The third annual MobileSunday – an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums – will be taking place in Barcelona on the eve of this year’s Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).

Last year’s event, which was also organized by Rudy De Waele with a little help from Stuart Mudie, was attended by over seventy people. This time round, there’s going to be some more free beer, generously provided again by the good people at MyStrands.

What possible reason can you have not to join us? To confirm your attendance, simply add your name to the Who? list by clicking here – if you don’t know wiki syntax, just copy and paste the name of the previous person in the list into a new line and replace the name and URL with your own details.

All MobilOpen members are invited to come along. We can meet up there and have a drink. See you all there!

When?
7pm, Sunday 10 February 2008

Where?
BelChica
c/ Villarroel 60, 08011 Barcelona.
Metro L1 Urguell (between Gran Via and Diputacio. It’s only ten minutes walk from the MWC congress.)

Here’s a Google Maps directions to BelChica.

Yahoo has no desire to let the mobile web go the way of the web.. meaning to lose their front leader position. Mobile advertising is a natural continuation for their business. It will be easy for them to get advertisers to place ads on the web and on the mobile web at the same time. Though the field is crowded, with many only mobile ad servers, Yahoo brings several key advantages to advertisers.

Yahoo has a similar advertising deal with Vodafone Group, and the alliance with T-Mobile gives it access to two of the top four mobile phone network operators in Britain.

Advertising on the mobile web has grown rapidly in recent years and Yahoo has been aggressively targeting deals to sell and manage ads after suffering setbacks in its core Web search and advertising business against competitors such as Google.

“Banner advertising through the Internet on your mobile creates many opportunities for potential advertisers to adopt innovative marketing campaigns,” Phil Chapman, director of marketing at T-Mobile said in a statement. “We regard Yahoo as a leader in display advertising, and with its deep understanding of the mobile space and the potential that mobile advertising can offer clients, we’re glad they are on board as our partners.”

Of all the iPhone’s features, none had reviewers gushing more than its Internet browser. It was the first cellphone browser that promised something resembling the experience of surfing the Internet on a PC. Santa helped deliver on that promise.

On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times. A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone.

The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.

Other companies confirmed the trends, if not the specific data, observed by Google. Yahoo, for instance, said iPhones accounted for a disproportionate amount of its mobile traffic. And AdMob, a firm that shows billions of ads on mobile Web sites every month, said it saw traffic from iPhones surge drastically around Christmas.

“Consumers are going to demand Internet browsers” as good as Apple’s, said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president who oversees mobile products.

Mr. Gundotra said Web browsers as capable as the iPhone’s could also prove a boon for developers of mobile software, who have long struggled to adapt their programs to different types of phones. As it does on the PC, he said, the browser could provide a more homogeneous “layer” for programmers.

“The reason no one considered this seriously is that the Web layer on mobile devices was terrible,” he said. Google has taken advantage of the capabilities of the iPhone browser to create a product, internally called Grand Prix, that it says provides easy access to many of the company’s services, including search, Gmail, Reader and Picasa.

A la mobile a software developer unveils a suite of applications – browser, camera, games and more – based on Android.

A la mobile is a start-up dedicated to Linux-based “open” systems for mobile devices, says the demonstration proves that Android can deliver on its promise of making it easier for consumers to get access to all sorts of applications.

The open nature of Android means, “There can be a lot more customization, reducing the cost of devices as well as development time,” says Pauline Lo Alker, A La Mobile’s CEO.

A La Mobile installed its applications on a smartphone from HTC, the Qtek 9090. They include: a Google (GOOG) browser, phone dialer for making voice calls, audio player, Google maps, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, calculator and notes. A La Mobile plans to pitch this prototype – a first for Android, according to Alker – to handset makers.

2008 predictions

We will see the cycle of consolidation and proliferation start in the
mobile sphere – as already familiar from the post-dot-com web industry:

1. Massive increase in acquisitions as the big players (from MNO’s to
device manufacturers) will put some of their cash-pile into bying
customers through acquiring e.g. MVNO’s and SMS-providers; or to gain
technology and patents by buying small and innovative companies from
developers to MISP’s

2. At the same time, a few of the heavyweights will wake up and realise
their weakness in controlling only a few links in the value chain; and
as a result rush to merge – a web or media giant with the content will
merge with a major mobile player with the channel and customer base.

3. While the investment bankers are still laughing all the way back
from lunch (and the rest of the economy is sighing of relief, as doom
seems to have been avoided again), the techies (many with nice
redundancy packages from their merged employers) will be busy starting
up thousands of new companies

4. Which will all lead to yet more proliferation rather than the
technology leadership and de-facto standardization that were partially
a motive behind all the mergers and acquisitions

5. Luckily “one web” will nevertheless become a reality, as no-one will
bother to tinker with the basics when there are all these fancy new
things to play with

6. By the end of the year, the analysts and press will be busy arguing
whether the dot-mobile bubble will burst (no pun intended, Andreas &
team at .mobi!)

Pauli Visuri