Game over?

Smaller entrepreneurial wireless developers could lose a friend with Verizon Wireless’ acquisition of Alltel Communications L.L.C. Alltel supports a number of cool applications on its deck. Celltop, which allows you to customize your user interface with widgets; Ontela, which offers a service that automatically sends your cellphone photos to your PC; or SpinVox; which turns voice mail into text, all are available from Alltel, but not Verizon Wireless.
Perhaps Verizon Wireless will add these applications, but it’s likely that these very same developers have already pitched the soon-to-be No. 1 carrier.
Being a smaller operator forced to compete with wireless giants with larger marketing budgets, Alltel competes on innovative offerings to gain customers. With MyCircle, it was among the first to make unlimited calling to off-network numbers popular.
AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless have put significant resources behind music offerings and mobile TV and video. And it makes sense; these are large entertainment categories and the offerings have the potential to bring hefty revenues because of their mass-market appeal. Alltel’s initiatives, in contrast, are onesie-twosies that separate Alltel from its competitors, but likely aren’t giving the carrier a huge return on investment.
It’s usually been the smaller carriers that have led the innovations as they are more nimble and able to take risks. As such, these carriers are incubation labs for application developers. If an app is wildly successful with a smaller carrier, the big dogs take notice. Operators with nationwide presence need to appeal to the lowest common denominator, so to speak.
And therein lies the bigger problem. I just returned from the GSM Association’s Mobile Innovation Marketplace in Atlanta, where a number of small developers showcased their wares before AT&T Mobility and other operators. The apps are cool, but that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be successful. They need to be seen (most obviously on the carrier deck), they need to have mass-market appeal for a nationwide carrier to deploy them and they need to be a money-maker for the carrier.
Although the Verizon Wireless purchase of Alltel makes sense, I do fear small developers with a good plan have one less place to showcase their wares.