// Pocket Picks //

Pocket Picks was lucky enough to be invited to a special round-table hosted by Motorola this week, featuring some of its senior execs and key content partners.

The purpose was to talk about ‘The Future of Mobile Entertainment’ and how mobile technologies are creating new opportunities for the industry. Among those present were representatives from Motorola itself, EA Games, Universal, Wecomm and Shozu.

The key issue was the current exponential growth in consumers using mobile services and content like picture sharing, downloading games and accessing multimedia content, all because operators and manufacturers started offering one-click access to services.

Think Shozu embedded on a new Motorola handset or Sony Ericsson’s Cybershot, or even operators’ one-click access to their portals. As Andrew Till, Motorola’s Senior Director for Applications and E2E solutions said: ‘Single click access to features makes all the difference.’

But you’re reading this wondering so what? What does it tell me about what to look forward to? Well, according to the panel, the big thing for 2008 is going to be… [drum roll]… ‘User discovered content.’ And what’s this?
It is, according to Tim Harrison, EA Games EMEA Marketing Director, is when you turn on your handset and get one- or two-click access to services you want. It’s the single biggest thing that’s ‘moving the market’ at the moment and pushing companies to ‘make the discovery as easy as possible.’

The result is that manufacturers, operators, content providers and non-mobile companies like Yahoo! and Google, are all increasingly working together to ensure flexibility in how a user accesses, downloads and shares content – for instance a service like Shozu letting you upload your pics to a blog of your choice, rather than one dictated to you by your operator or manufacturer. Or having one-click access to Yahoo! or Google email.

Motorola itself, starting with the Z8, is determined to be at the forefront of this. The Z8 was its first UIQ handset in four years and the manufacturer wanted to ‘go to market with the best of breed partners’ to get the best applications on its handset. The result is that six months after launch, there are over 1,000 applications available for it and requests for more applications account for most calls to its call centre.

Tim Harrison’s final point perhaps summed up the sea change in the industry. He reckoned we’re now seeing ‘consumer pull’ for services, not an industry pushing what it likes to resistant consumers like before.

Consumers now expect to get big online brands and services on their mobile regardless of manufacturer or operator. Brands like Facebook, Yahoo! and Google.

These companies must be rubbing their hands with glee and it looks like 2008 will see mobiles truly become handheld devices for surfing an open internet.