IBC 2008 is coming (very) soon to the RAI exhibition centre in Amsterdam. Great, you think, why should I care? Well, IBC is an entertainment industry exhibition and conference. And given part of that industry is “mobilised”, then there are going to be a large number of mobile companies there, showing their wares.

Specifically, the “Mobile Zone” is full of Mobile TV and video providers, and if last years show was anything to go by, a hotbed of activity.

If you fancy going, check out the opening dates/times below, and then go to the IBC website to sort yourself out a ticket!

IBC returns to the RAI Centre in Amsterdam, with the conference opening on 11 September and the exhibition running from 12 to 16 September 2008.

The exhibition opens to visitors at the following times:

• Friday 12 September 12.00-18.00 hrs
• Saturday, 13 September 09.30-18.00 hrs
• Sunday 14 September 09.30-18.00 hrs
• Monday 15 September 09.30-18.00 hrs
• Tuesday 16 September 09.30-16.00 hrs

Exhibitors will have access from 08.00 hrs each open day of the show

www.ibc.org both captures all the information from last year’s event and will chart the progress towards the next. As we have information to share, so our electronic newsletters will keep you up to date with the build-up to IBC2008. We look forward to seeing you there.

Gee, those guys at Motorola (NYSE: MOT) sure are good – they mail to let me know that you can win an E8 device from them, through a promotion they are partnering with Last.Fm on.

So, if you’re not already a Last.fm user then go and check it out and create a profile for yourself. Tell us which track Motorola should use for their next ROKR phone launch and you could win a MOTOROKR™ E8!

The comp can be found here.

The E8 is a nice little phone, and has a thumping ad campaign behind it (type motorola rokr e8 advert in to YouTube and you can watch it) – so well worth a go to win it!

I’ve been a fan of O2 (NYSE: TEF) for a while in respect of their Marketing efforts, and turning the Millenium Dome in to a desirable venue was no mean feat. Justin Timberlake was awesome on a different level when he played there, and so it’s with great pleasure I can report that Kanye West is coming to the O2 (again) in November.

Kanye’s latest album has been a masterclass in how to lace high-quality lyrics with phat sampled beats, and his live show is variously reported as being stunning. So get your interweb-clicking fingers on the mouse button and check out here for pre-order of tickets. Nice!

O2 has announced that it is continuing it’s sponsorship of the England Ruby team for another four years – this will mean it will run beyond the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. The deal is worth about £4 million per season, and run to 31st August 2012.

O2 (NYSE: TEF) is promising it’s customers more player access, and more unique mobile content also – as an O2 customer myself, I can’t wait! Come on England!!

[Via: Mobile Choice UK]

Carphone Warehouse Chief Exec Andrew Harrison recently called for sensible marketing of mobile phones to kids, according to Mobile News. Unfortuntely, it doesn’t appear he has much backing, as Child safety organisations wouldn’t back him, and the industry at large didn’t have anything to say in support either.

Harrison said last month the industry should take a “responsible attitude” towards the increasing number of children using mobile phones by marketing targeted products to them in a sensible manner.

The input from the Childrens’ Charities was that a more ethical approach would be to market to the parents, not the children. Also the charities pointed out that the safeguards for services usage needed to flow through the parents to they could control what the children are seeing.

Interestingly, handset manufacturers didn’t support the idea of marketing to children either – despite the fact they potentially have a good amount of sales to gain:

Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) marketing director Dave Hilton said: “We do not target children and do not promote phones to under 16s. We recognise teenagers use phones, but we have adopted the ethical policy not to target them. If it is found that there is an increasing market appetite and we believe there are no ethical implications at that time then we would consider targeting under 16s.”

And finally, even the (other) retail channels don’t appear to be in agreement with Carphone:

A Phones 4U spokesperson said: “Whilst it is clear the use of mobile phones by children is on the increase, we must remember that child safety is paramount. We understand there is a need in society today for more stringent controls regarding how mobiles are used by children, and the content they are able to access. However, Phones 4U’s core target market are 16-24 year-olds, and so all of its marketing efforts are focused on reaching those over the age of 16.”

Apart from the input from SE and Phones4U, other companies in the Mobile ecosystem largely refused to comment. Personally, I’m not surprised, given the sensitiviy of the issue. Where children are concerned, there need to exist extra levels of protection to make sure that Mobile devices don’t become a targeted channel for all the less than savoury elements out there, in whatever forms they may come.

[Via: mobilenewscwp.co.uk]

China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) has now started it’s marketing push for a public beta of 3G telephony services, hinting that full deployment may be available soon after that little sporting event called the Olympics!

As we’ve reported on before, the dominant tecnology for 3G in China is not going to be the otherwise globally-accepted WCDMA, but in fact China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access).

TD-SCDMA was developed as part of a larger Chinese effort to create technology standards that would not require the payment of royalties to foreign patent holders. It is not compatible with any other 3G standard, and China’s carriers have not indicated they will support any other 3G standard. However, given the size of China’s domestic mobile market — about 550 million users — even 10 percent penetration would give TD-SCDMA more users than in many nations.

This latest advancement in trialling comes after 3 years of trials, in which various sample groups and technologies have been tested. There are six handsets involved in the current trial:

• Dopod s700
• Motorola (NYSE: MOT)’s l800t
• Haixin T66
• LG KD876
• Lenovo (OTCPK: LNVGY)’s TD800
• Samsung i688

Interestingly, the i688 is one of 4 models that Samsung gave to the “Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG)” for use during the Olympics next month – Samsung is also an official sponsor. Overall, 15,000 devices have been supplied – clearly there is a massive P.O. (purchase order) if Samsung is selected as a key provider, so what’s 15K devices between friends!?

[Via: PCworld.com]

 The Mobile Marketing Association has released a Global Code of Conduct – the aim being to help companies use mobile for marketing, whilst protecting consumers. This latest release updates the 2007 document, and contains five categories:

• Notice
• Choice & Consent
• Customisation & Constraint
• Security
• Enforcement & Accountability

I’m all up for this sort of more stringent control, anything to protect us end-users from being spammed, hassled, called, and texted by dodgy companies offering various “once in a liftetime” opportunities!

[Via: Mobile-Ent.biz]

Orange and disposable pen maker Bic are joining forces to launch a 49 EUR BicPhone, that will come with the battery pre-charged, and one hour of call time. The phone will be widely available across France from 7th August. The phone is made by a Chinese ODM called TCL, and will support just voice and text.

As Bic is well-known for it’s bright colour pens (and shavers and lighters), you can expect the phone in lots of garish nice colours. Latterly, the phones are also going to get store-space in Orange’s shops.

I was going to say this story was nothing to write home about, but that is such a poor pun…..

[Via: Telecom Paper]

Much as Motorola were the other day, now Samsung are busy mailshotting me, to let me know about the Tocco (F480). I got a lovely email inviting me to check out the website, which I duly did. On arrival, I landed on a very busy homescreen, but on clicking through to the Tocco, found a message (see above) asking me to “imagine customizing my touchscreen“… I’d invite readers to close their eyes and have a go, it really is quite a magical experience!

Anyhoo, if you want to actually buy the phone from the Samsung mobile shop, it’s £315 – but right now it’s out of stock. Alternatively, you can peruse your friendly network operator, or independent shop.

Check out the Tocco at the Samsung site here.

Jaguar recently launched their new XF model in the US, and went big on Mobile Advertising to do so – details below…..

First of all, what does the XF look like? Well for all you petrol-heads out there:

Jaguar wanted to communicate the vehicle’s break through styling and unique features to a target audience that was male, 35 to 54 years old, and with a high level of household income. Mobile proved to be a great way to do this.

Banner Ads were placed on mobile internet sites such as MSN.mobi, cars.mobi and Yahoo Mobile, in order to drive (if you’ll pardon the pun!) people to a Mobile-oriented wesite. Impressively, by May 2008 (from a launch in Nov 2007), over 15 million ad impressions had been generated. This brought 85000 unique visitors to the Mobile site. Further on from this were some nice stats about usage of the site:

• 12,000 videos downloaded
• 18,000 wallpapers downloaded
• For users who visited beyond the home-page, the average dwell time was 2 minutes
• 1.2% of users requested an email brochure by entering their email address into the WAPsite
• 2.6% located their nearest dealer to arrange a test drive

The Mobile site was designed so that it would serve up the right images and videos to the correct handset – quality being important when you are trying to get over a feeling of luxury!

The results from the campaign were pretty good, although perhaps not as large as other advertising sectors – but that’s no bad thing – Mobile Advertising is growing, and as more contextualised and relevant ads are served, it will become a more widely-recognised and acceptable channel.

[Via: MobiAD News]