MEM2007

The following was published yesterday at DeGardener.

I spent the week in Monaco at MEM2007. From the personal perspective it was a very exciting show, after all, first time HOOQs was on display. From that perspective we had an excellent show - great feedback and lots of users and leads. We have work cut out for us, but the good news is that the market is HOT! The need for personalized, open, operator independent web to mobile services is all over the place and is welcomed by users, operators, content providers, analysts and bloggers.

MEM2007 is not really a classic exhibition, it's more of a conference. Participation is nearly exclusive to industry insiders and the tracks, therefore, are very professional. To a start-up-ist, these represent rare opportunities to take a 30,000 feet view and collect some insights that extend beyond the daily challenges. My own personal climax was not a single industry lecture or panel, even though all were very interesting at their own merit. To me, the most insightful session was a focus group with 10 different teenagers. These young adults were gathered from different countries - Australia, England, France, Italy, Finland, Germany - and were all surveyed about their digital lives. Here is some of what they told us:

1. The key elements teenagers look for in their mobile phones is appearance. Then come ability to play music, quality of camera and feature richness.

2. Nokia is the most popular handset brand. Out of the 10 participants, 5 had Nokias, 2 had Samsungs, 2 had LGs (Chocolate) and 1 had a Sony Ericsson. 7 out of 10 devices were 3G.

3. They don't do mobile clients - only 1 participant ever downloaded a mobile application. A game. Used it a couple of times and ditched it.

4. Teenagers are smart shoppers. They don't mind paying for Internet content, but hate buying stuff they can easily find for free. In other words, they will not buy songs for 3 Euros a pop. Contrary to popular belief, they buy a lot of CDs in addition to downloading free music. They know how to manage their music collection and how to get their favorite music on their mobile device.

5. On they other hand, all participants testified they would gladly buy new content if only they could find it easily. All participants agreed that the mobile operator portals are close to impossible to navigate through.

6. On top, the differences between operators and handsets make it impossible for users to share experiences. Not tracks or clips - pure information about where and how to find them!

7. They things they on their handsets are better Internet browsing and memory. They really don't get why MP3 and Video enabled phones come with such little memory.

8. They don't mind advertising if it makes content free. They are already used to online ant TV advertising, why object to mobile ads?

9. They all tried Google on their mobile and didn't like it. The mobile experience does not provide anything close to the internet experience.

10. They don't do MMS. All of them tried and all of them claim that "it doesn't work".

11. If they had to give up their TV, Mobile Phone or PC, 9 out of 10 would give up their TV (the only other answer was PC). None would let go of their mobile phone.

These young adults were not screaming in a vacuum. It was great to hear executives from operators presenting plans to further breakdown their walled gardens and push flat data rates. It seems like it's only a question of price points now. This is music to the ears of user centric service providers. To me, however, getting the bartenders in front of our booth excited and HooQed was most rewarding than anything!