I haven’t seen a lot of the 3GSM exhibition itself yet because there are a lot of things happening besides the congress and there are lots of interesting people to meet. Tuesday afternoon was the Mobile Jam Session and I am really glad I went to the event. Targeted at mobile developers the format was great to discuss the latest and greatest ideas and problems of mobile developers alike. I got many of my questions answered and got lots of good input.
One interesting thought I took away from the session which developed while we were discussing different User Interface approaches of Apple and the rest of the mobile industry is the relationship between operators and Apple vs. operators and Nokia: The Apple brand has a lot of marketing power and Appel had nothing to loose in the mobile space. This way they have managed nugging network operators into becoming a bit pipe for them and on top even share the revenue they make as a bit pipe with them. Nokia on the other hand is also a powerful brand but they make their money with selling handsets to operators and not so much by directly selling them to the customer. Consequently their handle on operators to do something new and bold was pretty much restricted. So it was good Apple came in and broke the ice.
But maybe mobile network operators felt that the iPhone was good for them because of it’s restrictions. Think what the data consumption with a Nokia Nseries phone would be if it were sold at the same conditions by mobile operators as the iPhone. Suddenly you have all those cool applications in addition to browsing and eMailing…
Anyway, just one of many interesting thoughts developing during the event. Thanks to Caroline and Rudy for organizing the event, I very much enjoyed it.
Also thanks to Peter for explaining soviet style tactics of mobile operators. Well, that’s for another post.