The future really is in the palm of your hand. Mobile is everything, and today mobile is at the core of communication between businesses and consumers. In today’s 24/7 always-on culture, consumers are not only plugged-in to work at all times, but more often than not they’re also connected to some form of mobile entertainment – from music to games to dating apps. As mobile entertainment is central to the consumer, it’s increasingly important that carriers take note of the trends and leverage the enormous opportunity at hand. Entertainment and mobile businesses looking for growth should continue to embrace a future of disruption and innovation to keep up with demand and evolving technology. As mobile entertainment climbs, let’s take a look at what opportunities carriers have to take advantage of mobile entertainment options.
Revenue opportunities
In 2014, data and value-added services surpassed 40% in developed countries and 70% in undeveloped countries. At the same time, carriers are dealing with the threat of eroded revenue from over-the-top mobile entertainment services, but should not fear OTT players – they should instead embrace them and build partnerships. As OTT players proliferate with the smartphone boom, carriers have been trying to pivot and protect their walled gardens by creating their own entertainment services, from carrier branded music services to carrier branded app stores. This pivot, however, puts carriers at a disadvantage, as they compete with companies that focus entirely on mobile entertainment products and are limited to carrier-specific marketing channels. Instead carriers should take advantage of their services to strengthen their product offerings and create new revenue streams. Nowadays, several market-leading mobile carriers are pioneering this approach. Some are making content available natively as network services rather than as apps. Others are using new technologies like voice over LTE to reinvent their call experience while adopting innovative OTT capabilities like video and call path services.
Creating consumer loyalty
It’s no secret that competition among wireless carriers has heated up and providers are constantly trying to find new ways to attract customers and retain current ones. With customer loyalty a key battleground for today’s wireless carriers, there is an enormous opportunity to leverage mobile entertainment to engage and connect with wireless customers. Mobile entertainment is also a natural opportunity for carriers looking to increase their touch points with consumers by enhancing the quality of the user experience through the features and functionality of mobile entertainment apps. While creating carrier-specific customer service apps is nothing new, creating engaging, exciting mobile entertainment apps that resonate with consumers is a much more effective way to stay not just on a customer’s home screen, but on their minds as well. This has become even more critical as customer loyalty has shifted away from carriers – especially at the millennial level – with many simply more brand loyal to their specific mobile device.
The challenge for many carriers is how to create a completely new, yet functional app for their consumers, with all of the exciting mobile entertainment people expect from scratch (e.g. music, videos, ability to share, etc.). As such, as carriers’ battle for additional consumer mindshare, we’ll likely see them work to partner with existing mobile entertainment brands to bring their users something familiar, but something that also provides a value. Take recent moves from T-Mobile US, who recently designated more music apps that, when streaming, will no longer consume data as part of the carrier’s ongoing Music Freedom initiative. According to T-Mobile US, people want their music and Music Freedom is increasingly one of the main reasons for consumers switching to the carrier today.
Gaining insight
The industry model of mobile first means that consumers are always connected when they want to be and have access to not only essentials, but also their mobile entertainment. With big players like Facebook and Pandora seeing even bigger returns on their mobile products, it is clear consumers are spending their time on entertainment platforms. As the mobile entertainment market is projected to grow over the next four years, carriers have an opportunity to gain a market edge by partnering with mobile entertainment services to access information on behavior and consumption from valuable audiences – such as millennials. Mobile carriers and entertainment companies can work together to leverage this data to ensure they are ultimately catering to mobile-first customers, finding ways to better accommodate their needs.
Looking ahead
As carriers are always in search of ways to better bridge the gap to connect more people to the things they care about, no matter where they are, mobile entertainment presents a promising solution. As mobile companies today are focusing on connecting the next billion people, the industry has to work with entertainment providers to drive rapid growth of noncore services.
Editor’s Note: In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this Reader Forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: [email protected].
