Are there lessons to be learned following Amp’d Mobile Inc.’s rapid fall from the grace of mobile entertainment? Will new and existing players be more hesitant in their pursuit of mobile, more conservative in their investment on made-for-mobile production?
Analysts say the mobile entertainment market still isn’t ready for Amp’d Mobile-sized ambitions, but it’s not keeping the industry’s wheels from spinning toward mass-market adoption.
“I don’t think it (Amp’d Mobile’s troubles) has a long-term impact on the mobile content space,” said Roger Entner, senior VP of the communications sector at IAG Research. “I think it will bring a much-need dose of reality to this market, and then realism. Because for a while, this was like the 1849 Gold Rush in California, and this is a very tough business.”
Levi Shapiro, director of audience metrics at Telephia, said, “It’s migrating to a big boys’ game and even having big boys as investors still is not the same as being a big boy.”
Seamus McAteer, chief product architect and senior analyst at M:Metrics Inc., said Amp’d Mobile’s experience in the space has proven that “the window of opportunity for a content-driven MVNO has expired.” He added: “It’s proven that you can’t really build an operator around content, so it’s proven that. You’ve got to have something much more than that. It’s got to be about more than content if you’re going to build a viable operator.”
McAteer did, however, give Amp’d Mobile credit for being the biggest publisher of content with 37 titles to choose from on its reasonably deep deck. “They did do some good groundbreaking things with respect to content for mobile,” he said. “It was a friend for a lot of the edgier type stuff.” The Amp’d Mobile deck included content from names like TMZ.com, PerezHilton.com and The Onion, the first two finding their only on-deck mobile home at Amp’d Mobile.
“They had quite a bit of original content, which will live in the annals of mobile content sort of folklore. It did do some edgier things, but obviously wasn’t enough,” McAteer added.
“An interesting experiment was adult content on Amp’d and as a result I don’t think we’re going to have an opportunity in the United States to really see how the United States market reacts to adult content,” Shapiro said. “I think they were doing some amazing things and some innovative things in regard to programming.”
Legacy lingers on
Because of that, there is still some value to be eked out from content that spring boarded out of Amp’d Mobile’s state-of-the-art production facility. “Lil’ Bush,” which is routinely mentioned as one standout, delivered 2.1 million viewers when it debuted on Comedy Central in June, making it the most watched series premiere for the network since 2004. The program began as a series of short-form episodes available exclusively on Amp’d Mobile, but was quickly picked up by the network for an extension to a much larger TV audience.
“For me it’s really about multi-platform. The consumer will enjoy “Lil’ Bush” whether it’s on Comedy Central, online or on Amp’d,” Shapiro said.
Adderton critique
While complimenting Amp’d Mobile founder Peter Adderton for driving the MVNO’s tenacity in the mobile content space, the analysts also had less-than-stellar comments about the leadership style of the man who formed the youth-centric MVNO that he preferred to label as more of a mobile entertainment company than a wireless carrier.
“It was a vanity exercise for Peter Adderton really and you know he did a good job of building a probably dysfunctional board that sort of allowed him to do what he wanted to do which ultimately was a kind of na
