Just got back into the hotel from London's March Mobile Monday. The theme was "what have operators done for us lately?". We heard two operators tell a bit different stories, and that's exactly how it should be. No industry value chain blocks, please.

O2's James Parton presented their Litmus developer program, a two month old newborn. Despite of a lot pressure, he did not disclose any participation numbers from the program. He did mention a few other, interesting numbers that I wrote down. O2 gives 70% of their apps store the revenue to developers (same as Apple and Nokia), they have 260 million customers at reach (with Telefonica), and they claim it takes a developer 18 minutes - not 18 months - to develop and publish in Litmus.

Doesn't sound too bad to me. A gentleman in the crowd disagreed, however, and called them a "huge toxic well", accusing O2 of having the poorest billing system in Europe and no idea what the customer wants. Everyone's entitled to their opinion.

Vodafone's presentation was more inspirational than informative. Terence Eden started by reminding us that the Nokia 1100 is the best selling phone in the world,  and that iPhone, Nokia 5800 and other such smart gadgets are useless. "Useless!".  The point was, that since they are not well connected to the network, and they don't work together, they lack something essential from the user experience point of view. He's not wrong. A someone who worked her best years (ahem) in promoting interoperable, open mobile standards, I agree to an extent. I wouldn't go as far as to call smartphones or mobile computers useless, but I get where he's coming from. A well working, fast and reliable network does bring value. With more and more services sitting on a web rather than be downloadable, as Jo Rabin from .mobi reminded, the network does matter.

The panel was well chaired by Anna Gudmundson, although a certain spark was missing. Everyone agreed and no real confrontation took place (apart from the "toxic well" comment). Perhaps the one discussion takeaway from the panel was an argument between David Wood and others on UI design. People defend Steve Jobs' way of making decisions on user interface and user experience, but David defended the "committee" type of UE design. If you think of it, there is a point to it. More people should be able to represent a customer base of millions of people better than one person could be. A lady that I talked to over the cocktails said that 5 people will do it. No more is needed.

I just cant help but think of two things here: 1) a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and 2) iPhone and iPod UE's are fantastic. Even with these demons whispering on my shoulder, I am going to vote for David's way of doing it. Together rather than
alone.