Mobile Monday Bangkok - Jan, 2012
Yesterday night is another big night for people in mobile arena to gather, discuss and exchange something. It’s the event called Mobile Monday (MoMo) held at Four Points by Sheraton near BTS Asok in Bangkok during 7.00 - 10.00 PM.
At first, I were fear that I won’t be able to make it to the event as I need to finish works soon enough before heading out.
After got to BTS Asok and walked right back to Sumkhumvit Soi 17, I just saw this big sign telling the direction to Four Points By Sheraton.
I registered at the counter and get a free beer coupon, then walked right to the projector to see the agenda. I hope I would see two of three speakers which don’t come from Thailand. Why ? Why did I think like that ? It’s because Nokia Session is in need to represent Lumia brand !
*Anyway this turned out wrong at the end, too bad.
The sessions are as follows.
- Tarad.com
Subject: Mobile Commerce in Thailand.
The fast growing e-commerce website in Thailand, by Pawoot Pongvitayapanu, Managing Director. - Huawei Technologies
Subject: Trends in Mobile Usage & 3G Technology
By Mike MacDonald, Chief Technology Officer - Nokia
Subject: Mobile App Ecosystem
By Jirapat Janjerdsak, Head of EDX at Nokia.
As usual after all the sessions ended, it’s time to network. Networking is the first priority one of reasons why I come here.
Opening
Ville Kulmala, Chairman of Mobile Monday, give a speech before the actual event will start.
The crowd is amazing blending with foreigners and local Thai people. Almost stand still, give a little chit-chat while listening to speaker.
Tarad.com (Mobile Commerce in Thailand)
The first session is starting with Tarad.com. The fast growing e-commerce in Thailand. He, who’s speaking, is called a king of e-commerce in Thailand :O
Mr.Pawoot was speaking. The notable things got from this session are as follows.
- Most physical shops after turned themselves to sell things with Tarad.com, their sales hugely increases and can generate really big revenue compared to physical shop.
Roughly 1000 - 5000 % percent as seen in the slide as compared to the normal way of physical shop. - Tarad.com has expert teams to assist and help shops to do well on Tarad.com even if they won’t have basic knowledge about Internet or technology.
- There’s also verification process by submitting legal document to identify the shop itself before being able to sell things on Tarad.com. This is important as noted by the speaker.
Huawei (Trends in Mobile Usage & 3G Technology)
I don’t get used to this company, but similarly that I’ve heard it before, shame me.
Anyway, Mike told us in various stuff about trends in mobile and 3G technology. This is more like a informal talking rather than all the facts. The things I got from this is as follows.
- Data rate is going to be higher and higher, soon enough users will be able to download .torrent stuff via mobile device :S
- Trends in using mobile device in Philippine for BlackBerry is that they love to hang out the device around their neck but they don’t buy data package. That’s a totally funny. But it’s true.
- Data package is exist because the operator can distribute the bandwidth wisely. For example, unlimited is for limit (calculated) number of persons going to use, and other packages come in to help lessening the pressure on using only “unlimited” package and suit more widely to other users.
- Thailand has the most potential in generating revenue on online game business. This is true as I’ve seen one of the notable research also confirmed this as well.
- “Sexy” is one of reasons why people choose to use or decide to use such stuff. For example, “Path” is just another wrapper of social network application in which behind the scene, it uses API to do things. Path is sexy as people would love to show their friends new things.
- To be able to cope and provide all the needs for the next generation users, the application should be able to
- Sync data in real-time
- Be able to share, and share with regards to Where, When, Why, with Who.
Such things as we already have seen in Facebook these days, it’s also “Sexy” in original ways.
Nokia (Mobile App Ecosystem)
The last session, and is the most attractive for something to be showed in the session itself among audience. Anyway it turned out that NO LUMIA was showed ! So it’s disappoint me a little.
Mr.Jirapat has spoken normal stuff like mobile ecosystem and how Nokia would do their internal stuff and direction to cope and provide the needs for the future trends to come.
The notable things I got from this session are as follows.
- Revenue from freemium games is higher than premium games as compared between Jan 2011 and Jun 2011, the percent increased by about 25%.
- There’re millions of subscribers who don’t use mobile internet yet, so Nokia is trying to make it increases as such. From the photo above, 1.2 billion is mainly feature phones while 1.5 billion is mixed between smartphone and feature phone, so Nokia is trying to focus on those two instead of just smartphones.
The question also rises from one of the audience as well that “Does this mean Nokia is focusing more on feature phone in this year ?”. This question goes stronger as the latter stage of this session, he showed us new feature phones called Asha 200.
Maybe they’re trying to give another shot beside the success of Lumia (even if it’s not wide spread just yet).
Networking
This is a sweet part. In fact, I got to the event before time and right then started to talk to people around there before the event starts. So this ending part of networking is some kind like a wrapping up for me to talk to whom I need to talk to.
Advertiser, web technology, game related companies and MoMo teams themselves are my interesting here. Too bad, not much about game related personals have come to this event, but nonetheless I speak to others as many as I could. That’s a great experience !
Yes, time to party, opps, networking !
