I am currently sitting in the “Marketing to the Customer” track, in which talks are focused on customer-centric solutions. So far, the main discussion topic has been mobile advertising, with presentations from Celltick, Abaxia, Netsize, and Oberthur on the topic. Gemalto also given a talk about personal data management.
Most of the presentations were of course directly targeting the SIM manufacturers direct consumers, i.e., mobile operators. Abaxia clearly mentioned that they want their offer to become the “Google desktop” of the mobile world. Gemalto is also basically saying that mobile operators are in a good position to manage somebody’s contacts and personal information. That may please their customers, but I don’t really see why I would use anything else but Google’s desktop (unless, of course, they decide not to develop it for mobile phones, but I doubt that). As for personal information, I have registered to Plaxo to synchronize my various computers and devices, and I am getting connection requests, including from Gemalto employees.
On the other hand, some presentations clearly mentioned that mobile advertising content should be managed by advertising agencies, not by operators. Oberthur’s Stéphane Girodon went as far as proposing to reserve a big chunk of the SIM card’s memory for advertising purposes, and to have somebody else (not the operator) manage it. Of course, they also show how that can bring revenue to operators; after all, they need to be paid for providing access to their SIM card. But in that case, the SIM is shared between the operator and third-party operators.
Somehow, I have the feeling that the open way has much more momentum and can lead us to a far bigger business, because it can draw third-party application providers on the SIM card and allow agencies to market the SIM card space as an advertising medium. There is hope, but the presentations shown here make me believe that there still is a long way to go.
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