Mobile star speaker doesn't mention mobile

Yes, he was fascinating, but CTIA’s keynote Quincy Jones said nothing about mobile.

Jones was the star speaker at the Billboard Mobile Entertainment Live! conference, which traditionally raises the curtain for the CTIA show. He was fantastic. But what a bizarre choice – the Dude said nada about mobile.

QJ expounded on the plight of record companies (“it’s a terrible way to distribute music”) on Rwanda, on jazz and on technology. He also name-dropped a lot (Gorbachev, Bono, Clinton). Throughout the Q&A, this 75 year old legend of film, TV and music was utterly engaging. But still no mobile insights.

It was nevertheless the highlight of a muted morning’s sessions in which gentle questioning failed to get the most of a potentially intriguing interview with Mark Collins of AT&T. Later came another bizarre session entitled ‘After the iPhone’, which featured an interview with and largely about Motorola.

At least Blake Krikorian of Slingmedia was entertaining as he explained how Slingbox is good for operators (even though it lets users ‘place-shift’ their own TV broadcasts on their phones).