Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Back to Nature: Roaring Ringtones

Last week I was amazed by the creativity of Singtones and wondered what more can be offered in this so crowded market of ringtones. The blog reader and Outreach Coordinator Tammy Monroe of Conservation Calling LLC pitched in:

Want a Lion's roar as your ringtone? How about a Frogs Chorus? Conservation Calling offers ringtones (for $2.49) and wallpapers ($for 1.99) to personalize your mobile phones with a wild nature theme. The company contributes 10% of its net revenue to American Forests' Global ReLeaf campaign. Every dollar donated plants a tree. Unfortunately, the service is only available in North America so I wasn't able to get my Dolphin ringtone...

Great cause! Thanks Tammy!

Carnival of the Mobilists at Golden Swamp

This week's Carnival is hosted by the Carnival ringmaster herself, Judy Breck at Golden Swamp. Judy has done a great job of wrangling hosts to insure that the Carnival happens every  week and generally keeping everything running smoothly. This week she's put a fine collection of the latest posts on everything mobile with a timely Harry Potter theme.

Pimp My Ringtones

You'd probably think "hey, what more can be offered in a bursting market of $9 billion of ringtones?!" But creativity has no limits -- my dear friend Russell Buckly of Mobhappy writes about a new personalized ringtone service called Singtones.

"Singtones offer the ultimate ringtone customisation, even more so than Orgasmatones (whatever happened to them?) with the added benefit that you wouldn’t be embarrassed if your Mum heard it.

Singtones offer you the ability to record your very own version of a well known song. Then the software “fixes” those with dodgy or tone deaf voices, so everyone can get a good result. The cost? A mere £1.50 ($3)."

So, what is next...?

8 Random Things About Me

I was first tagged by Tom sometime last year with “Four things you didn’t know about me”, then I got tagged once again by my beloved Mobile Diva, with 5 things and now, once again I was tagged by my friend Rudy with 8 things!!

So, here are the rules of the new 8 Random Things tag game:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

And here 8 Random Things About Me:

1. I love to cook but won't bother to make something just for myself (it's just not worth the mess amd cleaning afterwards...).

2. I'm not a morning type... It takes me hours to wake up and hours to get ready...

3. The best part of the meal is the desert! I usually leave room for it :)

4. I love to read. To get hooked to a new book I usually begin reading on weekends when my mind is free. Then if the book catches me I'll use every free moment to continue reading.

5. If you want to make me happy just take me to a huge book store and leave me with your credit card :)

6. The best music concert I've ever been at was Avishai Cohen's concert about 6 months ago. It really moved me!

7. I hate to sweat. Really hate it. It makes me be nervous...

8. After 13 years of short hair, I'm trying to grow my hair and change styles...

I'd like to tag: Om Malik (aiming high), C. Enrique Ortiz, Helen Keegan, Tomi T. Ahonen, Russell Buckley, Paul Ruppert, Justin Oberman, Tom and Avner

Carnival of Mobilists at ... About Mobility

Sorry sorry sorry for being SO late...

My dear friend C. Enrique Ortiz is hosting the best writing on mobile at his revised blog. So don't miss it, Enrique has done a terrific job!

Ringback Tones - some figures

"Personalization is what is really driving the mobile phone market right now," said Laura Merritt, spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless. "The cell phone has become an extension of people's personalities with ringtones, ringback tones and other customizable options."

"Verizon wouldn't give exact figures on how much money the company makes off of extras like ringtones. However, in the first quarter of this year alone, Verizon customers downloaded 106 million ringtones, ringbacks, songs, games and applications, Merritt said. Each one of these customizations costs anywhere from $1 to $10."Ringtones and ringback tones are certainly among our more popular offerings," Merritt said."

[via The news Herald]

Google Plans to Shake the Mobile Content Eco-System

Search giant Google is developing a new mobile search service to aid consumers seeking to purchase ringtones, games and related premium content. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will offer lists of providers selling the content they seek, and in the future Google will begin charging content firms for placement in its search results, an approach mirroring the sponsored links Google currently offers on traditional Web searches.   

The new search site is said to enable users not only to find a list of mobile content providers, but will also provide an easy purchase interface (through Google Checkout or PayPal). Google has apparently been working “for months with content providers - including large entertainment companies and smaller mobile-media aggregators” in preparation for the services launch. Insiders say to the WSJ that the initiative has suffered a series of technological setbacks, with an official commercial launch date currently uncertain. Google also is said to be mulling a social networking service enabling its Gmail users to exchange content.

This offering will challenge mobile operators who profit well from mobile content such as ringtones, wallpapers etc'. Previous initiatives to create a mobile search engine and mobile content directory like Mobicious haven't dared to shake the eco-system's balance by offering an alternative purchase interface that cannibalizes operators' share. I hope this new challenge will accelerate the process of opening the mobile walled-gardens and create an alternative playground in the image of off-deck/off-portal eco-system.

Frank Dickson of iSuppli: Strong Long Term Growth Lies in the Mobile Full-Track-Downloads

Hi all,

Welcome to the second part of the mobile content coverage.

Today, Frank Dickson from iSuppli will be visiting here. Frank is Principal Analyst, Multimedia Content Services. He covers markets for digital video and home entertainment, with focus areas including IPTV, video on demand, home networking and broadband video.

Hi Frank. How are you today?
Life is good. Thanks for asking.

What has been successful to date and what promises to sell in the future?
In addition to premium content, messaging continues to grow strongly worldwide but with significant regional variation. The mature country markets of Western Europe and Asia saw growth, but the growth in the Americas almost astounding. Growth is strongest among the US operators, several of which saw revenue associated with messaging double in 2006 compared to 2005. Messaging growth is being driven by both increased p2p messaging usage as well as increased premium SMS associated with mobile content purchases and participative TV.

What are the key drivers for market growth for different types of mobile content and entertainment?
The future is all about video! The mobile video market continues to develop, but remains highly fragmented on nearly all fronts. Business models are uncertain. Technology standards are uncertain.  Consumer usage models are uncertain. Content rights need to be resolved. Geographic differences are significant in both content consumption and regulatory environment. As a result, the mobile video market will take time to develop, but offers the biggest potential upside. Competitors across the value chain should participate early to learn and develop a position in the market. Competitors should set expectations appropriately for a highly volatile market with high uncertainty in the short term. Agility will be key to adapt to rapid change.

Many state that widespread consumer demand has lagged after a rapid penetration rate. Why? What are the barriers for market growth of market for mobile content?
The major barrier to growth of mobile content is leakage, as in revenue leakage. Approximately, 5% to 10% of transactions turn out as bad transactions due to fraud, lack of funds on a prepaid card or delivery problems. Another 5% to 15% of good transactions result in refunds due to shady marketing practices, overly protective wireless operators not wanting a customer to have a bad content experience or a lack of transaction visibility for customer service. Wait, did I mention the customer service support call costs? There is money leaking everywhere.

One of the problems is that the wireless operators want to be in the center of the purchase experience.  The billing systems however are built to service reoccurring wireless subscription customers. Wireless operators making themselves the nexus of mobile commerce transactions creates a problem as they are now providing high volume transaction clearing services like those provided by Visa, PayPal and others.  Frankly, processing financial transactions is not at the heart of their distinctive competencies.

How will the services evolve over time?
The mobile music market is among the most dynamic content categories worldwide. Polyphonic ringtones are receding with a transition to realtones. However, on a worldwide basis, the overall ringtone category appears to be slowing. 

Ringback tones continue to gain strength in Asia, but haven't migrated significantly to other geographic regions yet. Video ringtones are among the newest services positioned as a next-generation ringtone.
The emergence of full track download music services continues, with operators worldwide deploying services. Dramatic growth of these services remains mixed regionally and by operator. Consumers are still slow to build awareness, while operators have significant challenges to put together a cohesive and easy-to-use full track music storefront. Overall, in the emerging battle between music phones and mp3/pmp players, the music store and music delivery platform still significantly favors mp3-oriented services. 

What applications will drive the market in the next few years?
We believe that there is strong long term growth in the mobile full-track-download market. However, outside of Asia, the inflection point for dramatic growth is still developing. Overall, iSuppli reduced it’s full track download forecast in this quarters tracker, while increasing our outlook for mobile music streaming services. Full track downloads will continue to be among the strongest mobile content markets, while streaming music services will segment the market somewhat and take advantage the subscription-based business model which aligns ideally with mobile operator business models.

For example, we did end-user primary research to provide more insight into consumer demand.  Approximately two-third so respondents listened to music on they PMP; however, only 10% listened on their phones. This suggests their may be some struggle converting individuals from a usage specific device mentality to unbiquitious device mentality.

A big thanks to Frank Dickson for this great interview! :)

Klonies at the NYT

As a fan of David Pogue of the NY Times, I was very proud to see his review of the Klonies mobile Caller ID:

"You know how young people are spending $10 billion a year on ringtones, just because it lets them express themselves? The next big thing, I'm convinced, will be avatars. This feature, too, was on display: You design your own little character, or avatar, choosing a hairstyle, clothes, facial features and so on. Then, whenever you call people, your character appears on their cellphone screens. I'll bet avatars will be the next huge teen fad in 2010 or so."

[via NYT]

Let me provide some background info for those of you who are not familiar with Klonies; Klonies is a new service of personalized avatars by the mobile solutions provider Comverse, that enables the creation of avatars from a big content library of body types, eyes, hairstyles, hats, glasses, moods, clothes, branded accessories, etc., which can be used in traditional web forums, as well as to extend this experience to the mobile arena. Comverse has created a mobile Caller ID service, by which a user can create his Klonie either on the Web or on his mobile handset. Klonies let youth segment do something they could never even dream of doing before: create expressive avatars that represent them on other people’s phones. Klonies give the users extended means for self expression: they define how they are seen by their friends, on their phones.

Enriched Ringback Tones Offering With Non-Music Content

When you think of ringback tone, the first thing that probably pops into your mind is a personalized music played when you wait for the person called to answer. Last week I came across creative thinking of what can be nice to hear while waiting:

The Indian mobile operator Hutch enriched its ringback tone portfolio with a few creative non-music content categories (apart of the natural/default music category):

• One of the categories offered by Hutch is playing cricket scores for callers. Once Cricket Callertunes are enabled, it will play cricket scores on match days, and even carries a stadium jingle followed by the match details. When the day's play is over, Cricket Callertunes will automatically get disabled and the default Callertunes will be activated. On the next match day, Cricket Callertunes will automatically be re-activated and so on. [No need for me to spell it out how these so frequent updates generate $$, right? ;)]
• The second category offered by Hutch is called “Busy Callertunes”. Once it is enabled, callers will know that you are unable to take their calls. You can set an appropriate Busy Callertunes to tell when you are in a meeting, at the movies, have low battery, or on a holiday, without answering the phone (activation is made by sending SMS).

This is a great example how “thinking out of the box” can help operators build a creative and wider offering which attracts many more users to the service. And I’ll end this post with the TV commercial of the Cricket Callertunes - enjoy!

Frank Dickson of iSuppli: Content Will Be the Battelfield

Hi all,

Today, Frank Dickson from iSuppli will be visiting here. Frank is Principal Analyst, Multimedia Content Services. He covers markets for digital video and home entertainment, with focus areas including IPTV, video on demand, home networking and broadband video.

Frank has over a decade of industry and market research experience. In his most recent prior role, he was Senior Director of In-Stat’s Convergence Groups and responsible for the firm’s multimedia and convergence research. His coverage included multimedia services, content, equipment, infrastructure, and residential connectivity, and semiconductors. Frank has a Masters Degree with Distinction from The American Graduate School of International Management and an MBA from Arizona State University. He also holds a Bachelors of Science Cum Laude Degree in Operations/Production Management from Arizona State University.

Getting to Know Frank

Hi Frank. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
Life is good. Thanks for asking.

What got you interested in mobile?
Greed. Whoops. Did I cross the line from honesty to transparency?

Wireless subscribers are measured in “B’s” as in billions. hat type of market size means that a whole lot of people have a lot at stake and are willing to buy research. 

What takes up your time other than mobile?
I live in Arizona with 360 days a year of sun shine. Time for me is spent in sporting activities or watching my son play baseball. It is not a life as exciting as 007, but I like it all the same.

The Market of Mobile Content

How big is the market for mobile content and entertainment?
REALLY BIG! Try almost US$20 billion worth of big. Music alone with its multiple usage applications will almost reach US$9 billion.

Which important trends are shaping the mobile content market?

1. Growth in ringtones & Ringtunes is slowing. Asia and Europe are maturing, while heady growth rates in North America moderate. Continued growth in mature markets will migrate to product extensions of ringtones and development of full-track download and streaming music services which will take time to develop. The growth opportunities for digital music across all categories are shifting to the emerging mobile markets: Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and developing Asia. 
2. Mobile gaming growth is slowing significantly, particularly in Asia. However, North America remains a growth market. Furthermore, game quality is improving with new advanced 3D graphics technology in handsets and multi-player gaming capabilities. The opportunity to expand the market relies on broader awareness for the core segment of casual mobile games, and development of new gaming segments. Developers and operators need to focus on leveraging the unique characteristics of mobile gaming: mobility, connectivity and location.

How significant contributor to the overall revenue is the mobile content expected to be in the future?
How significant? It seems to be the battlefield will be centered on content. The markets for mobile premium content, including music, video and gaming continue to drive operator data revenue.  Messaging continues to be a strong market as well, with dramatic growth in North America. 

Operators are looking to mobile content and other value-added services for 1) Revenue growth and 2) churn reduction. As the operators are the primary mobile distribution channel, content providers, application providers and technology providers need to focus on these two objectives.

Voice ARPU declines accelerated in the quarter for most of our profiled operators. Across the 20 key operators, Q1 2007 aggregate voice ARPU declined 6% sequentially compared to Q4 2006. Voice ARPU declines were mixed among operators on a worldwide basis with some seeing slight increases while others were down. Meanwhile mobile data ARPU increased sequentially by 1%. Overall, most of the global operators saw Data ARPU growth. Data ARPU is particularly strong among North American operators, where both messaging revenue and mobile multimedia content are seeing strong growth.  Across all the operators, nearly 20% of revenue is now associated with data. Three of our tracked operators get over 30% of revenue from data: SK Telecom, NTT Docomo and O2. Aggregate subscriber growth slowed to 3% sequentially in Q1 2007, down from sequential growth of 6% in Q4 2006.

Thank you Frank! :) Don't forget to join us next Sunday for the second part of this interview.

No More Ringbacks for GrandCentral Users

Google confirmed yesterday what the blogosphere has suspected: it has acquired GrandCentral Communications, an online voice communications management startup. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal will result in one notable change for GrandCentral users: users will no longer be able to upload their own ring back tones. Instead, GrandCentral users "will be able to choose from a selection of licensed sound files made available within the GrandCentral service."

Looks like Google wants to avoid copyright issues related to users' uploaded music. Another possible reason I read is to assure potential mobile partners that Google isn't a threat to their ringback tones business. I'd really love to hear what you think about this move my dear RBT experts! :)

Then I Met Om Malik In Person :)

And here are some cool pics - and Thanks Niv for the right to publish them :)

Blogference: Om Malik's Presentation

Om Malik gave an outstanding presentation, focusing on his insights as a professional blogger.

“The early traffic trends of Gigaom made it clear: you can build an audience of a magazine that costs many $M with a laptop, a cellphone and a broadband connection.”

However, to meet these goals you need to:

1. Define your mission statement – what is your value proposition for the end reader?
2. Have an answer to “why are you blogging”?
3. “If you screw up – say that you did, otherwise people would move on to the other 20M places that exist on the web.”
4. “Remember that your readers are smarter than you think and smarter than you think you are.”
5. “People should behave in blogs the way they behave in real life.”
6. “People who disagree with you are more helpful to you in the long run - they say something about you.”

Om also provided some insights for the PR and marketers among us:

1. Marketers don’t put the time to read the blogs and think about the reasons of bloggers to write\think as they do. So, you should invest the time to learn the blogger and only then communicate on one on one basis.
2. Do your homework - sort which blogs you should pay attention to.
3. You have to treat every blogger as a newspaper journalist.
4. Give him\her an opportunity to talk with your CEOs.

As an example of business reaching to blogs "the right way", Om presented the case of Joost. Joost offered GigaOm’s readers 20,000 invites; by doing this Om not only provided an added-value to his readers in the form of his insights but also gave them 20,000 invitations. Joost, on their side, got 20,000 tech savvy users who were eager to take the app for a test drive. It is clear how everybody wins… 

As for GigaOm, Om was asked about his shift from the online media, Business 2.0 magazine, to his private-held blog\business. His answer was that while he was a Senior Writer at Business 2.0 and writing GigaOm (on the same time) he realized that the blog was getting more readship, as well as more recognition and more alert discourse was being held through the blog. And the rest is history...

Putting aside the profession for a moment, I have to say that I was very impressed of Om as a human. There is so much for to learn from him... :)

And last quotation – “Thanks to blogging, I take other opinions more seriously.”

Second Day of Blogference Begins

Hi all,

I just got to Om Malik's workshop about the interaction between blogs, bloggers and business companies. I'll try to update as we go or later on.

Have I said already I'm a big fan of his...? :)

Update: Om just confessed he has a hangover :)

Live Blogging from Blogference2

Niv Calderon published some pics of the first day. Enjoy!

Live Blogging from Blogference

The second panel at the Blogference was dedicated to the behavioral needs which lead people to blog.

Dr. Yair Amichai-Hamburger,Director of Bezeq International Research Center for Internet Psychology, IDC Herzliya presented some figures about the blogging motivations. While most of the motivations were very obvious, one of the major motivations he stated is the feeling of loneliness and depression. According to his research, people who feel lonely find a relief in blogging.

Even if it contains truth to a certain extent, I think this statement is very generalized and doesn't take in count that there are many different types of bloggers and blogs. Is it the main motivation for many of the professional blogs we see around...? Hm....

As for the 'personal blogs' type, there are many bloggers who write them while being social people in their nature. I've heard many times that people find blogging as a time-saving method to update and keep in contact with many of their friends at the same time...

More thoughts on this later on [it's a little hard to blog and listen at the same time ;)]

Blogference - Update

The first panel was mainly focused on blogging in the political sphere. One interesting case study was leveraging blogging to promote a nation's public image. David Saranga, the Consul for Media and Public Affairs has opened an official blog called "IsRealli". This blog aims to present news and facts about Israel that the mass media doesn't cover, or in other words - this blogs tries to provide wider information about Israel and change the current negative public image Israel has in the eyes of the world.

David said this was the first official blog of a country (cool!). IMO this is a blessed initiative however the execution is somewhat naive... It should be way more provocative to generate traffic and web awareness. Maybe they should hire marketers? Ahm... ;)

Blogference

Hi guys,

I'm at the Blogference at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. "Blogference combines both the academic and practical aspects of blogging, addressing both the latest research and showcasing new blogging elements." Among the speakers, Om Malik, which I really hope to meet, will give a workshop. Also there are plenty of bloggers attending on the second day, looks very interesting. 

I'll try to bring you updates as we go... :)