There's valuable industry insight out there if you're prepared to look, says Softtalkmobile.
It only takes a microcosmic linguistic slippage to morph the acronynm MEF into ‘meh’, the verbal equivalent of a ‘huh, who cares...’ used most famously by Bart Simpson in the cartoon series The Simpsons.
So if I say MEF you might respond with ‘meh.’ But what if I said Mobile Entertainment Forum? Well, you might say, ‘not another worthy industry body,’ or something similar.
Think tanks, talking heads, blog writers; seminars, conferences, breakfast briefings; working parties, committees, expert analysts – it sometimes feels like the mobile entertainment industry is made up of disparate groups of vested interests who are all joined together to in one common purpose – to promote their own agenda.
But that’s exactly how it should be. Because all this reveals a market that is thriving and healthy... and increasingly wealthy. And MEF, if you don’t already know it, is serving this market with some penetrating insight that might serve you well too. In fact, it would be unusual if you weren’t familiar with MEF – its board of directors reads like a who’s who of the industry.
MEF describes itself as ‘the leading trade organisation for companies wishing to monetise their goods, services and digital products via the mobile connected device’ and goes on to add ‘provides an impartial, consistent and powerful voice for the foremost companies and entrepreneurs from across the mobile content and commerce value chain.’
In that spirit, its North American arm has released a series of white papers on m-commerce. The aim is to ‘demystify the complexities of mobile payments and address key industry issues which are barriers to consumer adoption for mobile content and commerce.’
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There are eight papers in all, each one on a different topic such as privacy, payment solutions and regulation. Clearly, they’re focused on North America, but with the exception of the tax and regulation papers, there should be some very useful content that could help a games’ house and developers inform and extend their industry knowledge.
This is no bad thing, given the size and potential of the market. Games apps developers already have two large feet in the door and can, for example, act as excellent channels for other brands not familiar with the mobile arena to piggyback on – for a fee of course.
Interestingly, MEF is also developing a mobile payment model matrix which identifies all of the different purchasing and transacting models for mobiles. It is genuinely worthy work, definitely worth checking out and surely no ‘meh.’
In a similar vein, Intel Capital’s release of $100 million for Intel AppUp Center developers is set to galvanise the steadily growing move towards cross-platform apps. This is an important move, and is designed to accelerate development in infrastructure middleware, innovative applications and digital content.
It’s an implicit acknowledgment, which has also been stated explicitly, that as time rapidly rolls on, there’s going to be a lot more devices that need connecting together. Within the industry, we may get excited about developments such as HTML5, or look with interest to MEF’s payment model matrix, because these are the tools of the trade that help us grow and develop our business.
However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that from an end-user’s point of view, these things are as riveting as an engine gasket and they just want things to work and be able to connect when ever, where ever and to whatever.
Intel Capital funds are designed to aid Intel AppUp developers in reaching these objectives and despite the proliferation of app stores, the Intel AppUp Center is unique in its positioning. It’s not proprietary and it’s forward looking.
This development and the endeavours of MEF point to an industry that is characterised by driving change and to make the most of it you need to be in the front seat.
* This blog post is written by Softtalkmobile, and is sponsored by the Intel AppUp developer program, a single channel for distributing apps to multiple devices, multiple operating systems, and multiple app stores.
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