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The 2008 Mobile Content World conference is underway and just like the CeBIT conference a week or so ago it's shaping up to be a showcase of how out of touch and ill-prepared Australia is for the rapidly maturing communications age.
Intrepid geek journalist Stilgherrian has been blogging about the experience in his inimitable style. Allow me to share a few choice excerpts:
When user experience expert Oliver Weidlich of Ideal Interfaces showed them screenshots of the iPhone on the big screen, around 80% of the 150-odd audience sat up, alert, seeing it for the first time.
Huh?
Sure, Apple’s groundbreaking product isn’t officially available here until the (rumoured) 19 June opening of slick new Apple stores in Sydney and Melbourne. You don’t have to have bought into the whole Steve Jobs personality cult, bought one overseas and hacked it for Aussie networks. But if you claim to be professional and haven’t at least read about the iPhone a year after its release you should be shot.
Ok, so as an avid Mac fan I have indeed bought into the personality cult and have been happily enjoying my imported and hacked iPhone for the last nine months or so, gushing with smug glee every time someone recognises the shiny device and asks me about it. But the reason I like Apple products so much is because they do what I want them to, and they're designed to work in the hyper-connected world we're all gradually finding ourselves immersed in.
A lot of the conference was about getting users watch the content from big TV, movie and games houses. Twice the guy pimping one content management system said, “It’s all about creating a more addictive experience for young people.” What sort of ethic is that?
One session talked about “bringing the lounge room experience to the small screen”, which seems as sensible as bringing the tennis experience to the swimming pool. Meanwhile, iPhone users download stuff that’s meaningful for them, connect to their own computers to access their own data and, according to Google, generate ten times the search traffic as non-iPhone mobile users.
“The carriers see they’re about to be hit by the truck, so they’re over-analysing and over-complicating the situation with all their business models about content,” Leeb-du Toit told me. “They should be going open and simple.”
It’s appropriate that the conference was held at Sydney’s Star City Casino. Anyone ignoring the iPhone is gambling big. The dice are rolled 19 June.
Well, we think so. June 19 is when the first official Apple Store in Australia is rumoured to open in Sydney, and when Australia is rumoured to finally have the iPhone officially unleashed upon it. With Apple you never know till you know, but this one is looking to be a pretty safe bet.
At the moment I pay $1 per 5 minutes to access the internet using my iPhone on a flaky connection at slower than dialup speeds. This thing is going to completely reshape the mobile industry when it lands. No-one is going to put up with that sort of deal for long.
In the meantime we're still waiting to hear how long it will be before someone gets around to starting to build that super hi-tech broadband network Rudd promised us. Sometime in the next five years I understand, and it's going to run at 12 megabits per second. Meanwhile other countries are already enjoying 100 megabit per second networks.
In the US there are over 7 million people employed by internet companies. At the Government's 2020 summit earlier this year the internet was described as 'an emerging industry'. Go figure.
Oh and by the way I wrote this post on my iPhone.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Richard Brown 06.03.08 at 8:31 am
You are so funny, but yes it is so shocking how far behind Australia is with the rest of the world. It is shocking, To think that there is a WiFi network running thru like 60% of the US. that means you open your laptop and bam ready to go. And we have our lovely Telstra WiFi "hotspots" in McDonalds and some Hotels, that drop in and out all the time and cost $20 for a few hours of 256kb connections. It is time for Australia to wake up and see how far behind our "Mobile" network is.