Mobile Entertainment

Germany is home to many of the biggest automotive brands in the world - and boy do they love showing off their stuff. Take BMW for example. In October last year it opened BMW Welt (BMW World, non-Germanic readers), a gleaming temple of automotive design next to its head office in Munich.

The building looks like the illegitimate child of the city's Allianz Arena and a set from Star Trek. It's so futuristic it hurts the eyes. It took four years and upwards of 200 million euros to build.

Just don't call it a car showroom. When BMW Welt opened, a company spokesman described the building thusly: "Our dealers are like local churches, while BMW Welt is St. Peter's Cathedral."

Anyone picking up a new 330 or whatever gets a full day at Welt and true VIP treatment. BMW isn't alone in this thinking. Volkswagen has its Autostadt, Mercedes has got a flash museum and Porsche is working on its own place of worship right now.

The point to all those places is that anyone can walk in - yes, ultimately BMW would like to sell you a car, but it also wants you to dine there, shop there and learn there. The website says it wants to teach kids about 'mobility'.

Teaching about mobility, eh? Funny they should say that. Sounds like the sort of thing Nokia would say at the opening of one of its flagship stores. Everyone likes a moan about the 'on device' content retail experience, but maybe there are ways to better capture consumer interest in mobile content using shops.

Yes, the High Street - remember that? Shops with real stuff for real people to touch, feel and play around with? Apple plays the same game with its flagship stores. 3 has adopted a similar 'show and tell' retail strategy to Nokia. But in mobile they are the exception rather than the rule.

In other industries shifting units often isn't enough anymore. Companies want to sell an experience. Next to a car, a mobile phone is one of the most personal material things you are likely to own. Maybe we should start building some cathedrals to the experience of mobile content.

As the old saying goes - if you build it, they will come.