CTIA preview: Despite downturn, the show goes on for mobile entertainment

Mobile Entertainment Live! must really like Matchbox Twenty (or vice versa). Eighteen months after the pop band's guitarist Paul Doucette joined AT&T VP of consumer data Mark Collins on the Mobile Entertainment Live! stage to unveil the operator's Napster Mobile service, Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas will sit down for a keynote Q&A at this year's event, taking place Tuesday, March 31. Thomas will presumably offer his take on the current state of the digital music marketplace, and perhaps he'll also address the impact of mobile technology on the artist/fan relationship--earlier this month, the singer launched an account on micro-blogging service Twitter to announce the mid-April release of "Her Diamonds," the first single from his upcoming solo album Cradlesong. Other keynoters at Mobile Entertainment Live! include MTV's executive vice president of digital distribution Greg Clayman, Kia's vice president of marketing for North America Michael Sprague and Imeem's chief marketing officer Steve Jang.

Mobile content and applications will continue generating CTIA Wireless 2009 headlines and buzz after Mobile Entertainment Live! ends, of course. As of the fourth quarter of 2008, mobile data revenues now constitute 25 percent of total operator ARPU, according to research firm Chetan Sharma Consulting--a year earlier, the percentage contribution stood at approximately 19.3 percent, and while Chetan Sharma anticipates the U.S. market will exceed the 30 percent benchmark in 2009, the recession and its impact on consumer spending will dominate talk at this year's conference. "There's no question we're in a downturn--there would be a lot more things happening right now if the economy was as strong as it was two years ago, but we're still seeing a robust marketplace," said Louis Gump, vice president of mobile with The Weather Channel. "There is still a very strong hunger from consumers and industry players for mobile data offerings." Gump forecasts that application stores, location-based services and mobile advertising will all command media and attendee attention next week: "This is still a very fertile environment for innovation," he said. "We're all just doing it on smaller budgets than we would have liked."