MSG @ M-Days Munich; Mobile Trend Survey Results Reveal App Store Success Stories PLUS The Touch Web » mobilegroove

I’m out the door and off to M-Days in Munich, one of Europe’s biggest and best mobile industry events and exhibitions. The sold-out event brings together 1,400+ mobile industry professionals, executives and analysts to exchange ideas, network and talk global mobile trends. I’m proud to be a media partner and will have other news post-event about an exciting new venture between MSG and my esteemed colleague Carsten Szameitat, M-Days organizer and the driving force behind GFM Nachrichten, Germany’s leading source of mobile industry news and analysis.

And what better event than M-Days to provide a preview of the first (exclusive) results of Mobile Trends Survey 2010?

Drawing from an online survey of 1,000+ professionals and practitioners, the survey – conducted by MSG partner Netsize – provides insights into key trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the pivotal importance of mobile as a means to bridge our virtual and physical worlds.

During the session aptly titled “Mobile Trends 2020, Mobile Research and App-Commerce: What Comes Next in Europe?” I will provide conference attendees, industry influencers and key bloggers a sneak peek into the controversial survey results, starting with respondents’ views on app store leaders and the enablers that give them and their offers the competitive edge.

Follow the  event on Twitter (#mdays).

I look forward to an exciting panel with futurist and trend scout Monty Metzger (best known for his work with MOCOM2020, an open think tank about mobile media worldwide), Peter Broekroelofs (who heads up Service2Media and has valuable insights into the future of mobile commerce), and Karin Du Rietz from Rubberduck Media Lab (with some cool ideas about the future of mobile TV).

Another trend I will include in my presentation/discussion is the impact of smartphones on the fabric of the mobile Web.

The advance of touchscreen devices, app stores and new advertising approaches/formats are all coming together in a new kind of interactive mobile Internet, a brave new place where new content, new experiences and even new mobile search services will set the bar.
This brings me to Taptu, a mobile search company that understands this seismic shift. It lays out its views on this new Touch Web in a thought-provoking series of white papers.  (Available for download on MSG – see the right-hand sidebar for more details.)

The Touch Web throws up as many issues as it does opportunities.

•    What does it do to usability?
•    What does it mean for mobile advertising and how do we make it easy and inviting for people to interact with company sites and ads?
•    What is the impact on mobile search?

Tough questions I will address in my presentation.

Taptu doesn’t have all the answers either – but its plan of action (and thought leadership) is impressive. For a start, Taptu has crawled, indexed and graded websites (assessing factors such as their suitability for touch devices and their page weights –key since it impacts the speed of browsing on mobile network and the end-user experience) to create an index of Touch Web-friendly sites.

To make sure Touch Web-friendly sites also figure highly in mobile search results Taptu has also fine-tuned its algorithms to “decide whether to return results from the Touch Web, the mobile Web or the wider Web” depending on factors such as the searcher’s device and what they would likely appreciate.

More about this next week when Taptu releases the first-ever Touch Web report. MSG will delve deeper into the results in a series of articles and sponsored podcasts. And more on the Netsize survey results tomorrow (once they are public).

If you plan to be in Munich, please feel free to reach out!

Disclaimer: Netsize and Taptu are MSG partners and supporters and have committed to presenting exclusive thought leadership via a branded presence on MSG.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Mobile Marketing, Mobile Research, Mobile Search. 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.