Andy and I expect a few more from their crew will be around to hand out beer tokens and generally chew the fat.

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CHECK US OUT ON FACEBOOK TOO
Join the group - you'll be in good company and get more details about this event
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Skål

The Swedish Beers crew: Helen, Steve, Anton and Gillian