Program

WAP sites, iPhone-formatted sites, desktop HTML pages. Slideshows and video. Where is mobile content headed? More video, more apps, and the mobile Web. What's working now? Do you develop a Web site or a mobile app? Do you bother with streaming video? In some countries (e.g. South Korea), mobile TV is ubiquitous. Here, it's still fractured, and no one is sure who wants to pay for it.

There's a lot more to this than the up-front price. For example, consider a typical game purchases. There are free and paid versions and subscription fees. There are ad-supported free mobile apps without a paid version. You can buy extra content a la carte (wallpapers, ringtones). You can buy extra "levels" in games or feature packs for apps. You can even do that with free iPhone apps as of September: now you can "suck a new customer in" with a free app and then get them to spend money once they're committed. (RIM just announced a developer API for this on Monday for BlackBerrys too.) Which models work best for the media industry? How it all breaks down across mediums (mobile apps for TV networks, mobile apps for magazine publishers, and so on).

This panel will discuss the various ways to make your content attract customers, and will cover topics like carrier decks, app stores, and preloaded device content. One definite trend is how Apple's App Store brought about a more detailed consumer shopping experience. In the early days of mobile apps, the most people could tell is to look at tiny three-word titles and descriptions on low-res screens, in order to decide if an app was worth buying. That basically meant licensed, well-known properties did well, and original IP didn't. Now, the field is wide open. But as a result, there are thousands of apps out there, and it's tough to get noticed. Our experts talk about how to do it the right way.

We'll go over some cases that work, and some cases that don't work. [[Forrester analyst such-and-such]] will give one short presentation, while [[Mobile Marketing Assocation person such-and-such]] will give another, with time for audience Q&A at the end. The goal is to offer a detailed, objective perspective of mobile marketing: more analysis, less fluff.

We're all tired of hearing how "[[Insert current year plus one]] is the year of mobile video!" So this panel, packed with mobile-savvy TV and media executives, will instead focus on real practical issues: what hasn't worked, what needs to change, and what consumers may find interesting. Today's mobile TV problems are legendary: stuttering video feeds, expensive monthly plans, confusing channel guides (is this simulcast? Live-but-different-than-cable? Pre-recorded, tired Jay Leno clips?), and the lack of a broadcast mobile TV standard here in the U.S. *Is* there a model? Is two-way video just good for CNN (CNN's iReport app was an interesting turning point). Or does it have other uses? What about watching Hulu on a netbook, and switching between that and an iPhone? After this panel, we're sure you'll agree: who needs DVD drives anyway?

This panel will discuss what innovations are in the pipeline, with a focus on what's coming soon. Normally it's a lot of fun to cover future tech, i.e. "wouldn't it be cool if each cell phone could shoot a ray of light, such that when you shine it through a crystal, it links to a chip implanted in your head and walks you through security in 30 seconds at the airport?" The media already does a good job of covering that stuff. But here, we're thinking two years out, maybe three, tops. Which of today's mobile challenges can be solved in the next couple of years? What's on the immediate horizon? If we accelerated handset development and 4G network rollout—if it was suddenly January 2012—how would things be different? What's possible here that isn't possible now? How can we plan for it, and line up our mobile strategies such that we're ready for what's coming, without making a huge error and developing towards a target technology that doesn't come to pass?

This workshop will provide a detailed overview of today's mobile platforms, to help you decide where to target development efforts. We'll go over the kinds of apps that could work best for your organization, how much development will cost, what the design and development process is like, and how to find developers to work on your project.

This workshop will provide a detailed overview of today's mobile platforms, to help you decide where to target development efforts. We'll go over the kinds of apps that could work best for your organization, how much development will cost, what the design and development process is like, and how to find developers to work on your project.

This workshop builds on Monday's Mobile Content panel. What do you want your apps to do? In this workshop we'll discuss use cases for several kinds of apps, and step through the various things users might want to do. (Hint: avoid throwing in features that "extend the brand" but are actually useless for customers.) We'll also go over the differences between native apps (for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and other platforms) and mobile Web sites (like iphone.facebook.com or m.cnn.com). In some cases, a (lavishly designed) mobile Web destination, with specific iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and other formats and dedicated URLs, would be more sensible.

Let's say you wanted to get started tomorrow morning. How long is a typical development cycle? Do you need to hire artists or audio professionals? What about a UI designer? Who will build your app for you? What do they need? Will they be able to communicate with each other? In this workshop we'll go over software developers kits, test machines, and development models, as a sort of "producer or project manager's overview" of how the process will work from start to finish. The goal is to have everyone working efficiently with the right information. The last thing you need is for, say, an artist to spend a week creating assets for a feature the designers had actually deleted last month—all because the artist was still working off of an old design document. (This happens more often than you might want to believe.)

Touch gives you freedom to design new buttons in addition to dragging and flicking. Hardware buttons are fixed, not to mention different from phone to phone—but lots of folks still swear by their QWERTY-equipped BlackBerrys and Sidekicks. How does this all affect app design? Example: BlackBerry OS apps need a Storm/Storm2 version as well as non-touch versions. Windows Mobile apps are either touch, no touch, or have a special UI overlay to deal with (TouchFLO, Samsung TouchWiz). iPhone, Android, and webOS apps are all touch.

In addition, how versioning and staged releases can increase your bottom line, through renewed placement in App Store lists. While developers have long offered software upgrades with new features, on mobile it can have a direct impact on revenue. Should this affect your upgrade strategy? Is it like SEO in Google? This workshop builds on Monday's Content Discovery panel, i.e. how to make sure your app is found.