FinnMobsters had a heck of a week in Barcelona during the buzzy, public relations stunts filled tradeshow, but by the time the teams hopped on their flights back home, all of them had a significant number of prospects in their pockets. And as we put the finishing touches to this newsletter, follow-up enquiries are coming in from Asia, U.S. and Europe.

Dazzboard, Xtract, Sendandsee, Powerkiss, Notava, On2 Technologies, Ixonos, IIF, and Technopolis Ventures showcased their wares in hall 4, while colleagues from UpCode, Cellictica, and Openbit used FinnMob’s Powerbar in hall 1 as home base for their guerrilla marketing skirmishes through the tradeshow’s thousands of square meters.

Many visitors to FinnMob’s Powerbar mentioned the more positive mood in the show compared to last year, while some, who considered themselves veterans going back from the Cannes days, moaned about the lack of real innovative stuff. The advantage of being a bartender at the Powerbar was that I heard lots of great stories and industry analyses. I walked away from the tradeshow with these observations:

• The old adage about innovations happening in the periphery of networks has its counterpart in the presentation of innovative companies in shows like MWC—one had to go to the far end of the tradeshow to see them.
• Mobile applications and services are keystones to industry growth.
• Guerilla style marketing should be part of any start-up’s tactics.
• Talks, especially those spread via the media about Europe’s lost edge in mobile innovation is premature.

The main story from Barcelona should have been about small innovative companies rather than the industry Goliaths flexing their muscles. I had enough time to wonder where we are now in the life cycle of our industry, as I shuttled back and forth between halls 1 and 4 of the tradeshow, and the terms “box moving” and “value-added” services came to mind. At one point in the saga of the computer industry, incumbent hardware manufacturers began losing their hold on customers as smaller, hungry and very innovative players began introducing smaller “boxes” shipped with their flavor of Unix. I am sure there are still plenty of you out there who have been around long enough to remember how the industry cycled through the different proprietary platforms, to Unix-based platforms to Microsoft, etc. Let us switch over to the mobility story. Where are we today? We have boxes. They are smaller. Or rather, their sizes come in variations of small; they are shipped with software in variations of proprietary. Back to Barcelona, February 2010. Twenty-first century box movers introduced their latest and greatest. But wait a moment, what is Google doing in this picture? And why was the buzz louder among the mobile content and service bunch? Where and when have we seen this before? If you are a FinnMobster and you have a twinkle in your eyes as you read this, you rock.

by Roger on February 26, 2010

¡Hola! FinnMob is going to Barcelona on February for the Mobile World Congress 2010!

Meet us at the MWC 10 for more information about us, our members and our offerings:

- Hall 1 (1E19). Join us at our wireless charging PowerBar, where you can recharge yourselves and your mobile devices while taking a look at the coolest and latest mobile developments from Finland.

- Hall 4, level 1 (4.1HS01). FinnMob has its joint pavilion with
Israel Mobile Association (IMA), with 10 FinnMob exhibition stands, featuring the following companies:

There are also plenty of other FinnMob member companies @ MWC.
More information about these companies can be found in our
Mobile Event Guide, which is accessible via mobile browsers
at http://m.finnmob.com or from the touchscreen at the PowerBar.

Follow our MWC activities on http://twitter.com/FinnMob. Please
use the tag #FinnMob, or reply to us @FinnMob, when
Tweeting or sharing pictures on Twitpic related to FinnMob.

FinnMob contacts onsite:

@ismorantala / +348 40 5567770
@petegreen2 / +358 40 5707911
@pvesterbacka / +358 50 5552682

Take a look at all the IMA and FinnMob (FMA) participating companies in the IMA-FMA catalog.

¡Adios! See you in Barcelona!

by Pegre on January 21, 2010

Hola!

Greetings from Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona - instead of going to the cottage by the lake for the Midsummer the Mob packed their bags to hit the Mobile 2.0 here in Esada Forum in Barcelona.

Currently listening to a prestation from Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook Wireless about what’s happening around location bassed apps and how people are using location information in their daily life. According to their studies people check their location 6 times a day and the range of apps using location information to give you anything from the ufo sitings from 40 years back around your location to Real Estate companies giving information on open houses around the area. Cool stuff.

by pekka on June 19, 2009

An assault team (Ismo Rantala & Pekka Front, that is) from FinnMob will sacrifice their Juhannus to attend the Mobile 2.0 Conference in Barcelona later this week (given the lousy weather forecast, it is sounding like a better and better deal by the minute).

Mobile 2.0 is one of the leading mobile meetups in Europe, exploring the emerging Mobile Ecosystem and Disruptive Mobile Innovations. This year’s event will explore the next big leaps of innovation in mobile for the coming years. Five main themes will be covered during this edition: Openness, Beyond Free, Play, Context and Sense.

FinnMob will be scouting the scene, promoting the Finnish mobile industry, and creating connections that will hopefully be helpful for FinnMob members in the future.

Over 170 companies are attending. A super quick look at the roster shows that at least Pikkoo and Some Bazaar (hiya, Peter, don’t ya ever get tired of traveling?) from Finland are attending. If I missed your company, let me know.

by uppiniska on June 15, 2009