Stream provides a flavour of this years IBC event. 

A lot of research has been released trumpeting the success of mobile content in the 14-35 age group, but the industry has neglected those over that age. Surely grey surfers, with high disposable incomes, could generate significant revenues for mobile content providers? What efforts are being made to attract older users? Is content specifically being developed to target them or is this vast and growing market still widely ignored? 

With the rise of user-generated content, direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales and search and discovery technology what role is left for aggregators to fulfill? Do content producers and carriers alike really need the services that aggregators offer? Or is their expertise in other areas such as partner relationship management (PRM) enough to keep them in business and deliver value to their partners and the industry as a whole? 

Mobile communities are beginning to emerge and that raises the question of control. Unlike the traditional internet, the mobile internet has not come about as a means for like-minded groups to communicate freely. Its currently a premium medium, but mobile communities run by the users themselves take control away from content producers and carriers. Mobile communities will generate traffic but are unlikely to generate premium revenues. So is the industry ready to let go and allow users to take control of the mobile environment it has guarded so jealously for the last decade? The success of MySpace in the online environment gives a hint of how revenues may be generated, but can mobile content businesses stomach this sort of commoditised service? 

With memory card capacity routinely reaching 2GB, and 4GB cards on the horizon new capabilities have been unlocked from full length movies to music library storage equalling MP3 players. However, if memory cards are to break into the mass market there is much still to be done in terms of getting consumers used to buying physical content formats again. Its a long time since many tech savvy users queued to buy a CD or DVD so can memory cards tempt them back to retail stores or is their application more of a marketing give-away or bundled offer with a new device? 

Billing for content is still a challenge for carriers. Their heritage lies in charging for voice by the minute and adding some sort of service charge on top. The complexity of dealing with multiple organisations within the mobile content value chain presents a raft of problems both technological and cultural to overcome. So, how are carriers rising to the challenge? How is the billing software community developing solutions to surmount the obstacles? And, what advances are in the pipeline? 

Techno-nerdery and early adoption, particularly of mobile technology, seems the near-exclusive preserve of the male of the species. So what is the mobile market doing to convince women that theres something in mobile content for them? Mobile gaming, ringtones and sports-related content  not to mention adult ¬  are heavily weighted to men so why has the mobile market to date failed to address female users? Surely it cant be because the bulk of decision makers in this industry are male? 

Theres a lot going on in that small window above the 12 keys on the average mobile device. Theres your device manufacturers logo above the screen, theres your carriers logo and theres the identity of the band whose track youre downloading all to be considered. If you go one step further youre possibly downloading that track from a branded site like EMIs The Raft. That means youre looking at four different brand identities when you commence a typical mobile download. User interface solutions give the provider of the interface  whether portal provider, carrier or content producer  the scope to reinforce their brand identity and make it an easier, higher quality experience for users. But is it all worth the hassle? Is mobile search and discovery technology eliminating the need for customised user interfaces, and are carriers really doing such a bad job on their own? 

With more and more brands devoting greater percentages of their total ad spend to mobile, the market is developing speedily. But what exactly constitutes prime mobile advertising real estate? Is it billboards on search pages or operator portals? Is it banners at the end of movie clips or jingles at the end of music downloads?  

As digital music channels proliferate and music becomes available to download over Wi-Fi to MP3 players and laptops in retail environments such as Starbucks what role does mobile music now have? Subscription models¬  music as a utility ¬ such as Omnifone's have opened up a new way of accessing music to users but are they in danger of becoming bewildered by the choice on offer? What effect has the emergence of flat rate data tariffs had on mobile music? Is pricing now sufficiently clear? And what brave new moves are we poised to see  and hear? 

In spite of advances across the mobile content sector mobile games have remained fairly static. One-time purchases of two-dimensional, crude adaptations of console and early PC games remain the norm and the promise of fully-featured three-dimensional games has so far failed to materialise. In addition, much heralded advances such as multi-player gaming have also failed to crack the market. This has been to the detriment of download volumes with sales growth slowing. However, there is still much to play for and if innovations such as 3D, multiplayer and games with multiple versions do continue to arrive on the market then recovery could come about rapidly. The end of quick, easy money from basic games could herald an era of new maturity and the customer-disappointing age of expensive (¬3-5) games could be at an end. This needs to happen quickly, though, since much more customer disenchantment could damage the sector irrevocably. 

In spite of the advances of mobile search, the potential of location based services has yet to be fully unlocked. Getting down to the granular level of understanding the users location and making relevant search responses available to them is a complex process. In addition, this area skitters into the realms of breaching data protection regulations. So what real value can be delivered without falling foul of the law? 

Poor customer experiences have been a key barrier to wider mobile content adoption across all sectors of the industry since its inception. This has led to disturbing statistics about repeat downloads and customer satisfaction emanating from the analyst houses. Should high quality customer experience be regarded as a weapon to differentiate in the carriers armoury or as a weapon to drive usage of mobile content? What are carriers and content providers doing to get the message across to users that its now safe to dip more than a toe into the mobile content market? How can the industry assure users that early disappointing experience need no longer be repeated? 

Although security and authentication technologies still have a significant role to play in protecting the under-age from adult or gambling-related content the rise of threats such as mobile viruses places yet greater burdens on security and authentication systems. As mobile devices become more and more closely wed to users PCs through the synchronisation of email, diaries, music downloads and other types of content, security weaknesses in the mobile environment pose a very real threat to the security of business networks and home IT equipment  not to mention the increased threat of fraudulent activity. What systems are being deployed to keep the mobile safe from threats such as these? And whos responsibility is it to protect mobile users and prevent their devices being used as a back door for the unscrupulous to access corporate and personal data? 

The idea of getting free content underpinned by sponsorship from a brand seems pretty attractive but there is the real risk that there simply isnt enough benefit for any party in the proposition. Brands may feel they dont get enough benefit for providing high-value content with the simple addition of their logo as a sponsorship mechanism and, if more profile is given to the sponsoring brand, users might become alienated. Is there a middle ground? Can brands operate mobile marketing in such a way that it drives response and revenue for them without becoming an annoyance to the very customers they are trying to attract?