Kick off for development program for Mobile Media Technology Enterprises

April 2 Wireless future in cooperation with IT-Fornebu, Oslo Teknopol, Abelia and Innovation Norway arranged a workshop for the providers of mobile media technology.

With almost 50 participants, of which almost 30 represented mobile media technology companies, the most important Norwegian companies in the business participated. Objectives of the workshop was to present and kickoff a sector development process for:

1. a technology and market analysis for strategic road mapping of the next 2-3 years
   
2. an internationalization program, starting with USA, but also including other markets dependent on opportunities at hand (South Africa, China, India,..?).

In the first part of the agenda in the first presentation, the Wireless Future program for development of enablers of mobile rich media services was presented (v. Wireless Future/P. Thornér). The effect of collaboration on gearing of competitiveness was pointed out and briefly explained.

In the second presentation the process of using Forsight type of scenario methodology for strategic Road-mapping analysis was explained (Daniel Nordstad Grönquist, Norrman Partners).

Within the next two weeks an invitation will be sent out to the 50 companies interested in participating in development program. We do not know how many of these companies are interested in participating in the Road-map process, but as the interest seemed large in the workshop, and we only may accommodate up to 20 participants, we may have to apply a first come first served principle. For participating in the Roadmap process there will be a fee of the order of 10.000 NOK/company.

In the second part of the workshop regarding "Influencing the international market"Telenor and Telenor Playground was presented (v. Karianne Prytz, Head of Services, Telenor Global Coordination, Markets). Telenor Playground is an offer for technology providers to test their products. The process to qualify for playground was described. Two companies in the meeting already had products in Playground, and further 10 companies found the offering of Telenor of interest.

The planned overview of MMA and possibilities to influence MMA (v. Anne Lise Katle, Head of Mobile Content Telenor and board member of MMA) had to be postponed to the next workshop.

In the short presentations regarding entering new markets Anders Ljungquist from Ability AS gave a verbal presentation of his experiences from over 20 years of global business development and sales, then Hans Talleraas presented the offering of Norad for market development and Steinar Svalesen from Teleplan as gave a comprehensive presentation of his experiences from development of The mobile media company in USA. Steinar pointed out that having Telenor as an owner created attention and opened doors on high level in large companies, which may be a challange for SMC's.

Tony Raposo gave a short overview of the market and services of Innovation Norway in USA before the presentation of Soren Schaft of Opportunities and challenges entering the mobile media market in USA. The presentation of Soren gave an excellent overview of opportunities and challanges in the US market, wich indeed is quite different from other markets.

Some ideas for collaboration was tested and received a positve respons, including putting up som kind of collaboration umbrella or sales company to get executive attention from large companies and at large trade shows.

Finally it was concluded that there is an interest for both the development processes. Before next meeting an analysis of the market presence and plans of companies in Norway will be done. The results of the accumulated analysis will be presented as a bakground for planning of common activities, whereas individual data from each company will be treated as confidential.

The presentation of Soren Schaft who was at CITA in LA was given using Skype. Impressive quality with last Skype release:

Workshop on wireless technologies for the intelligent buildings and smart home business

Together with the Norwegian RFID resource network Wirless future arranged a workshop March 12. aiming at getting an overview of status of the Norwegian offering and experiences and to find out what needs to be done to utilize technology to reduce buildings costs and get buildings that increases user efficiency and comfort while reducing cost of operation and environmental loads.

The workshop engaged in the order of 40 participants mainly from the building sector. Status is characterized by:

• Manny of different standards and proprietary solutions creates barriers for real estate owners to use products from new suppliers
• Some real estate owners prefers traditional solutions not to get dependent of proprietary solutions
• The experiences of users are that suppliers has been promising more than they could deliver. In one project that was presented the supplier is now able to deliver what he promised 6 years ago. However, the technology is starting to become mature today in some areas, as for example alarm systems.
• Generally, the competence in the different parts of the value chain is low => Intelligent solutions are not a asked for in generall RFQ's => Only market addressed by suppliers of intelligent solutions is projects managed by the real estate owners themselves.

For a general maturing of the market a broad approch involving all the players in value chain is required.

Real estate owners needs to get a better understanding of the benefits of the technology. Studies of best practice from the oil and gaz industry, and experience from "intelligent hospitals" may give some information. However, there is a need for more knowledge from practical experiences.
Real estate owners would like to have plug and play open solutions allowing connectivity of different types of systems from different suppliers both on physical and on application level. Some suppliers claim that they can offer that. However, in a broad perspective it was acknowledged that there is a need for harmonization and standardization as well as competence and in some areas for more open system architectures.

There was a general commitment of the participants in then workshop to contribute to the process of maturing the market, although no specific projects where defined.

Innovation Norway made a presentation of how "IFU/OFU" projects may be financed.