We have had a busy several weeks with some good events and speaking opportunities here in Germany and abroad. We exhibited at M-Days in Frankfurt the beginning of February. The exhibition was busy, and Heiko Kasper, Director of Business Development, was given the opportunity to speak on mobile advertising on the exhibition floor to a large and surprisingly lively crowd (a few photos can be seen on flickr). He was also interviewed by GFM Nachrichten, sharing insights on what mobile looks like this year, and whether 2012 is yet another year of mobile (watch the interview on YouTube here).

This week two team members from Sponsormob also visited Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, which is a massive event for mobile held annually in Spain. The event was huge, visited by 60,000 professionals in the mobile industry. It was informative and busy, and we look forward to next year’s MWC as well.

We were also in Las Vegas earlier this week at LeadsCon, where a team of two exhibited, discussing advertising opportunities on mobile with hundreds of new contacts. We would like to thank everyone who stopped by our stand at LeadsCon, making it a great event for us!

After being busy this year exhibiting at events in the US and the UK (such as ad:tech and Apps World), the beginning of 2012 will see us active here in Germany. We will be exhibiting and speaking at M-Days, a massive event for mobile communications and advertising event taking place in Frankfurt, Germany. This year over 120 exhibitors will be at the event, and over 3,000 visitors are expected to be attending.

The dates of the conference and exhibition are February 1-2, 2012, and it will be held at Messe Frankfurt. We will be in the Innovation section of the exhibition and would love to meet with you, so please contact us if you plan to be at M-Days and would like to connect.

Mobile internet agency M47 Interactive has now made its free Flirtalike app available to the European market. The app, which was launched in the US in 2010 Sponsormob, is now accessible to German customers in the App Store. The app is available for iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPod.

Georg Gajewski, managing director at M47 Interactive, says, “In Germany we are seeing rapid changes in the habits of dating and flirt site users. Up to now, traditional online dating and flirt portals have been overlooking the opportunities in mobile, so we are happy to fill that gap.”

Flirtalike is the first free flirt community app developed exclusively for the mobile internet. It gives users the opportunity to connect and flirt via their mobile devices simply for fun. Future plans for the Flirtalike app include launches in other European nations.

Sponsormob is the exclusive promoter of Flirtalike and looks forward to offering the iPad app to the German market. Regarding partnership with Sponsormob, Gajewski says “We are excited about the expansion of Flirtalike throughout Europe and for continued cooperation with Sponsormob. We are hoping to see a repeat of the success with Flirtalike in the USA through our partnership.”



Sponsormob has been on the road a lot lately, participating in events in Paris, London, and Barcelona. The travel will continue this summer with App Day in Köln (Cologne), Germany, the end of this month. The event takes place on July 26 and is an event that brings together app developers and marketers. There were over 350 registered participants at the last App Day in Frankfurt, and this event is expected to be a success as well.

Our CEO, Peter Glaeser, and Public Relations Manager, Talya Shoup Burnett, will be attending the event for the day. For anyone interested in attending App Day, registration is free and can be done on the event’s registration page. And as always with Sponsormob events, if you are attending and would like to meet with us, please contact me to arrange a meeting (talya@sponsormob.com). We would love to hear from you!

Peter Glaeser, CEO of Sponsormob, will be in Frankfurt tomorrow for M-Days, the largest conference and exhibition for mobile communications in central Europe. There will be more than 90 exhibitors at the trade show, and over 2,000 visitors are expected to be in attendance this year.

The focus of M-Days is on the mobile market in central and eastern Europe, and the gathering includes industry leaders from telecommunications, media, and advertisers. Some of the hot topics at M-Days will be apps development and app stores, mobile communication and  commerce, application development, mobile advertising, and others.

The event takes place at the Congress Center in Frankfurt, Germany, on January 27-28. Peter will be on site Thursday, January 27.

Ok, so it seems that Sponsormob is operating from the right country. We all know that Germans like what they call “Handys” (yes, this is the English term that Germans use for a mobile phone. Don’t ask us why, because we certainly do not know the answer!), but I just came across an informative article by mobiThinking that proves this. The article, backed up with reports from ComScore, shows that Germany is currently leading Europe’s mobile market with 51 million mobile users. Of these 51 million, seven and a half million access the internet through their mobile web browser, while fifteen million access mobile services through mobile apps (mobiThinking). These numbers were from January of this year,  so it will be interesting to see what next year’s reports show. With 2010 being the purported year of mobile (or maybe not), then we can expect these figures be larger next year.

So what are the people of Germany spending their time on the mobile web doing? The top sites being searched appear to be Google (no surprise here), MSN/Windows Live/Bing, and Yahoo. The only thing that did surprise me was that Facebook ranks at #7, trailing behind ICQ and AOL. I mean really, ICQ takes me back to my high school days in the 90s, and that has been a while! I honestly didn’t realize that it was even still in existence, but apparently it is still alive and well.

But back to Germany and our findings – the most popular mobile applications in Germany are: maps, weather, search, and news (in that order). This information isn’t shocking, but it is good for marketers to know what people are doing via their mobile devices. The growth seems to be due to good data networks and unlimited data plans, as well as by the popularity of smartphones (mobiThinking). Another interesting point is that Germany is home to large brands who are comfortable with mobile advertising (think BMW and Lufthansa).

So what does the future in Germany look like? Well, like a mobile one, of course! As mobile usage grows worldwide, Germany will continue to play a part.

(photo courtesy of dmexco)

Just a quick reminder that Sponsormob will be in Köln this week at the digital marketing conference dmexco. We will be exhibiting on Wednesday and Thursday, the 15th and 16th, and can be found at stand E84. Come over and visit if you are there – we will have refreshments waiting for you and some great giveaways (really, some you can actually use!).