A chronology of the industry's era-defining events reported during the print era of Mobile Entertainment. Start arguing now.
Last month, ME went online only five and a half years after making its debut as a print publication.
To commemorate the switch, we compiled a chronology of the most significant events reported during 'the paper years'.
Here they are:
November 2004: Launch of Vodafone 3G
The first press conference ME went to (though we were still pre-launch). This Voda quote will make you laugh: "The new phones will be like personal entertainment centres, bringing faster downloads of compelling video clips, games, music and ringtones as well as face-to-face mobile video calls."
They would. But not for five years.
And then it would be Apple making all the money.
December 2005: EA buys Jamdat
Electronic Arts doesn't do things by halves when it spots a market it has yet to conquer. Having made a low-key entry into mobile gaming via a licensing partnership with I-Play, EA bided its time, then fast-tracked its way to 900lb gorilla status by paying $680 million for the then-leader Jamdat in December 2005.
Remember, this was still the Java and BREW era, when mobile was still the runty little brother of the 'proper' games industry. While the Jamdat acquisition was all about carrier distribution and porting –great days, eh? – it laid the foundations for EA's current success in the App Store era.
March 2005: ME launches
Our first issue proclaimed how excitement around the mobisode had prompted Hollywood studios to hold secret meetings with Sorrent.
Inconsequential nonsense! But how fresh it all seemed.
March 2005: Sony Ericsson launches Walkman phones
The W800i kicked off a glorious era for Sony Ericsson and established the concept of the music phone. Eventually the firm sold 130m Walkmans, but came to rely on them too heavily and got caught out by the smartphone. It’s only just recovering.
May 2005: Crazy Frog hits number one
The entire Crazy Frog phenomenon is emblematic of a distinct phase of the mobile entertainment industry's history, warts and all.
The positive spin: it was the first mobile-originated IP to become a bona-fide mainstream pop culture phenomenon.
The negative spin: that phenomenon would be tainted by the controversy around subscription scams. Plus it was fucking irritating, obviously.
But the key moment around Crazy Frog is indisputably the Sunday evening when the spin-off single kept Coldplay off top spot in the UK charts. Ding ding!
August 2005: The debut of BBM
Research In Motion's transformation from a corporate caterpillar into a beautiful consumer butterfly remains a work in progress, with variable success.
However, more and more industry folk are beginning to realise that RIM's importance as a consumer handset maker has little to do with touchscreen Storms and U2 apps, and more to do with BlackBerry Messenger and BlackBerry's must-have status among teenagers.
It's become a parallel social network under the radar of most 'grown ups'. Tech industry commentators like to wonder where The Kids will flock to if they give up on Facebook. The answer is three letters: BBM. And they're already there.
September 2005: O2 UK launches i-mode
In Japan, i-mode with its 91 per cent rev share and reliable handset base, had utterly owned the content scene. In Europe it was undone by crappy phones, confusing marketing and timing that ensured it emerged just when rivals WAP and 3G were turning a corner.
September 2006: ME Awards
Some people told us the industry wasn’t big enough for a glam event like this. We didn’t listen, and 370 people crammed into the Royal Garden Hotel. What a happy happy night. One of ME’s proudest.
Jan 2007: Launch of iPhone
The day everything changed. Without doubt, the most momentous in the history of the content space. Apple didn't invent the smartphone.
However, the company rewrote the smartphone rulebook when it unveiled the original iPhone, most importantly by focusing on user experience rather than technical specifications.
That first iPhone had no 3G, dodgy camera, no way to install your own apps (!) and on paper looked distinctly underpowered next to the competition. It didn't matter, and Apple has been setting the high-end smartphone agenda ever since.
November 2007: Google creates an Android
Would it buy Sprint? Would it buy US spectrum? Would it buy a handset maker? No, no and no. But still the speculation followed Google round like paparazzi on Lindsay Lohan.
And in 2007, the industry found out what Google had planned. Initially it was hard to get your head round an open mobile OS and a loose collection of OEM partners (the OHA). But now with 200,000 Android activations a day, it looks like the billionaires at Google knew what they were doing.
July 2008: Launch of App Store
Again, Apple didn't invent mobile applications when it launched its App Store. Instead, it was a phenomenal rebranding job: applications became apps, with a beautiful browsing and purchasing process, and a cast of thousands. Which swiftly became tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands.
The App Store has set a bar that is still dauntingly high for rivals, it's made millionaires of several small indie developers, and it introduced the world to Angry Birds, Foursquare and fart apps. Okay, so it's not all good news...
September 2008: Comes With Music Launch
Nokia has taken plenty of stick for its services strategy in recent years, thanks to high-profile flops like N-Gage (twice), the muddled launch of its Ovi Store, and the perceived failure of its Comes With Music unlimited music service.
However, there are two big reasons to see CWM's launch as significant, and far from a failure. First: Nokia's achievement in signing all the music industry's big players up to an access-based music service as early as it did.
And second because Comes With Music is a force to be reckoned with in emerging markets like Brazil and Mexico, where piracy previously dominated.
November 2008: INQ1 handset debut
Startup INQ made its first splash in the mobile industry with the Skype Phone, before turning its attentions to Facebook with the INQ1.
It was ...
Advertisement
Facebook's tight grip on the social graph means deeper integration with it is now on the agenda of every handset maker. INQ did it early on.
March 2009: Foursquare and Gowalla check-in at SXSW
With all the hype around social location, gamification and check-ins, it can be startling to remember that the SoLo excitement only really kicked in during the SXSW Interactive conference in Spring 2009. It saw the debut of two similar-yet-distinct services: Foursquare and Gowalla.
They started to popularise the idea of checking in to real-world venues and pushing that information out to your friends, with game-like scores and achievements wrapped around it.
Their fortunes have diverged over time, with Gowalla's growth falling away compared to Foursquare and newer rivals Iike MyTown. Even so, the double-launch was when the mobile world woke up to social location.
October 2009: Droid smartphone Unveiled
We could have chosen the first Android handset, the G1. but actually, the glitzy and no-expense-spared launch of the Droid smartphone last year is the moment we'd pick out as the most important.
Why? Because it was clear from then on that the world's big mobile operators saw Android as a viable horse to back in the smartphone races, and also because it was the moment that the operator + manufacturer + Google partnership model crystallised.
Droid also managed something that few industry folk would have predicted at the start of 2009: it made Motorola cool again. For a while.
November 2009: Google pays $750m for AdMob
ME remembers how excited Russell Buckley (AdMob employee number two) was when the off portal network did 100m impressions in seven months.
Eventually it was doing 25bn a month. A bunfight ensued with all sorts looking to snap up the ad firm with the keys to the glorious kingdom of mobile. Google won. What grand plans they must have now.
February 2010: Facebook reaches 100m mobile users
By stealth, and with little proactive effort, Facebook transferred its awesome online presence into mobile. Yes, by 2010 there were multiple apps and links embedded within ‘rich’ address books.
But Facebook’s mobile impact was basically consumer-driven – and six months after breaking past 100m it would have 150m users. Now, the market waits for its next move. The day it monetises its mobile inventory will be very interesting…
April 2010: iPad launch
Apple's big product launches aren't just significant for themselves, but for the impact they have on the wider market. As for iPhone and the App Store, so for iPad.
It wasn't the first tablet by any means, but the 10-inch device's debut reinvigorated the category - right now, everyone and their outsourced Taiwanese manufacturing aunt is making a slate-shaped device.
iPad was also hailed as a lifeline by the newspaper and magazine publishing world, seen as a vital competitor to Amazon in the e-books market, and made waves in the TV and film industries too. Samsung and RIM have already unveiled their own tablets.
June 2010: AT&T scraps flat rate data
The beginning of the end of all you can eat data came when AT&T cried ‘enough’ and rolled out new tiered plans.
The operators had danced with the devil for long enough, and when smartphones and video streaming came along, their nightmare scenario came true. O2 followed AT&T soon after.
September 2010: The de-capitation of Nokia
Days before Nokia world, out went Olli-Pekka and Anssi – the architects of Nokia strategy in the noughties. They left with the market leading status intact, but the lucrative smartphone segment in tatters. Is this the beginning of the big turnaround?
