MEF Asia rounds up latest mobile media events

The MEF Asia regional chapter have been busy over the last few months, having a significant presence at the key mobile and media events taking place in the region. General Manager for MEF Asia, Crystal Chua, outlines some of the significant highlights from three of these events below.

1. Mobile Broadband Asia Pacific Summit 2009, 5 May 2009, Malaysia

MEF Asia Marketing Chair, Colin Miles, was there to share his insights on the “Is mobile advertising a viable play in emerging markets?” panel alongside Yahoo!, Ericsson and OmnicomMedia Group. Some MEF members also took advantage of the complimentary passes to join us at the event.

The key takeouts:

• It was an excellent, highly focused event which was well organised, with about 150 attendees including all the mobile operators
• MEF had a strong presence within the program, with the AFME report for Asia being discussed during the Mobile Advertising session
• Most panelists and audience agreed (with the findings) that it would take a while to mature, and metrics were the key to adoption

2. MEF/CASBAA Mobile TV CXO Summit, 7 May 2009, Hong Kong

Some 42 senior industry players were present at this closed door event to address the pertinent issues on Mobile TV. Thanks to the kind sponsorship from i-POP, SpeedCast, Hungama Mobile & Dolby, MEF, jointly with CASBAA, was able to draw out some key issues such as:

• Mobile TV depends upon all-you-can-eat data plans becoming standard, on this there was complete consensus
• The industry was still wrestling with content Licensing models and revenue share challenges
• Mobile advertising is still some way from becoming business model that is taken seriously for Mobile TV
• Some great case studies, such as CSL were given, and it was felt VOD is critical to the user experience
• The KPMG/MEF survey results (issued at CTIA) got an airing to a highly discerning group of industry leaders!

3. Music Matters, 2-4 June 2009, Hong Kong

Now in its fourth year, Music Matters is a forum created with, by and for the Asian music industry and has become a permanent, must-attend fixture on the global music industry calendar.

Social networking, brand awareness, mentoring sessions, digital music downloading and closer relationships between telecommunications and record companies were among the topics that dominated this year’s event. While the ever present issue of piracy was on the minds of many execs, other industry leaders focused on the user experience of consumers during today’s every changing digital age. Many speakers also predict that the US digital music market will be overtaken by Japan in less than 10 years.

An interesting new player in the music scene which was highlighted was none other than Google Music. Google Music was launched in China very recently to develop a potential new revenue stream for labels via a better product experience. Representatives demonstrated the use of an online music search “bubble” which will allow users to find similar tracks in a range of genres.

Supporting Music Matters for the 4^th time, the MEF Panel brought about an interesting discussion on “Music Goes Mobile”. Here are the highlights:

• Optmising the mobile device continues to be key in improving the customer experience for mobile music
• Cellcos must take better advantage of their partnership with the music labels
• Creative bundling and pricing strategies can help cellcos enhance the users’ perception of the value proposition