Mobile Content Australia Report
Last week I attended the two day Mobile Content Australia conference in Sydney. It was the first time that Association and Communication Events have staged the mobile content conference, going head to head in competition against Mobile Content World (Sydney), coming up in June.
With around 150 delegates and a collection of high profile speakers the organisers would have to be pleased with the outcome.
As I was preparing my round-up of the event I found a news article about Two Way TV doing a deal with News Corp’s Star channel in Asia and was a little surprised that Daniel Barton from Two Way did not mention this or discuss their Simcast system that allows for interactivity to television shows as they broadcast.
In fact, overall there was a lack of Asian examples of mobile content systems and successes, afterall, this is where all the innovation is occuring and we are sure to follow suit in the next few years. Particularly when Hugh James, from SBS pointed out that in Australia the average consumption of mobile tv is 3-5 minutes and in Japan it is 10-12 minutes.
Of course, it’s impossible to cover everything and Daniel did give us a few pointers in regard to the legalities of gambling on the phones, explaining that skill games are legal but poker, bingo and casino games are not. He told us they provide 2 different play options, Play for Fun (no money), Play for Real (with money).
He pointed us to a wap site hosted in Sth Africa by a company who offer services globally.
There were speakers from the big three (Fairfax Digital, Yahoo7 and nineMSN) and although they provided great demonstrations that they are embracing the mobile platform all seemed to indicate that it is a test environment as the market has not matured enough to consider it mainstream. They encouraged delegates to get in early and make something and learn from the experience.
Robbee Spadafora, from Seven, emphasized that the mobile is like a tentacle of an octopus while the brand is the head. Although I disagree with her argument that the mobile is an extension of the web and the web is an extension of broadcast, she did say that community is important in the mobile environment and not to communicate on mass - get personal as it is a one on one experience.
She said she was not prepared to do exclusive deals with telcos as this would alienate some of their audience. They want everyone to have the choice of accessing their content.
There was a lot of debate about the role that telcos are playing in the mobile content landscape, both on the issue of exorbitant data charges that is dampening consumer interest, as well as their impact on the ability for content makers to reach their audience when the telcos are the gatekeepers to the walled gardens where consumers are being channeled.
Overall I felt the conference could have done with more real life examples of content that works on the phone, especially off-deck sites given that Michael Padden from Telstra said he has not seen any decent off-portal content. A real shame, particularly considering Vianney Settini, from France who I interviewed a couple of weeks ago, was in attendance and who publishes a directory of unofficial i-mode sites called i-gloo. He was surprised by the lack of off-portal site development in Australia.
The viability of off-portal publishing was in hot debate during the cocktail drink hour (kindly provided by 24/7) and during the panel discussion on the second day when it was mentioned that mBlox had just done a deal to be able to sell wholesale GPRS from Vodafone in the UK.
Although DVB-H was only mentioned briefly it felt like there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for it. Angelos Frrangopoulos from Sky News argued that traditional linear channels on the mobile don’t always work because in the “snack tv” model people have a 5 minute window to consume something and if that is at the end of the news bulletin that won’t work.
Of course there were many other excellent speakers during the two day conference who I have not mentioned in my summary and I thank them all for their insight, particularly Paul Budde, who was an excellent chair of the second day and hosted a delegate discussion for the final session that was vibrant and dynamic.
I would like to congratulate Shahida and Saul for a great event and I thank them for supplying me with a media pass to attend.