 |
|
   |
|
|
 |
CTIA - The Day After April Issue Roxanne "The Expert" Singleton I'm back from CTIA where I had the good fortune to get the lowdown from some of my buddies in the business. It all started in a downtown "beat gen" bar in the French Quarter, fashioned after a favorite of Bukowski, I caught up with a group of experts experiencing a moment of clarity. Along the way, I got the scoop on the Mobile Entertainment Summit (a bit of press coverage here). As you probably know, the entertainment industry has been sniffing around the mobile industry for a while now. They are ready to go mobile and they have made it clear they want to be in the driver's seat. We actually think it's a great sign that mobile communication has reached a level of maturity - so much so that an entertainment event at to CTIA attracted over 1000 participants. The mobile device is now accepted as the "third screen." In entertainment terms, television was first, and then the PC (thanks to broadband) and now they want to extend their reach to mobile. From their standpoint, here's what's hot and not in the mobile market for 2005: What's Hot
Given that perspective, entertainment companies clearly are poised to profit via the mobile device as a meaningful marketing channel. Throughout the summit, panelists underlined the need to focus on raising subscriber awareness and driving usage of existing content and applications through better merchandising. Merchandising, to them, involved three key areas: discovery, personalization and audience diversity. Effective merchandising requires better service discovery. On the web, users look for content, such as Harry Potter, in Warner's branded store or the Potter fan club, rather than starting with a portal from their provider. Forcing mobile users to explore via the operator's portal may be counter-productive. Personalization means user-aware discovery, not wallpaper. Users think of a personalized shopping experience -- "show me my store" - offering intelligent recommendations and flexible, personalized pricing based on usage over time. This is how the online shopping experience works today; customers expect the same on their mobile devices. Reaching the mainstream As mobile entertainment reaches the mainstream, the audience will become more diverse. This means that there is opportunity for both mass-market brands and niche content. The operator has a vital role to sustain an open ecosystem catering to all tastes while providing preferred channels for popular brands with tight control of quality, delivery and billing. This is similar to how brands already operate today with cable TV. And in Europe, both operators and brands view off-portal navigation as a lucrative complementary marketing channel. Operator control at issue The "walled garden" has traditionally been the position of U.S. operators. Content providers excluded from this garden feel cut off and seek alternate distribution channels. Even those providers included in a carrier's portal objected to the lack of control over the presentation of their content. Some leading entertainment companies are developing client-based applications to improve their ability to deliver targeted marketing. Brands may end up competing with operators by becoming Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs); using its content and brand as a means of differentiation. Such content-led differentiation was welcomed and considered beneficial for the industry relative to the commodity price-based competition seen in U.K. Digital Rights remain important Another hot topic was legal distribution direct to the consumer that protects digital rights and employs the user's preferred payment method. Operators have a key role as the preferred payment option (Bango has reported that 8% of consumers used their credit card for purchases while 35% preferred to be charged on their phone bill). As the discussion wrapped up, and folks started making their way home, it was clear the excitement was as tangible as the opportunity for mobile entertainment in 2005. I left feeling excited about the future of entertainment for mobile. Are you working on applications that bring entertainment to users? If so, I would love to hear about it! Drop me a line. Roxanne has been working as an application developer for over 10 years. Her goal is to successfully write this column without having to join the marketing team or sit on the top floor with the execs. Roxy recently sold her vintage Motorola brick phone on eBay for $15. If you have a general question you'd like answered or just want us to know what's on your mind, let her know. Or, for more detailed or specific technical support questions, please visit ODN Developer Support. |