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March 2007: 3GSM Mobile Congress in Barcelona - A report.
The 3GSM World Congress was held in Barcelona from the 12th to the 15th of February this year. Located at the FIRA showground in the south west of the city for the second time, the show is promoted as the world's largest for the mobile industry.
The blue skies of Barcelona were a welcome change from the slate grey clouds of Luton which I'd left behind. Not that I'd got to see much sky before the metro delivered me to Espanya station, where I emerged blinking to see the two imposing gate towers guarding the entrance to the event. The showground is a complex nestling against -and climbing up- the flanks of Montjuďc, which is a big hill overlooking the town and the modern container port area. I was handed a Village Map and sent on my way, past giant screens and cooling fountains, to find the content area. The rest of the show, spanning eight large halls and around 1,500 exhibitors, was dedicated to the technology of the mobile, from transmitters and towers to handsets themselves, via big, ugly rack-mountable boxes of electronics and every sort of test gear. It was a stiff climb to my target, despite a couple of outdoors escalators. In expanding the show (it was only five halls and 1,000 exhibitors last year, I think) some convenience has been sacrificed. Still, there were lovely views from the rear of the site.
Andy Kleitsch of wContent was the first familiar face I saw, located on his stand on the lowest level of Hall 7. Last year his laptop had been stolen at 3GSM, but I'm happy to report things were going better. Thus far. He said, "It's going considerably better this year! Nothing stolen or lost yet, and there's been no muggings or beatings. Our new thing is Firefighters, which is a wallpaper product based on five years worth of calendar photographs of genuine Seattle fire fighters. There's not been a press release about it, so you could be getting an exclusive here! We're mostly appealing to women with this, as they're an underserved market, but there's an appeal for some men too. There are many mobile operators who are looking for content to serve women, and we think these guys really hit that nail on the head. Other than them, mobile video continues to be the biggest thing and finding new content with enough of a difference to get noticed is the challenge. So we're always looking for that kind of differentiating video content, and that remains a big part of our business."
Armed with the last tub of delicious ice-cream from a Yahoo stand, I continued my exploration. Adult seemed more mixed in with other content people (location-based services using GPS-equipped mobiles is going to be huge) than last year, meaning adult stands were dispersed around the hall and not ghettoised.
The Private/Lechill booth was well populated with good looking girls and men in sharp suits on white furry sofas, and I picked Private's Director of Wireless Technologies, Tim Clausen, out of the crowd. "This is our second time at 3GSM and it's going very well for us. Together with Lechill, who are one of our content aggregators, we're talking about licensing business, and letting them talk to operators. We only have one booth per year, and that's here, because it's the most important place to be. It's convenient for Lechill too, being based in Barcelona like us. But if the show was in London, we'd still travel for it. Last year here was really good and we've a very healthy growth - 100% in net revenues and €8m turn-over, with 63 operators, in 31 countries, covering nearly 600 million handsets. And growing all the time; looking to Latin America, Asia and Australia for continued expansion. Even the North American market may be opening. You may have read Telus in Canada have confirmed they'll be handling adult content. They're keen to have us as a brand so we're looking forward to growing more in 2007. One new thing we have is called Get Into, which is a soft, behind-the-scenes, reality product. Other than providing videos of sexy girls, we thought let's try a new concept, let's be creative. It's like MTV having Mariah Carey show off her awesome apartment in New York City. Sonia Baby, who we have on the stand, is a big star in Spain. She's in the media a lot and Vodafone Spain and other carriers can put her up on the portal- We're all very curious about how it'll work out, but I'm convinced this concept will generate a lot of traffic and interest. It's ideal for people who like the Private brand, our community you might say, who want more from us and our stars than just the movies we have. If it's the success we expect it to be, we'll look at doing similar things in other territories. For a German to see his favourite girl walking through Berlin rather than Barcelona would be great and we can tailor our product for whichever location we're focusing on."
On the Brickhouse Mobile stand I met Blake Fayling and past Penthouse Pet Aria Giovanni. "The show's going great for us. Brickhouse aggregates content from twenty to thirty of the top adult brands from LA, and we distribute that content to around ninety carriers around the globe. There's still plenty more we want to get with, which is why we're here- and to meet existing partners, of course. Aria Giovanni's with us in the booth, and we launched her D2C mobile site, Aria Mobile, here. We're very excited about adding that to our line-up of D2C sites. The UK market is significant for us as the market in the US is very conservative. There's an opportunity there over the long-haul, but without age verification there's limited content we can offer. That's where the UK has really laid the groundwork- we can present to US and other carriers who are trying to do, for the first time, things the UK's already done in terms of launching adult content responsibly. What we have in the US is 2257 which is to ensure that not only are people seeing the content over eighteen, but that people featured in the content are over eighteen. It's easy for carriers to get so focused on access AV that when we talk about 2257 it can be quite a flashbulb moment for them. They're not in the adult industry and it's one of those things I guess they never saw themselves having to think about."
AOE's John Green collared me most politely and we had a good chat about next April's expo in Amsterdam. Porn legends TheHun are involved, and changes to the show's format means there will be only one day of overlap with World Telemedia.
Natalia Kim on the Hotzips stand told me, "It's been really busy, and there's more people interested in adult content here than I've seen anywhere else. Even people from tiny countries I've hardly heard of are here, which is surprising. Also countries where you'd not think adult would work, but even they're looking at softcore. Hotzips has the exclusive rights to the Barcelona Erotic Film Festival, and also the one in Lisbon. We've a range of content from soft to hard, so we can offer our customers wide options."
I saw a cool -if obvious- idea on the non-adult Integral stand. They were showing a range of retail blister-packed memory cards which were pre-loaded with full-length, mobile-optimised movies such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Spiderman 2 and Layer Cake. With the current cost of 128Mb SD/MMC cards being 'peanuts', distribution through shops of films on this format makes perfect sense. I watched a landscape clip on a Nokia N73 and it looked absolutely spot-on.
Czech firm MP Media were back, as was Princess Productions from Italy, whose Sexy Summer Girls had replaced last year's Sexy Xmas Girls. Boss Andreas Adami was also looking forward to the Euro2008 to relaunch his Sexy Football Girls product, which had been a hit for him in the run up to the World Cup last summer. Sexy Olympic Girls are in development hell at the moment due to trademark issues though.
Ian Aaron, Twistbox CEO had a two minute break in his busy schedule so I grabbed him for a talk about recent changes to the Twistbox and Waat Media businesses, as well as future plans. "The corporate structure is that there's three divisions within Twistbox, as there's three business lines. Twistbox Entertainment deals with our general entertainment properties, Twistbox Games, and our brand for our late-night category, Waat Media." When asked how the show was going for him, he said, "Absolutely fantastic. We've been introducing lots of new products to the market, especially Waat's new line of erotic games. Using the technology from our games arm, we now port to about a thousand different handsets, in twenty-two languages. We're working on various Play-for-Prizes promotions around our brands and merchandising around the games too. Digital Playground's Pirates poker game is the standout product from that line-up at the moment. Our Vivid and Penthouse products have been doing extremely well too. We've also just launched a Girls Gone Wild flirt/chat product and we've video call products which are just coming to market now as well. In the UK, we opened an office in Chancery Lane, London, and we've built a great team there, headed by Justin Richardson who was the head of mobile for Warner Brothers. Our relationship with UK operators has really developed since you and I met here last year. It's probably doubled in number, and the key driver for future growth is age verification. We've been involved in the best practices, with content classification, validation tools and integration with AV - We're trying to drive the market very responsibly, working closely within local standards, working with our brands to fine-tune the products, and through that it's been really nice to see our business almost triple over the last year."
One cool display idea I saw was on the Paraddax.com stand. They were showing their Walk Through Magic product, which uses a falling curtain of vapour and rear projection to make a video screen you can literally walk through.
Another stand in the rarefied air on the top level of the hall was Bango's, and their Christian Kreul told me they were at the show to have as many discussions as possible with potential content providers, especially off-portal business. "The show's really going well for us", he told me. "We've seen lot of interested people. Our Safe Subscription model that gives clients the option to offer global subscription services throughout the WAP session has been talked about. We've also launched the Bango Vision package, because more and more big brands are going mobile, and not all of them want to make money through it. Rather they want to offer information, and want to use our ability to track users to look at the statistics so they can judge the success of their mobile campaigns." When pressed, he said, "We've not found the hall's location or our position in it a problem."
Perhaps it's because the content area was tucked away at the very top back corner of the site, but Hall 7 never seemed as busy to me as I remembered last year's content zone in Hall 2 being. Certainly, as one climbed up from level to higher level within Hall 7 the air got thinner along with the visitor and exhibitor density. Last year I wrote about metaphorically elbowing people in the neck to get onto the site. This time I had to dodge one old man who wanted my press pass so he could avoid paying the €550 entrance fee. Maybe I'd just timed my visit (the middle two days) wrongly, or the considerably larger site gave the illusion of diluted visitor numbers, but it seemed quieter than last year if not actually quiet. There was a surge after 2pm on Wednesday, but judging by exhibitor comments ("So-so" and "It's a bit stop-start", were as bad as it got) they were getting to see the people they needed to, and happily had more time to talk to them properly. So no clouds above Barcelona, but still a silver lining.