Well, it seems there were big ambitions, but a small turnout, for this week’s Mocollywood mobile entertainment conference in London. Here are some items I took note of during some of the panel sessions:

-- Quite a lot on adult content today… appears to be one of the few genres generating revenues and audiences on mobile. Italy weirdly was cited as a major market for it by more than one speaker. Renny claimed that 80 percent of Three Italy’s subscribers watch adult content. Richard Gale, marketing director for Playboy (NYSE: PLA) TV: “One of our biggest questions remains, how do you replicate the success we’ve had in Italy?” He says although mobile is less popular than TV and Internet, it’s growing at the fastest rate. People on average consume six to seven minutes of video when it is streamed on mobile; two minutes when it is on-demand. Tim Clausen, director of wireless for Private Media, says it offers content in 35 countries through 80 operators and has doubled its revenues in the last two years.

-- Adult content owners are breaking new ground in terms of business models. Gale from Playboy TV again: “We’ve just started a cross-platform billing service for users across TV, Internet and mobile based on a 4-digit PIN. [Users pay a flat rate for a piece of content and can consume it on any device.] We’re going on gut instinct and taking a risk since we’ve had to make assumptions on usage for pricing.”

-- Lots of mobile operator criticism flying about, but unfortunately no operators present to defend their side: Gale at Playboy TV: “The mobile value chain has to be one of the most screwed up I’ve seen in my life. Everyone wants a piece of the penny…Operators are greedy.”

-- Skepticism of how mobile TV pilots can be translated into commercial deployments. Renny at Rok: “To base a billion dollar infrastructure investment on a heavily pampered pilot is like going into battle after playing Space Invaders. It’s fundamentally flawed.”

-- Skepticism of what operators realistically expect out of video services take-up. David Thompson, content acquisition manager (music, video and mobile TV), Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC): “If the operators were to fulfill their business case on streaming they would not have the capacity to support it.”

-- If the mobile industry is a dance between operators and vendors (customers being the audience), the vendors seem to leading right now: “For Nokia (NYSE: NOK), fifty percent of its high-end handsets are sold directly to consumers with the applications Nokia wants embedded on them,” said Bruce Renny, the marketing director for Rok Entertainment.

-- Content owners crave more simplicity and scale in the European market for selling digital content rights across Internet, mobile and potentially other platforms. Chris Marcich, SVP and MD for the MPAA: “We would like to see a pan-European clearing house for digital rights, but cross-border negotiating will make that difficult…It’s conceivable to negotiate with producers for all-in rights but mobile is just too small.” Thompson at Sony Ericsson: “We need to create an environment where content providers can play by the same rules that they understand today.”

I also had a briefing with Mike Yuen, head of the gaming group for Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM), a summary of which will be posted tomorrow.