Last week we attended the Mobile Internet Conference in Berlin. As already mentioned in an earlier post, Rocco was chairing the pre-conference day (31th March). A few startups were presenting at this day, amongst them Trutap and itsmy.com. Other presentations (YouTube Mobile, Cyworld, Yahoo! Spain) also gave interesting insights.
YouTube Mobile for example is most accessed in Japan followed by USA and UK. Its first launch version (alpha version) featured only a few thousands of videos and the distribution was mainly through carriers and mobile phone distributors. While its launch of the second version offers almost all the YouTube videos and experiences a 15 times increase in views per day. Right now YouTube Mobile does not include advertisement, but since it belongs to Google we can expect some kind of advertising soon.
On the next 2 conference days the presentations were mainly held by carriers (3 AUSTRIA, Magyar Telekom, O2 Germany, Swisscom Mobile, etc.). It was interesting to hear that carriers still (try to) open up. A very good example was 3 AUSTRIA. The presentation was very insightful and Alexander Franz showed how they are dealing with the changing environment and the shifting from voice to data. He introduced some interesting business models and explained the ”Skype Phone” for 99 EUR.
All in all it was a very interesting event with many interesting and diverse companies. And of course another great networking opportunity.