By
Trendiculous on August 1st, 2006
Posted in Other Interesting Articles, Market Trends, Mobile Content | Comments Off
The World Cup offered some of the first real numbers on mobile TV adoption.
By John Gauntt - Senior Analyst
31 July 2006
The recently concluded World Cup proved to be a catalyst for the mobile TV efforts of 3 Italia, the Italian mobile media company that is part of Hutchison Whampoa’s global collection of 3G carriers. According to 3 Italia’s CEO, the company signed up over 111,000 subscribers in six weeks after the June 5th launch, which was timed to coincide with the start of the tournament. In contrast, it took South Korea’s TU Media nearly one year to sign up 100,000 subscribers to its Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB) television system for mobile phones.
3 Italia’s experience is worth watching given that Italy is the first European country to launch nationwide mobile TV services. The current mobile TV offer covers nearly all of Italy’s largest cities and towns with nine TV channels that can be accessed via a 3 Italia mobile handset. The company aims to sign up some 500,000 users by the end of 2006 and predicts that Italian penetration of mobile TV services by all the operators should reach about 20% or 10 million people by 2010.
In the US, the mobile TV market should reach around 24 million users by 2010 according to IDC. The research firm estimates that video/TV services for mobile handsets would settle at around 10% penetration. This is compared to around 7 million US mobile data users who are pulling video content into their phones.
The huge spread in subscriber numbers between mobile video, mobile TV and other services (depending on how you define it) suggests that mobile video services remain an area that is still trying to find its footing in terms of consumer packagaing. Certainly, the Italians are plowing new ground through their deployment of an actual broadcast layer, Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld or DVB-H, the first large-scale deployment in Europe.
However, it’s already the case in many markets, including the US, that customers can access video content for their higher-speed 2.5G and 3G phones. This suggests that even as the Italian mobile TV launch confirms significant interest in mobile TV (one wonders how the launch would have fared had the national football team exited early instead of winning it all), it also confirms that the heavy lifting to market mobile TV services effectively in the larger context of mobile video, remains an elusive “goal”.
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Trendiculous on July 14th, 2006
Posted in Other Interesting Articles, Mobile Content | No Comments »
User content a new challenge
Michael Sainsbury
The Australian
13jul06
WHEN France’s World Cup football captain Zinedine Zidane headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the final of the competition on Monday morning, the incident was quickly made available on the internet’s hottest site: Youtube.com.
Some time in the past six months Youtube - which allows users to upload any and every type of video clip - roared past MySpace (owned by The Australian’s publisher, News Corporation) as the web’s most talked about destination.
This week, Youtube reported that users were downloading 80 million videos each day. The site is part of the seemingly unstoppable internet trend towards user-generated content.
Although community sites have been around for a few years, they are suddenly the next big thing on the web, part of what industry watchers are calling Web 2.0.
User-generated sites are proliferating: there are professional networks such as Linkedin and the recently started Sensis site LinkMe, movie and music sites where users rate content, online citizen contribution to big news organisations and the vast spread of blogsphere.
Now social networking sites are booming, fuelled by faster broadband access technologies that allow users to view content-heavy sites laden with picture and videos without waiting an eternity for the download.
It’s not only News but rivals such as MSN - in Australia represented by the Ninemsn joint venture between Microsoft and Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd - Yahoo and Telstra that are getting into the game. MySpace, with more than 90million users, recently localised its site in Australia and since then has seen a surge in interest.
News Interactive says 1.1 million Australian users had uploaded their details to the site, with about 10,000 signing up each day.
Director of network content and services at Ninemsn Jane O’Connell said MSN’s Spaces site has 1.6million Australian users of its 50 million across the world.
So far BigPond’s community networking site is called BigBlog but has attracted only about 10,000 users.
“User-generated content is attracting a lot of interest and attention at the moment because it’s an area that exploits the ability of the individual to tell his or her story, or demonstrate their creativity to
a potentially massive audience,” Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton said.
Many young users such as Sydney’s Natalie Woodhill, 14, use MySpace alongside MSN’s ubiquitous Instant Messenger, showing a sharp ability to mix and match service from different providers.
Natalie said she joined the site because her friends are on it: “not so many friends from school but friends from outside school”.
Business interest in the sector was sparked last year when Rupert Murdoch, a long-time web sceptic, put his new-found faith to the test, paying $US580 million for MySpace’s parent company Intermix.
Mr Murdoch recently suggested that his investment had already increased tenfold.
The big question is: How will these sites leverage their millions of users and visitors to make money?
While Youtube founders Chad Hurley, 29, and Steve Chen, 27, work on an online advertising model for their site, MySpace reckons it has figured it out.
“MySpace does big programs with big advertisers, which are going to pay us money to do so,” said Nic Jones, who until he resigned yesterday ran News Interactive.
“Now there might be other spin-offs as well. There may be events you can charge people for but the basic business model is the client spending money: either advertising or building profiles.”
Mr Jones believed the unique nature of community sites led to a different tweak on the more traditional internet advertising model.
“Take your mind away from banner and buttons and start thinking about profiles: clients set themselves or their product up as a profile within itself.
“When you have got the demand and traffic, we could just open our doors and get everybody to say: ‘I have an ad here and an ad there’,” Mr Jones said.
“It’s important to do some groundbreaking stuff and showcase some really big ideas.”
Still, there is a darker side to the easy-access community networking sites, with plenty of stories about sexual predators stalking the 15-39 target market.
So are these sites just all about sex? Mr Jones disputed that MySpace was. “I’d say that the major subject is music, but I don’t deny that when you get 80 million 15 to 39-year-olds; that is the beauty and the difficulty of it … but the same as when you get a whole bunch of kids at university, yes, sex happens.”
Mr Jones said 24/7 help lines were in place in the US and increased security measures would be introduced in Australia soon.
But wait, there’s more. Coming soon to a mobile phone near you: the chance to upload your life and mingle in the virtual malls and parks of cyberspace.
MySpace - in October or so - Yahoo!7 and Telstra will extend access to their fast-growing community sites to hand-held devices in coming months.
“With Telstra and BigPond really focused on integrated services, we will be exploring new opportunities for user-generated content given the crossover we can provide between the online and third-generation mobile content worlds,” Mr Middleton said.
“With 3G mobile’s video messaging capabilities, it’s simple for customers to generate their own content and post it to the web.”Must be set in iimage-browser.phpMust be set in iimage-browser.phpMust be set in iimage-browser.php
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Trendiculous on July 14th, 2006
Posted in Mobile Content | No Comments »
BusinessWeek Online (Europe)
11 July 2006
By Jack Ewing
Music Phones Tackle the iPod
Consumers are starting to leave iPods at home in favor of listening to cell phones that store their favorite songs. Should Apple be worried?
At first, 26-year-old London resident Rachel Slack carried around both her Apple iPod and her mobile phone. But in November, after buying a Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman phone with enough memory for about 100 songs, she started leaving her iPod at home. “I always carry my phone with me, but the iPod is an extra. It made sense to just use my phone for both,” Slack says.
Should Apple (AAPL ) be worried about people like Slack? Maybe. Phones able to store and play MP3s have been on the market in Europe at least since 2001. But the latest models are starting to encroach on iPod territory in terms of song storage.
Sony Ericsson’s soon-to-be released W950i Walkman phone (expected to cost upwards of $500 before operator subsidies) can hold up to 4,000 songs in 4 GB of solid-state memory—still much less than a 15,000-song, $399 iPod, but plenty for people who don’t need to have their comprehensive collection of 1970s acid-rock albums with them all the time. “It’s all I need on the ride to work in the morning,” says Slack of her Sony Ericsson (SNE ) (ERICY ).
CELLULAR THREAT. So far, iPod and iTunes sales don’t show any sign of suffering from the proliferation of music phones, analysts say. In Britain about 8% of all adults listen to music stored on their phones, vs. 17% who listen to music on an iPod or other dedicated music player, according to market researcher Gartner Group (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/25/05, “iPod Killers?”).
But as music phones with lots of memory become commonplace, it’s inevitable that they will chip away at the middle and lower ends of the market for digital music players. Already, more Japanese download songs onto their mobile phones than over their PCs. An estimated 27% of the mobile phones sold globally this year will be able to store and play music, according to market research firm Ovum. By 2010, the number will hit 69%.
“In Europe 400 million people have mobile phones,” says Matthias Immel, vice-president for consumer marketing at T-Mobile International, a unit of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom (DT ). “Sooner or later all 400 million will have a mobile phone that is capable of playing music, and that will of course change the landscape.”
NEW REVENUE SOURCE. Apple tacitly recognizes the threat. It has formed a partnership with Motorola (MOT ), which offers phones with iTunes software. But versions on the market so far hold a maximum of only 100 songs, a sign that Apple is wary of cannibalizing its own lucrative market for iPod devices (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/8/05, “Apple’s Phone Isn’t Ringing Any Chimes”).
For mobile-service providers, the proliferation of music-capable phones opens up a source of new revenue they desperately need as the price of traditional voice minutes tumbles. Vodafone (VOD ) and Deutsche Telekom are among those who have launched their own music-download services.
SFR, the mobile-phone unit of France’s Vivendi (V ), has a catalog of 500,000 songs available for download to mobile or PC, and says its 1.5 million 3G subscribers already buy an average of four songs a month. “The service-providers have to look for new revenue streams. Entertainment is clearly high up there,” says Daren Siddall, an analyst at Gartner.
SHOOT YOUR PC. The revenue isn’t the only benefit to the telcos. They hope music will drive customers to make more intensive use of the 3G networks they have spent billions to create. “It’s a great way of taking a dull technical thing like 3G and bringing it to life,” says Edward Kershaw, head of music at Vodafone in London. One hope: If consumers get hooked on downloading music over the air, they could forgo downloading via the PC entirely.
To spur adoption, carriers are splashing out marketing money. Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, for example, has designed a whole music-based campaign around singer Robbie Williams. The idea is to spur not only downloads but also use of 3G streaming services, while helping the whole T-Mobile brand look younger and hipper.
Via a deal with Williams, one of Europe’s top acts, T-Mobile users can catch his concerts live on their cell phone screens as well as download his songs and ring-tones onto their phones. So far 250,000 customers have downloaded Williams tunes, according to T-Mobile. Williams also appears in T-Mobile commercials and there is even a special Robbie Williams edition phone, based on a Sony Ericsson Walkman.
SLIM MARGINS. Of course, Apple won’t be toppled easily. The company’s iTunes software for transferring music from a PC to an iPod is still easier to use than similar software that Nokia (NOK ) and handset makers provide for their phones. “It can take a while for you to transfer music from your computer to the phone,” says John Shepherd, a 24-year-old office administrator in London, who adds that he nevertheless prefers to store his music on his phone.
In addition, it will be difficult for mobile-service providers to undercut Apple iTunes on the price of a song download. In Britain, iTunes sells songs for 79 pence ($1.45) and albums for £7.99 ($14.40). “The price has been set by Apple and it’s been set very low, so the margins are very slim,” says Ovum analyst Michele Mackenzie.
The operators know that and are pursuing a different strategy. They figure mobile downloads are most likely to be impulse purchases—a user hears a song and wants it now. Sony Ericsson already sells technology allowing users to record part of a song they hear on the street, then instantly get information about the artist by connecting to the Internet and conducting a search.
ALWAYS CONNECTED. The Japanese market suggests that Vodafone’s Kershaw may be right about the potential for over-the-air music sales. Already, Japanese consumers download more songs onto their mobile phones then they do to PCs. As European mobile-download services become more competitive in price, convenience, and sound quality, Apple could start to lose market share. “The benefit Vodafone and competitors can bring is that we’re connected all the time. That gives us enormous power,” Kershaw says.
The mobile-service providers are also learning fast about the download market. They realized early on, for example, that cell phone users didn’t want to buy songs they could only store and play on their phones. So services such as Deutsche Telekom’s Musicload let customers buy a track or album for their phone, then separately download a copy onto a PC at no extra charge. Customers are allowed to burn songs onto CDs as well as storing them inside their phone.
Apple still beats music phones on memory and battery life. The phones are getting better fast, though. Nokia’s N91, which costs about $600 before operator subsidies, can hold 3,000 songs and play for 10 hours. By comparison, the top-of-the-line 60 GB iPod, which costs $399, holds 15,000 songs and plays for 20 hours on a charge.
MORE THAN MUSIC. “These kinds of smart phones begin to deliver a really compelling music experience,” says Thomas Husson, an analyst at Jupiter Research in Paris. Nokia does not release sales figures for the N91, but the company is “selling everything we can produce,” says Jonas Geust, Nokia vice-president for music.
And of course a phone-music-player is also a phone, not to mention a digital camera, Web browser, alarm clock, and portable game player (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/14/06, “Mobile Phone Bonanza”).
“There will still be a market for MP3 players just as there is still a market for digital cameras,” says Steve Walker, vice-president for product marketing at Sony Ericsson in London. “But there is a segment of the market that sees one device with two functions as an advantage.”
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Administrator on April 7th, 2006
Posted in Mobile Content | 1 Comment »
Mobile Monday - Breaking News: 2006 mobile phone market to grow to 915 million
Nokia outlines industry dynamics at AGM
2006 mobile phone market to grow to 915 million
Timo Poropudas
30 Mar 2006 at 18:29
Speaking Thursday at Nokia’s Annual General Meeting, company CEO Jorma Ollila traced the rapid rise of mobile communications and described the nature of the industry today.
“There is huge diversity between geographic areas and markets in terms of consumer preferences and behavior,” he said.
“In addition to continuous growth in voice communication, other industries like music and digital imaging are quickly becoming more integral to mobility.”
Ollila described how the size, growth and dynamics of emerging markets are increasingly driving demand. He repeated the company’s earlier statements that Nokia expects approximately 80 percent of the next billion subscribers to come from the emerging markets.
Ollila also upped the company estimate for mobile device market volume growth in 2006.
“Due to strong subscriber growth, we have now updated our global mobile device market volume estimate for this year,” said Ollila.
“Nokia estimates that in the year 2006, the mobile device market volume will increase globally 15 percent or more from our estimate of 795 million units in 2005. Previously, we estimated that the global mobile device market volume would grow 10 percent or more this year from last year’s estimate.”
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Administrator on April 7th, 2006
Posted in Mobile Content | 2 Comments »
Mobile Monday - Breaking News: Mforma takes Hands-On Mobile name
ersonal lifestyle of games
Mforma takes Hands-On Mobile name
Timo Poropudas
6 Apr 2006 at 15:33
Mforma Group, a global publisher of mobile lifestyle, games and personalization products, Wednesday announced at the CTIA conference that the company has changed its name to Hands-On Mobile.
“The decision to change our name reflects the fact that we have become the definitive mobile-entertainment media company worldwide,” said Hands-On Mobile’s President and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Sacks.
“Consumers want entertaining, enriching and empowering content at their fingertips, a truly ‘hands-on’ entertainment experience.”
As a result of the emerging demands of carrier partners and consumers of mobile entertainment, the company also announced that it has aligned its business along three product lines: Hands-On Games, Hands-On Lifestyle and Hands-On Personalization. The new alignment reflects the company’s strategy to target all mobile-media market segments.
“With the name change and the realignment of our business segments, we are better positioned to anticipate and capitalize on the emerging trends taking place within the mobile-entertainment industry,” said Sacks. “In the coming weeks, we expect to roll out a diverse and compelling array of products that will meet the needs of our customers, enabling them to customize their mobile-entertainment content to best reflect their own hobbies, beliefs and passions.”
In separate announcements released today, Hands-On Mobile unveiled new mobile-entertainment products.
They include a partnership with Lego Classics to create unique Lego-branded games and Daily Devotions, a product that offers daily inspirations and prayers delivered by Pat Boone, a recognizable Christian leader and the voice of the Christian Radio Network.
Another partnership is with the notorious and legendary rock star Tommy Lee. In the coming months, Hands-On Mobile expects to launch an array of new products that target specific segments of the mobile market, ranging from next-generation games and lifestyle applications to ground-breaking community products.
Founded in 2001, Hands-On Mobile is delivering content to more than 150 wireless operators in 40 countries. Through partnerships with Activision, Atari, CBS SportsLine, Lego, Marvel and others the company provides some of the most popular games in the industry, including Texas Hold ‘Em, Monopoly, Tycoon, and True Crime.
A rapidly rrowing industry
Last year, consumers spent billions of dollars downloading content to their mobile phones. According to a published research report issued by Morgan Stanley in March 2006 the market for mobile-entertainment products is growing rapidly.
There are an estimated 2.1 billion mobile phone users worldwide, with the number of subscribers growing 20 percent annually. Mobile phone users spent USD 1.8 billion downloading mobile games last year, a 42 percent increase over the previous year. Consumers spent USD 19 billion buying mobile-entertainment products such as ringtones, games and applications in 2005.
By 2009, Morgan Stanley said that figure is estimated to reach USD 45 billion annually.
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Administrator on January 24th, 2006
Posted in Mobile Content | No Comments »
MobileTechNews - Pan-European mobile music agreement
Pan-European mobile music agreement
Posted: 23-Jan-2006 [Source: Ericsson]
[Ericsson and EMI announce pan-European mobile music agreement providing full-track downloads and ringtones from EMI’s catalogue in Europe.]
Ericsson today announced a pan-European mobile music agreement with EMI Music. The agreement allows Ericsson to enable European mobile operators to distribute ringtunes and full-track downloads from EMI’s catalogue in Europe, including tracks by Coldplay, Faith Evans, Gorillaz, Norah Jones, KT Tunstall, and Robbie Williams, and Bebe (Spain), Tiziano Ferro (Italy), Wir Sind Helden (Germany) and Raphael (France).
Around 12,000 ringtunes and 200,000 full-track downloads will be made available to consumers through Ericsson under the terms of the agreement. Ericsson’s Personalized Music Portal is a white-label business-to-business solution, and is the most widely commercially deployed personalized mobile music service among operators today.
Ericsson’s Personalized Music Portal is based on the Service Delivery Platform for media services (SDP Media), which enables operators to easily and quickly launch ringtunes and full-track download services at low cost. Content providers, including EMI, provide Ericsson with digital content, and Ericsson negotiates with operators to provide a full management service. This allows the content provider to concentrate on creating and marketing new content, while operators can focus on promoting the service and billing the consumer.
Doug Lucas, Vice President, digital development and distribution for EMI Music in Europe, says: “Music fans across Europe have consistently shown that they want to use their phone to listen to full tracks from their favorite artists, or to personalize their device with a ringtune. This agreement with Ericsson further increases our ability to provide millions of consumers with great music from EMI’s catalogue wherever and whenever they require it.”
Johan Bergendahl, Vice President Marketing, Ericsson, says: “The Ericsson Personalized Music Portal is already a great success and we expect that the demand for the service will increase even further with the great content and promotion opportunities that EMI and its remarkable roster of artists brings to this partnership.”
More…
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Administrator on January 24th, 2006
Posted in Mobile Content | No Comments »
Mobile Monday - Breaking News: Mobile music gets more attention than mobi-TV
BT, Virgin Mobile test 1000 users
Mobile music gets more attention than mobi-TV
Timo Poropudas
13 Jan 2006 at 13:29
UK mobile phone users are more interested in music than TV, according to the findings of a recent BT/Virgin Mobile trial, reported in the UK press. The Guardian newspaper says to have seen an analysis of the recent BT and Virgin Mobile Group pilot scheme, which involved 1,000 mobile customers being given the chance to try out mobile TV and music services.
Consulting company BWCS quotes Guardian saying that 59 percent of those involved in the recent trial service said that access to TV on their handsets was an “appealing? option. However, on the other hand, 65 percent of the trialists rated mobile digital radio at the same level of interest. The Guardian reports that users watched an average of 66 minutes of TV a week on their phones while they listened to an average of 95 minutes of radio.
The research also shows that users are prepared to pay around GBP 5 a month for access to TV services on their phones.
The trial is one of the most extensive of mobile TV services being carried out at the minute and involved users within the greater London area. BT’s Movio service uses a portion of the digital radio spectrum currently available and allows mobile customers to receive live television programs as well as digital radio stations.
Emma Lloyd, the head of BT’s Movio business, told the Guardian newspaper, “I would characterize it as radio being even more attractive than TV in the trial. We will be able to piggy-back on the attractiveness of digital radio and I don’t think that is a negative thing; I see it as a positive thing because the UK leads the world in digital radio.?
The Movio service uses normal broadcast signal. It works using Internet technology and part of the digital radio spectrum owned by national digital radio broadcaster, Digital One. Taiwanese company HTC is already making the first commercially produced handset capable of receiving the broadcast TV images.
Virgin Mobile is hoping to land a period of exclusivity for the technology in Britain and says it will offer several TV channels to its customers from this summer.
MmO2 is due to report back on the results of its trial next week. The former BT mobile wing has been trailing the Nokia-backed DVB-H standard, which relies on different radio spectrum.
Lloyd said yesterday that BT is aware of the strengths of DVB-H in broadcasting multiple channels but had made the decision to go with DAB because the network is already in place across the country.
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Administrator on November 30th, 2005
Posted in Mobile Content | No Comments »
Mobile Monday - Breaking News: Yahoo! goes mobile on Nokia smartphones
Yahoo! goes mobile on Nokia smartphones
Timo Poropudas
26 Apr 2005 at 16:25
Nokia 6680 supports Yahoo! content services. Nokia and Yahoo!, the number one global internet brand, today announced an agreement that allows millions of Nokia smartphone users to get Yahoo! content on their Series 60 handsets.
Yahoo!’s customers can get email, entertainment services such as ring tones, wallpapers and downloadable games and mobile search. This will be the first set of services available through Nokia devices based on Series 60, the industry-leading smartphone platform.
“Access to information, entertainment and the ability to stay in touch when and where you want is at the heart of our vision of a mobile connected life,? said Harry Santamäki, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, Nokia Multimedia.
“Our agreement with Yahoo! is a progressive step in facilitating the adoption of an online lifestyle: we are providing consumers with a familiar way of accessing the internet and Yahoo! email through their mobile devices, with the added convenience of content downloads on the go.?
Juha Varelius, VP & MD of Yahoo! Mobile said: “With consumers’ lives across the world becoming increasingly centered around mobile communications, this new international relationship between Yahoo! and Nokia is a great way for people to have the Yahoo! internet experience on their Nokia phone and benefit from a range of essential services on the go.?
Nokia is the first handset manufacturer with Symbian-based products to distribute Yahoo! services for consumers in such a large number of European and Asian markets, including Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The first Nokia devices with Yahoo! internet services are the Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681 and the Nokia 6630. More devices will be announced on April 27. The existing Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681 and Nokia 6630 owners will be able to download similar applications over-the-air in the same markets starting from the second half of 2005.
Bookmark on del.icio.us
By
Administrator on October 4th, 2005
Posted in Mobile Content | 1 Comment »
Tease not sleaze on mobile phones
Money from adult content has failed to live up to the hype
Richard Wray
Wednesday August 24, 2005
The Guardian
Sex sells, according to the old marketing adage. But while the adult entertainment industry swooped on the introduction of video recorders, embraced multi-angle DVD players and hijacked the internet, mobile phones seem to have slipped its grasp.
At the height of the dotcom boom, as mobile phone companies began looking for revenues from non-voice services, adult content was lauded as a money-spinner based on its success in the online world.
Since then, all the UK operators have dabbled in the provision of erotic content, either directly or by allowing customers to access content provided by third parties. For customers who want them, there are wallpapers, screensavers, videos, animated scantily clad women and even “moantones” for those who find that Crazy Frog just doesn’t do it for them.
Article continues
But the figures do not match the hype. In its report into the mobile entertainment industry last month, industry expert Informa predicted that the market for erotic content for mobile devices will be worth $2.3bn (£1.3bn) by 2010 compared with just under $1bn this year. Within five years there will be more than 114 million regular users of adult services compared with 65 million now.
They may look good, but these figures are dwarfed by the overall mobile market. There are already well over 1 billion mobile phone users, and by 2010 that will have passed 3 billion, according to research by Gartner. Informa’s prediction for the entire mobile phone content market, including music and gaming, is $43bn by 2010. Adult services will account for just 5% of the market.
“If you take it out of the context of the wider market, $2.3bn is not a small amount of money,” says Daniel Winterbottom, senior research analyst at Informa and author of the report. “It’s just when you put it next to things like music and games, which we believe will take off, it’s not quite as impressive a part as made out in previous years.”
Graeme Oxby, marketing director of 3, the UK’s newest mobile phone operator, admits: “It is not very important in terms of the volume of usage. It is dwarfed by music and football and comedy.
“It was massively important on the internet partly at a time when next to nothing was charged for apart from access. For mobiles it is just a bit of the cake.”
John Conlon, head of adult services at Virgin Mobile, concurs. “I think it is going to be a money-spinner,” he says, “but only in the same sense as music, gaming and gambling. It was pitched as the great white hope for mobiles but it is just one service.”
The adult content industry believes the operators are downplaying the importance of their wares because they do not want to be seen as peddling pornography. The mobile phone networks, for example, have done deals with well-known adult brands such as Playboy, Hustler and Paul Raymond.
Julia Dimambro, director and co-founder of Cherry Media, which operates the Cherry Sauce mobile phone adult content portal, reckons such deals are an attempt by the operators to distance themselves from the content.
“Operators are saying that it is not the big revenue driver, but they cannot be seen to be promoting adult content because it affects their brand as a mobile operator,” she says.
The mobile phone operators’ biggest fear is that adult content will be viewed by children. Last year, the networks plus Virgin Mobile produced a code of conduct and set up the Independent Mobile Content Board (IMCB), which takes best practice from standards bodies such as the British Board of Film Classification and adapts them for mobile phones.
Under that agreement, mobile phone users are barred from viewing content the IMCB deems adult, and it cannot be accessed without an age check being carried out.
“It is essential to us that the people who get to see over-18 content are over 18,” says Mr Oxby. However, the adult content available through the mobile phone operators’ portals is fairly tame. The video clips available on 3, for example, “in no sense could it be described as hardcore”, according to Mr Oxby.
Aim-listed mobile content group Blue Star recently signed a deal with O2 to bring Page 3 models to mobile phones.
With its generally young customer profile in mind, Virgin Mobile has slapped a no-nipples rule on its content. Mr Conlon believes that the market for fun, flirty and sexy content is much wider than the market for the purely erotic.
For example, Virgin has run a successful WAP-based Beauty or Beast game that takes the form of a striptease quiz. A right answer removes a piece of clothing from the model on the screen, a wrong one generates a less appealing picture, such as a “granny with her teeth out”.
It’s the sort of tongue-in-cheek content found in lad’s mags rather than in top-shelf publications, and it is interaction rather than graphic detail that seems to turn on more punters, Virgin believes.
The Glasgow-based DA Group has developed animated “fantasy babes” who can interact with mobile phone users. “What we do is more on the fun side than the seedy side,” explains sales and marketing director Cyril Scott. “The sort of stuff you would not be embarrassed if your mum saw on your phone.”
Ms Dimambro, however, reckons there is a real market for more hardcore content, provided it has the interactive element that mobiles can bring.
Cherry Media’s wap.cherry sauce.com age-verified mobile site gets 300,000 hits a month with no marketing behind it. The site repurposes content from top-shelf providers such as Private, and is currently working on a 3G service that will take interactivity to the next level. It offers punters the chance to pick particular girls and act out fantasies.
“A 15-second clip of someone twirling around in a bikini is fine,” says Ms Dimambro. “But if it is two minutes long it starts to get boring after 45 seconds.”
Bookmark on del.icio.us