Lawrence Coburn, CEO and cofounder, DoubleDutch; Walt Doyle, president and CEO, Where; Ted Morgan, CEO and founder, Skyhook; and Annette Tonti, CEO, Mofuse took the stage for a CEO mobile panel to share their views of market trends and opportunities.

The steep trajectory in increasing numbers and types of connected devices continues to redefine the opportunities in this space. The question of whether SMBs need to have mobile apps versus WAP sites is still a live question for clients. Content may be king but location is becoming an expected layer to content products and services. Mobile location data are very valuable and sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, Morgan cited a case where location proximity and clustering data from mobile users was a factor in a retailer’s site selection process for locating a new store.

As for what’s next, the panel sees scaling opportunities in moving from national brand buying to a least medium-sized business, and maybe smaller, local business in some cases. Mobile payments work elsewhere in the world but technology, security, privacy and data ownership issues are prolonging rollout and adoption in the U.S.