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Mobile Entertainment & Commerce
...the analyst view
Edition Thirty Nine - 3rd October 2007 | |
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Nokia puts itself on the map
The news that Nokia is to buy the leading supplier of sat nav maps, Navteq, for some $8 billion has set tongues wagging in the content industry. The news comes hot on the heals of Nokia launching its own mobile content portal, Ovi, earlier in the summer, which got everyone in a lather as it looks like Nokia is trying to capitalize on its brand name as a handset maker and start to offer content.
The two events are surely linked. Nokia wants to be a content and services provider as well as making the kit. The purchase of such a well known, technically excellent company as Navteq would indeed make it a leader in mobile mapping apps.
But there is more to it than that. It could be argued that Nokia has identified — rightly in my view — that along with recommendation and search, location-orientated information is going to be key to the next generation of mobile services.
The industry is beginning to realize that mobile browsing per se is not how users are going to interact with the mobile wed: it is much more personalized than that. And what can be more personal than you physical location and all that goes with that?
While the deal is a big one, I suspect that there are more to come. Watch out for Nokia getting deeper in the recommendation, search, discovery and advertising environments, most likely through key purchases this year. And then watch as the mobile industry takes an until now unexpected turn.
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Nokia buys leading mapping company for $8.1bn — the future looks LBS
Nokia took the industry by surprise this week, when it announced the purchase of leading digital map supplier Navteq for a reported $8.1 billion. The move adds some of the most advanced mapping technology currently available to the sat nav market to the mobile technology provider’s inventory.
The move is being viewed by the industry as either an attempt by Nokia to focus on location based services (LBS) and to develop content services around maps and location, or that the company has only just started a massive spending spree on a range of content service infrastructure companies.
Navteq brings a number of key assets to Nokia: a great team with best-in-world maps and navigation industry expertise, a strong customer base and an industry-leading map data and technology platform with the broadest geographical coverage.
Navteq will continue to provide the most advanced and flexible map data platform to navigation industry players. With Navteq, Nokia will further strengthen its location based services offering and bring to market the most innovative, context aware Nokia Internet services with accelerated time to market.
"Location based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia's Internet services strategy. The acquisition of Navteq is another step toward Nokia becoming a leading player in this space," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President and CEO, Nokia. "By joining forces with Navteq, we will be able to bring context and geographical information to a number of our Internet services with accelerated time to market. We also look forward to maintaining and enhancing the services and support provided to Navteq's existing and future customers".
"Nokia's unique vision for location based services aligns perfectly with Navteq's vision to enable everyone to find their way to people, places and opportunities on mobile communications devices, cars, desktop computers and in all the other places that are important to them," said Navteq President and CEO Judson Green. "It's really exciting to imagine what we can achieve by combining our location experience with the resources of a company that has a customer base of more than 900 million people."
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Half of users ready to pay for location-based services as technical barriers evaporate
Almost half of mobile users in the UK, Spain and the US would pay for location based services (LBS), especially family/child monitoring offerings, finds a study by IDC for LBS company TruePositions.
Better phones, better screens and improved data pricing and data services, coupled with increasing acceptance of the mobile as more than just a telephone are all driving interest in LBS, believes TruePositions.
The survey also revealed that there is a growing interest in local search services, but that these would tend to be ad-funded, rather than subscriptions-based, finds IDC. 80 per cent of users in Spain, 70 in US and 60 in UK all told the analysts that they would sign up for local search if it was free.
Security is still an issue with users, many of who feel that their data could be misused or leaked to others to misuse.
LBS based around social networking was also indicated as a potential to drive traffic and messaging, says TruePositions.
In the enterprise market, workforce and fleet management were highlighted as key LBS applications in the report, with 74 per cent of respondents seeing increased productivity and 68 per cent cost savings as the key benefits.
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Even young people find mobile entertainment services too confusing to use, warns study
A new report into how young people use mobile entertainment services has highlighted that even today’s technology savvy younger generation is confused by the range and cost of mobile services now available. Responses from 638 UK mobile users aged between 11 and 25 indicate that today’s ‘connected’ youth audience is failing to grasp the full potential of mobile phone entertainment – or understand the best ways to access it. The research was conducted by youth research specialist Q Research in conjunction with Intellistream, a specialist in interactive mobile video and voice applications.
Despite being avid consumers of the latest gadgetry — 94 per cent of 11 to 25 year old males and 89 per cent of females own a PC and more than two-thirds have an MP3 player — survey responses showed a genuine lack of understanding of mobile phone content, services such as mobile video, how they are accessed and a fear of the likely cost of these services.
In spite of all participants being surveyed on the mobile Internet using WAP, 32 per cent said they could access the Internet on their phone but did not, with a further three per cent claiming that they could not access the web at all on their handset. Since users were responding to questions using a WAP site, they were by definition using the Internet.
Panellists were also confused by the extent and ways to watch different video and TV services on their mobile phone. Although 85 per cent of respondents said they had the ability to download videos, 57 per cent claimed not to be able to view TV podcasts which use the same formats – further evidence of user misunderstanding.
This apparent confusion contrasts with the general rise of video calling, mobile TV, and other content, available both as commercial downloads or user generated content.
“There is also a wider issue hinted at in these responses: if today’s technically literate young people don’t know how to fully use the range of services available on their mobile phone, then other consumer categories certainly won’t either,” says Jim Beagle, chief executive officer of survey sponsor Intellistream. “We know that many young people encourage friends or simply shame their parents into trying new interactive services, such as real time video to mobile applications, TV podcasts and video-based games. If the industry isn’t successful in building on the clear interest in video sharing and video calling amongst this group, new entertainment services will be slower to reach the critical mass needed to ensure widespread adoption by consumers.”
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Telefonica signs deal with Yahoo! to offer search, recommendation and MMS-based email…
Mobile network operator Telefonica — owner of O2 in the UK — has signed a deal with Internet giant Yahoo! that will give the mobile operator advanced advertising and search capabilities, as well as offering Yahoo! and Telefonica’s combined customer based email and IM over MMS.
The deal sees Telefonica replace existing web partner MSN and will give Yahoo! access to Telefonica's customers in 15 countries in Europe, including the UK and Ireland, and 13 countries in Latin America.
Yahoo!’s OneSearch will replace MSN’s offerings and will deliver the carrier advanced search facilities, including recommendations based on analysis of customer data and previous choices made.
The internet company believes that revenues from the mobile advertising elements of the deal could outstrip those of its online business.
Julio Linares, Telefónica’s general manager for Coordination Business Development and Synergies says that “Partners are essential to our mobile strategy and these key relationships, like the one we are announcing today with Yahoo!, will continue to evolve and deliver state of the art Internet experiences to our customers at home or on the go.”
“Yahoo!’s new partnership with Telefónica furthers our leadership in mobile and demonstrates our commitment to working with partners to enhance the Internet experience for customers on their mobile phone,” adds Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo!’s Connected Life Division. “Together we can grow usage of mobile Internet services and create new revenue streams through mobile advertising.”
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… as Orange provides real time content recommendation
Orange has signed an agreement with Xiam Technologies, for the provision of its My Personal Offers System (MPOS), which will give customers real-time recommendations across the Orange World Portal. MPOS will help Orange World customers to discover personalised content that is relevant to their own specific interests.
MPOS will ensure Orange customers discover and consume a broad range of content and services that are both relevant and meaningful based on their unique profiles. For example a football fan could expect to be offered ‘FIFA 2007’ game and a ‘Chelsea’ wallpaper based on the club they follow, then be presented more subtle, unexpected recommendations based on usage patterns identified by MPOS and filtered according to individual user profiles. MPOS can recommend content across different categories and suggest content that the customer may not otherwise find.
Jim Small, Portal Relevance Manager at Orange UK says that: “It is the first time our customers will be able to access a diverse range of content services through a tailored recommendations page on Orange World that is based on the intelligence we have gathered from each user’s previous visits. For us it is about enhancing and personalising the customer experience, whilst increasing customer loyalty and content revenues. We believe that Xiam’s MPOS technology will help us do this.”
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Mobile adult websites who carry ads generate bigger revenues
Adult mobile website owners who publish mobile adverts on their sites are seeing a massive surge in the revenue they earn, according to adult mobile advertising network Adultmoda.
Adultmoda believes that part of the reason for the accelerated growth is that advertising with Adultmoda can prove to be far more cost effective and wide reaching than advertising on other media.
An Adultmoda spokesperson commented “There is no need to drive the user from one particular media platform to mobile - with Adultmoda the users viewing the ads are already in the target country, and are literally surfing adult mobile web sites. Placing an animated/static banner or text ad in front of them at this stage, in their local language, which offers content relevant to over 18s is proving to generate an extremely good ROI for advertisers.”
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GSMA Mobile World Congress 2007
12th - 14th November 2007, Venetian Macau
The only place where the best converge. The GSMA Mobile Asia Congress 2007, formerly known as 3GSM Mobile Asia Congress, is THE place to connect to the Mobile future! Mobile Asia Congress is a unique environment for leading companies to showcase the latest in mobile products and solutions, a place for the industry's innovators to develop new ideas and for its leaders to set out their visions for growth.
Contact us today to register for the most highly-regarded event in the mobile industry.
Hong Kong: + 852 2593 1286
UK: + 44 2077 592 315
Make the greatest, most effective investment in yourself and your company by being part of the most highly-regarded event in the mobile industry, the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress.
For more information please click here
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Mobile Games Testers
The company successfully publishes quality game titles and mobile entertainment content onto the largest mobile operators in the industry and distributes this content across all key global territories.
The objective is to focus exclusively on high quality entertainment content such as games and video applications from a small number of key developers and media owners, establishing a position at the forefront of the industry.
They are now seeking experienced Mobile Games Testers to join their West End based studio asap.
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Cachelogic’s New London Office Extends Reach to Global Media Industry
CacheLogic,provider of the world's leading Digital Asset Delivery Network, a new generation CDN (Content Delivery Network) designed from e ground up to offer unparalleled on-line delivery performance, economics and control for owners of large digital assets including video, software download and video games, today announced further expansion with the opening of its London office in the UK.
Phill Robinson, CEO, CacheLogic says, "This expansion reinforces our commitment to better serve the needs of those who are in the business of delivering next generation video and rich media content over the internet. It also provides us with an excellent base from which to hire the best talent in the industry, alongside our headquarters in Cambridge"
Optimize mobile browsing & shopping experience on 2,500 devices with Netsize mDevices
Netsize is launching a new online service totally dedicated to mobile handsets recognition. Access information on over 2,500 devices online and in real-time today. Netsize is pleased to announce the launch of its information database module, mDevices.
"Optimising mobile browsing experience and product merchandising according to devices capabilities may sound trivial or obvious. However with close to 2,500 mobile handsets in the European market and couple hundred new models coming out each year, this information update can quickly become a nightmare for brands and merchants and be of crucial necessity if they wish to propose their consumers a compelling shopping experience on mobile", notes Renaud Ménérat, marketing director of Netsize Entertainment Solutions.
Price: £1490 (Single User) £1990 (Multi User) £2990 (Enterprise Wide)
This highly anticipated 4th edition of the mobile gambling report, provides a vital analysis of the current and future status of the mobile gambling market. Through interviews with key players in the mobile gambling sector it offers both regional and UK forecast data on: service adoption; average wager; total wager and gross win and discusses recent developments in the market for mobile-delivered casino, lottery and betting services.
The in depth study provides vital forecast data on subscriber growth, ARPU and total revenues, and also offers a series of strategic recommendations for operators, broadcasters, service providers, vendors and regulators.
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