Three days ago at Berlin’s Home Base Lounge I was wondering whether MobileMonday was still a grass root organization. It was crowded with a peak of 120 attendees from which were about 30 newbies (raised their hand when asked “who’s new to Mobile Monday”). Probably these were expecting something big as the event was supposed to “take a look at global trends and the new ecosystem in the mobile industry from a bird’s eye perspective in order to get a grasp of the Big Picture”.

The panels

Three Panels plus a discussion showed about the status of mobile and the future development:

• Philippe Souidi (Founder at 23ideas)
• Matthäus Krzykowski (Co-founder and Managing Partner at Agora 9 Group and contributor to VentureBeat)
• Martin Menzel (Concepter & Developer Mobile Web & iPhone Apps at maniac lizard – strong knowledge about the Japanese mobile market)
• In a panel discussion at the end of the official part the guys above plus Markus Berger-de León (CEO at Abacho) were discussing analysts’ findings from different perspective.

The line-up kept the promise of The Big Picture because it was packed with a broad range of mobile topics: Consumer services, app ecosystem, m-payment, and value chain. We had number crunching and region hopping (from Japan in the far east to the silicon valley in the far west). Time frame span from 2000 to today – surely future trends were given to give an estimation of “what’s next”.

Great stuff in particular came from Matthäus Krzykowski who gave insights from his writing experience at VentureBeat and he also presented his new company Agora 9, a market intelligence firm focused on the app economy. His outlook was very entertaining for the ones familiar with Mobile. But regarding the newbies, they are probably not that much into Mobile day to day, it was a bit hard to follow I guess.

Short but in depth – as told in the announcement of the event – all this was handled in a 90 minute rush. To me it would have been better to extend to two hours. Anyway.

Friendticker promoting beta launch

The guys and girls from friendticker were promoting the beta launch of their service at a booth beside. Their new social game and mobile loyalty platform is similar to its competitors Foursquare, Gowalla and also German based Tagcrumbs (Also Facebook is stepping-in in April) but is offering real benefits provided by companies using the platform for promotion. I am curious if this service will finally help local stores and retailers profit from the mobile revolution – this huge field still has to be developed.

What did we learn?

Complicated value chain. Well I am glad to see that other mobilists agree that it is not easy to give a clear picture of the value chain. It is a very complicated ecosystem and it is hard to know the relevant players and their proposition especially when they are moving along the value chain. Even harder to put all that into a chart.

Who’s making money? The panelists were of three different opinions, which actually doesn’t help here either. Feel free to pick yours:

• “All could make money.”
• “Difficult to answer.”
• “I do not have a f* clue! :O”

What I liked. It is not new to say the mobile phone is personal and so on. But you have to keep in mind that the ecosystem is built on the people using phones and connected services. These people have to fall in love with the phone and so will mobile as an industry lift-off!

About the author: Philipp Deprez took his professional experience in different fields of the mobile and online world. He started at Zurich based OEM Ascom, where he did research in the dual band handset market. After that and after studying engineering management in Karlsruhe he turned to online portals and transaction services at Commerzbank in Asia. He was based in Shanghai and managed the local requirements for online banking systems including the roll out throughout the Asian branches. At Tomorrow Focus AG and Smaato Inc. he learned about the character of mobile advertising. He understands mobile advertising as a service that offers interaction between people and products. Hence he feels confident that mobile advertising will develop. It will then be seamlessly integrated in the user’s media consumption and therefore will perfectly fit in the daily lifestyle.