Dear Industry Executive

An end to mobile interaction with TV?

As UK broadcaster Channel 4 rolls out the latest series of interactive TV show Big Brother this week, the broadcaster has decided to not only cut the cost of phone voting, so that it makes no profit from it, but it is also loping off text voting altogether, as it cannot guarantee that all votes can be counted in time.

While this is a blow to the mobile-TV interaction industry — and flies in the face of research by digital marketing agency Siren (see top story) — it is a nod to the fact that, while all the attention has been on dodgy voting scams and impossible quizzes, mobile voting is a huge problem. As discussed in this organ before, text being a store-and-forward technology means that, at peak voting times in show, there is no guarantee that all texts will get through and be counted. It is, in fact, a scam.

Channel 4’s decision to axe mobile voting, because it doesn’t want to get caught out again with errors in phone voting shows that not only has the pressure from regulators and the media to ‘clean up’ mobile media interaction, but also that TV companies may well be turning their backs on using premium rate telecoms as a revenue generator, relying instead on good old advertising.

Back in March, at the height of the furore surrounding TV interaction services, one exec who wants to remain anonymous told me that TV companies were toying with abandoning mobile and fixed line interaction as it was simply too much hassle. It appears that Channel 4 has become the first to do this.

This is a big blow for the mobile industry. While telephone costs to interact have fallen — which is good for the consumer — ending text interaction takes away a vital channel of mobile interaction and throws in to chaos the idea that text voting is just the start: MMS and even 3G video have been tipped as huge revenue generators as consumers send in clips to shows. This must now be in disarray.
 

Yours

Paul Skeldon

paul.skeldon@contentfutures.com

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One in five TV viewers interact with programmes using mobile

Despite Channel 4’s plan to pull the text voting element of Big Brother, which launched last night, as many as one in five TV viewers across Europe are becoming ‘activated’ by using mobile to text in to television shows, finds a study by digital marketing agency Siren published last week, which insists that TV viewers watch the television with the remote control in one hand their mobile phone in the other.

“As both media owners and advertisers are looking beyond coverage and frequency for more qualitative viewing measures such as engagement, we believe that our research into activation gives an important, and useful new perspective in understanding the degree of involvement that viewers have with television content,” says Mark Brandon, CEO of Siren.

The study — called Activation Nation — finds that the activated tend to be young women, who account for some 27 per cent of interaction as opposed to me at 20 per cent. Of these nearly two thirds of those inspired to interact with the TV using mobile, do not interact with any other media.  The activated are also five times more responsive to advertising, with one in four programme activated people having texted as a result of an advertising prompt.

The study also concludes that the activated are twice as likely to customize their mobiles, with 44 per cent of texting to receive content on their mobile phone, compared to 22 per cent of respondents. They are also 40 per cent more likely to visit a TV website and 50 per cent more likely to use the red button.

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Are content offerings too complex for the average user?

While the mobile content and services industry continues to offer new service offerings at a rate of knots, one thing is possibly being overlooked: what customers actually want.

According to research by Alpheus Solutions, the mobile industry is at risk of failing to meet consumer needs as it increasingly fails to align new services and applications with consumer demands, making things overtly complicated and either expensive or not price-transparent.
 
Focusing on the promise of new services such as mobile advertising, social networking, location-based services (LBS) and mobile TV, Alpheus believes is a major risk of services not aligning with consumer demand. It says that its research shows that consumers are increasingly suspicious of complex applications that don't meet their needs and potentially add to their mobile phone costs.
 
“Our assessment clearly shows the market is running the risk of losing billions from poorly planned services,” says Nick Sex, chief operating officer of Alpheus. “People are suspicious of paying too much for disappointing services. Yet operators are now in a position to change all that – many services are now closer to being launched, and the key is that mobile operators need to get that launch right, the first time.”

Sex believes that Social Networking is an ideal case in point. “There are two issues holding the market back: cost of data charges, for example, with consumers not convinced they should pay to upload a video to YouTube via mobile when it is effectively free on a PC, and interoperability, where people want to interact with their network of contacts irrespective of what device or network they use. On the plus side, with more powerful cameras, phones are now perfect for 'citizen journalism' – giving the immediacy that a PC doesn't have.”

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Mobile poker boom expected as bwin and Cellectivity team up

Online gaming provider bwin is partnering with Cellectivity, one of the UK’s leading mobile gaming and betting content providers, to distribute a mobile version of PokerRoom.com: the first live multi-player mobile poker application of its kind, allowing mobile users to pit their poker skills against real online players. Cellectivity’s content agreement with 3 and T-Mobile, two of the UK’s largest mobile operators will position bwin at the forefront of the fast-growing mobile gaming market.
 
The deal sees the two industry leaders combine their brands, customer reach and technological know-how to distribute the UK’s first portable poker room application, offering mobile players access to poker tables anytime, anywhere. The application also features a play-for-fun version that gives players an opportunity to pit their skills against real online players.
 
Cellectivity will make it possible to integrate all the dynamic functionalities and real life poker action that users have come to expect of bwin’s online PokerRoom.com. At the same time, it will provide gamers with an optimized user experience specifically designed for the mobile phone. The application will be distributed on UK portals managed by Cellectivity.
 
“There is a significant and proven market for online poker,” explains Marcel Puyk, CEO of Cellectivity. “By working with bwin, we will be able to provide mobile users with access to real online poker tables for the very first time. This is an incredibly exciting development in mobile gaming.”

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South Africa opens up to MT PSMS, heralding raft of new services

South African messaging company Clickatell, is launching mobile terminated (MT) premium rate SMS service in South Africa. Unlike typical premium rate SMS services, which charge users for the messages they send, mobile terminated services charge according to messages received, allowing Clickatell's customers to offer a raft of flexible and creative messaging services from a single shortcode.

Currently offered by Vodacom and MTN in South Africa, mobile terminated services are used for subscription-based content. Because the networks offer these services in different ways, Clickatell provides an easy-to-use open interface for value-added service providers to access the networks and bill their customers. Uniquely, Clickatell pays out the full revenue share to its customers.

"Using operator systems directly can sometimes introduce unnecessary complexities as message delivery and billing relies on different systems. By combining this into one interface, Clickatell ensures its customers do not have to be exposed to these hassles," says Patrick Lawson, Clickatell CTO.

The benefit of offering mobile terminated premium rate services is that users don't have to send an SMS every time they want certain information. So, for example, traffic or weather information can be delivered on a regular basis to the handset, once a user has subscribed. In addition, because South African operators offer variable billing, a single shortcode can be advertised and promoted for a variety of services with different charges associated. 

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itsmy.com launches personal mobile mashup site and plans to make UGC-ers richer

Gofresh has rolled out its personal mobile mashup site itsmy.com’s “My Downloads” worldwide, offering every cell phone user his own, free, personal mobile homepage. This includes all mobile 2.0 services, as well as a itsmy.com subdomain. Now all community members can add a personal download page to their itsmy.com mobile web community account.

Already it has seen more than 110,000 mobile content mashup sites created within the last six weeks securing itsmy.com as the leader in mobile User Generated Content (UGC) in the US and Europe.

Antonio Vince Staybl, CEO Gofresh: “With the integration of ‘My Downloads’ we emphasize the growing importance of trusted content stores and thus redefine the value of mobile content – by giving it a very individual touch. Now everyone can download music, videos, games to his cell phone directly from the mobile homepages of his friends and affinity groups. Moreover, people all over the world have a new possibility to get to know each other much better.
 
“In a few months we will launch the next level of  “My Downloads” with the possibility for the user to earn up to five per cent of the sales turnover of his personal download site. The sales price will be in the range of $0.99 up to $1.99, pay-per-download. No subscriptions.” adds Sabine Irrgang, COO Gofresh.

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Fireplayer, the UK's award-winning mobile music application, launches in Japan

UK mobile software developer, Bounce Technology this week announced an exclusive partnership with ISB Corporation, the Japanese IT solutions provider,  to launch its award-winning music mixing service, called 'Fireplayer', in Japan.

Fireplayer allows users to become instant DJs using their mobile phone to remix and save their favourite music with their mobile phone. Users can create their personalized ringtones from artists' original recordings and can even upload their mix to a community area where other Fireplayer users can listen to their remix skills. The tracks not only contain the hit version, but also contain added sound effects, such as bass and synthesizer, beats and rapping. 

Fireplayer licenses content from all the major record labels. A wide variety of tracks are available from a number of artists, including the Gorillaz, Jamiroquai, Fatboy Slim, and Franz Ferdinand.

Fireplayer was originally launched in the UK in 2004 with Orange, the second largest mobile operator, and went on to win the UK Digital Music Awards' 'Most Innovative Mobile Application'.

Japan is one of the world's largest mobile phone markets and is the leading country for mobile music consumption, with the US coming second place and the UK coming third*. Launching in Japan marks a significant step for Fireplayer where penetration of mobiles is well over 100 per cent in certain age groups and where music applications are increasingly popular. 

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