My mobile experience

I enjoyed the weekend in the Alps - with no connection to the internet and no connection to my mobile operator. The financial crisis is not ripping us our money, but for us editors it takes our energy. To be honest, there are many days, when we should confess, that we just simply do not know neither. No idea, what the next savings rescue plan will mean to the markets, to the economy or to the future. This tells a little bit about the modern and the old media approach. In the old media days we were not able to confess: We do not know. Nowadays we might try to do so. But would the readers understand or would they still expect us to guide give them advice in every circumstance?

Next thing to enjoy was, to attend a panel tonight, that discussed chances and problems of mobile internet. Interesting to hear form Alexander Oswald from Nokia, that more people use the internet via mobile, than via PCs or Notebooks. Reason is the strong mobile usage in Asia, China and Japan. To my mind there is a big difference in what people want and what operators, manufacterers for handhelds and content developers hope, that mobile internet will be.

Well, we all dream of high usage, fair revenues and easy content. Fact is, that the development of mobile content will be as difficult as interesting content for the web. There will be some killer-applications, like youtube or facebook. There will be some followers and there will be a lot of content-providers, that will have to fight hard for some revenues. It is difficult for media companies to make money via their internet-channels, but it will be a challenge to make that money via mobile channels. Few people will pay for content and the ads will be small, and maybe completly different than now: few chances for banner ads, as it is hard to argue, that branding works on small devices.

But, what if all handhelds were as smart as iPhones one day? And had batteries lasting several days, just as Nokias handhelds do? Maybe we would see a million possibilties for future revenues, future marketing and future content.

I wish you all good luck with your investments!

Alexis