On 15 February, one of the most exciting showcases of mobile innovation of the year will be on display in Barcelona: the Mobile Premier Awards in Innovation. The awards are the largest start-up competition in the mobile sector and they are a unique grass-roots discovery tool: each chapter of the global community of Mobile Monday chooses one candidate. 49 candidates have been chosen (have a look further down). An international jury (I am flattered and proud to be a member) selects 20 finalists who will pitch in Barcelona at the Palau de la Musica on the afternoon of the first day of the Mobile World Congress.
It is a wonderful display of the innovation and creative power the mobile industry has to offer and I invite you to have a good look at the candidates.
If you are in Barcelona that week (and who isn’t?), you should make sure to book your ticket for the event here.
I hope to see you in Barcelona to celebrate innovation in mobile!
To stay in touch with everything around the awards, follow them on Twitter (@mobilepremier), become a fan on Facbook,
And, once your in Barcelona, you should not miss Mobile Sunday Barcelona 2010, which has fast become an unofficial kick-off event to MWC for mobile bloggers. It is on on Sunday, 14 Feb, from 7pm CET onwards.
Here’s a list of the 49 candidates (with links here):
- MobileMonday Austria – Mobilizy
- MobileMonday Barcelona – fonYou
- MobileMonday Belfast – SpeechStorm
- MobileMonday Bergen – ComCom
- MobileMonday Berlin – spendino
- MobileMonday Bogota – RedSalvavidas
- MobileMonday Brussels – Getyoo
- MobileMonday Buenos Aires – Beepoint
- MobileMonday Caracas – Consorcio Si-SMS
- MobileMonday Chennai – mobiSiteGalore
- MobileMonday Copenhagen – Cepa Mobility
- MobileMonday Dallas – Wave Integrated Marketing Solutions
- MobileMonday Dublin – Locle
- MobileMonday Dusseldorf – Yoose
- MobileMonday Edinburgh – Mobile Acuity
- MobileMonday Estonia – TaxiPal
- MobileMonday Frankfurt – match2blue
- MobileMonday Hamburg – apprupt
- MobileMonday Hungary – InfomatiX
- MobileMonday Jakarta – dotus indonesia
- MobileMonday Kuala Lumpur – CWorks Mobile
- MobileMonday Lithuania – SendFlow
- MobileMonday London – Audioboo
- MobileMonday Madrid – Tooio
- MobileMonday Malmö – Color Monkey
- MobileMonday Medellin – Wanbee
- MobileMonday Melbourne – Callernizer
- MobileMonday Mexico – Binbit
- MobileMonday Mid-Atlantic – Amphetamobile
- MobileMonday Milan – Soundtrckr
- MobileMonday Mumbai – Umundo
- MobileMonday Munich – Aloqa
- MobileMonday New Delhi – Voicetap Technologies
- MobileMonday New York – PercentMobile
- MobileMonday Oslo – Bipper Communication
- MobileMonday Paris – Presselite
- MobileMonday Rest of EMEA – Layar
- MobileMonday Rio de Janeiro – iMusica
- MobileMonday Rome – Mobnotes
- MobileMonday Sao Paulo – Atope
- MobileMonday Shanghai – mInfo
- MobileMonday Silicon Valley – CloudMade
- MobileMonday Singapore – Just Mobile
- MobileMonday Slovenia – Visionect
- MobileMonday Sofia – Bianor
- MobileMonday Stockholm – MoSync
- MobileMonday Tel Aviv – waze
- MobileMonday Toronto – Fonolo
- MobileMonday Vancouver – Sort Shots
We live in a world where sharing has become an It-word. Contribution, engagement have all fast become pinnacles of every marketing expert’s arsenal.
And now O2, not always famous for the radical and new, has taken this concept, embraced it, turbo-charged it and took it to a whole new level. Enter: giffgaff (fashionable with no upper case). giffgaff is the world’s first people-powered MVNO (or “mobile service” as it calls itself), owned by O2 but apparently independently run. Here’s how it works (or supposed to work):
The network is a good (?) old-fashioned solid one, namely from O2. But that’s where it ends. Sales, marketing, customer service, brand development and the general business decisions will apparently all be made (or at least proposed or advised on) by giffgaff’s own users. I already found an entry in its forum calling for users calling for two rotating board-seats for users (though that will probably remain to be seen). giffgaff does have a gaffer (CEO in old-fashioned corporate speak) with a back-room (management team) overseeing the whole thing (and that team, according to early commentators who have met them, seem to be for real). The service appears to run on a SIM-only model and aims for “simple” tariffs that include voice, text and data (mobile web without restrictions).
The prices for the service should be significantly lower because there are no armies of marketers, sales professionals, account managers, customer service representatives, customer service managers, etc, etc – or at least much less of them. At the same time, the “sharing is caring” credo has shown its power and quality in many ways on the web so far (and with giffgaff people will apparently earn rebates if they contribute). And in particular on customer service it should be easy to beat virtually any carrier hands down, shouldn’t it?
So will it work? I think it would be wonderful if it would. I am not sure though if this experiment will be a massive success (maybe a small success is good enough anyway). And the reason for this is power law distribution: only very, very few people contribute significantly (Clay Shirky gives a wealth of examples) and most people contribute hardly anything (the question would then be if the rebates are enough to break that mould). Whilst this works well with something like Wikipedia, I am not sure if a user of giffgaff would be all too happy to wait however long it takes for a member of the community to answer his/her particular query, at least not if it concerns some core functionality. Such a user would arguably be disappointed and thus relatively quickly discouraged. Which would be the end of him/her as a user of the service. Which would be not so good.
I would be more than thrilled if they would pull it off. And I will clap and shout for them. It would really be a whole new level of sharing. Go on, guys!!!
MVNOs seem to be seeking the shelter of big incumbents. Or is it the other way around? Incumbents buying the brands built by MVNOs and internalizing cost along the way? I suspect it is the latter but the economics would work either way…
Anyway, along these lines, Bell Mobility, the Canadian incumbent carrier, announced today that it has acquired Virgin Mobile Canada (or rather the half it did not own already) for Can$ 142m. This follows the acquisitions of Virgin Mobile UK by NTL and Virgin Mobile Australia by Optus. And, continuing the above theme, Bell also announced that Virgin will continue to operate under its own “unique wireless brand with special appeal to young Canadians”. There you have it.
Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO for 16-24 year-olds has been in the news lately a lot. The trigger was a piece by NMA according to which Blyk had announced it would scrap its consumer offering and concentrate on selling its technology/concept/both to other operators. This was quickly refuted by Blyk. The “final” position appears to being a little unclear.
I post on Blyk, and the next day its CEO rushes to give an interview… Was he upset about what he read and unleashed a PR storm to rescue his company to fight sentiment of the blogosphere? Perhaps, perhaps not. Well, maybe not. On the merits, there is nothing dramatically new but it is worth mentioning, I guess, nonetheless. Judge by yourself.
I know I have been depriving you lately (the day-job demanding more of my nightly attention than I would like) but this is remarkable: Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO, which I have covered previously (here and here), raised – financial crisis or not – a rather substantial amount from its existing investors, namely €40m (which apparently translates into $50.4m). Now, do they not read my blog? Or do I not get it (as Blyk’s UK MD would probably suggest).
Now, I will not claim that they ramped up their efforts as a result of my comments a few days ago, but Blyk announced today that they breezed past the 100,000 subscriber mark. So, well done them!
It does not however alleviate my concerns about the general business model, I have to say. They are not revealing ARPU or anything like that. The overall constraints of the ad-funded approach do, I think, remain. I stand to be corrected but would need to see a more robust business parameters to be convinced…
PS: Thanks to BitRabbit for the heads-up!
