Mobile Content Challenge (MCC) 2008


It was interesting to have attended the MCC2008 Prize Giving Ceremony yesterday at Hotel Istana in Kuala Lumpur. A significant portion of the audience were members of the media, the industry partners who acted as mentors to the participating teams, the finalists and members of the winning teams. Other attendees were representatives from the higher education institutions.

There were three speeches, each highlighting a few interesting facts. What Mr Sandi Das, the CEO of Maxis Communications Berhad said was something to take note of. There are 20-23 million mobile phone users in Malaysia (out of 26-27 million population) and 4 out of 6 billion mobile phone users in the world are expected to use their mobile for information, learning, games and to perform banking and business related transactions. Thus, m-learning, m-entertainment, m-banking, m-commerce and so on. He mentioned that there is plenty of opportunity for Malaysians to create content for these uses! Part of the goals of the MCC is to create entrepreneurship among young Malaysians. Who knows, they can conquer the world economy through local creations!

Datuk Halim Shafie, the Director General of the Malaysian Communications for Multimedia Commission highlighted the fact that the number of 3G subscribers have risen from 1.5 to 3.6 million over the past one year and that by 2011, we will see more mobile data than voice data flowing through the mobile air waves. It is expected that 50 percent of Malaysians will be broadband users by 2010.

Y.B. Dato' Shaziman Abu Mansor, Minister of Energy, Water and Communications Malaysia expressed that the government wants to see more mobile content developers. RM50 million has been allocated as seed funding for mobile content developers. He was there to launch the event and praised the winners for their entrees.

It appears that we will soon be going through an exciting era next. Notice how computers have shrunk in size in spite of greater computing power over the past 25 years? And the convergence of information, computer and mobile technologies? I think educators need to seriously think of mLearning next!

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