eComm 2009 | Presentation on Asian Mobile & Telecom Ecosystems

Today was the last day of the Emerging Communications “eComm” Conference in San Francisco, CA.

The turnout and talks were great thanks to the hard work of its organizer, Lee S Dryburgh. It was a mix of telecom, design, web stuff and thoughts about the future of communication (who said “Technology, Entertainment, Design“?) so probably the name was well deserved ^_^

As a newcomer to the SF scene, I focused on what seem to be the hottest topics: iPhone and Facebook to show how Asia had actually proven both models way earlier.

• i-mode almost 10 years before iPhone
• Cyworld and QQ years before Facebook (which is still “financially unproven”)
• DeNA and GREE way ahead in monetizing mobile SNS

They make so much profits it’s like dealing drugs! (actually, even better than drugs if you believe Freakonomics)

Tencent (QQ) is publishing its 2008 numbers within a couple of weeks and should have profits in the 500 million USD range. Remember MySpace was bought in 2005 for 580 million USD (“he’s nuts!”). Well, Tencent could buy one MySpace a year simply based on cash flow. Xie xie.

I also presented some examples of “yet to come” things such as “Broadcasting Jockeys” in Korea and mobile novels in Japan, on which I exchanged profusely recently with a CNN correspondent (who wrote the following article).

Also, it was fun to call the US a “developing market” when looking at the penetration of 3G and the speed of broadband compared to Japan and Korea (one attendee twittered about relocating to Asia).

Now for your enjoyment, the slideshow (without the 20 minutes speech).

– Benjamin