Mobile Monday Beijing – Bubble or Gold Rush?

Thanks to all the 110+ participants who came yesterday at Browns for this year’s first Mobile Monday Beijing session, we were only a few seats short from a full house!

Our four panelists – Adobe’s Akio Tanaka, DLA Piper’s Rocky Lee, WI Harper’s Harry Man and Origo’s Niklas Ponnert – worked hard at giving their insights on whether China’s mobile market is a Mobile Bubble or a Mobile Gold Rush. As expected the reality is neither black nor white ;-)Here is a summary of the ~90 minutes of discussion. If you were there and think some important ideas were not reported, please – email us – we will add it and credit you!

• First, China’s mobile market is still growing at a frightening pace, and the appetite for mobile content is also growing accordingly. Now, regulations and operators’ policies are making life difficult for CPs and SPs.

• For our panelists, the nature of opportunities in the mobile market has changed in nature: there is a need to find alternatives to traditional revenue models, even the large SPs are working on that.

• For Harry Man, if the leading SPs seats are now more or less taken, there are a large number of niches where a startup can become #1 or #2. Hottest topics today are mobile search, mobile communities, mobile gaming, etc. (sounds like a list of recent or upcoming Mobile Monday topics!).

• According to Rocky Lee, the overall quality of entrepreneurs has generally increased: you can now find repeaters who survived the Internet/mobile Winter in 2001~2003. Even though the problem today is radically different (more about regulations and operators policies) than before (there is no shortage of capital), surviving skills pay off.

• Akio Tanaka added that companies today can look at how to leverage their content of product overseas better thanks to the spread of mobile platforms. He gave the example of Flash Lite as a platform allowing content to go cross-borders. Some of Adobe’s investments like China’s Flash Empire and Japan’s Cell are exploring this path after achieving great local results. The importance of gathering a users community around a product or service is also seen as critical in an environment where a company cannot rely on a relationship mediated by mobile operators.

• Niklas Ponnert compared investment opportunities in China and India and said that the better infrastructure and more experienced entrepreneurs made China a very attractive destination. In addition, opportunities aside from mobile content abound in platforms, solutions, software, etc.

• Tong Li, CEO of the startup Tokiva – currently developing a “mobile skype” to allow mobile users to make international calls at rock-bottom rates – joined on stage to tell us about why after a successful entrepreneurial experience in the US he came back to China to start a mobile venture despite the perceived difficulties, and how he funded it.

The Boar/Pig is said to be gallant & noble, and loyal in friendship – all characteristics that might inspire a healthier mobile market for the New Year!

To celebrate the 1st anniversary of Mobile Monday Beijing, we will be back on March 5 with an unusual session on

“Mobile, Innovation and Creativity“

The two speakers for this special New Year session are Andy Tian, Strategic Partner Development Manager at Google, and Fredrik Härén, Sweden’s most popular creativity lecturer who moved to Beijing to help turn it into the world’s next creative capital!

We wish a relaxing Chinese New Year to all, see you in a month!

Benjamin Joffe (benjamin [a][t] mobilemonday.cn)
www.plus8star.com