MobileBeat

We attended MobileBeat in San Francisco last week. This was a very well attended and exciting conference of a kind which we really ought to see more of Europe. In fact a comment we made, made it’s way to VentureBeat’s conference summary. Quite a few US players are choosing to hype this up as a “US has beaten Europe” story, probably sensing payback for all those years of Europeans telling them that the US was way behind. Well not any more if the energy on display here was anything to go by.

One of the most interesting contributions was from Google who repeated their view that app stores are not the mobile web. This ties up with what we heard in London a month ago – it’s clearly a mantra with them. A counterpoint from Getjar is here. Our view is that success of the iPhone and it’s associated appstore is distorting perspectives on this issue. Apps are great for certain types of interaction: but complex live services will predominantly be delivered across the browser.