MobileBeat 2009: Feedback about content, news and dealmaking
Last week, about 500 people attended MobileBeat, our sold-out mobile conference in San Francisco.
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Most people said they enjoyed the content debates and the jazz-filled reception afterward. In one case, a startup entrepreneur said he got three meetings with venture capitalists and four appointments with large companies interested in corporate development deals. In another case, two UK-based companies, Shozu and Touchnote told us they signed a deal on the spot after… Continue Reading
Thanks for coming to MobileBeat2009!
Thanks to all of you who made it to MobileBeat2009 yesterday!
We had a wide-ranging discussion of the biggest mobile trends of the day. One conclusion from all of the excitement: the U.S. is leapfrogging Europe.
That’s not a conclusion made by us. It came from several Europeans (see story). Mark Curtis, of Flirtomatic, was another attendee from Europe who told me last night he was somewhat ashamed that the enthusiasm exhibited here yesterday would not be… Continue Reading
Come to MobileBeat 2009 — an executive conference on mobile innovation!
We’re pleased to announce our second annual mobile conference, called MobileBeat 2009, on July 16, 2009 at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco.
The event centers on the rise of the “mobile application,” and the profound influence its having on our lives — and, by consequence, on the entire business world. Last year, we held the first MobileBeat conference right after the release of the iPhone 3G — and so were first to discuss the… Continue Reading
MobileBeat is tomorrow. Latest addition: Bart Decrem, owner of top iPhone app
Make sure you’ve registered for MobileBeat, our mobile conference.
I think it’s going to be fun, because we’ve gathered all the significant mobile players under same roof: Carriers, handset manufacturers, operating systems, content providers, top investors, and leading start-ups. We’ll have cocktail party to cap it off. We’ve got just a few tickets left.
Our latest addition is Bart Decrem, of Tapulous, which owns the most successful iPhone application to date: Tap Tap Revenge, a game that… Continue Reading
The rise of the mobile platform-device, and the decline of the operators
Over the last five years, we’ve seen a staggering creation of wealth by two companies with mobile device strategies: Apple (which owns the iPod and iPhone) and RIM (which owns the blackberry).
Their success comes even as the major operators have stagnated — the big three have created almost no value at all.
Below is a chart of the stock performance of Apple and RIM, compared to the Nasdaq over the past five years. They’ve grown about… Continue Reading
MobileBeat: We’ve added free session for developers, including operators
We’ve added a special pre-event session to MobileBeat next Thursday, July 24.
This will be a free session for developers focused specifically on the trends we’re seeing on services platforms (Nokia’s OVI, for example) and operating systems (Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, etc.) and how they’re impacting developers writing mobile apps.
In addition, we’ve invited some operators to provide perspective on the challenges and benefits of building third party applications for their networks.
This session is meant to… Continue Reading
These 10 companies will demo on MobileBeat stage
After some tough decision-making, we’ve settled on the ten companies to present to the full audience on stage at MobileBeat next Thursday, July 24.
They’ve beat out far more than a hundred companies after several rounds of selection. They are as follows:
Applications:
Kyte.tv — a live video company that lets you broadcast live video from a phone, and keeps it organized on a web site through a personalized player
Loopt — a company offering location based applications for users… Continue Reading
Latest MobileBeat2008 additions: Facebook’s Jed Stremel, MySpace’s Brandon Lucas, Skydeck’s Jason Devitt
I’m delighted to announce three more panelists for MobileBeat2008, our mobile conference scheduled for July 24.
They are Jed Stremel, director of mobile at Facebook (pictured top left), Brandon Lucas, senior director of mobile business development (pictured middle) at MySpace, and Jason Devitt, chief executive of a new mobile start-up called Skydeck (bottom). They’ll be speaking on our panel about mobile vs. web moderated by Om Malik. We’ll be announcing one more person on this panel… Continue Reading
Mobile 2.0: Rummble, Zipiko and Dial2do shine, but venture captialists express caution
After being in the US the last few months I attended the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference last Friday.
The Mobile 2.0 events are known for often being early in championing mobile issues that become more mainstream later. They’re also known for giving a variety of folks in the mobile ecosystem a place to meet and discuss things openly, a rare find in mobile. This time, panel discussions covered mobile social media, VCs & mobile, operators and… Continue Reading
Five trends driving the mobile web
During the voting process for best mobile company (see our MobileBeat2008 voting page), we started to map the mobile landscape.
Led by Matthaus Krzykowski, a consultant at Mobile-Facts, and getting feedback from other experts, we’ve segmented the main mobile sectors. The diagrams below illustrate our conclusions. They highlight the significant trends. We also classify a sampling of start-ups accordingly.
Note that we’ve placed a green arrow by the bubbles where we see the main momentum right now… Continue Reading
Mobile ad company Admob is about to mint money
Advertising on mobile phones is a trying market. Americans have been slow to surf the mobile web, in large part because dominant carriers have made browsing the web so painful.
But one young company, Admob, is showing impressive results despite all this, according to interviews and an investigation into the overall ad market. Admob puts ad banners on mobile web pages run by companies like ESPN, CBS and Weather Underground. Based on its current performance, the… Continue Reading
MobileBeat voting ends. Latest speaker additions: Arrington, Malik and Nishar
Voting for the best mobile companies has ended as of noon. We’ll be announcing more details about the winners after the holiday weekend.
Winners will be invited to MobileBeat, our conference on July 24 about the tectonic changes happening in the mobile industry.
Mippin, a mobile service which lets users more easily interact with content on mobile phone, is sponsoring martinis for the closing cocktail party event.
We also have a few more speakers to announce:
Michael Arrington (pictured left):… Continue Reading
Earlybird tickets to MobileBeat end tomorrow — expect this to be a good networking event
Earlybird tickets to MobileBeat, our conference focused on the tectonic changes happening in the mobile industry, are on sale until tomorrow — so move quickly.
We’ve got a great lineup of speakers shaping up. I expect the most valuable part will be the networking in the hallways between sessions. The mobile industry has long been fragmented: Developers have largely been shut out of the platform discussion, because of regulations that have resulted in a quasi-monopoly among… Continue Reading
Bones in Motion trys to catch up to Garmin with cell phone GPS tracking for athletes
Location-based app maker Bones in Motion is looking to take a bite out of Garmin and other GPS manufacturers, offering up a service that lets runners and bikers user their GPS-enabled cell phones to track distance, speed, and how their training is progressing. Based out of Austin, Texas, the five-person outfit currently has deals signed with Sprint and Verizon, and is in talks to bring the service to other major carriers.
Founded by Andrew Graham and… Continue Reading