This week I attended Chetan Sharma's Mobile Breakfast Event, which he recaps here. It was great to see some familiar faces and hear startup stories from a range of services.
I'm grateful that Chetan puts on these events and brings such a focused community together.
Listening to the commentary on application distribution and startup's path to commercial viability is interesting now that I am sitting on the carrier side of the fence. While the audience is not as virulently anti-carrier as a SV meeting it was close which has always struck me as amusing. If eliminating carriers would be such a panacea why not just go to market only on the web?
Problem solved as is evident by the great number of web-only startups in 2009 and 2010 which have generated fast growing user bases with scaling revenue models...oh, wait.
Beyond that equation there were some interesting discussions on time to market in general and the business model implications of aligning with carriers, OEMs, etc. Swype and Root had interesting stories to tell on this topic.
One topic which was interestingly absent was cloud computing or even HTML5. Has the iPad launch killed that hot topic for consumer mobile services? The app store route on iPhone and Android seemed a forgone conclusion to both speakers and audience, with one notable nod to RIM.
Mobile Email Tops Voicemail, Says Seven
Mobile Email Tops Voicemail, Says Seven - WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS.
SEVEN has done an interesting survey claiming that voicemail and email are a bit of an either-or communications preference for businesses, and that IM lags substantially behind email.
In my (non statistically relevant) experience companies tend to be culturally inclined toward either voice or email. Most technology companies I work for are either email or IM dominated for reaching someone or getting an answer. However service firms I've worked with, and for, are primarily voice oriented.
I've always thought the type of work you did created different demand types. Service firms often rely heavily upon context and conveying that is easier through voice. Tech firms often need fairly straightforward info bits which is fastest thru email, text, or IM.
October 14, 2008 in Mobile Email, Mobile industry commentary, Mobile Startup Tracker, SEVEN | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)