Dinner with Stephen Burke SVP Mobile Search Company MCN

At the close of play at the MEF, MCN’s Stephen Burke and I headed off to a delightful chic Cannes restaurant.  What followed was a very interested evening and delightful conversation centred around mobile search.

Now the weight of BKI Media and analysis is behind me, I can relax more with mobile search companies and my “chasing the story” mentality is replaced with an understanding new business models and development of mobile search mindset.

This made for a really good night. After I told Stephen about the new Mobile Seo business and the successes, fun and issues I have encountered. We spoke candidly about mobile search and what was still missing and why mobile search is there – but just not quite there yet.

The mobile search competitive playground is small. But new entrants are making it harder to call mobile search one service or offer.  Advertising or pure play mobile search providers (outside the operator) are creating a new mobile search eco-system. This is usually, but actually the uptake of new mobile search leaders or entrants in the white label field is very narrow.

We have layers of mobile search providers:

1. White labels: MCN, Motricity, Medio, Jumptap
2. Branded players from online: Yahoo!, Google, Live!
3. Vertical search providers: pure video search (vTap), pure music search (Gracenote)etc.
4. Mobile Visual search companies: SnapNow, Snaptell, Mobot, Kannuu, Mobile Acuity, DSPV (I think no longer actively pursuing it) and several more.
5. New branded mobile search players: taptu, abphone (interview up next), find.mobi

We both feel that that consolidation is going to happen and we did guess that one company was about to be sold (but it’s a secret). In general, I wish I taped it or made it more formal as there was also some strong discussion on federated search and how federated seems like the new black in mobile.

But anyway, Stephen is a great guy with a very impressive background. We are both ex-Sony and that made it fun as Stephen understood when I spoke about my time at Sony and what it taught me very early on in my career.

Related News:

1. MCN-inc set for more expansion and Stephen Burke joins as new SVP Marketing and Monetisation
2. Eye opening chat on federated mobile search with Phyllis Reuther CTO of MCN Mobile Content Networks
3. MCN launches mobile search services in Finland with Elisa
4. Mobile Search: MCN’s Michael Crane
5. MCN-INC mobile search hits the headlines with two wins at 3GSM