After the success of the 1st Mobile Application Developers’ Meet in Bengaluru, IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) is organizing a Seminar for Mobile Applications Developers’ to provide a common platform to deliberate upon the opportunities and challenges of growth pertaining to the mobile applications services in India.

The seminar, to be held on 23rd Nov 2010 in Chennai, India, endeavours to recognize the way ahead to promote and project the growth in the field of mobile applications’ development with the help of an impressive line-up of experts as speakers. The seminar will also set a stage to encourage innovators and developers to offer an impetus to the industry which is undergoing revolution of sorts and proving to be an attractive revenue generator.

The event is free for all, but prior registration is mandatory. Please register here at http://iamai.in/Events/2nd_mobile_application_developer/register.aspx

Date: 23rd Nov 2010
Venue: Vel Tech University, Avadi, Chennai

The event has several prominent speakers including
» Sunil Rao, Head of Forum, Nokia India
» Prabha Aithal, Chief Technology Officer, CanvasM
» Badri Sanjeevi, Chief Executive Officer, Mauj
» Sandeep Sawhney, Head of New product & Innovation, Aircel Ltd
» Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chairman & Managing Director, One97

Speed dating, wherein participants get to meet the speakers One to One, is also part of the agenda

More details at http://iamai.in/Events/2nd_mobile_application_developer/

Be there tomorrow

Krishna Kumar from Inmobi.com gave an interesting talk filled with useful insights.

Priceless quote from the talk: Privacy and security are like mother-in-laws. Over-hyped and they don’t bite

Some key points from the talk:

1. Value Proposition for social networking or mobile or anywhere else is value – what is the value that we are providing. It is not about 2G, 3G, LG, it is the value that we are delivering to the customer.
2. The whole value of “value” is also difficult. Somethings can be quantified, somethings can not. For instance, you can not quantify the value of the conversation/ call.
3. If you are Facebook, you have more data of the user than the ISP which provides Internet to you to access Facebook. So, if you can get users engaged and sharing, you will get data.
4. Location is definitely an important concept these days. In future, chipsets prices will continue to fall and handset itself will give you the location of a person.
5. Hence, if you can combine social profile with the location information, this becomes a deadly combination like fuel combined with fire.
6. We also need to look beyond the operators. In India, 80-90% of data goes “off” operators. Hence, an enormous opportunity exists to tap them. Some networks in Indonesia and Turkey have been able to get this data – not only from social profile perspective but also usage profile as well.
7. When we combine social profile with location, we get a deadly combination. When we add usage profile to it, then it is unbeatable.

Also check: inmobi blog

Excerpts from the talkby Satya Yerramsetti, CEO, 160by2

You build up a network which you don’t use [you just accepted the invites] is useless. However, you have 300 contacts on your phone book and 30-40 people are ones you are in regular touch with. That is social networking at its best.

Hence, as a first step to analyze mobile social networks, you must first understand how social networks work, how the users behave online and then try and use creative implementations based on this understanding. We also need to understand that users are also very dicey and picky about how companies use their data. This is separate from privacy – which obviously is an issue and we need to tackle the same. Another interesting thing in the current scenario is location. Every person in future will have a phone with GPS enabled which makes location specific networking and engagement the next obvious statement. Knowing a person’s location can lead to better and more engaging interaction with the consumer.

160by2.com is Gold sponsor for IAMAI Mobile Ad Conference.

Find Satya on Facebook * Twitter*160by2 Blog

Sujai Srivastava, Business Head – VAS Marketing and Mobile Advertising, Reliance Communication, well known as Sujai basically talked about these two topics:

1. What we ought to be doing and what are we currently doing?
2. What is creativity in the mobile space?

Sujai said that they have lot of data. For instance, they have all this data:

• Targeting -
  • Prepaid/ postpaid, Bill value/ recharge value, HSD/ Net connect, Roaming Customers, International callers/ receivers
• Demographics -
  • Circle, pincode, gender, name, birthdays
• VAS Usage -
  • Content/ data users/ event subscrubers

The various advertising opportunities include -> Banner/ Brand zone/ Rich call alert/ Aad videos/ SMS 2.0/ Big Map. Scheduling takes care of when to show what advertisement. Sujai said that RCom is now trying to add the filtering capability – for instance, should we talk about upsell to this user or not.

Sujai then went on to cite some examples of successful campaigns include Union Bank of India – focusing on branding and lead generation, Colgate World of Care, Club Mahindra and other FMCG brands. He feels that if you crack the FMCG brand, others follow easily.

The future includes Mobile TV [Live Streaming of Cricket Match].

The second panel discussion at IAMAI Mobile Ad Conference “Mobile Advertising : The next Big Thing – Capabilities and Challenges” is now under way. Interesting question floated by the moderator [Shailesh Rao, MD, Google India] on where do panelists see mobile advertising going in the next 03 years? The comments are as below:
Raj Singh, MD-India, 2ergo Group : Couple of things are moving rapidly now. Mobile has a very large reach now. Brands now have a stake in the growth and utilization of this medium.

Pradeep Shrivastava, CMO, Idea Cellular : Currently, mobile advertising comprises of SMS blasts and banners. Permission based marketing almost does not exist right now. We have almost a very crude form of advertising right now. In next 03 years, unique engagement models will appear. For instance, people who use roaming a lot, could also use travel related services. The ecosystem will evolve a lot – mostly, comprising of local brand sign up. We will also see a move towards Pin Point Targeting.

Sanjay Singh, CMO, One97 : Currently, ringtones and other mobile downloads as an industry are more than music industry otherwise. We will see more such trends appear. Google presented advertising as a value add-on for consumers when the norm were pop-up banners. Similarly, we will see/ need strategies that are unique for mobile advertising.

A R Vishwanath, Chairman/ CEO, IMI Mobile : The key leap for mobile industry right now needs to be contextualizaton. Content that you serve needs to be customized from a users personality and behavior.

Shailesh Rao, MD, Google India : Mobile advertising agencies and advertisers need to experiment and be willing to risk at least in the short term.

Voice – There is question about how many people will opt in for Voice? Voice brings its own challenges as well. Voice should be in language of the consumer – Gujerati in Gujarat and Tamil in Tamil Nadu.

Measurement – Maybe, we do not need measurement after all.

Operator – The same person who downloads porn in night also downloads devotional songs in the morning.

Vinish Kathuria, COO, Spice Digital - We started with Cost per Lead and now with data coming in [we tracked all data when we experimented], the clients have signed up for long term contracts. Hence, don’t loose hope. There are two areas – rural areas and urban areas. Today, rural areas might not be attractive to brands but it is attractive for Public Private Partnerships as well as Government of India.

Shantanu Sirohi, VP and Founder, Interactive Avenue – I have a huge issue with Operator Portals. Most Operator Portals are running WAP Porn websites.

Mahesh Narayan, Country Manager, Adlab - Democracy will prevail after a while. Most consumers will go to what gives them value – it could be operator portals or other niche portals run by specialist companies.