The next stop in the evolution of the wireless industry is customization. And it’s expected to hit with all the subtlety of a tornado.
This is not your father’s faceplate. Not only will your ring tone and ring-back tone identify you, so will your preloaded games and which MVNO you use.
Customization is sure to spike revenues. People pay to belong to certain clubs, whether that club is the NHL, NASCAR or the soap opera “All My Children.” (Fred Flintstone is prehistoric and still cool, despite the fact that he hasn’t made a movie in forever. Just ask my friend Renae, who loves all things Fred. While she might shun using a Fred faceplate in the office, I am sure a Fred screensaver would be worth a few bucks to her, along with the Flintstone theme song, Yabba-dabba-doo ring-back tone and a bowling for Brontosaurus burgers game.)
In fashion, venerated designer Emanual Ungaro (according to InStyle magazine, not me) said women are feeling powerful these days, and that sense of power “has made them very unfaithful customers, but in a good way. … Now they shop everywhere, building their own style by mixing together whatever they like from wherever they choose.”
Sounds like customization to me. The interesting thing about the wireless industry is it can capture men and women, appealing to their senses of style.
It is difficult to imagine which major brands won’t be playing in wireless at some point. Will Tommy Hilfiger sell a handset with his tiny red, white and blue logo somewhere on the phone? The people at FOX Interactive Sports told me people are loyal to Howie, Terry and the rest of the Sunday morning NFL crew, and that loyalty could be leveraged into a wireless brand, partnering with a handset manufacturer to sell a FOX-branded faceplate and preloaded games. Virgin Mobile USA has leveraged its brand into 1.75 million customers. AT&T Corp. is looking at an MVNO business too.
Past arguments of whether MVNOs are valid and whether carriers just become dumb pipes seem to be disappearing. Rutberg Research expounded on that in a recent research note. “Our conversations during CTIA 2004 indicated remarkably positive, and nearly universal, support for MVNOs. This is in contrast to our conversations in 2002 and 2003, where industry executives and observers questioned the value of MVNOs in the hyper-competitive U.S. carrier environment. At this year’s conference, carriers and potential MVNO brands appeared, in our view, both confident and realistic on the opportunities for MVNOs.”
People keep saying that the wireless industry is going to save the music industry; it’s also likely to give some legs to the estates of dead celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
