Feedback from Mobile Internet World: Techie, but “did you get that?”

November 15, 2007

Mobile Internet World organized by Yankee Group Research Inc

BOSTON – The first annual Mobile Internet World organized by Yankee Group Research Inc. attracted 1,000 delegates, including mobile technology specialists, advertisers and media. While the content was heavy on technology, it was clear that many questions dog mobile as it takes on Internet attributes. Traffic in the session rooms was steady, although the show floor could have done with more activity.

Here are comments from a selection of attendees and exhibitors on this inaugural show whose purpose was to question whether it was time for the mobile Internet to be taken seriously.

Berge Ayvazian, Chief Strategy Officer, Yankee Group
You have to start somewhere. This industry is at the beginning, and in the beginning you have create a vocabulary. We are starting a cross-cultural dialogue. We want to expose the mobile Internet to users.

Jonathan Singer, Research Analyst and Editor, Trendsmedia
How do we make mobile Internet better for everybody? More user-friendly? How do we figure out what apps consumers/enterprises want? And how can we enable that?

Brian Slitt, Director of Sales, Third Screen Media
I thought the show was more tech driven, not as media driven. There were lots of mobile/tech startup guys looking to hawk product. We had a lot of ad network people asking how to be a part of our network. Third Screen Media will definitely be returning next year, but we’ll send more tech people.

Karen Myers, Development Officer, World Wide Web Consortium
The Sprint guy [a speaker] was in the weeds. We were very happy to have a full room for Tim Berners-Lee’s keynote. The show was very interesting and extremely tech-driven.

Steve Bratt CEO, World Wide Web Consortium
I agree that the open platform is necessary for the mobile Internet world to succeed. That is what made the Web successful.

Beth Goza, Senior Marketing Manager, Zumobi
The show has been tremendous. The booth has been packed. We’ve had some great press and analyst interviews. We are one of the sponsors, so we’ve been really active. Mobile is back on the map! This has been a big week for mobile, with the Mobile Marketing Forum show in Los Angeles and another small Microsoft event in California and this show.

We announced the public date for our beta site and our name change here. People are really interested. They have asked which handsets are available for this platform, what is the coverage, what’s your revenue model? I’ve been sharing with attendees how our business model works. And I’ve been impressed with how knowledgeable people are. The show is definitely going to be bigger next year!

Yakov Hemo, Engineer, InfoGin
I thought the show was well organized with companies in the right sector. Very good, learned a lot, especially from the World Wide Web Consortium. We’re definitely coming back next year. My only complaint was that the layout of the conference was too spread out.

Nigel Spicer, President and Chief Operating Officer, Files 2 Phone
‘What do you guys do?’ was the question I got the most at my booth, which was disappointing because I had this sign made [points to huge sign behind him describing what Files 2 Phone does]. We didn’t understand a lot, except when they talked about the mobile computer. It was an energetic audience. We were very pleased with reactions. Being here was extremely worthwhile. [But] the conference was too distributed, distances from sessions too far apart.