I am at CTIA - the mobile phone conference - in Las Vegas, and on Monday, there was a pre-show event called "Mobile Entertainment Live". I have been involved in the mobile contents industry for the past several years, and am quite disappointed that people are still complaining about the same things.

There was even a panel designed to "complain" all the problems that the contents providers face, repeating their same mantra to blame phone carriers, rights holders (such as music labels and movie studios) and everybody else.

In my eyes, though, they are missing an important point - "women".

I recently talked to a guy from RockYou, one of the top Facebook application providers, and he mentioned that their CEO reads teen girl's magazines to come up with new ideas, because they have the biggest "viral" power to spread their application. Sure enough, Web2.0 community understands it. So they are successful.

Even in Japan, the land of male-centric society, mobile contents industry has plethora of female entrepreneurs, most notably Tomoko Namba of DeNA (provider of ad-supported game/SNS service Mobaga Town) and Yoshimi Ogawa of Index (the pioneer of i-mode contents). And their main customers also are young women. They love to communicate, have fun together, and listen to their friends. Great customers for mobile contents.

Here at CTIA, in the US, the land of the free and where women are supposed to be better situated in business than their across-the-pacific neighbor, the place is just full of men. Women are often ignored both as providers and as customers, even in "that" mobile contents segment. They talk about sports, hip-hop and shooting games - so much focusing on 18-and-older male audience.

5 years, and nothing has changed. You guys just don't understand your potential customers. And that is the formula for failure. Stop complaining and do something about it.