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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SEE ALSO GOMONEWS BLENDER PHOTOS AT SMAATO FACEBOOK PAGE HERE.

Related Posts:

• 2010: A Million Apps in App Stores?! Check the answers from the experts at Smaato Roundtable
• Smaato celebrates its 5th Year with Record Milestones! 16+Billion ad requests p/month & 7000 registered publishers
• Smaato Network: 5000+ Publisher & 7 Billion Ad Requests Per Month
• Smaato @SXSW 2010 – Refreshing Spring Break for Mobile Marketers
• New Android & iPhone SDKs for Mobile Advertising with free Analytics

Please join us at Mobile World Congress 2010 Barcelona, February 15-18 to learn about Smaato’s Mobile Ad Optimization Platform and all it’s benefits for mobile publishers/developers and mobile ad networks.

Meet us at Booth 7C38, Hall 7

Smaato Team @MWC 2010:

Ragnar Kruse
CEO & Co-Founder

Harald Neidhardt
CMO & Co-Founder

Petra Vorsteher
EVP Strategic Alliances & Co-Founder

Joerg Anhalt
Senior Vice President
Mobile Publishers Development & Monetization

Meet also:
Robert Guenther (Manager Partner Development), Yoko Nakagawa (Director of Strategic Alliances), Kedric Van de Carr (Director Publisher Development & Monetization), Miriam Hoppe (Marketing Manager) and Johannes Heinze (Product Manager).

PS: If you want to join our excellent team click here.

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About Smaato
Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators.

Smaato’s SOMA mobile advertising platform aggregates more than 35 mobile ad networks worldwide and optimizes mobile advertising revenues according to automated rules overseen by an experienced ad operations team. More than 2500 publishers have signed up with Smaato as a partner to monetize their content in 215+ countries and Smaato is managing 4 billion ad requests per month.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of multiple leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising ARPU. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, the dot.mobi Advisory Group and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2009 & 2007) and was an Andrew Seybold Choice Awards finalist at CTIA 2008 for best Newcomer, among other awards.

Smaato Inc. is based in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany and the Asia-Pacific presence of Smaato has been established in Singapore.

www.smaato.com

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The new ‘SOMA SDK for Android’ from Smaato grants access to now 35 mobile ad networks worldwide to serve display ads within apps and mobile websites on Android handsets. The monthly published Smaato Metrics showed a significant uptake in click-through rates from Android phones (http://metrics.smaato.com) for January 2010.

Smaato will enhance the upcoming releases of SDKs and the SOMA mobile web API with a free analytics and reporting dashboard to visualize usage data and keep track of advertising revenues.

More partnerships with ad networks

Smaato is strengthening its mobile advertising technology and adding more partnerships with ad network partners of the SOMA optimization and mediation platform. More targeting data, better forecasting tools and media buying features will be made available in future SOMA platform releases in order to enhance the value for ad networks partners worldwide.

In this context, Smaato is announcing the 35th ad network partner for the SOMA platform: adsmobi Inc., based in New York. adsmobi (www.adsmobi.com) will use the Smaato services already available to SOMA ad network partners today and is focusing on providing a media buying platform working with advertisers and media agencies.

Smaato Award winners & Free iPad at Smaato booth

Smaato Mobile Advertising Award winners Aloqa, Flirtomatic and waze will present their apps and mobile web services at the Smaato booth 7C38 in Hall 7 (app planet). In addition, new publishers signing up during Mobile World Congress will have a chance to win a free Apple iPad if they use the easy registration at: www.smaato.com/signup with the promocode “ipad2010”.

More insights on mobile advertising are provided in a free, new white paper: “Global Choices in Mobile Advertising” available at www.smaato.com/whitepaper.

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• Smaato partners with Motally for Advanced Mobile Analytics! Cross platform offering for iPad, iPhone, Android and Mobile Internet

The GoMo News Blender is back…. at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next year… in a bigger venue!

Huge thanks to the wonderful Smaato for being the main headline sponsor and captain of the bar. This is the sixth time that Smaatohas sponsored GoMo News and our joint events are always extremely successful as we know the vendors and publishers that rock!

Everyone in the mobile marketing, mobile advertising, mobile search, mobile barcode and mobile application or web space is invited.

See the GoMo News article here:

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• New Whitepaper: The Mobile Advertising Ecosystem
• Female Friday with Petra Vorsteher, Smaato’s Co-Founder & VP