Dear Industry Executive

Why are orange’s digital media numbers so small?

It is only a snapshot, but as snapshots go, Orange’s Digital Media Index — a list of what digital media content customers actually buy over mobile — is revealing. Orange has 15 million customers in the UK, yet the numbers of downloads specific content sectors are attracting are — I would argue — rather low.

Only 2.1million of these access the web wirelessly. OK, its quite a new thing and data charges, for now, cloud the issue, but only 65,000 wallpaper images are downloaded each month. Assuming that no one downloads more than one a month, that’s still less than half a per cent of its user base is downloading wallpaper.

The picture is brighter with games, where some 750,000 are downloaded a quarter — but, by Orange’s own admission, there is a fairly niche pool of 30-something male users with money and nifty handsets that do this.

Music and Mobile TV fair little better.

While it is brave of Orange to divulge these figures — and the fact that it is being trumpeted as a Digital Media Index implies that it is an ongoing divulgence — it is possibly right to assume that it is doing rather well and is seeking to brag about it.

If this is the case then it really does show how far the mobile content sector needs to go. As I have said over the past few weeks, flat rate data charging COULD — and I emphasise the lack of a definitive there — drive up mobile web access, mobile search, on-portal content sales and ultimately an off-portal content market, much more needs to be done before content sales come anywhere near to the revenues and traffic generated by voice and text, which still account for the lion’s share of operator revenues.

Yours

Paul Skeldon

paul.skeldon@contentfutures.com

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Orange itemises the digital media its customers buy and finds mobile web access surprisingly low…

The number of people currently using the mobile web is languishing below the 20 per cent mark, despite widespread advertising and the promise of fairer data charges. According to UK MNO Orange’s Digital Media Index — a monthly assessment of what its customers are doing with mobile content services — just 2.1 million of its 15million customers are accessing the mobile internet: a paltry 14 per cent.

But things aren’t all gloomy. The study also reveals that most of these hits are 30-something men downloading 750,000 games every quarter. And MMS services, while still languishing far short of SMS are on the up, with 5.4million being sent every month — compared to 872million texts.

When it comes to downloading wallpaper, which most phones can do, the picture is very different. About 65,000 images are downloaded by Orange customers every month and scantily clad women dominate the charts.

The most downloaded images in the first three months of this year include a host of female "wrestlers" — known as "WWE Girls" and "WWE Divas". Animal, the exuberant drummer from the Muppets, is also in the top 10 as is the flag of St George.

"There's an interesting correlation between the posters that adorn teenagers bedrooms and the wallpaper they download for their phones," says Gavin Forth, head of entertainment at Orange. "Generally, boys download more mobile wallpapers than girls, and your average 16-year-old lad's bedroom wall is plastered with wrestling, girls and film posters ... that's what they're downloading on to their phones as well."

The youth end of the market also seems more taken with downloading songs, with more than 250,000 music tracks, ringtones and music videos downloaded a month. Most activity is in the late afternoon and at the weekend, suggesting the majority of users are children just out of school.

As for mobile video, movie trailers remain the most requested clips, followed by sports clips and what Orange terms "babes". More "adult" content accounts for four per cent of mobile video.

Sporting events score high on mobile TV - which is "streamed" live to a handset rather than downloaded to be watched whenever the user wants. Orange's live coverage of the cricket World Cup was the most popular content watched over the first quarter of the year.

Read More: http://pressoffice.orange.co.uk

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… but 69% of users would make mobile Internet more a part of their daily life if accessibility was improved

An extensive trial held across five UK universities has revealed that users are much more likely to go for mobile web surfing if the quality of the experience and ease of use are improved.

The study, commissioned by web-to-mobile content adaptation company InfoGin found that mobile web surfing soared by 120 per cent if the pages are displayed in a way that works on the handset and is not just a poor adaptation of the standard web page.

Prior to the trial, two in three students found surfing the Internet on their mobile such a poor experience that they gave up trying. During the trial period, a thousand students from five UK universities accessed the mobile Internet through InfoGin’s Intelligent Mobile Platform.  Users picked three random web sites and accessed them once using InfoGin's platform and again without using it. As a result, 69 per cent commented that the experience was “useable or enjoyable” when accessed through InfoGin.
 
3G handsets offering advanced mobile data services are prevalent but accessing the Internet is still cumbersome. Prior to the trial, only 18 per cent of users found mobile Internet services to be satisfactory. 83 per cent of all trial respondents agreed that as the Web offers more social networking and online community activities, it is becoming more and more important to access the Web while being on the move. 

Of course, InfoGin has a vested interest in the study’s outcome and found that 69 per cent of those questioned thought that InfoGin’s solution made mobile web access “even better” and that 71 per cent would be prepared to pay extra for access to a service like InfoGin’s.

Read More:http://www.infogin.com/doc/press%20releases/University%20Trial%20100507.pdf

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Bango offers free “lite” service to help brands start to exploit the mobile web

Getting ready to exploit the expected surge in mobile web browsing and m-commerce once flat rate data charging comes in to effect this summer, Bango is this week launching a free mobile web service — Bango Starter — to remove the costs of selling digital content on the mobile web.

While the cost and complexity of selling content direct to mobile using old Premium SMS services is rising, the mobile web model is simplifying access to mobile users and driving costs down. For no cost, this lightweight version of the Bango Service gives businesses, brands and individuals the opportunity to use Bango to experience the benefits of the mobile web to sell their digital content. 

Anyone with small libraries of content can sell them to consumers world-wide on any network with a full choice of payment options: on phone bill; credit/debit card or PayPal.

”The internet way of working with low cost of entry and global reach provides a refreshing change for the mobile content industry," says Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango. "By providing global WAP billing and the mobile search basics for free with our Bango Starter service, we encourage the 'long tail' of smaller businesses to give the mobile web a try."

Content is simply registered at www.bango.com - with the input of some key information including metadata, download page URLs, pricing and ratings. This delivers the quickest and most comprehensive way to start earning money on the mobile web today/ Bango Starter delivers everything needed to get started on the mobile web. It provides a risk free way of evaluating the potential of the mobile web in selling mobile content along with basic information about who is purchasing.

Read More:http://bango.com/news/default.aspx

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Better management of phone content could drive the market — and Alltel thinks it has the answer

One of the biggest drawbacks of a growing content market is that it becomes increasingly difficult for users to access what they have bought and downloaded. In an effort to make managing content and services on handsets easier, US operator Alltel Wireless has got design agency Frog Design to ‘widgetise’ the mobile screen, making it more like a PC desktop and hopefully encouraging non-youth adult users to make more use of content services.

Celltop — which won Best in Show at CTIA earlier this year — splits the mobile screen in to 11 ‘cells’, any two of which are displayed on screen at any one time and allow mobile users to have their favourite football team info and, say, the local weather running at the same time on their phone. By simply scrolling left and right they can display any of the other nine cells they may have filled with everything from contacts to diary dates to video to music.

For example, the news cell shows top stories from Associated Press, while the Weather is displayed by AccuWeather in an adjacent cell. Live sports scores can be delivered to a third and a fourth may feature the phone’s own contact lists.

Much like widgets found on PC desktops, Alltel is now offering Celltop sites to third parties to sell service offerings to users to grow the service in the US. Aricent — Frog Design’s parent company — and Alltel are looking at how to deliver similar services across Europe.

Read More: http://www.aricent.com/services/alltel-celltop-casestudy.html

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Schering Health Care to use mobile for ‘find my nearest’ morning after pill

Pharmaceutical company Schering Health Care is offering women in the UK the ability to finds the nearest stocking of its Levonelle ‘morning after’birth control pill.

The service, run by Incentivated, allows women to text to 62233 to receive the nearest two Levonelle stockists to where they are. It is the first time a pharmaceutical company has offered a location based mobile service.

The service is being publicized in London in the Metro and London Lite free sheet newspapers in a campaign that will run for three months, planned and bought by Universal McCann. Mobile agency. Incentivated devised and will manage the mobile campaign.
 
Robert Thurner, Commercial Director at Incentivated, adds: “This campaign illustrates how forward looking brands can exploit the unique strengths of mobile in serving up time and location sensitive information whilst respecting people’s intimate relationships with their handsets. In this case, the mobile option spares Levonelle users the potential embarrassment of getting caught browsing the website in public.”

Read More: http://www.incentivated.com/?p=newsItem20070510LEVEC

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The future’s bright, the future’s…. wood?

Forget 3G and ultra-slim phones, the next generation of handsets could be made of wood and use content such as music to communicate rather than the more traditional text and voice calling.

That’s what’s on offer from a range of ‘phones’ that went on display in Dundee this week. Students from the College of Art, Science and Engineering’s Interactive Media Design and Innovative Product Design courses have dispelled noisy ringtones, annoying text message alerts and ugly handsets and created six new mobiles, aimed at “supporting intimacy and sensuality instead of voice calls and texts”.

They include the 'Aware', contained in a necklace which sends a tingle down your back if a friend is in the vicinity;  the 'M:ssage', which lets the user send another M:ssage owner a massage instead of a text; the 'Hive' that uses tiny LED lights to let its owner know when there are other ‘Hives’ in the room and the 'Boom Tube' which lets people make music over the network, allowing people to ‘jam’ together remotely.

Ian Shiels, a student from the Innovative Product Design course, says, “We are aiming to showcase a new direction for the mobile phone. The designers involved believe that since the meteoric rise of the mobile telephone, most of us have been guilty of over-looking the part of mobile commuication that is almost magical; sending and recieving messages to and from the people that we care about. These new phone | not phones celebrate the essence of communication without drowning the user in rich media. This exhibition is a revival in back to basics telecommunications, in a new, never seen before form.”

The phones have been developed by second year Interactive Media Design and Innovative Product Design students and are being marketed by Phone I Not phone.

Read More: http://www.idl.dundee.ac.uk/phonenotphone

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