Insights from Mobile World Congress on 2015

1. seeing into
The Future
Calvin Carter, Founder & President of Bottle Rocket,
dishes on Mobile World Congress 2015
2015

2. 1
MWC is No CES
For years i’ve noticed something about CES in Las Vegas. Not only do I
feel my personal values don’t fit the impressive display we have come to expect, I have also
noticed Vegas has a “tell”. Every year I like to see what booths are small one year, and huge
the following. A few years back it was 3D printers. Who the heck needed one of those? The
vendors’ booth size said so, we didn’t have to ask. But the line to see the booth said something
else. A year later it was “wearables”. Then it was “drones”. CES, at least the cheap seats, is an
oracle of the future. Yes, that’s insanely embellished. But it’s what I have seen myself.
Barcelona is different. First off, there are no cheap seats. “Small booths” are usually found as
a child to a mega booth. For example, France or Catalonia will host a booth so that companies
inside that region can have their own 5x5. That is something we simply don’t see in Vegas.
But the biggest difference, and this is a “duh” moment, is Barcelona is, as advertised,
all about mobile.
Barcelona deserves many things, including props for seeing at least a few years into the
future when they saw that mobile might one day be something big. The spirit here is amazing.
Open to the future and ready to write it. So, what did I find in the city of mobile?

3. 2
not for the tire kicker
there are no cheap seats. I’m not sure if this is the
congress itself, insuring that no riff raff makes it in, but from the
cost of the tickets to the travel required to the cost of the booth,
it works. Everyone I met was “industry”. Take it or leave it, MWC
is not for the tire kicker. It, however and unfortunately, favors the
established. Even the booths from companies you could tell were
throwing a hail mary were well-healed. This is a place you come
when you have arrived or you are traveling with someone who has.
I was looking for the cheap seats. I didn’t find them. But I did find
some amazing opportunities in the regional “combined groups”.

4. 3
security, security,
security
it’s all about not getting hacked. Security, malware protection,
hardened hardware, and secure platforms were all huge trends this year.
They were last year, too, but with an even bigger focus in 2015. Not only
are there platform solutions (use the apps from said provider to send
texts, make calls, and send emails and you will be safe) but now very,
very well-designed phones (hardware) are showing up for very, very high
end privacy and security. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. But
it’s the first time I’ve seen it in multiple booths, at once, with platform
options available for non-hardware options like iOS, and pretty darn
good-looking phones at that. This is a small market. I get that. But it’s an
important market. Sikur and LockPhone stood out as strong contenders,
and as a sign of things to come in major provider handsets as a feature.

5. 4
video killed the
display star
video ads continue to make a lot of money compared to
their display (banner) counterpart. I noticed this year the ingenious
use of video in non-video apps. Like Teads.tv, who will put high-
quality video units in your non-video app to get video-level CPM’s.
Interesting note: they act like the auto-play Facebook videos you’ve
seen in your friends’ feeds, but they didn’t copy Facebook. Who
knows if it’s true, but word has it they did it before Facebook.

6. 5 engagement
overload?
it’s all about engagement. Maybe too much so. If
there is a word more overused at MWC than engagement, it
might be innovation. But innovation still has a fresh smell to it.
Engagement has gone to the dark side. Too often did a company
misuse engagement in booth signage to mean cross-channel
attribution, shopper activation, download, referral, social
activation, or any number of other things. What I learned is that
it’s nearly impossible for a non-expert to make sense of these
companies and their claims. Fortunately there are still a few
companies who understand the difference between engagement,
promotion, advertisement and activation. See the next slide...

7. 6
notification nation
NOTIFICATIONS, NOTIFICATIONS, NOTIFICATIONS. Urban
Airship has always been a dear friend and they continue to innovate the push notification
space. I also have my eye on other companies that honestly don’t do push like UA does, but
do provide a wide range of messaging options like email, SMS, MMS and other non-native
techniques like mGage. These are very different companies, but they are converging on similar
grounds. The future is centered on what UA is doing, but the day-to-day needs of a major brand
involves what mGage is focused on as well. This is not a battle, it’s more of a conversation.
And the conversation is so important there are very interesting feeder companies that you
should be aware of. Take a look at batch.com. For free (or paid, if you want to do it right)
they’ll monitor any app you want and track every single push it gets, no matter how granular
the business rules are. Bottle Rocket builds some pretty amazing notification strategies and I
was very impressed with their no-nonsense approach to reporting. We’re going to start using
it Monday to track our clients and their competitors push strategies. Simple, but powerful.
If there is one thing I will tell you in 2015, it’s that notification strategy
is your most important thing to focus on. Was that subtle enough?

8. 7
Attribution and
native mobile
Cross-channel attribution, when it comes to native
mobile, is still tricky. Most groups had “just launched an SDK”
to match their web-based features. First off, it can’t match the
web-based features, and secondly, a first gen SDK is rough.
Trust us. But this is something worth continuing to watch. Cake
had an interesting product. Frankly, so did five others.
I say we watch them all.

9. 8
virtual reality
in due time
Google Glass and headset Virtual Reality is still young.
It is coming though. It’s so cool. Insanely cool. But it needs
a few cycles; all of them, not just Google, Oculus, and
Gear. It’s coming soon though. Until then, there are tons
of cool applications for stand-out ideas to take advantage
of the feeling of magic it still creates like the Jim Beam
work Bottle Rocket released recently for Devil’s Cut.

10. 9
scaling is hard
scaling is hard. Try it on millions of end points. Then, it
is even harder. As an app developer, we’ve had to roll our own
tools to track “issues” with our work. We aren’t perfect, and
neither is our work. And, while Bottle Rocket has some of the
best quality assurance services in the industry, it’s hard even
for us to keep on top of the releases, track issues, determine
fixes and roll them out quickly. Fortunately, we saw better
solutions this year than we have in the past. But not as good as
I’d like. This is an area of opportunity for the industry. There
are a few strong companies here. There could be more.

11. 10
social isn’t a broadcast
chris moody from twitter gave a great presentation with
client and friend Arlie Sisson from Starwood Hotels and Resorts.
Arlie delivered a strong message about the importance of a brand
having the confidence to go first combined with a focus on putting
the customer’s needs, desires, and curiosities for new experiences
above anything else. Chris noted the importance of voice of
brand and the fact that, before social, was voice of brand even
possible? Social is more than what you tweet, it’s what you hear
and what you respond to. It’s a conversation, not a broadcast.

12. 11
Buzzword overkill
buzzwords mean nothing, including at MWC. Here are
the exact words from a flyer I picked up: “We help businesses to
communicate more efficiently through smarter mobile engagement.
Our solutions allow us to use mobile as a channel to create new
revenue streams and as a channel to improve business operations.
At the heart of all our products and solutions is the philosophy
of leveraging intelligence to deliver service excellence”. We
all can, and must be, a lot more clear in instances like this.

13. 12
rip sms and mms?
not quite
the world still cares about SMS and MMS, and
maybe North America should too. There are a lot of meaningful
companies providing very well-orchestrated email, MMS and SMS
messaging campaigns, services, analytics, and attribution models.
Maybe we need to be creating holistic messaging strategies that
truly combines all the ways a company can message including
push, local, MMS, SMS, email, social, referral, and other means.

14. 13
bring your hardware
beacon networks are growing, but still in pockets. MWC
is a global event. So everyone gets to come. However, it was
disappointing to be talking to a group about the success they’ve
had with beacons, only to learn it was in one city of only 1M
people. That’s not a bad thing. But as an app developer ready
to use a tapestry of BLE beacons, it reminded me why we
manage proprietary solutions for our clients. Big brands still
need to bring their own hardware if they want to do it right.

15. 14
early days of
augmented reality
ar is alive and well, and still in the future. The guys
at Metaio are keeping it real and finding very, very cool ways
to use AR for real-world issues. But wide use is still a ways
off. That’s ok. So look for bigger and bigger “booths” in
this area for the next 3 to 5 years. Oculus and Samsung are
making serious moves here. This will happen. And those that
show up early to the party will be rewarded with more than
just great PR. But this is a big thing and it will take a while
to unpack its full potential. From this we will not return.

16. 15
pay it forward?
payments are still a mess. Too many players. Wait a
year. But lean into Apple Pay if you’re riding the fence.
Wait on the rest or take small chances to learn.