The summit opened with the announcement that the “open mobile revolution has just begun” as stated by Nokia Siemens Networks CTO Hossein.  Impressive statistics prove this point, such as the fact that in every second in 2010, 290 applications are downloaded to smartphones or smart device and 8 smartphones are connected to the Internet.  15% of the cells handle 50% of the traffic.  As a result, the capacity and coverage must increase.

The discussions then moved to the topic of live video and the bandwidth impact, quoting statistics about how much of the internet and wireless content would be video.  While it is true that the majority of the bits will probably be video, the majority of signaling on the network is driven by other apps in my opinion.  The CEO of MLB.com referenced network congestion and how the solution was bandwidth optimization, in which different bit rates are provided to different devices, etc.  However, the answer/solution was not in an application-agnostic way that SEVEN builds its solutions, and I think ignores the bigger problem of the multitude of applications that drive the majority of the signaling on the network.

Finally, there was the CTO of Verizon Wireless, Anthony Melone, who talked a lot about LTE and indicated that LTE is “about the bandwidth hungry apps we can’t do today”.  He said the main question is “how will the ecosystem evolve to make that efficient for everyone?”  Again, everyone was focused on the bandwidth and not the signaling issues.  However, even Melone admitted that “we still need to optimize applications for mobile” and re-iterated that later in the discussion.

Clearly there is a need for solutions that optimize the experience both on the network as well as the device, where SEVEN Networks has its unique position.

Thoughts/Feedback?  Other reactions from the Open Mobile Summit?  Let us know.