The Next Wireless Wave
This year’s wireless spectrum auction should usher in a whole new wave of mobile applications. That’s where several Alberta developers come in, all vying to be the next RIM<
by Scott Valentine
Construction jobs are incredibly expensive to operate. So much the more so in places like Fort McMurray where labour costs are hyper-inflated. By giving construction companies and the people that hire them a tool to capture and measure the cost of every business process, Singletouch can honestly say, “We get you. Here’s something that can help you run your business,” and deliver on the promise. But in order to take the next step, beyond novel solution and on to market leadership, Singletouch, HangHip or any other mobile application must meet one more key criterion. It has to be marketable to the world.
Mobile can hang with us anytime, anywhere. As a result, it’s a great tool for catching us in the very human and commercially exploitable act of being ourselves. Take a cool picture? Upload it to Facebook or Flickr and share it today. Need directions? Tell Google where you are and what you want to do and it will happily make a sponsored suggestion. Want to catch the world news or a little saucy European cinema on the train home? Tap your iPhone a couple times and so it shall appear.
“MoboVivo is the first company in Canada to license and distribute TV shows online,” says Trevor Doerksen, founder and CEO of Calgary-based MoboVivo Inc. “My background is as a television producer, but around 2005 I saw an opportunity to distribute content in different ways,” he says. “We started by licensing technologies, then created a web store and now we’re on the iPhone.”
The success of people like Doerksen — no techie, at least to begin with — illustrates a truism about this emerging field. On the economic landscape, the confluence of mobile technology and market opportunity occurs at the headwaters of interactive content and “What’s in it for me?” The question is not: “Do consumers want an entertaining, interactive experience on their hips?” It’s: “How are we going to get it to them, and what’s my piece worth?”
Think back on our problem of fragmentation – all those different devices, networks and marketers – and imagine a big, fancy negotiating table with parties all around screaming about reasonable risk, copyrights and revenue entitlements. MoboVivo helps take the pain out of that negotiation by providing a media repurposing solution that handles the problems of deploying digital content over a range of devices, and brings partners to the table with world-class pedigrees in broadcasting, network management and marketing in order to deliver content worldwide at “no-blink” price points.
The commercial appeal is obvious. Mobo-Vivo’s technology reaches a broad and engaged demographic in real time and offers advertisers an unprecedented opportunity to connect with the consumer when they’re open to an interaction. It’s a lean, mean business plan that leverages the quicksilver opportunities of mobile applications deployment with tremendously scalable market opportunity.
Any serious mobile technology play has to have the legs to go global. Take a quick tour of MoboVivo’s website, www.mobovivo.com, and you’ll see that Doerksen already has the company positioned front-of-mind with a range of consumers and marketers: club culture from Europe, news, sports and entertainment from around the world; an inspired documentary on snowboarding filmed in the Canadian Rockies. It’s no hype. MoboVivo is already the top iPhone web application worldwide, an incredible accomplishment for a young Canadian company. (Dare we invoke the name of Research In Motion?) The challenge for Alberta mobile technology firms that want to last is to offer a unique wireless value proposition to the global marketplace that deploys easily, harnesses the power of interaction and is flexible enough to allow for still uncharted business opportunities.
Piece of cake.
A large, growing and fragmented market for mobile applications solutions is in play, and the wireless spectrum auctions have helped to assure that MoboVivo, HotButton, Singletouch, Mob4hire, HangHip and every other Alberta mobile tech has the capacity to compete on the world stage. It’s now up to the leadership of these companies to carve out a niche somewhere upon the 24/7 market opportunity we wear on our hips.
Astute investors wishing to learn more about HangHip can text me on the mobile with lunch requests. Please attach a Google map.
Pages: 1 2
Follow Alberta Venture On: