Barcelona leads

Here in Barcelona it's been chillier than in previous years during Mobile World Congress. However, in the conference and exhibition the temperature has been hotting up with some of the AIB's contacts talking of the best event ever for deals.

That's good news and certainly the AIB has enjoyed getting a whole raft of leads of people and organisations that are interested in what our membership does and in getting involved with the AIB's events, such as the 2009 AIB Media Excellence Awards - the AIBs. 

We'll be following up on those over the coming few days and look forward to working with more companies in the mobile industry during the year. 

Now it's time for me to work on the mobile and broadcast session that I'm chairing here on Thursday...

Not much of a recession in mobile

Judging by the flight traffic into Barcelona over the weekend, and the proportion of BA planes given over to business class (more than 50% on the flight I took out of London Gatwick on Sunday), the recession has passed the mobile industry by.

Lots of activity here in Barcelona as Mobile World Congress gets underway this Monday morning, although the queues to get into the Fira weren't as bad as last year.

Good to see that AIB member France 24 is here, on a corner of the Actimagine stand in hall 2. Vizrt is also here, in hall 7 and DW on the NRW stand in hall 2.

Mobile's the future

I spent four days in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress last week (11-14 February). It was an eye-opener for me on my first major foray into the world of mobile telephony.

My impressions: lots of people making lots of money from the mobile industry; a confidence that they're getting it right; a move towards content being made available on mobile devices, with devices equipped with DVB-H rolling out.

So where does the media fit in all this? It's up to content owners to start courting the mobile operators and handset manufacturers to ensure that their material is available to handset users in markets all over the world. And then it's a question of mobile operators pricing access to the content at sensible, affordable prices to avoid "bill shock".