CTIA 2007, San Francisco, Impressions Day #2
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Second day and it seems that the theme of the show is that SMS is a nice common denominator which will help bring more functionality and less silo applications to mobile devices. This is amazing for me to hear! Thus far in North America we have met with hostility from some quarters as we push intelligent Email to SMS. Ironically, we spoke to 4 analyst firms yesterday and they all think we are doing the right thing! The view is that intelligent Email to SMS where you filter as much as possible so you get 20 relevant/critical emails instead of 200 on your mobile phone and you intelligently summarize so you can maximize the use of the 15 words that an SMS packet allows is actually a good approach! Who knew?? J A nice highlight at the show yesterday was the speech by Facebook co-Founder Dustin Moscowitz. He was strongly trying to make the point that unlike the world of the Internet and computing which have open systems from Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc., the wireless networks are locked up closed systems from the carriers. This again reminds me of the Bellheads versus Netheads view circa 1997 when the web was taking off and the carriers were resisting as best they can. They were forced to shift. Similarly, the wireless carriers will have to do the same thing. I love the idea of Google buying wireless spectrum in the future and blowing the roof off these closed systems! It was also interesting that the Co-CEO of RIM Mike Lazaridis took the stage as well to introduce Facebook on the Berry. This is nice for RIM since they are traditionally associated with old school business execs and with Facebook, they get a younger audience. The carriers are also happy to have more packets going through their networks as people browse their fat picture books and videos! But will the consumers who are used to free Facebook really want to pay the data fees? We will have to wait and see.
Now, onto lighter matters…I loved seeing people playing Guitar Hero at the Motorola booth racking up high scores! Lots of people want the iPhone we are giving away it seems as it has an older version of software! Finally, the Ontario Pavilion folks served more lovely ice wine from Niagara to keep everyone happy! J