Not to be too excited but March was indeed quite a month. The CTIA show in New Orleans was an extraordinary show of mobile data excitement finally hitting the mainstream. Further in the week in Santa Monica at Digital Hollywood digital media executives were pondering questions they did not know to exist a year ago. So now we ARE walking and chewing gum at the same time - can you do that?As mentioned before, the US market is transforming into a battleground between alien forces (Asia and Europe), the competition is accelerating through the import of proven models from Korea, Japan and the GSM markets. The Southern league in Atlanta (Cingular) will soon be launching an attack against the North (Verizon) through major price competition and through flushing the market with prepaid offerings. The North will perhaps try to pre-empt some of the impact by opening up its walled garden. Qualcomm’s BREW model - the loyal midwife of the US wireless data market - will according to the oracles suffer some blows in the process when Verizon puts business before ideological principles.
And then there is the magic word: MVNO. It is one of those words people use without fully understanding what it means. I bet P. Diddy did not fully understand what it means when he was calling himself an MVNO at the CTIA keynote. However, he had a point: he is an opinion leader that can move markets and direct the flow of value in the ecosystem. Good for him.
Warmest regards,
- Tapio Anttila
- www.anttila.net
MOBILE MUSIC: TOWARDS LIFESTYLE PROGRAMMING
When trying to condense the essential of the past month in mobile music into one paragraph one has to lift up the revelation I had at the Warner Music party at CTIA (where I also lost my voice for 3 weeks). The record labels took mobile music seriously sometime in the fall of 2003 and the results start to show: Warner is now offering a complete set of mobile music products for its recording artists to create and monetize - as part of the standard package. So far we are talking about the basics: ring tones, graphics and downloads - I believe soon we will be talking about channels of dynamic entertainment programming. It is the ‘fifth element’ of musical entertainment, something pioneers like Snoop Dogg are bringing to the market today with his diversifications into TV shows or adult videos. Or Bono extending his brand into politics. Ring tones are just a tip of the iceberg, just like the hit song itself is.
In late 2001 I discovered a little company headquartered in Manhattan Beach, CA, called UrbanWorld Wireless. Mike Johns was programming hiphop-related sponsored news to users of two-way pagers. He was feelin’ it - the stuff I am trying to describe above. He called himself ‘CNN for the hip-hop crowd’. Then he moved on to original DJ ring tones, selling them through distributors like Infospace Mobile. Now he has over 400,000 subscribers to his news service and close to a million dollars in annual revenues. That’s enough for a company of two people. Plus he will probably soon sell the company to the Koreans or to the Japanese for $10 million because hip-hop has some real following internationally and thus growth potential. Good for him.
PREMIUM SMS - OPEN OR CLOSED?
I remember talking to Paul Palmieri at Verizon sometime in 2002 about the European premium SMS market and how it should be replicated in the US. His response was: “No matter how hard I try I don’t understand why people would pay more for a text message.” We have come a long way since then. By the end of Q2 this year all major US operators will start selling content over premium billing infrastructure. Short codes can be rented for this purpose by anyone but the use of those codes has to be approved by each operator separately.
However, there will be no adult content sold through this billing mechanism - that business is all left for Bango.net to take over… Adult companies are moving in to court the carriers, though: a leading adult publisher New Frontier Media together with its mobile publisher Brickhouse Mobile organized a party at CTIA (at a gentlemen’s club) reserved strictly for mobile carriers (despite its name, MEOW! would not qualify to attend…). A Brickhouse Mobile representative told me that this is the way the adult industry got past their distribution hurdles in the cable industry: with money and patience - and they intend to do it again in mobile.
I believe in the end open distribution models will win. In a way mobile operators are like Michael Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1988: they are already preparing to promote perestroika in an effort to control the explosive market forces. Eventually even that will fail because the consumers will vote with their wallets. With some luck we might even see the iTunes phone one day, ‘Carrier willing’.
SOME COOL COMPANIES
ThirdScreen Media. This company is to mobile what DoubleClick is on the web. Established only a year ago, their timing to address the mobile advertising B2B opportunity should be good. www.thirdscreenmedia.com
M:Metrics. Seamus McAteer is launching a well-funded attack to create the ‘Nielsen’s-like’ research and rating service for the mobile industry. www.mmetrics.com
m-Qube. Jon Bukosky took up the role as GM of Los Angeles and VP of Worldwide Content. This mobile marketing company is hot in Hollywood, partly fueled by the media industry growing to understand how to integrate promotional components into mobile programming. http://www.m-qube.com/
PEOPLE NEWS
The Macromedia content team was hard currency on the market after completing its mission: on top of the undersigned enjoying the limelight, the other two individuals have cool gigs: George Linardos is the first ever Nokia Hollywood employee (Sr. Manager, Branded Content) and Brad Auerbach is the Senior Legal Counsel for Qualcomm’s MediaFLO division. Contact: george.linardos@nokia.com; brad.auerbach@qualcomm.com
Infospace Mobile is rumored to be bleeding. Anthony Stonefield left last week to found a bunch of new companies but he’s not alone: a large part of the Moviso team in LA is calling it quits. Does the HQ in Seattle have a mobile strategy?
EVENTS, BLOGS & SOURCES
May 9 (New York): MoMeMo NYC meeting at SoHo House. Senior-level monthly mobile networking event in New York. For details, send email to Ashley Heather at info@momemo.org.
June 1-2 (Miami): Mobile Messaging Americas by IBC. As always warmly recommended - see you there!
Talking about good blogs: see the http://www.imodestrategy.com/ of Walter Adamson. You don’t need to go further to learn everything about i-Mode.
My favorite news sources: I have only time for two these days: www.moconews.net and www.digitalmediawire.com. That will get you covered.
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented herein are those of the undersigned and do not represent the position or message of any company I might be affiliated with.
