GMIC 2010 Day 1 Thoughts

I wanted to send out ‘live’ updates, per-se, during the day yesterday but the internet connection was horrendously slow! So much for a Mobile Internet conference, eh? =)

Anyways; I didn’t make it out for today’s session- feeling a bit under the weather today. I think it’s just a cumulation of lack of sleep and fatigue from this week. I had to head out to the US Embassy on Tuesday, which is on the East side of town, by 7:30am, and the GMIC conference, which is also on the East side of town, by 8am.

I just wanted to throw down some thoughts from speakers that stood out to me from yesterday’s session-

BO YiQun, co-founder of the Great Wall Club

Why look at Asia in regards to the Mobile Internet space?

• There are 5 SNS listed in the stock market in China
• Tencent has had a 35 fold ROI over five years and is more profitable than Facebook
• 92% of the 1.8 billion USD revenue in 2009 of Tencent were directly from users through virtual goods, while Facebook’s revenue is exclusively reliant on ads

Takeshi Natsuno, inventor of i-mode and a professor at Keio University, Graduate School of Media and Governance

• The difference in the Japanese mobile space and the rest of the world, is that the Japanese network carriers didn’t wait for standardization, such as with WAP 2.0, instead they innovated.
• In Europe and America, it’s the internet players who are innovating (Apple, Google, Android, RIM, etc).

• The internet players are going to continue to be more active in innovation as cloud computing becomes more popular, and the need for sync’ing between PC and phone increases in demand.
• The scope and enforcement of standards in application layer should be carefully set up, as too much standardization would diminish incentive for innovation.
• Innovation in the emerging market will become more important than advanced market- there’s a bigger opportunity and a bigger market. This will be the new frontier for the mobile industry

Interview of Takeshi Natsuno, by Benajmin Joffe, CEO of +8*

How do you define an ecosystem?

• An ecosystem is a kind of tool to provide the best service to users. Just providing a handset and hardware isn’t going to be useful for the consumer; the ecosystem makes the hardware useful. The difficult thing for the carriers, is that in the telecom business, you must invest huge amounts of money to innovate. However, in cloud computing, you can take small steps and gradually develop an ecosystem- there is a huge financial risk to build an ecosystem in the telecom business.

Shawn Dubravac, Chief Economist, Consumer Electronics Association

• Contrary to the old mantra: “build it and they will come”, you need to think about what kind of audience you’re trying to attract. Be aware of the type of users you’re looking for.

• Understand ‘combinatorial innovation’ in mobile innovation. Take Apple’s iPhone for example- it was an ‘innovating’ device that integrated WiFi, GPS and MP3. These technologies, separately, aren’t innovative.