One year later, Marketing Magazine invited me back to keynote their “mobile 2.0″ event last week to present an updated point of view on a marketer’s choice of Wap (or the mobile web) vs. App.

A lot has changed in a year in the mobile space and how does this impact marketers – and specifically Canadian ones? Check out the slideshare deck below for this year’s take on this ongoing debate. Also apologies for the font – slideshare replaced mine with something less readable

Steve Levy, president of Canadian Market Research, Ipsos Reid, presented highlights from a survey of marketing executives at Marketing Week today in Toronto. As stated in the afternoon daily, Steve indicated that only about 12% of marketers are actually incorporating mobile into their marketing mix.

The reason… apparently infrastructure barriers. Huh?

The only barriers are marketers and brands who haven’t yet educated themselves on where / how mobile fits into the marketing mix NOW.

With over 75% of Canadians actively using mobile phones and with numbers approaching 40 billion for SMS messages sent in 2009, I don’t know how anybody could say infrastructure is barrier to leveraging mobile.

Earlier this year I blogged about Rogers breathing rarified air with the introduction of their 7.2 mbps network. Since then they have nearly trippled those speeds to 21 mbps which has also since been matched by Bell and Telus with their new 3.5G national network.  High speed (nearly broadband) wireless is now truly available to most Canadians.

Having said all that, any marketer reading this post who has yet to incorporate mobile into their marketing mix should erase this post from their memory and go back to their usual ways.

Understanding how to use mobile in the marketing mix is one of our agency differentiators. The longer inaccurate messages are propagated about the mobile opportunity the better our competitive advantage will continue to be

Recently I was having a healthy debate with my friend Steve Sorge over at Mobile Fringe around “Wap vs App” – or should marketers focus their efforts on building out a mobile website vs. building out a mobile application.

Since my presentation at marketing magazine’s mobile 2.0 conference, my point of view had been shifting towards Wap – or the mobile web. My reasoning being that with the mobile safari browser webkit being commonly adapted by nearly all smartphones we can now build once and deploy many times with few changes to fit each platform while outputting a very rich experience.

This is not only cost effective but ensures reach – which is key if your audience isn’t on an iphone yet.

Steve pointed out that most people with iphones would rather search or browse on the App store than on Google – a huge shift in behaviour. With over 85,000 applications and 2 billion downloads, the App store is evolving to become your life tool for anything you need. After all, isn’t there an App for everything?

I was being trumped with my own traditional point of view – user experience trumps technology every time.

Yesterday it was announced in the media that the iphone is coming to Bell and Telus next month. Having recently completed upgrades to their networks to enable GSM (which is what the iphone works on), they can now offer the iphone and compete head on with Rogers. With iphone users already driving +60% of all mobile web traffic in Canada, what will happen when you suddenly make the most popular device available to everybody else?

2010 will be the year that the iphone changes the mobile landscape in Canada.

Although Canadians have other great options in the Palm Pre and the pending new Storm from Blackberry, making the iphone available to nearly all Canadians is a game changer – for both consumers and marketers.

So… Wap or App?

I’m back to the middle. You should probably do both, but start with a mobile website – unless your target audience is already on the iphone. By this time next year, that could be everybody.

Marketing Magazine is putting together a fantastic morning conference on June 18th in Toronto at the Hyatt on mobile marketing 2.0.  The lineup includes Mickey Alam from Mobile Marketer, Amielle Lake – CEO of Tagga Media Inc., and Mitch Joel – President of Twist Image.

I’ve also been asked to lead a session which I’ve entitled “WAP vs. APP” which covers the mobile web and mobile application opportunity for brands and marketers. I know “WAP” is not really a term we use anymore for the mobile web, but it made the title catchier

It’s only $99 to attend the morning conference – so register here right now!

Details on the full agenda can be found here.

Hot off the presses – check out Marketing Magazine’s current issue which has a focus on brands in motion: how mobile is revolutionizing marketing in Canada.

1) Brand Power

2) I want my PDA

3) Measuring Mobile 

Although Canada still falls behind even the U.S. in mobile penetration and usage, we are at a point where it’s hard to argue that the Mobile channel is not relevant in Canada. How are you incorporating mobile into your marketing plan?

In support of their issue on Mobile, Marketing Magazine is hosting two Executive breakfast meetings this week in Toronto and Montreal featuring special guest speaker John Hadl, Mobile Adviser to Procter & Gamble US, will discuss the role of mobile in a consumer-centric, media-fragmented world.

As part of the two meetings I’ll be presenting a case study on how a leading Automotive company has gone beyond “text to win” to create true customer engagement in the Mobile channel in Canada. President & CEO Michael Carter from MyThumb Interactive will also be presenting a case study on how a leading beer company has created engagement through mobile.