Organised by Øresund IT, Nordic Unwired 2004 gathered representatives of mobile network, terminal and content industries. Parallel to the Conference, participants could set up meetings with other participants at the Partnering Exchange.

Companies from the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Finland, France, The Netherlands, Italy, besides Denmark and Sweden, were represented in the event, which attracted companies like 3, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Macromedia, Samsung Electronics, TDC Mobil and HP.

Ideas on “how to create attractive wireless products, services and content to stimulate end-user spending”, the theme of the Conference, were abundant, though some times divergent. However, there was a general agreement on that mobile devices and applications need to be simpler and easier to use.

One of the speakers, Joakim Nelson, Head of Business Strategy for GSM and UMTS at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications in Lund, acknowledged that mobile phones are still extremely complicated. “We (mobile phone producers, red) have to put all the hardware and software in the device plus we have to support network operators in offering their services and also allow developers to offer their products,” he justified.

Divergence x convergence

A way to avoid too much complexity may be to use people’s personal preferences and needs to guide the design process. “There are hundreds of mobile phones on the market and they all look the same. But if people are different, the devices should also be different. This is why I believe that the future will bring divergence, not convergence,” said Juha Christensen, President, Mobile & Devices at Macromedia, in the US, in another session.

Christensen is convinced that in the transition from the world of voice and simple data to the more complex and profitable world of data and mobile multimedia, mobile operators need to segment their markets, which can be done by offering rich and diversified data content. “Data services will differentiate operators, but unfortunately mobile operators have done a disservice to the industry by making it very difficult to develop content to mobile phones,” said Christensen.

Tord Wingren, CEO at Samsung Europe, agrees that different people require different technologies, but believes that convergence is the word of the day. “Mobile phones are winning the pocket space. But pockets cannot be filled up with too many things and this is why convergence is important,” he observed. Wingren foresees a future where mobile phones will play an even more important role in people’s lives.

“We at Samsung see mobile phones as our personal gateway to information, services, entertainment and also, thanks to near-future larger storage capacity, as a sort of emotional enabler. Users will be able to ‘store’ their private lives on their mobile phones. They’ll go around carrying, for example, collections of pictures of their family or from their childhood in their mobile,” he said.

King Kong and Godzilla

The increasing tendency to convergence can be seen everywhere as illustrated by Peter Vesterbacka, founder and Global leader of BizDev Mobile E-services Bazaar, HP: “Today Nokia is the world’s biggest camera and FM radio producer. He consents, however, that design and technological improvements have to be made with the user in view. “Content is king, services are King Kong and customers are Godzilla,” he summarized with humour.

How important mobile phones will become in people’s lives in opposition to the role of personal computers is something open to controversy. Michael Bohlin, Business Device Manager Northern Europe at Microsoft, believes that insufficient storage capacity will remain a hindrance to turning mobile phones into “the remote control to our lives”, as Christensen phrased.

Jens Lehmann, Area Sales Manager at the French mobile game provider In-Fusio, has been witnessing the increasing use in the PC’s territory. According to him, 75% of In-Fusio end-user customers play on the mobile phones at home and not only on the move.

The device’s soul

Nordic Unwired speakers had several ideas on how to perform the task of talking people into about the wonders of having mobile phones in the centre of their lives. Ludvig Linge, CEO at the Malmö-based TAT, made use of the human senses to explain his view of the evolution of consumers’ attitude towards mobile phones.

In his opinion, people have been buying mobile phones because of the handheld design, which he renames as the skin factor, expressed in features like the device cover and ring tone. However, consumers will more and more choose to buy a mobile phone because of the content provided through a device, which he labels as the soul of the device.

“Creating, enhancing and keeping the soul are vital for attracting customers who will search the function, get attracted by the skin (handheld design) and fall in love with the soul (content),” he concluded.

More information: Nordic Unwired Conference and Partnering Exchange - 2004