This Monday, the 7th Dutch Mobile Monday (MoMo) was held in the Rode Hoed in Amsterdam. MoMo is a regular event at which the great minds of the mobile industry meet and exchange thoughts and ideas on the future of mobile telephony. With this 7th edition, the emphasis was on creating value through mobile services.

Value and technology
During the first half of the event an open discussion was held between the attendees, primarily on the value of user generated content. Is there any value? And can money be made? The majority felt that it is still possible to make money with user generated content, despite the demise of Skoeps.nl.

During the second half, Ajit Jaokar went deeper into the technical side of things, discussing the impact of open source on the mobile industry. The last speaker, Yme Bosma of Hyves.nl, revealed some of the plans of Hyves to expand their mobile services and possible ways to create value, and money.

Not yet mature
Looking at the way both the industry and end users handle the relatively new technology of mobile communication, I think it’s evident that the technology has yet to mature. From the industry’s point of view, there is the lack of widely adopted standards, making it hard to create innovative applications with a wide reach.

Also, the gadget factor often takes precedence over actual usability. When a distinction is made between SMS (text messaging) and e-mail, when Voice over IP is seriously considered as a service for mobile phone users, and when someone’s Hyves, Facebook and Myspace addresses are all regarded as integral parts of their identity, it is obvious to me that the point is missed. And for all the end users struggling to balance their mobile phone use with direct human interaction, and getting excited over all the various sounds their phone makes, I think we still have a long way to go.

Tags: mobile culture

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 11:49 and is filed under Events, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.