It takes quite a long time to analyse 47 different companies, but it was very interesting. There were 49 shortlisted, but that included British entries Mobile Acuity and Audioboo so I wasn’t allowed to vote for them. Very pleased to see that they have both made it into the finalists list.

As I expected the most radical and unusual uses of mobile came from what we condescendingly call the developing countries. I particularly liked RedSalvavidas, which has become terribly relevant in view of what has happened in Haiti. In many ways using technology and business models in ways they were not originally intended is the core of innovation as most of the time we have more technology than we can use, but it doesn’t do what we need.

I was surprised at how many outsourcing and development shops were in the list, but I guess this just shows that the state of the mobile market is very variable round the world. One man’s innovation is another man’s old hat.

Sounds and image features among surprisingly few of the entries, but where it did it was interesting. I think Augmented Reality is going through a big hype phase, but has underlying real applications. Let’s face it, the idea of having always-on connectivity in our pockets was fantastic concept only a short while ago. In some ways AR is a solution looking for a problem, but all the elements needed to make it useful are coming together at last. And that is really the sharp end of technology.

Socialising stuff is going to be interesting, as the basic transports of social networking have gravitated to a few centres. So I’d look out for more new ideas servicing that area.

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