MEF CEO Dario Betti breaks down the four categories in the MEFFYS 2019 awards and shares insights into the innovative companies nominated for this year’s coveted industry prizes.
Get to know what moves the ecosystem
Our industry is continually evolving and improving – it can be a struggle to keep up with all the innovations and changes across such a huge network of interconnecting global ecosystems.
MEF is here to help, with the return of the MEFFYS, the industry awards that recognise innovation and key trends from right across the global mobile ecosystem.
Peer Reviewed
The MEFFYS 2019 shortlist has been nominated by MEF Members, the MEF Board and its Advisors and will now be voted on by all MEF members in the ultimate peer review. As such, Meffys 2019 is not about self-celebration; Members were not allowed to nominate themselves. The shortlist represents exemplary use cases that demonstrate the technologies and ideas challenging traditional approaches to industry problems and ecosystem models.
Conversational Commerce
The craze for messaging has been a defining force in personal and business communications over the last 5 years. Now add a mature set of artificial intelligence solutions to power intelligent communication and real life conversations (chatbots) that are fast, effective, and immediate to support businesses. The impact is set to re-write much in commerce, and customer service.
Your.MD founded in 2012 has been working at creating a doctor in your phone with human qualities and perfect medical knowledge: becoming a gatekeeper for health services and goods for over 3 million users. Recently Reckitt Benckiser invested in this company.
Cleo is the Siri of Personal Finance, an AI powered money managing assistant, a disruptive player that intends to replace Banking Apps with Facebook Messenger communication.
FUTR is a specialist in conversation-as-a-service: its machine learning platforms allows for enterprise to drop their real language chat to fulfill FAQ & Search, forms filling, alerts and shopping.
++AI has created an intelligent chatbot platform that is working already across verticals including finance and travel and supporting multiple interaction channels: web, mobile apps, instant messengers, smart speakers.
Innovation in Services
The spice of innovation can make a difference in cost or customer experience. Using the power of people – the best technology is the technology that brings people together to engage in a flexible and effective way with an enterprise: gig-economy, crowd sourcing is a shaping how people contribute and consumer services.
AppQuality is using crowd-testing to support blue chip clients in improving their app.
TogetherPrice is the application that let users group together to share services from Netflix and Spotify to office services for SMEs. If people are unavailable think how artificial intelligence has pushed performance and productivity to peaks unimaginable until a few years ago.
SonicJob is applying Artificial Intelligence to creating CV on the fly for its 130,000 monthly active users.
Accedo the multiplatform video editing platform is using AI to build on interactive and personalized services for sport fans.
Digital Life
The way we interact with machines and technology is changing: a new approach to User Experience is emerging with focus on balanced, secure relationship with technology for young users.
Safe Lagoon has developed a new filtering tool to allow young mobile phone users to experience the mobile Internet with the protection against bullying and predators; this is not a ‘spying app’ but it includes participation of the young users and their parents.
Design Swarm has been designing IoT devices such as the Good Night Lamp, focusing on extending family life rituals through everyday objects – a simple and less tech-centric approach to enriching digital life.
Goozby is a digital trainer that guides young people to balance digital habits and be rewarded. Goozby supports mental and physical wellbeing among its users and has received the support from the Wellcome Trust.
Blockchain in mobile
The hype around blockchain is suffocating: it is hard to find companies are actually delivering real innovations with this technology. Here are a few real applications of blockchain.
Bank of Telecom has created a virtual currency to speed up settlement payments among telecom providers exchanging traffic in Voice and SMS.
The Reality Gaming Group has created tokenised in-game items into a mobile game utilising blockchain technology. Users can now trade elements of the game freely.
Smartshare is a blockchain based app for start ups: its mobile app that covers issuing private equity, shareholder meetings, board meetings, contract management and capital increase.
ARK is an open-source blockchain platform that empowers everyone, regardless of their aim or technical background, to quickly and easily leverage blockchain technology.
MEFFYS 2019 – Thank You
A big thank you should go to the members of MEF, our director of the boards and our MEF advisors: Andrew Parkin White, for Mobile IoT, Daniele Mensi, for Blockchain, Gianluca D’Agostino, for Start Ups, Iain McCallum, for Personal Data & Identity.
Don’t agree with the shortlist? Let us know your recommendations for the next round of Meffys awards.
MEF Connects 2019
7 October 2019, London
The 2019 Meffys will be announced at MEF Connects London 2019, which brings together MEF members in a series of sessions across some of MEF’s industry programmes plus invited guests.
