Wirelessnorth.ca

WirelessNorth.ca will be participating in an Interactive Ontario iLunch event this Friday and we’re looking forward to it:

If you dream of creating the next “killer app” for mobile phones consider this: the iPhone app fund rejects 99.8% of applicants. In a six-month period over 2,700 plans were received. Out of that group, only five companies were funded.

According to a recent Jupiterresearch/Forrester research report, mobile TV adoption is now at just 1%, and interest in all types of mobile TV is just over half what it was in 2006.

And Yahoo tech reported that a wave of economic gloom is set to hit mobile phone buyers (in 2009), with a growing number of analysts expecting the once-buoyant market to shrink for the first time since the 2001 crash.

But against this backdrop of doom and gloom, content creators gain ground as mobile technology continues to flourish, while carriers and other traditional gatekeepers of mobile content give way to new distribution opportunities.

Drawing on the experience of each of our panelists, iLunch 7.03 will explore:

- the types of mobile content that have been most successful to-date
- the best businesses to be in: mobile content creation, platforms or distribution
- distribution methods, partnerships and monetization strategies that have been most successful in this space
- the role of private investors or venture capitalists

Panelists for this session include:

• Simon Foster, Vice President, Business Development, GlassBOX Television Inc
• David Bazak, Sr. Relationship Manager, Media & Entertainment, RBC Royal Bank of Canada
• Mark Hyland, VP, Marketing, QuickPlay Media
• McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves, CEO/Founder, The Nimble Company

Moderated by: Thomas Purves, Tech Strategist and blogger

Register Here!

And hope to see you there.

And then there was another one. Hot off the presses at the Post: Bitove taps president of wireless venture

The satellite radio and fast-food entrepreneur has tapped Dave Dobbin, the 38-year-old former Toronto Hydro Telecom president, to be president for his budding wireless venture, Data and Audio-Visual Enterprises (DAVE) Wireless, sources have confirmed to the Financial Post.

Mr. Dobbin is considered by many industry insiders to be a blue-chip executive that has shaken up the industry with two municipal-based telecommunications businesses and has the potential to aggressively elbow DAVE Wireless into the highly competitive wireless market.

“He’s known as a bit of a maverick,” said one telecom analyst who declined to be named.

WirelessNorth.ca had a chance to sit down with Dave almost a year ago and we came away both impressed, and with a delightful earful on the state and capabilities (or lack thereof) of the incumbent telcom networks in Canada. Anyway, congrats and good luck in the new gig with DAVE Dave.

DAVE is the one new entrant we saw as a wildcard amongst the new entrants. Not quite national, but they bought up spectrum in mostly urban areas in the west and Ontario.

Here’s the next big question. With more new and overlapping entrants officially announcing, are they really all going to build out each their own network or will the sharing agreements be coming next? it would make a LOT of of sense, if the new guys can come to terms. If even Bell and Telus need to do it…

New stats are out on wireless penetration in Canada.

” A new Harris/Decima survey finds that 72% of Canadian households now have access to a wireless phone, up from 64% in 2006. Commissioned by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA)”

it gets better

“Canadians continue to be some of the most enthusiastic mobile phone users in the world” said Bernard Lord, CWTA President and CEO.

Than you Bernard, give us a second while we try and mop up the vomit of sycophantic incredulity now splattered down our shirt fronts. As we work on that, how about a wirelessnorth challenge? We hereby declare! WirelessNorth.ca will give $100 dollars to anyone who can identify any comparable country worldwide (let’s define that as greater than 1M population and close to or greater GDP per capita to Canada) with a lower wireless penetration rate than Canada. Hint: there isn’t one. But nonetheless, we’re serious, see if you can prove us wrong.

To get you started, a few quick wireless penetration stats from select countries you may have heard of:

USA 82% penetration 2008
UK >100% 2006
ITA >100% 2006
Fra >90% 2006
Ger >85% 2006
NZ >80% 2006

You can argue that the wireless industry has been getting a lot better in Canada. But we still suck. As an industry, all we’ve achieved, is to be last place by less than last year. go Canada.

It’s been a while since we first wrote about fonolo, and in the meantime this cool little startup is finally getting closer to launch. Fonolo is one of those tools that should have been invented a long time ago, it enables you to visualize call center or IVR trees and dial directly in to the place (or agent) you want to talk to.

The service is looking good with a lot more companies added since the last time we looked. A couple features we’d still like to see are a) an ability to save your account numbers in the service to dial deeper b) where are the telco’s?

If you want to give the service a try yourself, we have 100 beta invites to give away for fonolo, get your fonolo beta invite here.

That’s what it looks like this morning. Discuss.

Alex reminds us that Mobile Monday Toronto returns tonight. Here are the details if you are in town:

Topic: Mobile User Interfaces – Creating Engaging Customer Experiences
Guest Speaker:
Mr. Hanni Doch
Director, New Products
Rogers Wireless

We return to our regular venue:
Dunedain Multimedia Inc.
110 Spadina Avenue, Studio 700