SAN MATEO, Calif. -Mobilitec Inc. is giving teens homework assignments.
The company, which provides a platform for selling mobile content, has created a focus group of 11 teenage wireless users around the world. Mobilitec gives the kids monthly assignments and asks them to provide feedback and rate their experiences finding, downloading and using mobile content and applications.
The idea, said Chief Executive Officer Margaret Norton, is to make the process easier for users of all ages to access mobile offerings.
“We have a lot of opportunity to get direct feedback from our customers,” which include carriers and content providers, Norton said. “But not from our users.”
Subjects use their own phones and are paid $75 monthly, which must cover the cost of downloads. For their first task, the teens downloaded two assigned games and two titles of their choice.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, even the early adopters found the process to be challenging and the games expensive. Subjects often had difficulty searching through carrier decks, and sometimes couldn’t locate the game once it had been downloaded.
The teens seemed please with the overall gaming experience, though, and said they’d be more interested in mobile gaming if carriers and content providers targeted them more aggressively.
“In every case they said, `Market to me, message to me,”‘ Brown said. “‘I would buy more if I knew there were other games that were interesting to me.”‘
Mobilitec hopes to keep the focus group intact and plans to expand the number of subjects. Future assignments will focus on mobile music, off-deck content and social applications.
