It was a pleasure to be the first Mobile Dating company to ever speak at this conference. I spoke about how The 3G Dating Agency is “Taking the Waiting out of Dating” and gave a run down of the key reasons that this entire industry will inevitably move over from the internet to the mobile.
As you can imagine it led to some very healthy debate… actually most of the audience were from the US and had such PC/fixed internet perspectives that they said things like social networking on mobile will never make any money. I wonder if they realise what type of content is being pushed through all these text messages? It was inevitable that some would fall off their seats when I reminded them that:
> American mobile users are now sending more SMS’ than they are placing calls
> More than a billion people are using the internet on their mobile phones
> More than a billion people have sent MMS – by the end of 2008 it will become the most used data application in the world (behind SMS)
> Mobile Data revenues will reach $200 Billion in 2008
> Even if you exclude SMS revenues, Mobile Data revenues are already worth $70 Billion or as as much as Hollywood box office revenues + Video Gaming software sales + Global music industry revenues
> 300 million multimedia phones will be bought in 2008
> $130 billion will be spent on SMS in 2008
The general consensus seemed to be that “mobile was an additional feature for their web users” which is odd because Mobile Content whilst still in its infancy has already generated revenues in excess of much more eastablished industries. The mobile content industry dwarfs the internet industry and younger generations obviously prefer it.
Christine Perey backed up my feelings with the deep industry know-how and stats from her excellent Informa Mobile Social Networking: Communities and Content on the Move report.
The talk by Lorraine Adams from Gorgeous Networks about how to generate great PR gave me some great take-aways that I’ll definitely be using… I only wish i could share her slides with you.
