Video Report from the Global 3G Forum in Tokyo
Marcus Evans held their 6th edition of the annual Global 3G Forum from 22nd to 25th January here in Japan “… the most successful test bed for new mobile technologies and products”. Wireless Watch was on-hand, as usual, to meet some of the brightest minds in the businesss and we caught-up again with well-known telecoms author, consultant and all-round very smart thinker Tomi Ahonen**. Our video interview with him at the 3G Forum last year is Here.
According to Tomi, the big news from 2006 centered on the rest of the world finally breaking away from the panic about 3G, the largest infrastructure investment ever. “In 2005 there was alot of despair and worry about whether 3G would happen.. then in 2006 3G started to roll-out everywhere and countries like Japan and South Korea reached 50% penetration.” The other notable development he mentioned was digital communities and their migration for mobile. He goes on to quote Informa’s recent report which estimated social networking revenues on mobile at $3.5 Billion in 2006.
While it should be no surprise that he predicts mobile commerce will be a major topic in 2007, find out why, and indeed what else he’s expecting in the foreseeable future. Tomi’s a well-tuned voice in the mobile business and we always enjoy spending some time to hear what’s on his mind.. enjoy the show.
We also managed to get Tony DeVuro, Director of Product Marketing, from AOL Mobile on camera for a chat about the new service they will be announcing next month. Stay tuned for that. [Update: interview now online here]
We had to quickly point-out that the tag-line for this years 3g Forum was “The secret of success is to know something that nobody else knows” as quoted from Aristotle Onassis. While that might well be true, the trick of course then is to “also know what everybody else does know” or how would you know that you know something that nobody else knows.. almost easier said than done.
Slick marketing and double-speak aside, if you’ve come this far then you already know the basis of Marcus Evans reasoning behind holding this conference in Japan.. but it’s worth stating again just the same:
Tokyo is the city where innovation evolves beyond rationality and craftsmanship exceeds in excellence and is continually pushing the boundaries of mobile communications. Disruptive technologies in 3G have created new business models and paradigms. Content, entertainment and subsequent mobile device management are said to keep driving high value business of the future.
Customer experience and brand management will be paramount and new and non traditional partnerships are becoming essential to 3G future prosperity. In this fast evolving environment, rest of the world 3G services and solution providers must take a hard look at every facet of their business processes, technological performances and marketing procedures if they wish to remain competitive.
In this fast evolving environment, rest of the world 3G services and solution providers must take a hard look at every facet of their business processes, technological performances and marketing procedures if they wish to remain competitive.
Indeed..
— WWJ Editors
(**Disclosure: Tomi is an outside advisor to our parent company Mobikyo KK)
Update:
A(nother) great post from Tomi today – re: migration from fixed-line web to mobile – posted Here.