4th June, 2008:

ATLANTA-The message during the opening session of GSMA's Mobile Innovations Marketplace was the industry needs simplicity to grow wireless users as well as to increase data uptake and average revenue per user (ARPU).

Speakers ranging from AT&T Mobility to Yahoo! agreed that despite wireless' obvious success it still remains too difficult for consumers on many levels from pricing plans, content discovery and application use.

"A sense of chaos has marked the industry over the last couple of years," said Doug Busk, vice president of Amdocs, as he opened the conference. "But out of this chaos, we are rendering true innovation."

David Christopher, AT&T Mobility's CMO, agreed and pointed out that the chaos has delivered choice in providers, devices and applications. In any situation in which there are so many choices, he said, wireless must offer personalization as well as simplicity.

"It's well recognized that as complexity goes down, usage goes up," he said. As an example, Christopher pointed to the use of a 1-button hard key on devices to allow customers to access content. He said AT&T saw 400% growth in music since adding such a hard key for music.

Calling for "radical simplicity," Chris Curtin, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts' vice president for new media and technologies, pointed to how his company was using wireless to make the guest experience "transformative." For example, he described a program in which a Disney character would call children on Christmas Day to let them know they were going on a Disney vacation. "CRM is a big play for Disney. The mobile phone is a major tool for us in delivering that."

Marc Mathieu, senior vice president of global brand marketing for Coca Cola, said the challenge for his company is to remain the brand "that's within arm's reach of desire." He pointed to the synergies between the major brand and wireless - the company sells 1.2 billion drinks per day, which compares to 3 billion wireless devices in the world. "1.2 billion times 3 billion is an intriguing opportunity," he said.

"We've used mobile to drive awareness, facilitate purchasing and to build loyalty and encourage engagement," he said.

But for all of the major brand success stories with wireless, there are challenges. According to Mitch Lazar, vice president of business development for Yahoo!, two major challenges involve the applications and pricing.

"People need a mobile first experience," he said, as opposed to taking the PC experience and applying it to mobile. Wireless consumers want instant information and instant answers. Lazar also said that wireless faces problems with engagement and must deal with the confusing pricing plans. He said it shouldn't be about cost, but about value creation.

The GSMA Mobile Innovations Marketplace is taking place in the United States for the first time this year. It complements GSMA events Barcelona and Macau. The event is showcasing 15 companies' products and rating how they deliver in innovation, originality, ease of deployment, demonstrable consumer benefit, user experience and market impact. The tournament will select two finalists to send on to Barcelona next year to compete in the 2009 GSMA Mobile Innovation Global competition.

The companies in the competition are Adaptive Mobile, Anam Mobile, ChaCha, CooTek, GestureTek Mobile, Linguatec, MMCast, modu, Nextivity, Red Bend Software, Roundbox, Sharpcast, Tagattitude, Ubidyne and WiSpry. The finalists will be named at the close of the show today.