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"Big Dumb Pipes!"

July 17 , 2007

Panelists at a discussion on the future of wireless at Accenture's annual Global Convergence Forum in Rome raised the carrier's concern about becoming "big dumb pipes", which has historically been fought by not allowing customers to access anything except the carrier deck. Another solution that's being touted more and more is for carrier's to get into the facilitation business: "Tom Wheeler, managing director of private equity firm Core Capital Partners in Washington, D.C., [suggested] carriers need to take advantage of the fact that they know more about their subscribers than anyone else does,and either sell that information to third-party content and service providers to help them target advertising at mobile customers, or possibly transmit advertising to handsets to be cached there and delivered at opportune times" reports IT Business. There's signs that carriers are beginning to realise they can't provide the new services as a one-man band. Stefane Parisse, head of strategy at mobile carrier Vodafone Italy, said: "We have learned that we cannot build new services by ourselves as we were used to in the past". The general excitement was apparently around Web 2.0-style offerings driving the take-up of 3G, with Philippe Chauffard from Accenture arguing that social networks like MySpace and Facebook are better suited to mobile anyway. Perhaps, but it's probably not what content and producers want to hear...but if the social networks encourage people to take up 3G services and pay for data packages it will provide the customer base for content services.

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U.K. operators push for a communal garden

July 13, 2007 Posted by Nick Lane

Nick Lane is principal analyst, Mobile Content & Applications, Informa Telecoms & Media.

Direct-to-consumer or off-deck once was conceived as a threat by European mobile operators looking to safeguard the potential revenues generated from content enclosed within their own portal. Along came a frog--supported by an extensive cross-media marketing campaign--and the wireless operators looked on in horror as their revenues started "hopping" off-deck. Following the success of Jamba/Jamster's Crazy Frog push, brands became increasingly frustrated at the limitations imposed on their content by the on-deck model and started exploring opportunities beyond the operator deck. Television, online and print campaigns jettisoned into the mass media and spawned the short code and premium SMS payment mechanisms prevalent throughout Europe today.

U.K. operators have borne the brunt of the rise of direct-to-consumer, more than any other nation. In 2006, more than 70 percent of content revenues were off-deck. That figure is creeping toward 75 percent this year, and looks set to hit 80 percent by 2010. But the extent to which off-deck is wounding the mobile operators--in the United Kingdom in particular--largely depends on their ability to adapt to this changing marketplace or face the unfavorable label of dumb pipe.

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CTIA: Orange CEO Warns Against Carriers Becoming "Content Pipes"

March 28, 2007 Posted by James Quintana Pearce

During his keynote at CTIA Orange Group chief executive Sanjiv Ahuja warned that carriers need to improve their customer experience in order to avoid becoming "content pipes". Becoming a dumb pipe seems to be most carrier's worst nightmare, and they normally try and fight it by restricting what can be done on their handsets. Ahuja's argument that carriers can keep customers buying their content and services rather than a third party's by making it a really good experience is refreshing. If a carrier's offering is halfway decent they shouldn't need to block third-party access because they will always have the advantage of better integration and simpler service. "It's the experience that differentiates our brand," said Ahuja. "We as an industry must not lose sight of what our brands can offer to customers."

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Orange CEO Warns Against Carriers Becoming "Content Pipes"

March 28, 2007

ORLANDO, Florida-(Dow Jones)-Orange Group Chief Executive Sanjiv Ahuja warned that carriers will need to improve their customer experience to avoid becoming "content pipes."

Mobile content is becoming an increasingly important business for the wireless carriers as revenue from voice services shrinks. But the industry runs the risk of being relegated to pipes carrying the content. It's something the carriers will need to be mindful as they serve their customers, Ahuja said.

"It's the experience that differentiates our brand," he said during a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless industry trade show. "We as an industry must not lose sight of what our brands can offer to customers...

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It's the User Experience, Stupid!

March 9,2007 Posted by Chetan Sharma and Sarla Sharma

Wireless World Magazine's March 2007 issue

The US wireless industry added more subscribers in 2005 than any other year in its two-and-a-half decade old history. Thanks to messaging and interest in digital media content, wireless data revenues from first six months in 2005 were over $4B while it had taken the entire year in 2004 to amass the same amount [1].

This year started with a flurry of activities in the wireless industry. From mega-acquisitions of AT&T Wireless and Nextel to the launch of new data networks [2] and services, the wireless market has been quite active. However, in spite of the buzz, carriers, especially in the US, face the same old problem of improving industry's most fundamental metric - the average revenue per user (ARPU) [3].

As we move towards an all - IP world, voice ARPU is declining and there is a danger that data ARPU might not increase fast enough to offset this fall off. By focusing on enhancing the user experience, digital media content and applications can be made compelling enough to boost interest, usage and distribution - and hence revenues. Wireless carriers who implement a user-centric vision will deliver sustainable competitive advantage and will help define the next - generation of personalized services.

We need to remember that the principle motivation to buy is not the technology, but the service that the customer is willing to accept and pay for. As such, all in the value chain need to focus on the single most important aspect of any service - consistent and immersive user experience.

Improve usability

Current applications and infrastructure framework do not do a good job of usability. At best, they are device-centric, i.e. content is customized by group of devices. Little attention is given to making the browsing and purchasing of content quick. By making content more push-centric, bandwidth can be optimized and increase value to the consumer. In addition, location and context should be used to package the digital content elements before they are presented or pushed to the user.

Help users find information

The digital media catalog across ringtones, ringbacks, graphics, movies, music, TV shows, video clips, etc. is growing at an explosive rate. Finding something that might interest you is becoming an incredible challenge. Consumers go through enormous pain to find the media content that they like. Imagine the up-take rate if users were able to find the content quickly and items that they are likely to appreciate are pushed up to them rather than subjecting the user through an archaic menu-like navigation system. A voice navigation system and recommendation engine backed by an analytic framework will help enable such search and discovery functionality. By building a content database of meta-data associated with all content, several opportunities will open up. Mobile search will be more important and cross - selling/up-selling opportunities will finally open. This content data along with user's history, preferences, and context will make for a very useful user experience that will increase data usage and hence ARPU.

Focus on day - to - day application use

Carriers should focus on making the everyday use applications - address book, calendar, SMS - better. For example, current calendar implementations do not have sharing and auto - syncing functionality. If Jan inserts an entry "Pick up kids at 4:00pm from Soccer practice" and if Jan and her husband Steve share the calendar, Steve's calendar should be updated automatically with this new entry. Additionally, these applications need to be ubiquitously accessible and multimodal in nature to adapt to the user's needs. These features will offer an attractive way of retaining customers in addition to creating potential new revenue streams.

Embrace new models

To be successful, carriers need to focus on new models such as off - net digital content sales, mobile advertising, superdistribution, and machine-to-machine. The implication is that services must be designed to enable new models and user experiences, and let independent content providers access the market without dealing with the walled gardens. Such a possibility requires the scope of the UI to be broader than existing implementations. It also requires the UI to be dynamic, i.e. to have the ability to be modified on the fly. However, some of these new models will only be successful if user privacy is fully respected.

Conclusion

As the networks are becoming capable of delivering higher bandwidths, devices are coming out with ARM9+ processors and rich multimedia capability, and digital content is becoming more pervasive - we are at the cusp of a hockey stick growth. However, digital multimedia content will only proliferate if user experience is front and center of every offering and every interaction that user has with the device and all types of content. It needs to be contextualized and personalized based on user's needs, preferences, and device capabilities. Only then can the true potential of digital media be unleashed.

Chetan is an industry expert and author of numerous books, articles, and reports on wireless industry. He is advisor to CEOs and CTOs of leading wireless companies on product strategy and IP development. More information at: www.chetansharma.com Sarla is a Principal with the firm and her experience includes work with Fortune 500 companies in various industries. Her clients include T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, Clearwire, Alltel, Microsoft, aQuantive, Getty Images, and Costco

• Source: CTIA
• By end of 2006, most metros will have 3G (EV - DO and UMTS) coverage
• Though we have been witnessing the introduction of various data services, overall data revenue accounts for less than 7% of revenues for US operators

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@ 3GSM: Mobile Search Disappoints, It's The Context, Stupid

February 15, 2007 Posted by Peggy Anne Salz

Recent Ovum research shows most users neither understand nor use mobile search. Where has the industry failed? Usability and cost are the chief barriers, according to today's 3GSM panel of senior execs from search engine companies-including Google, JumpTap, m-Spatial- and Daniel Appelquist, Vodafone's senior technology strategist .

However, usage may also be lagging because "asking consumers if they use it is the wrong question,"Appelquist said. "Consumers shouldn't be aware of mobile search. They should be aware that they are finding and getting the content...they want on the phone in a click."More than a click and users will lose interest. "The experience has to be seamless, transparent and invisible to the user."

"There are challenges in creating a fun engaging, fluid, rapid and highly relevant searching environment that lets people take action both off the device in terms of things they might be looking to do..[and] also take actions with respect to other things that are on the device."Part of the solution could be enabling new, more integrated search experiences.

Roundpoint CEO Trevor Schonfeld argued that the industry is held up by a mix of high prices and low relevance. "When you search, you're paying through a data plan. So, relevancy becomes quite important..and it's even more important that every search brings up relevant results."Failing to do this can deter users from trying search a second time. One approach that works for Roundpoint is allowing uses to identify the number of results they want to get to a query. "If you see your going to get 1,000 results then you don't want to see them on a mobile phone."Giving the user that choice is crucial, he said.

Users don't use search because the mobile industry has assumed that users want to search as a service when they really want to use search to navigate content of information, according to m-Spatial CEO AndyWalker. "It's easy to get obsessed about mobile search and assume users want a search box visible on the phone. [But] we need to embed it [search] in people's lives."The tipping point for mobile search will come when "people trust their phones and search to give them useful information."....

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www.moconews.net/entry/419-3gsm-mobile-search-disappoints-its-the-context-stupid1

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Warner Music head backs DRM

February 15, 2007 Posted by Matt Chapman and Ian Williams

Bronfman hits out at Jobs's call for an end to copyright protection

Warner Music Chief Edgar Bronfman has hit back at Apple chief executive Steve Jobs's open letter suggesting that music companies should abandon digital copy protection. Bronfman used his speech at a 3GSM forum to call on Apple to open up its iTunes software to other forms of DRM.

"DRM and interoperability are not the same thing," he said. "Warner Music believes very strongly in interoperability. Consumers want it and consumers should have it."

Despite Jobs's call for free access; Bronfman insisted that all parties could agree that intellectual property deserves some measure of protection. "But there cannot be so much protection that you create a poor consumer experience, and we need to find a better balance than exists today," he added.

In a separate conference call, Bronfman told reporters that music deserved the same protection as software, film, video games or other intellectual property.

Jobs's open letter to the industry had asked the four major players - Universal, EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music - to remove DRM protection from the products they sell.

However, Bronfman pointed to mobile devices as the future of the industry and praised Apple's upcoming iPhone.

"The opportunity for mobile is huge and it is remarkable that we are selling as much music as we are on mobiles given how difficult it is to access," he said.

"The average ring-tone download is two and a half minutes and takes 20 clicks. If you could make that two or three clicks, if you could make that 10 seconds, the amount of revenue that would unlock is extraordinary."...

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www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2183341/warner-music-head-backs-drm

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Mobile Search Important-Not Web Search On Mobiles

July 25, 2006 Posted by James Quintana Pearce

A new report from Informa Telecoms & Media, Mobile Search & Content Discovery, said that porting Web search solutions directly to the mobile internet isn't going to work very well.

"Search paired with personalization, which involves matching the right content to the right users, and recommendation is a much more powerful combination," said Peggy Anne Salz, author of the report (Disclaimer: also a writer for us). She said basic mobile search "places the burden on users to know what they want and grapple with handset limitations such as screen size. However, personalized search will ensure that content matches based on information such as users profiles, preferences, click history, time of day and location, will encourage users to explore the content at their finger tips and discover content they didn't know they wanted in the first place, thus driving additional data revenues".

It's a point-operators know far more about their users than the average search engine. It makes sense to use that information to arrange search responses to better fit the searchers demographic, and could be a way to combat the moves of search companies to grab the user from the carrier.

To view this article, please visit:
www.moconews.net/entry/mobile-search-important-not-web-search-on-mobiles/