MobileBeat 2009: Come hear executives from EA Mobile, CBS, Pandora, China Mobile and more

Below is latest batch of speakers we’ve got confirmed for MobileBeat 2009, our executive conference for the mobile industry on July 16 in San Francisco.

I’m really looking forward to the debates we’ll be having about which mobile platform rules: Is the iPhone really destined to make all others look like dinosaurs? Or is the iPhone itself the dinosaur, unable to adapt to more open, flexible evolved species (think Android)? Actually, some of the more interesting questions will be about the future and which players are positioned to monetize the fragmented market. How and where should applications focus their time, and if you’re an advertiser, how on earth do you market your brand in this new world?

Justin Kubiak, Director of Product Marketing Electronic Arts, EA Mobile — We’re now in the phase where huge companies like Electronic Arts are taking the smart phone seriously and launching all kinds of apps that threaten the two-person iPhone developer shops. For example, it launched The Sims on the iPhone, to great success (hitting the top of the iTunes paid app list).

Jeff Sellinger, EVP and General Manager, CBS — Sellinger runs the mobile strategy of the one of the largest content and news companies around but has consistently played with the latest technologies to keep CBS on the forefront, including with the break-through app March Madness. CBS has also released an iPhone version of its TV.com, featuring full episodes of mainstream network content over both cellular and WiFi.

Chetan Sharma, President, Chetan Sharma Consulting  — Sharma is a well-known mobile industry analyst (cited recently for a report showing the wireless data plan industry hitting $10 billion for the first quarter, a record) and he’ll be moderating our first panel of the day, about how key mobile companies are searching for their role in the new world order. Incidentally, he’s also predicting the iPhone 3.0 OS will push data usage up by 1.5 to 2 times.

Tom Conrad, CTO, Pandora — Conrad, who helps run one of the most popular music application on the iPhone, is outspoken; he once said “I need Android like I need a hole in the head.” Others at the conference, such as Mig33’s Steve Boom, will argue quite the opposite. Pandora was also one of the first apps on the Palm Pre. Even as the online music market shows signs of decline, Pandora is growing, reaching 4 million users a month on the iPhone, and by some measures accounting for 20 percent of the 1 million downloads through affiliate links each month.

Keith Kressin, Senior Director of Product Management for Qualcomm, CDMA Technologies  — Kressin represents the largest wireless supplier. The company is pushing its Snapdragon platform, its high-performance chipsets being used in many of the newer netbooks. It’s also about to cut prices to boost usage of mobile TV (FLO TV), which really hasn’t taken off yet in a big way.

Luke (Shanquan) Bao, Director of IC technology and Handset, China Mobile — Bao is the U.S. representative of China’s largest mobile carrier, which has been betting heavily on the mobile web. China Mobile, in fact, is the world’s largest carrier, nearing 600 million subscribers this year, dwarfing America’s largest carriers, Verizon and AT&T, which only have about 86 million and 80 million respectively. China Mobile is in the camp of carriers experiencing extraordinary growth, even as others are stagnating.

Brian Huey, Manager of Open Strategy, Sprint — Huey will speak to the ability of the Sprint network to handle high amounts of traffic demand from broadband-intensive applications. Many entrepreneurs believe, naively, that they won’t be punished if they hog the network with things like streaming video — we’ll hear the truth from Sprint and the other major carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and others including Vodafone.

Mark Himmelsbach, VP Director Activation PHD, a division of Omincom — Himmelsbach’s mobile marketing company works with HBO, Starbucks, New Balance and many others.

We’re also very pleased to announce support from the following industry leaders as sponsors; Qualcomm as Co-Host, Velti as Platinum Sponsor, AdMob and GetJar as Gold sponsors and RMBR, Nvidia, GreyStripe and Mozes as event sponsors.

Buy your tickets here.