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Mobile Marketer Daily MWC News – Reported by Smaato CMO

SMAATO — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:46:00 +0000

DAY 1
“Nearly 50.000 visitors are expected to visit the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress and Expo with 1,300 exhibitors spread across 130,000 square meters. It was raining yesterday, but I am sure everyone is relieved to be out of the snow in for a couple of days.

The much anticipated App Planet, having evoked a fantasy of a real huge scene event, is hosting real cool exhibitors. But the physical architecture of the “planet” is not more than standard fair boxes – beg your pardon, booths. Hall 7 is where mobile advertising networks such as AdMob, Mojiva and Smaato are situated, as well as Skype, serving the best coffee at MWC by far.

The Mobile Premier Awards (twitter tag: #mpa10) were presented yesterday by Rudy deWaele and hosted by dotopen in the wonderful venue, Palau de la Musica.

It was the fifth time the awards were hosted at MWC in Barcelona.

In total, eleven awards were presented in a five-hour ceremony in seven categories: entertainment, innovation – early stage startup, female entrepreneurship, marketing, innovation – emerging startup, user experience and social change. (…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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DAY 2
Many exciting things happened yesterday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Queen Rania of Jordan explained in her amazing keynote how the mobile industry can contribute to make this world better, providing education for everyone.

Her Majesty introduced 1GOAL, a global campaign she is chairing with support of singer Bono, President Clinton and the FIFA for the Soccer World Cup 2010 in South Africa.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Mobile First!
The afternoon keynote of Google CEO Eric Schmidt was titled “Mobile First” and transmitted live on http://www.mobileworldlive.com.

Google is now shipping 60,000 Android phones per day, Mr. Schmidt said. He said cloud computing was going to be key Google’s future.

Mr. Schmidt also announced that Google is working on new technology to improve security and enhance authentication to better protect data. He concluded his session by saying, “Mobile is pretty much the answer on everything,” announcing a major shift in strategy.

Puma launches solar-powered smartphone
Global sports marketer Puma yesterday issued a branded phone. The Puma Phone is the first phone designed to reflect the values of a global brand from the inside out.(…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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DAY 3
“The Android developer community seemed to have tripled within hours yesterday at Mobile World Congress. When rumors spread that Google was giving away Nexus One phones for free, hundreds of businessmen pulled their pride aside for a moment and stood in line for an entire hour and a half. Why? Well, just to attend an Android developer session.

And why would non-developers want to attend such a session? The answer was easy. Because at the end of the session, each attendee got a brand-new Nexus One phone – or Motorola Droid, if you asked for it- for free. Google gave away 1,000 Nexus One phones in ten sessions. A clever and focused way to create buzz with the right people.

The Android-phone giveaway made waves across the hall, where Sony Ericsson also showed off new devices and hosted its developer day with creative workshops.

Meanwhile, GSM Association CEO Rob Conway said in his opening speech that the demand grows constantly while innovation continues to surprise.

Actor Stephen Fry, a known technophile, echoed Feb. 16’s words of Queen Rania of Jordan, calling this the “best time in history to care about how we share and communicate.”

Mr. Fry introduced the GSMA awards with a summary of the happenings in the mobile world.

“What does an Italian say when using a Samsung phone running Microsoft OS?” he asked. “Bada bing!”(…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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DAY 4
“The Mobile World Congress 2010 closed its doors with a big fanfare about mobile applications and a total of 49,000 visitors from 200-plus countries. An upbeat industry gathering, sunshine in the end – and from where I sit, we are right in the middle of the high-tech tornado of a hyper growth mobile market.

The last day of the show found strong competition in a sunny and warm spring day, and some show visitors might have preferred the sun’s glare over the brightest AMOLED display in Samsung’s Wave, exposed in Hall 8. Not only competing with the spring light, the Samsung Wave and the new Windows phone, Motorola Blur and others should not be underestimated as major game-changers in mobile advertising.

You need no app for that – oops, where can I place my banner?
One major challenge comes from the industry’s stronger focus on user experience, which leads to a decline in the usage of applications for everything.

Personal status updates, pictures and messaging from various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and MSN are converging into so-called social hubs where all of these updates are being placed around the user’s contacts, instead of being scattered across several applications. (…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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Mobile Marketer Interview: Brands to dedicate 15-20 percent of digital spend to mobile

SMAATO — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:53:21 +0000

On the occasion of our latest funding round, Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato Inc., gave an interview to Mobile Marketer.

Brands to dedicate 15-20 percent of digital spend to mobile: Smaato CEO

By Dan Butcher

In the wake of receiving $4.5 million of Series B funding, mobile advertising company Smaato Inc. is optimistic about the state of the mobile industry.

Aeris Capital led the $4.5 million institutional round of funding, with an undisclosed partner and existing shareholders also participating. The capital will be used to hire new employees and to grow the company’s global presence.

“Similar to the acquisition of AdMob by Google, what we see is that mobile has picked up much stronger and has been validated as a market,” said Ragnar Kruse, founder/CEO of Smaato, Hamburg, Germany. “Last month we served more than 3 billion ad requests within our network, which we’ve built to 1,000 publishers, compared to 100 at the beginning of the year.

“Last year we had the crisis starting, and the question is now ‘What do we see coming?’” he said. “We see a hot Q4—we are very bullish about next year.

“Mobile advertising has proven that it’s not just experimental anymore, therefore we see more and more companies with mobile as a dedicated budget—in 2010 brands will dedicate 15-to-20 percent of their digital spend to mobile, depending on the country and the region.”

(…)

Smaato claims that its mobile advertising optimization and mediation platform can deliver ads in 215 countries across the mobile Web and within applications. This new round of funding will help Smaato further expand its network of 33 ad networks, according to Mr. Kruse. The mobile advertising market is growing rapidly and it has proved to be a profitable business even in recessionary periods.

Mr. Kruse said that Smaato has seen mobile advertising increase dramatically over the past 12 months. “Mobile has specifics that don’t necessarily translate easily from digital to mobile such as managing latencies and response times to still deliver a good user experience on mobile,” Mr. Kruse said. “For mobile, an international presence is important—as soon as you have great content, a great app, the content travels internationally very fast, so if you have a great app on the iPhone, you also need international coverage if you want to monetize it via advertising.

“Our growth strategy is clearly building out our international footprint and hiring more people,” he said. “We have offices in Hamburg, Germany, Redwood Shores, California, as well as Boston, Montreal and Singapore. “We see big growth and take-up in Europe and Asia, where we already have a lot of business, and we want to improve what we’re seeing there by being closer to those customers and expanding our international footprint.”

Read the whole article by Dan Butcher on mobilemarketer.com

Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009 Key Trend #3 – Profitable Fun

SMAATO — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:27:45 +0000

3) Profitable Fun

App developers are paying increasing attention toward how to build sustained growth and profitability with different monetization options.

See the Mobile Marketer article here:

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Mobile Marketer Daily MWC News – Reported by Smaato CMO

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