Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 161

When the journeyman boxer Chuck Wepner finally got his big shot at fighting Muhammed Ali for the World title, his enthusiasm got the better of him when he promised his wife the World Heavyweight champion would be sleeping in her bed that night.

After Ali had beaten Wepner to an inch of his life and the battered warrior had gone back to his hotel, he found his wife laying on the bed in a provocative pose who then asked her husband what time Muhammed was coming to her room.

Other athletes have had it easier with their spouses. Jim Hines prepared for his 1968 Olympic gold medal-winning run by sneaking into his wife’s hotel bedroom on the eve of the race with a bottle of champagne in each hand. Unlike Wepner, Hines had decided to have his fun while he could still get it… Which is uncannily similar to the way the mobile entertainment industry is behaving.

At this week’s CTIA trade show in San Francisco the parties came thick and fast and the champagne truly flowed. At Infospace’s gig on Tuesday, Billboard-topping artist Rhianna was paid 25K to gyrate her way through a few numbers in front of a goggle-eyed (98% male) audience. Across town, the Nokia, Fierce Wireless and MEF parties were all packed out and last night saw the surviving party animals descend on the Clift boutique hotel to swill up their remaining flutes of Veuve Clicquot.

This party shows no sign of stopping as CTIA gets bigger each year in the same way that 3GSM World has outgrown Cannes and is being held in a (grateful) Barcelona next year. For (grateful) Europeans, the rotation policy of CTIA works very well. Recent venues such as San Francisco, Las Vegas, Atlanta and New Orleans are great places to visit and are a must-attend for anybody serious about becoming a global mobile business.

Away from the bars and parties, the words on the trade floor were mobile TV, mobile TV, mobile TV, but recent research shows that the average punter doesn’t want to pay for such services and who can blame them? One minute the mobile phone was a voice-device that enabled people to be perpetually late for appointments, the next it’s an expensive communications hub for games and music that also takes pictures and videos and brings a bigger bill each month.

While the Holy Grail of converting the world's biggest installed base that is TV watchers to the mobile phone is naturally attractive, caution should be taken with the customer. Confident predictions that don't turn out as planned have bedevilled technology and capitalism for decades, and Mr Chuck Wepner will not need to be reminded about its equivalent in the sporting world.