Global Messaging 2009: more of the same

Remember my post about MIR 3.0 hunting for contributors? Here’s our first submission! It’s just a quick one from reader Malcolm Murphy who is not entirely impressed at next week’s Global Messaging conference.

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Next week sees the 2009 Global Messaging conference. Leading lights of the mobile industry gather to talk about how to increase ARPU with instant messaging, email and all the rest. Up until recently, I’d probably have been there as well.

But I don’t work in the mobile space any more, and boy has my perspective changed. From the outside looking in, Global Messaging 2009 doesn’t look that different from Global Messaging 2007 or 2008. It’s mostly the same mix of service providers and messaging vendors, mostly talking about the same stuff. And almost certainly from a mobile industry viewpoint; not from the consumer viewpoint.

And that’s the #1 problem in the mobile industry: it’s extremely insular. So while there are going to be a lot of talented, well-intentioned, creative mobile messaging specialists getting together next week to talk about how to move mobile messaging forward, nothing new will come of it.

Still, at least you can MMS on the iPhone now.

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Nice one Malcolm. Is it possible that the Global Messaging industry can ever surprise and delight us again?