The Mobile Content Ecosystem

Editor’s Note:This article is an excerpt from RCR Wireless News’ March Special Edition, “The Perfect Storm – A Focus on Mobile Messaging, Marketing, Content and Apps.” The 80-page special edition will be available next week at RCRWireless.com.
Music, video, voice, games, photos, location-based services, advertising, books, social networking; they’re all going mobile. Americans are consuming a media-rich mobile diet, which wireless operators hope will offset their declining voice revenues.
From the Amazon Kindle, which lets people read books transmitted via a wireless connection, to Wi-Fi integrated into the Nintendo Wii, more and more content is being consumed wirelessly. Whether it’s Twitter, Google Maps or the Wall Street Journal, content publishers are exploring ways to enable connectivity in a variety of ways.
In addition, handset manufacturers like Apple Inc., Nokia Corp. and Research In Motion Ltd. are introducing “store fronts” where people can go to buy wireless applications or download them for free, depending on the app. Indeed, Apple boasts that more than 3 million applications have been downloaded from its App Store. Not to be left out of the revenue stream, wireless carriers worldwide are building their own store fronts. Sprint Nextel Corp. just partnered with GetJar to give Sprint Nextel customers access to 60,000 free applications. Verizon Wireless said its store should be open to the public this year. T-Mobile USA Inc. is using a combination of off-deck applications with its choice applications to try to lure more customers to consume content. Perhaps the biggest initiative in the space was announced at Mobile World Congress last month in Barcelona, when 24 of the world’s largest operators announced they would join forces to build a store front so powerful that applications developers would need to write code for an app only once. Even infrastructure companies like L.M. Ericsson opened an eStore white-label app marketplace for wireless operators.
Revenue figures
Revenue numbers for this space are all over the place, depending on the segment. But no matter whose numbers you believe, one thing is sure: the space is growing. Operators are seeing incremental increases in revenues from data services rather than voice. Data revenues at VZW topped $4 billion in the fourth quarter and represented nearly one-third of VZW’s service revenues for the quarter. The story is much the same at AT&T Mobility, which reported a 26.3% increase in data revenues in the final quarter of 2009, totaling more than $3.9 million.
More than 740 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) text messages were sent in the United States in the first half of 2009, according to trade association CTIA. In countries where SMS is priced right for consumers, text messaging will continue to explode, said John Dwyer, CEO of Interop Technologies Inc., which provides core messaging and device management for wireless operators. SMS is only starting to taper off in countries that charge per transaction or per message. “Where there is an unlimited messaging bundle, we see continued growth,” Dwyer noted.
Content can be delivered via a carrier deck or more commonly off-deck. CTIA, under the umbrella of its Wireless Internet Caucus, has an action team devoted to ensuring that mobile content is delivered efficiently, while protecting the intellectual property rights of the content owner during the delivery process and providing a business framework that works for everyone in the value chain.
The ecosystem for mobile content is broad based, encompassing all of the players involved in delivering voice applications, as well as some additional players. These companies include, but are not limited to, carriers, device manufacturers, operating system developers, content publishers, content aggregators and technology companies that enable the network transactions and business processes. For the purpose of this article, we will concentrate on the companies involved in delivering content to operators on their networks.
Content publishers produce the content that is viewed, read, shared and otherwise consumed on mobile devices. CNN Mobile and The Weather Channel have been at the forefront of the wireless content revolution, as news and weather have been some of the earliest types of content that people consume. But the space is vast — from horoscopes and games to business travel aids like airline alerts, to mobile music and mobile TV — everyone in the content publishing business has a mobile play or is exploring how to make a mobile play profitable. Players in the space include FLO TV, MobiTV, Glu Mobile, Greystripe, Electronic Arts, music labels, social-networking companies like FaceBook and Twitter and countless news and entertainment outlets. Everyone from MTV to TLC has a mobile play.
Content aggregatorsare the companies that pull together all kinds of content and deliver that content to the end user. Companies working in this space are equally diverse, from Handmark and Handango to Nokia, Google Inc. and Apple. Myxer, LSN Mobile and Hands-On Mobile are just a few of the content aggregators working in the sector today.
Device manufacturers used to be limited to handset manufacturers, but this segment of the mobile content business is expanding as emerging consumer electronics companies incorporate wireless technology into a plethora of devices. Beyond feature phones and smartphones, there are personal navigation devices, electronic readers – even digital photo frames – that connect wirelessly. In the future, look for even more devices to include wireless connectivity, including gaming consoles, video cameras and digital cameras, back-seat entertainment devices and even vehicles themselves as telematics and machine-to-machine connectivity continue to spur innovation in the marketplace. Players include Apple, Nokia, HTC, Research In Motion, Samsung, LG Electronics, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, as well as nontraditional companies Amazon and Garmin. Look for more diversity in this segment as more consumer electronics go mobile.
Core infrastructure providers: Acision, Interop Technologies and TeleCommunications Systems provide platforms that enable SMS and MMS messages to be sent across carrier networks.
Enablers and facilitators are the companies that provide an underlying technology and business processes that help the application get into the end user’s hands. These companies are equally expansive. They encompass application program interface companies, gateway companies, Internet Protocol solution providers, authentication companies and network monitoring companies. Some concentrate on one area like Dolby with its mobile audio solution, while others like OpenMarket, which calls itself a mobile transaction hub, focus on the revenue piece of the ecosystem. Players in the space include Amdocs, IBM, Oracle, Telcordia, NewBay Software Inc., Opera Software, SpinVox, MBlox, Gemalto, Comverse, Motricity, RealNetworks, Openwave, Intrado, Neustar, Sybase 365, Novarra, Vantrix and VeriSign.
Interested in more content from the March 2010 Special Edition? Click here