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MobHappy

Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino on mobile technology.

Help The MIR Team Raise Money For Charity — And Win Some Great PrizesNovember 21

Ewan and his crew over at Mobile Industry Review are trying to raise 1500 squid for charity. They’re giving away some nice handsets and accessories — every 5 pounds/$10 (come on, haven’t you guys checked the exchange rates lately :P) you donate to the causes (Childline and the UN Foundation) gets you one entry. The drawing is December 10, so be sure to click on over and donate.

50,000,000,000November 21

As you can see from my artfully graffitied image above (Banksy, eat your heart out, mate!), a short while ago, AdMob served our 50 Billionth ad. This was quite comfortably within our 3rd birthday and is quite a milestone, as you can imagine.

Congrats to all my colleagues at AdMob on a very fine achievement and one that shows no sign at all of slowing down.

Special kudos to Omar, AdMob’s Founder, who came up with the idea and continues to lead the company and drive it forward on a daily basis. If you’re not from round these parts, I don’t do sycophancy (though admittedly, it might have come in useful now and again in my career), so by a process of deduction, you may rightly conclude that my claim must really be honest praise and appreciation.

Here’s to the next 50 Billion!

Another Winner from BBHNovember 21

My main reason for attending the GSMA’s Mobile Asia Conference in Macau this week, was because the MMA was joint sponsoring the Mobile Advertising stream, where I was speaking partly as AdMob and partly as the Global Chair of the MMA.

To be honest, the overall event was a little disappointing and nowhere near the scale and success of the sister event in Barcelona, which has to be the mother of all trade shows. Delegates seemed to think that it was smaller attendee-wise than previous years, though the exhibition was generally bigger. However, there were loads of rumours about companies cutting back on the number of delegates at the last minute, generally reflecting the grim reality of the economic situation. It was the first real impact I’ve seen first hand of the affect on mobile.

Having said that, it was hard to judge numbers in the huge venue that is the Venetian hotel in Macau - about a 40 minute ferry from Hong Kong. It felt as if it could comfortably swallow a couple of large football crowds and is, I understand, the largest hotel in the world and a replica of the Las Vegas one. The over-the-top Vegas style was very weird transposed into an Asian setting and was all the more strange as it seems to be a pilgrimage point for ordinary Chinese people, who can be found walking along the huge corridors, gawping at this example of Western decadence. In fairness to the West, it’s about as representative of what we’re really like is a pre-crash hedge fund

Helen’s WarningNovember 19

MH pal (and my old colleague), Helen Keegan, has a great post over at Musings of a Mobile Marketeer called “There is No Future of Mobile”. Of course, she doesn’t really believe that, but she does remind us of some important warnings for all of us who work in mobile and we should ignore them at our peril.

Most of the themes will hopefully be familiar with MH readers, but this isn’t a world where we can say something once and move on. Issues like flat rate, and comprehensible, data packages and being user centric remain critical issues for the mobile industry and if you know anyone important in the world of mobile, forward her link as a timely reminder.

The only point that probably requires more argument and discussion is whether the mobile is just a communication device. Sure, most of the primary successes to date have been driven by communication, without question, and communication will continue to be really important in the future. But gaming and alarm clocks (the third most popular functionality of mobiles according to Blyk) are two exceptions that spring to mind, but are they anomalies or hints of things to come?

It also depends on the definition of communication, I guess. Is broadcast or one-to-many “communication” or do we reserve that for one-to-one? Because some form of TV and radio/podcast are inevitable for mobile.

A topic for another d

You’re Probably Going To Laugh, But…November 11

I think this is a great idea — a picture frame with a GSM radio so it can receive MMS.

Nokia announced the SU-7 Image Frame a few years ago, but the price of the frame was pretty steep and finding a reasonably priced way to keep the SIM in the frame alive wasn’t very easy. T-Mobile’s on the right path, with the frame at $100, but $10 per month service might still be high.

I doubt I’d ever use one of these, but I can see grandmothers around the world loving it, and looking forward to getting new photos and updates from their kids and grandkids.