The GSMA’s Mobile Innovation Grand Prix competition aims to spotlight promising entrepreneurs from small and medium-sized companies that bring innovative new products and services to market. GSMA teamed up with US-based investment bank Rutberg & Company to host the competition’s Americas leg (Rutberg does mergers & acquisitions advisory and private capital raising services for companies in wireless and digital media), and the next round is coming up fast!
On iSkoot’s Grand Prix to-do list:
1. Shine up our presentation skills (after a nonstop Fall tour ’round the trade show circuit, I think Mark’s still good and loose.)
2. Head to Redwood City on Dec 1st
3. Go toe-to-toe with 9 other Americas finalists in a round of presentations to a panel of industry experts!
Two of the ten finalists will go on to compete in the final round of the tourney at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next February. Only one company will bring home the title! Can iSkoot go the distance? There’s only one way to find out. On to Redwood City!
Wrapping up the iSkoot Fall Trade Show Tour, Jake sets his sights on SoCal this week for a Thursday, Oct 22 speaking gig at Digital Hollywood Fall in Santa Monica. (We know - first South Beach and now Santa Monica? Jake sure can pick ‘em.)
Now there is a new world of mobile and broadband interaction, familiar to almost everyone — Mini-Apps, Social Apps and Widgets. For the uninitiated, the Mini-App is miniature application or website that resides as a component element on a user’s desktop, social media page or mobile device. A button on a user desktop may open multiple Apps, so that in a flash, mini-apps open to reveal up-to-the minute stocks, the weather, airline arrivals, a dictionary, your photo album — virtually anything, any data type — can be formatted into a Mini-App. Once the user gets the hang of it, life without mini-apps is impossible. Mini-apps are as addictive as email. Mini-Apps are your mini-obsessions managed and delivered as desired. Add in a layer of commerce and you have a fully featured digital ecosystem. Watch out! Mini-Apps are Here!
If you’re an iSkoot fan you’ve probably advanced beyond beginner-level familiarity with the world of mobile social media, but all the more reason to get down there to see what’s coming up next. You’ll get the insider scoop from our esteemed Senior Director of Marketing, plus execs from RadioTime, Juice Wireless, Last Legion Games, PointAbout.com, and TuneWiki. The panel will be moderated by Gary Yentin, a Consultant at Global Media and Entertainment.
This is the last opportunity to see Jake Martin in the wild (for now), so make sure to stop by, tune in and say hi. The panel runs about 75 minutes and starts at 9:30am sharp on Thursday morning. See you there!
It’s Round 3 of the trade show tour: This week, Mark Jacobstein heads to San Diego to join a panel at CTIA Wireless 2009. His panel, part of CTIA’s Mobile Applications track, is assembling for a discussion called “APIs - Enabling the Future of Mobile Development.”
Mark’s participating alongside execs from CloudMade, Mashery, NewBay Software and Global IP Solutions, and each panelist will be showcasing their company’s latest and greatest application to be launched via API. The panel will be moderated by O8 advisor Hank Scorny. Things are scheduled to get started tomorrow, October 7 at 4pm PST.
The official word about the panel:
“Application Program Interface (API) is changing the speed at which applications for mobile become available. What works and what doesn’t? The common denominator is the role that APIs are facilitating a modularity that handset openness brings to the consumer choices. Panelists will talk about their newest applications being launched via APIs, the brands and products using APIs to speed up their launches and the process to work via APIs to get the apps up and running, fast.”
If you’re heading to San Diego this week, make sure you don’t miss it!
As we signposted a few weeks back, trade show season in the wireless biz is really starting to crank; here at iSkoot, we’re prepping to pack up and ship out yet another iSkoot executive to get in the mix and spread iSkoot’s unique brand of wireless wisdom.
iSkoot Senior Director of Marketing Jake Martin heads to the VON Conference and Expo in South Beach, Florida this Wednesday to participate in a panel entitled Smartphones on Steroids: Netbooks and the Next Device Wave. The panel kicks off at 10am EST (that’s this Wednesday, Sept 23) and promises to deliver a full 50 minutes of industry expertise on smartphones, laptops and how the marriage of the two is changing consumer/provider experience.
The official blurb from VON:
“As mobile phones get smarter — with multicore processors, larger screens and improved graphics — laptops are getting thinner, becoming hyper-connected “netbooks.” This convergence is shifting the way people compute and connect - and the way service providers relate to their customers and generate revenue. This session will explore the effects of the smartphone/netbook convergence on service providers’ business models, network planning and marketing.”
The discussion promises to be an interesting one, and if Jake’s past speaking record is any indication, audiences can look forward to a pretty rollicking good time.
It’s a common tale. You’re standing on the subway, juggling the coffee and the morning paper en route to work when, suddenly, he appears - the iPhone guy. Swiping his e-copy of today’s New York Times, smirking at his coworker’s latest Facebook status update. You eye your humble flip phone. Feeling a little inadequate? Fret not, frugal phone user - When iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein sees your inexpensive feature phone, he sees big potential.
Mark’s shared his thoughts on the subject this week as a guest blogger in Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech blog. His post “Every Phone A Smartphone” points out that while the high-end smartphone market share might be growing, advances in mobile computing - the magic that happens remotely to power cool functionality on everyday phones - are getting more and more sophisticated by the day.
According to Mark:
“Remote data centers can better manage the applications, information, and rote data crunching that smart devices require. All we’ll need is a basic Internet connection and data can be passed back and forth from the phone to the data center in near real-time, without having to bog our devices down with heavy applications and software.”
Think about the way you use your computer these days, Mark suggests to illustrate the shift. Much in the way PCs have become “terminals for accessing to Internet-based content and applications, mobile handsets will need less and less onboard capability to do the things that make them ’smart.’”
He concludes that with remote mobile computing evolving to power slimmer, smarter mobile apps, nearly any phone that can connect to the Internet can “deliver an experience that rivals today’s smart phones at a fraction of the build and materials cost.”
To read Mark’s full blog post, click here - and say goodbye to your iPhone envy.
Conference season is heating up, and iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein has gotten himself into the mix once again!
Tomorrow, that’s Thursday September 10, Mark is headed bright and early to kick things off at GigaOm’s Mobilize 2009 conference at the Mission Bay Center in San Francisco. His is the first panel of the show, a 40-minute examiniation how to company’s can turn mobile apps into a profitable business.
“Monetizing Mobile Apps” starts at 8:25am tomorrow; joining Mark will be Dorian Porter, CEO of Mozes, Zannel CEO Adam Zbar, Plusmo CEO Krishna Vedati and Flirtomatic CEO Mark Curtis. Raven Zachary, President of Small Society, will be moderating the panel.
Tickets are sold out, but for those of you who jumped on the wagon early, come check out the panel! For more details on Mobile 2009 speakers and tomorrow’s schedule of events, check out the Mobile website: http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/09/schedule/
It’s that time again - South by Southwest Interactive is recruiting speakers! The one-of-a-kind festival, known for assembling the best & brightest in cutting-edge tech and media, is looking for top-notch talents to tout their industry wisdom –and iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein is in the running for the job.
The best part: YOU can help us bring Mark - and the iSkoot anthem “Every phone a smartphone!” - to the festival-going masses next March. How, you ask? Simple: the kind folks in Austin are letting you vote to get him the gig!
Here’s how:
1. Click the button below. You’ll create an account (it takes approx 15 seconds total) so you can cast your vote.
2. All registered? Here’s Mark’s listing: Click me to vote for Mark!Just click the “thumbs up” icon to cast your vote!
3. Heck, why not leave an encouraging comment? Scoll down to the bottom of the page, and let SXSW know you’re a believer in iSkoot.
The polls close on Friday, Sept 4 so act fast!
Thanks team! Let’s get Mark Jacobstein to Texas in 2010!
iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein heads to the MobileBeat 2009 conference at San Francisco’s Parc 55 Hotel on Thursday, July 16 to go head-to-head with fellow mobile experts on the future of data-heavy applications.
Mark will join execs from Sprint, GoTV Networks and Zer01 Mobile for a panel discussion aimed at finding out: Are data intensive apps in danger?
The Breakout Session (#5), kicks off at 3:40pm. An overview of the discussion topic:
New data-intensive applications, embodied by Internet voice applications such as Skype, are endangering carriers’ voice revenue. At the same time, millions of new smartphone users are browsing the Web and hogging massive amounts of bandwidth. The plethora of new data-intensive apps are only going to make things worse for carrier costs. Growth in data being transferred from AT&T, Verizon, and other network giants is exploding — it grew 1,000 percent last year alone, and is expected to roughly double annually through 2012, according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index. So how will carriers survive as costs may exceed revenue?
For additional details on MobileBeat’s full schedule of events, click here.
iSkoot has just gone and gotten ourselves one rock star of a sales guy. As we announced in our press release on Tuesday, industry veteran Alan Coad just signed on as our new Senior VP of Global Carrier Sales.
Alan’s been in the business of growing telecoms-oriented software/IT services companies for over 18 years, doing both the start-up thing (Aldiscon back in the day, SpinVox most recently) and bigger multinational corporate gigs (he founded Logica’s South American operations, headed worldwide Sales & Operations for its Global Telecoms products division, and eventually took over Logica’s worldwide Communications sector P&L).
He’s got a track record that’s tailor-made to deliver success for iSkoot, and our team is incredibly excited to have Alan aboard - So much so that we just unleashed him on the industry at Mobile World Congress. Perhaps you spotted our newest all-star executive in the wild?
