Reboot 10, impressions and thoughts
This year i had the chance to attend Reboot 10 in Copenhagen. This was my first time there and i have to say that the conference is good and the people, from speakers to the audience, were nice and friendly.
Now, since this blog is supposed to be devoted to mobiles and new media, let me pinpoint some impressions i had during the 2 days conference:
1) Twitter is a serious competitors of SMS: i was the only one in the audience without a notebook (damn battery!) and i was checking others people monitors: almost everyone had a tab on Twitter and another one on Summize. There was a parallel conversation between peers in the audience: comments on the speech in real time, jokes, schedule of meetings. Twitter is a real community alternative to SMS.
2) iPhone, iTouch: lots of them, nobody's calling, lots of surfing, photo shooting and mailing. So it's like a confirmation: the iPhone more than "a phone with an iPod" is "an iPod with the Internet" which is radically different. I wonder if the same consideration applies to the real market (Reboot is a Geek Adunanza): the real user will surf more the Web because of the device?
Lot of Mac fans in Italy were "surprised/upset" because of a rumored tariff that includes only 1 Giga of data for a monthly fee of 110€ with a 900 minute included. Lots of talking and little Internet: is this the italian way to sell the iPhone? Tim Iphone Plans.
In US things are a little bit different: At&t iPhone plans.
I look forward to understand how the market react in Europe and in particular in Italy
3) Notebooks: lots of Apple Computers, not big news in this kind of meetings. What surprised me is a little but significant presence of eeePC. They are tiny and well connected and full featured for the digital life on the road: they are the swiss knife of the internet. Not so stylish like the iPhone but real Computer with all the application running natively at a decent price.
What's missing (for the EU at least) is an integrated Hi-Speed module but maybe the Acer One will fullfill also this segment: Video Review.
4) This point could be called "Usb Dongle is the best friend of you laptop" or "Wifi is free, but sometimes Hi-Speed is better".
During the conference i saw a lot of USB dongles gently floating in the air from a lots of notebooks. although there was a decent wifi coverage some people preferred to use Hi-Speed. Why? My guess is that sometimes the QoS matters: when you really need to be online you don't want a dropped connection every 5 minutes. Or in general if you have a flat fee why bother to change your standard configuration: plug and play!
Working in a mobile operator i know all the efforts made to guarantee the QoS of the services and the mobile data market has a strong competitor in the free Wi-fi, so the strategy is simple : Operators should provide easy services with high quality at a decent price. Simple uh?
5) Free was the topic of this session of Reebot and the chat with Marko Ahtisaari was really inspiring:
Living off free - Learnings from designing Blyk - the free mobile network
I was familiar with the proposition of Blyk but what really surprised me was their approach to the mobile advertising market:
They accept as customers young people from 16 to 24 years only, not a day less, not a day more. What's interesting is that once you are in you can stay within the network while aging. Their ambitions is to create a sort of MTV generation as a customer base.
When you join Blyk you get a free SIM with 217 free texts and 43 free minutes,every month Blyk refills this SIM.
So Blyk is almost free but they are avoiding standard advertising based on the concept of "free" (where all traditional telcos advertised different "sort" of free plans) and they preferred to use unconventional marketing and an invitation only strategy. Good idea because they have now more than 150.000 subscribers which is an interesting number.
Also the subscribers are liking the ads because are tailored on their interest and some people is asking for more.
Here come another interesting fact: some people asked for a functionality where they can retrieve advertising on demand. I guess this is the dream of every media agency or advertiser: people saying that they are ready to read/watch/play an advertisement. How much is worth this on-demand-ad? I guess a lot.
In conclusion Blyk has a radically new approach to the telco market, will they succeed?
I think so because their business model is a smart mobile version of Google elements of success: easy and useful service, free, advertising and smart technology.
6) To conclude some fun while networking at Reebot:
"Hi, I'm Frangino and i work for a Mobile Telecom Operator", possible reaction list:
- Ah, Voip is free!
- The iPhone, bla bla bla
- How can i switch between application using symbian?
- You have expensive plan!!
- I have roaming issues..
- I don't like calling
- Why that midlet is not working?
- Nobody calls me, sigh sigh
more on Technorati: Reboot Reboot10 Copenhagen conference iPhone Blyk eeePC USB Dongle Wifi HiSpeed
Gizmodo reports that Apple recently patented a Text To Speech system to use SMS with voice commands. We all know that only a small percentage of patents become a service (or part of it). In this case i see a huge misunderstanding of the SMS market if Apple thinks that user will appreciate this kind of VoiceSMS. Usually Sms are used when you can actually speak a message and the reasons may vary: you are in a meeting, you don't want to be heard or simply you are playing with your Inbox while waiting the bus. The same scenarios applies to receiving messages: sms are simple like emails, you read them when you want and in complete privacy.
