Fifty UK firms offer the future of mobile phones

If the entrepreneurial firms highlighted in a report today have any say, the future of mobile will have us using our phones to book tickets, locate nearby restaurants and find dead rats - oh, and there'll be more of that user generated content (UGC), too.

O2 and Real Business today announced their second-annual list of the top 50 firms to watch in mobile. Although the combined revenue of the selected fifty firms is over £180 million, the panel of judges chose to eliminate larger companies and focus on those that would benefit most from a public platform to showcase their technologies.

"I'm amazed by the possibilities opened up by these companies and excited by what people will be doing in the next few years on their mobiles," said Charles Orton Jones, the deputy editor of Real Business.

Media platform firm Yospace - which offers a mobile blogging application for posting video and photos - ranked first in the list. With their application, users can upload content for free, while viewers pay to download clips. Contributors are paid a share of the revenue.

The award will make founders Tim Sewell and David Springall- as well as media group Emap, who bought Yospace last week for £8.9 million, very happy. "The timing is interesting," said Sewell. Given the firm has been around since 1999 - an eternity in UGC circles - Yospace is "the longest overnight success in mobile history," he said.

While consumer technology took the top spot, business applications dominated the top five. The second-place spot was awarded to business-to-business operator 2ergo, for their innovative backend technology which allows messaging as well as mobile payment systems. Also noted were silicon circuit designers picoChip and network optimiser Arieso.

From the fifty winners, the panel highlighted four trends: user-generated content, business to business services, location-based services and mobile ticketing. "With the proliferation of mobiles and cameras, there's a huge wave of user-generated content taking place," said Mike Short, the vice-president of technology for O2.

However, mobile companies need to find ways to turn these innovations into financial gain. "People use camera phones, take a clip, but it just sits on the phone, so it's not generating revenue," said Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum and one of the judges. But now, with more applications encouraging users to send the clips, the potential to increase revenue from the data market is growing, she said.

While Zoller said she was pleased about how well UK companies were covering key sector areas, she noted that there are some weaknesses. "One area I would have liked to see stronger representation on the content side is with music," Zoller said, adding she believes the weakness stems from the strength of the US in that area.

And the wireless rat catchers? That innovation comes from firm Wyless, who teamed up with pest-controller Rentokil to create a mobile network to monitor traps - and send an alert when a rat is caught - in real time. Now that's a worthy use of technology.

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