Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Super Tuesday - Super New Mobile Apps!

A big day like today brings cool new mobile apps!

First, let me share my own news:

As you know, I recently joined MyFrame Inc., who offers you a cool new mobile application called Flixwagon. For those of you who don't know what Flixwagon is, Flixwagon enables anyone with a capable 3G/WiFi mobile phone to broadcast live videos to the internet.

So you're probably saying, "ok, new mobile gig, where's the news?". We partnered MTV. Today, MTV's street journalism team will broadcast from 23 states to ThinkMTV using Flixwagon. Throughout the day, MTV will regularly break into programming and showcase news features from the live reports.

James Whatley from SpinVox shared that that SpinVox has partnered with WNYC Radio to enable greater listener interactivity during the station’s ongoing coverage of the multi-state primary Super Tuesday. Voters will be encouraged to contribute thoughts, comments and observations by speaking messages to a special phone number set up for the radio station. Those messages will be converted into text by SpinVox and will dynamically become a part of the coverage in real time. Hockenberry and Udoji will report on voter sentiments and read select text on-air.

Interesting to see how new means of communication take part in one of the biggest political events. Will follow closely.

Video Content Not Only For The Masses

Chris Albrecht from NewTeeVee reviewed a new start up called Big Think. According to Chris, 

"Big Think wants to become the YouTube for ideas. The site has experts like professor Steven Pinker, author Deepak Chopra, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer answering big questions on topics like identity, politics and media. The video answers to these questions are supposed to kick-start discussions with people like you and me who can post responses or comments."

"In a world in which everyone’s a pundit, it’s nice to see someone recognizing the value of experts, but I just can’t see Big Think taking off. It’s just…so…heavy. Questions like “How are language and identity connected?” or “Has capitalism run mmok?” require too much brainpower when I’m multi-tasking with my computer, and the answers are snippets, so the topic can’t be more fully explored. While I haven’t watched all the videos, the only “fun” on Big Think I came across was “Writing for the Harvard Lampoon,” and “What is the most lavish party you have been to?” It’s like I’m reading cartoons from The New Yorker — clever, but fun in a way that’s elitist. Ultimately the whole thing feels like a big Ivy League club that I’m not welcome in."

Putting the writers' negative impressions aside, Big Think have a very smart segmentation, aiming to the higher-end of the population and not necessarily to the masses. When evaluating start ups or new websites, one must differentiate between the relevance for him\her and the relevance for the target segment. Although Big Think might make some people feel as if they are in a big Ivy League club to which they are not welcomed, many others might feel at home. This is exactly what segmentation is all about – specifically tailoring products and services for designated populations. Of course people who do not belong to the relevant segment might feel left out. Otherwise it wouldn't be segmentation at all. This is precisely the reason why adults might feel left out when their children play with Barbies, or action figures. Or why career driven businessmen might feel out of place in a cooking course. Good segmentation. That's why.

The segment of choice for Big think, the higher-end, is a segment that spends hours online and is always on the search for quality resources and quality content; i.e. the high-end segment is also part of the addressable market for video content. While this segment might have been consuming "light" content, it is well-equipped to enjoy more complex messages and will probably appreciate "heavy" content.

Some examples of successful segmentations have already made their way into marketing textbooks (such as manufacturing different car models to address different segments). Video content as a market has already reached the masses (YouTube, MetaCafe etc'), therefore segmentation is the natural next step. Lately we started to see some players addressing specific segments, like 5min and now BigThink. So, if you feel left out, don't worry – some player will target your segment soon enough.

This post was originally posted on The Flixwagon Blog.

Ringback Tones Promotions

Hi all,

Xmas is right around the corner with its creative ringback tone mass media campaigns... But before that, I didn't want to leave without acknowledgment a few RBT campaigns from the last two months.

First campaign is brought to you from Colombia. The Colombian mobile operator Tigo has partnered Sony BMG to promote its content in a leaflet inside CDs and DVDs. Now Colombian CD\DVD buyers can simply send the short code that appears on the leaflet via SMS and get their own Backtone (Tigo's service name for ringback tones). The most crucial factor in this campaign is the offered playlist -- it would be very clever to offer music of the same type as the bought CD\DVD.

The second campaign is brought to you from the US. American mobile operator Cingular the mew AT&T launched a huge "Win a trip for 2 to meet Fall Out Boy, 50 Cents or Taylor Swift" campaign. AT&T users are encouraged to "Find Your Tone-ality to Fit Your Personality" and download an Answer Tone (AT&T's service name for ringback tones) and apply. Then, "if the artist calls you and hears his or her own song, you've won!"

And I can't wait to see this year's ringback tones Xmas campaigns... now that's a treat :)

Radiohead: Name Your Price for the New Album

The fact that a music band releases its new album as a digital download two months prior to its traditional hard-copy release didn't strike us by surprise. but the news about Radiohead releasing its new album and enabling its listeners to name their own price for downloading the album via its website, is a huge deal!

"There's no label or distribution partner to cut into the band's profits — but then there may not be any profits. Drop In Rainbows' 15 songs into the on-line checkout basket and a question mark pops up where the price would normally be. Click it, and the prompt "It's Up To You" appears. Click again and it refreshes with the words "It's Really Up To You" — and really, it is. It's the first major album whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay for it. And it's perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all."

shortly before the band started writing new songs, singer Thom Yorke told TIME, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F*** you' to this decaying business model."

[via Times]

It will be very interesting to see how "naming your own price" will work as Radiohead's business model.

College Students Are More Open to Mobile Advertizing

According to a new study from Ball State, "Technically oriented college students are increasingly receptive to receiving advertising via text messages on their cell phones and other mobile devices".

"An analysis of mobile communications by college students during 2005-07 found that 56.3% of respondents would accept ads if they would get something free, said Michael Hanley, a Ball State advertising professor and mobile marketing researcher.

About 37.4% of college students said it would only take the offer of a free ringtone for them to would accept advertisements on their cell phones while 21.4% preferred a discount or coupon to a restaurant, movie or grocery store and 20% wanted free minutes, upgrades, access to the Internet or music."
[via MobiAd Network]

Update: Continuing on the search for analysis about mobile advertizing I found this (which I think supports the findings from above):

Acording to a study by media agency Universal McCann "people always complain about things that are interruptive - it still works in traditional media but in this environment consumers have so much choice where they source content from and if it detracts from the experience they will go elsewhere.

The survey, which covered 9,500 people with a mobile phone and an internet connection in 21 countries from the UK to Mexico, suggests the marketing opportunity to reach gadget users is bigger than ever.

Consumers in the developing world were the most receptive to advertising, particularly Mexico, China and Thailand, while the US, France and the UK were the least receptive markets. On a mobile phone, the best forms of advertising were opt-in Bluetooth formats that provide information or vouchers direct to the mobile, popular with 72% of the global sample, and sponsored search results. Adverts on mobile internet pages and TV adverts on mobiles were rejected by 61% of respondents.

For podcasts and videocasts, sponsorship was the most valued form of advertising, followed by brand recommendations from presenters. Adverts at the beginning of the clip were acceptable but interruptive ads in the middle of a video or audio clip were not."

[via The Guardian]

Harnessing Blogs for Marketing Campaigns

Hi all,

I was invited to give a presentation about blogging from a marketer's perspective. As a blogger, I get many press releases sent to my inbox everyday, hoping to get featured. However, many of them are irrelevant to my field of expertise and to the topics I cover at my blog. Eventually, many of those press releases find their way to my trash can...

At the ordered lecture, I want to present examples of smart and creative marketing campaigns that harnessed the power of popular blogs for marketing goals. I started to search the web and found this amazing story at Word of Mouth Marketing Association website:

"Toyota recently completed a campaign in which it engaged a team of Greek bloggers to spread the word about its new hatchback model, the Auris. Toyota wanted three things from its Greek Auris campaign. One, it needed to be digital. Two, it needed to put the car's interior -- its "cockpit" -- front and center. And three, it needed to inspire test-drives and get consumers into the driver's seat.

To achieve its goals, Toyota decided to let its customers market the Auris for it. It invited 15 Greek bloggers to test-drive the car for a week, and encouraged them to post their findings to an official Auris Blog as well as to their own blogs. The results:

* Bloggers wrote 55 posts about the Auris.

* Readers posted 175 comments to the bloggers' posts.

* The Auris Blog received 52,000 visits from 41,000 unique visitors.

* The campaign generated 2,000 test-drive requests -- 50% of all test-drive requests."

[via WOMMA]

If you have more examples of this kind of marketing activities - please contact me. I promise to give you full credit for it :)

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.”

Mix Sherpa: A New Mobile Music Discovery Service

Hi all,

Today I wanted to review a very creative campaign done by Sprint to promote its new mobile music store called Mix Sherpa.

Sprint was looking for a way to create buzz and raise awareness for their recently launched Music Store in an already very crowded space with Verizon's, T-Mobile's and The New AT&T's (Cingular) music download stores. Also, the audience of "Advanced Connected", which Sprint wanted to reach, is extremely averse to traditional advertising and blatant promotion.

So how did Sprint manage these challenges?

The human\social angle - Sprint invented a whole story about 2 characters:
Ias Westbury, a washed up pop star from the 1980s running a record store on Melrose and DJ Supahboy5 who works at Ian’s store. To make the story seem more real, Ian even has his own myspace page and a music video for Ian’s one and only hit from the 80s called “Under the Moon” [which was directed by the music video legend Nigel Dick, (Tears For Fears, Guns N’ Roses, Britney Spears)].

The added value to the user - Sprint integrated a discovery and recommendation engine into the story about Ian:
Users engage with Ian and the DJ by creating their own playlists and in return getting an “expert” review of their choices. Users also get recommendations based on the newly created playlist. The added value for the users is the discovery of new music that fits their tastes and the reaffirmation of who they are and what their musical taste says about them.

Finally, piling a playlist and getting exposed to new music while interacting with a cool character will (hopefully) generate Sprint music downloads! Who wouldn't want to take the playlist to the mobile? Especially if the recommendations will prove themselves as precise, or in Ian's words:

"You go to the site and select your own custom playlist. Through the magic they call a “logic engine” - I'm able to analyze your playlist - and maybe analyze what's going on in that head of yours too. I'll offer you everything in my arsenal with humor, wit and charm - naturally. My longtime employee DJ Supahboy5 is also online to interject with his own opinions on songs and styles. We've got information on bands and songs, and links to download everything you need to take your mobile phone to the next level“.

As for the mobile part, Sprint offers "Sprint Music Manager" which is PC client that helps you sync your music from your PC to your mobile using a USB cord. As I don’t have a Sprint phone (I don't live in the US) I asked to get a demo account to try the new service. However, if someone gets the opportunity to play with it in the meantime, please share your experience and insights! :)

Ringback Tones: The Future Digital Music Distribution Channel?

"The overall value of the worldwide music industry has been in decline for several years, falling from a high-point of $39.7 billion USD in 2000 to just $32.1 billion USD in 2006." This is the main drive for the music labels to look for new outlets. One of them is the mobile music market. Lately, we have been witnessing a new marketing approach on behalf of the music labels; the ringtone and ringback tone have started to replace the old single played at the radio stations. Music labels now have been providing exclusivity for new singles mobile operators for a limited time, many times before the album has been even released.

What are the benefits of using this method?

• For the users - users are attracted to the exclusive and hot ringback tone and want to have the latest and hottest new song;
• For the operators - operators create more awareness to the ringback tones service, they generate more usage and hopefully more penetration of the ringback tones service. Also they are perceived as innovative, cool, updated with the current music… And, let's not forget that later on, after the exclusive ringback tone expires, they will notify the users and offer a new ringback tone and so on…
• For the music labels - music labels get the public to spread the word about and play the new release, i.e. increase awareness to the new song and drive sales later on when the album is out.

In Malaysia,

"pop singer Misha Omar released 2 singles as a digital single/truetone, some three months before the scheduled full album release. "This is the way the industry is moving. It looks like we will be doing it for all of our artistes," said Sony BMG managing director for Malaysia, Adrian Lim. Warner Music's new media development manager Wong Mei Chen said the company is also walking down the same path. "That's the trend that the business is going into. You'll be seeing more of that. You'll hear it as a ringtone before you hear it on radio." Wong cited examples like Linkin Park where the ringtone for the What I've Done single, which was released two months before the Minutes to Midnight album in May."

[via The Star Online, Thanks Gabi!]

However, this trend is not limited only to the more advanced Asian markets; some popular international acts are even beginning to sell more ringtones than albums: The Pussycat Dolls, for example, sold close to 80,000 ringtones of songs like "Don't Cha and Beep" while their album only sold about 50,000 copies."
[via The Star Online]

Also, In the past, I presented here another 2 international examples:

• American operator Sprint has used this marketing strategy when it offered, EXCLUSIVELY, Pearl Jam's "World Wide Suicide" single both as ringback tone (Caller Tone) and ringtone.

• And Orange France offered Johnny Hallyday's new ringback tone (Fun Tone) "La loi du silence" exclusively to its users. And here's the clip:

Seems like ringback tones might be the future digital music distribution channel. Any comments? :)

T-Mobile With A Music Offering For UK People

Hoping to captialise on its "Street Gigs"* events and Channel 4 music series  "Transmission", T-Mobile is extending its offering beyond T-Mobile customers for all music fans. How? T-Mobile is launching of a new music site named ARTISTdirect.com/uk. The site will go live on Monday morning and fans will be able to access exclusive content from StreetGigs artists such as The Fratellis, Mika, Badly Drawn Boy and the Arctic Monkeys.

T-mobile has teamed up with US-based ARTISTdirect.com, the largest site for independent music online. Based on the US version of the service, the UK partnership hopes to offer subscribers the chance to download content from its live music events 'Street Gigs' to the mobile and consume more mobile content. The new website will be dedicated to the UK market solely.

Music fans on T-Mobile will be able to download music via T-Zones, and non-T-Mobile customers will also be able to access news and get tickets to secretive StreetGigs and Channel 4's Transmission with T-Mobile.

[via press release]

What I like in this initiative is T-Mobile's understanding that as a consumer brand, it must have have an attractive offering to a wide audience; but even more important is to find the way to engage people which are not nesesarily T-Mobile's subscrubers. By providing them a reason to access the T-Mobile's website and incentivize them to visit recurrently, T-Mobile will build its public image and hopefully will draw more subscribers.

*For the non-UK readers, T-Mobile's "Street Gigs" is a unique series of live music events.

mobileYouth: A New Website

mobileYouth, a part of the Wireless World Forum, has a new look for their website. After getting the word from Josh I looked around and there are two things which are really worth the time to pay a visit:

• mobileYouth people now present videos from "on the street" interviews they run with teenagers. Many players in the mobile industry (and elsewhere) try to target this segment, but what do we really know about it...? This is our opportunity to watch, listen and learn.
• A series of podcasts covering the topics of teens, mobile, marketing and more...

And here is one of the videos about what youth think of mobile marketing. Enjoy!

Cingular (The New at&t) Pumps Up Revenue with "American Idol" (Part II)

Continuing with a very interesting study case of Cingular's long success with sponsoring the "American Idol" TV show, today I want to present the huge success Cingular had in the SMS arena. In case you've missed the first part of the Cingular study case - just follow the link.

For many years, the US was a backwater of mobile messaging in comparison to other regions of the world. However, looking at Figure 1 reveals a remarkable growth; Cingular has doubled the number of sent SMSs within a year (in millions):

Figure 2 might provide an explation for the striking growth: the SMS voting for “American Idol” which has been doubling itself from season to season caused the growth (in Millions)!

However, Cingular has done a lot more than offer SMS voting, it has been very creative with a diverse SMS offering:

1. Voting
All voting are done by texting the word ‘vote’ to a different number to vote for each contestant.

Who can vote?
Anyone calling or any Cingular Wireless subscribers that text message from within Continental US, Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico can cast their vote for the next American Idol. 

According to Cingular’s press release, “it has set a new record for wireless text messaging in the fourth season of "American Idol". The company recorded more than 41.5 million text messages throughout the show's 12-week voting period, which is believed to represent the largest volume of text messaging in a single campaign in the history of the U.S. wireless industry.”

Season 3 had an 80% increase over season 2 with more that 40% of all participants had never sent a text message; and the most outstanding fact - from the first to the last voting episodes, text votes increased by nearly 700%! (According to “The Future of Mobile Media” by Lucy Hood, News Corp Content & Marketing, April 27, 2005). It would be only fair to say that “American Idol” taught the American nation how to SMS!!

2. Vote Reminder

Cingular offers its customers to sign up to a vote reminder. Customer then receives a recap of the contestants and their voting numbers just as the voting window opens. To sweeten the offering, customers who sigh to the vote reminder service can earn 25 bonus sweepstakes entries and get standard message rates apply to all messages sent and received.

3. Trivia Game

Cingular offers a trivia game about the idol’s facts. To play, customers need to register for the weekly game. Registered customers get 20 new questions each week direct from the show. Each question answered correctly gives 1 point, answer incorrectly and they get 0 points! The top 30 scores are available at Cingular’s web site. Signing up and playing is done by SMS, messages sent and received while playing American Idol Trivia are charged at your standard messaging rates.

Amazed? This is not all... wait for next Sunday to read about Cingular's offering beyond the SMS arena!

Cingular (The New at&t) Pumps Up Revenue with "American Idol" (Part I)

A dear friend of mine just finished writing a very interesting study case of Cingular's long success with sponsoring the “American Idol” TV show. After reading it I thought this would interest many of you; so I asked and was kindly given an authorization to publish the study case at Xellular Identity.

Background
Cingular Wireless, now the new AT&T, is the official and exclusive telecom sponsor of American Idol's 6th season, started on Jan 07 after a huge success as the telecom sponsor for the last four years (2 years under the name AT&T Wireless).

“American Idol” is a televised singing competition which seeks to discover the best young singer in the country, through a series of nationwide auditions. The outcomes of the later stages of the competition are wholly determined by public voting. The format features three judges who critique the contestants' performances in order to facilitate the voting.

“American Idol” has become one of the biggest TV hits: it is the number 1 hour and number 1 half hour show on the American television for the third consecutive season. Also, the TV show won the 2006 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Realty Show/Competition and was nominated for the Emmy 14 times! The successful format was sold to many stations around the world, among them are South Africa, Poland, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, France & the Pan-Arabic region.

Measured by ratings, American Idol was the No. 1 show in America in 2004 while AT&T Wireless managed to reach the 10th place in the top 10 brands of 2004:
 

By 2006, Cingular reached the 7th place(!) and “American Idol” kept its reign as the most viewed TV show:

This case study will show how Cingular has been increasing usage and revenue by sponsoring the show. Don't forget to tune in next Sunday for the second part of this series!

Music Discovery Channels and The $1M Question

The first five items in the “top ten list” of mobile music downloads usually represent about 40% of all downloads. This outstanding figure raises two paramount questions asked by all players in the music industry: how do people discover new music and how can the players help people discover more and more? For the players in the music industry, discovering more music means consuming more. So how do we really get exposed to new music?

One of the main channels for exposure to new information as well as to new music is the mass media. In other words, who hasn’t listened to the radio while driving and got to hear the new single released by the most popular artist? Another channel of exposure is recommendations. Everyone has a "broker" in his social network, who is someone that really knows music and recommends new music and music worth listening to. Brokers are regarded as unbiased, authentic and reliable. Brokers are people that you trust and like their taste and they can be friends, broadcasters, or even music critics...

So heading to the million dollar question, how can these channels be leveraged to promote more mobile music? The first example of leveraging mass media to discover music comes from South Korea. Korean operators invested in new technologies in order to create a more convenient user experience for buying ringback tones. Both KTF and SKT use QR codes. QR codes are 2D codes which are published in newspapers, bus stops, billboards etc’ and contain information which is captured with a cameraphone (like in the illustration above). The cameraphone reads the information stored in the QR code and the user gets his\her new ringback tone (for a commercial of QR codes follow this link to Youtube). The second example is using video clips on a music channel. While the clip is playing, a bubble of information appears on the screen offering the viewers to get this song as their new ringback tone by sending a short code via SMS. Both examples leverage existing user behavior as well as impulsive buying.

A more “techie” channel of exposure is through several web based applications. These applications are actually the technological equivalent of the recommendation mechanism mentioned above. By this I refer to many cool companies like Pandora and Musicovery that developed web tools to discover new music based on tagging, categorizing (Pandora’s music genome project is really worthy of note) and community’s recommendations (usually done by ranking). Musicovey took it a step further with links to iTunes and Amazon.

In the mobile arena, one of the pioneers is MyStrands which just launched its Social Player last week. MyStrands offers a “music player for mobile devices (Symbian Series 60, 3rd edition) with two main characteristics: it is a music discovery tool and a strong community builder”. As a music discovery tool, it provides real-time recommendations of songs that are similar to the currently-playing song. Also, 30′ clips of the recommended songs can be streamed to the mobile device, and users can always learn more about the songs on MyStrands mobile website. To watch MyStrands' demo and more just follow this link.

Hopefully, in the future we will see more of these discovery applications in the mobile arena. If operators and content aggregators would enter this field, we could enjoy a wide range of new services. Imagine getting exposed to new music through the mobile and then being able to set it as a ringback tone in just one click…

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part II)

Welcome to the second part of the digital music coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here.  If you missed the first part you can follow the link.

Let's welcome John:

Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.

Who are the big players in the global music market? Are there new players in the neighborhood at the era of digital music?
Obviously the music industry is dominated by the big 4 record companies - Universal, SonyBMG, Warner and EMI. Much of the decline over recent years has been attributed to the rise of digital music and the increase in unlicensed file sharing (first Napster, then LimeWire and so on) and illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. It goes without saying now that the music industry looks at developments online very seriously. With the rise of YouTube and MySpace and similar sites becoming major players in the marketing of music, and with increasing numbers of mp3 download sites available, some online players stand to become very influential in the music market. If MNOs get it right and build market share in the download market they too stand to become quite significant in the music market.    

What is the future of retail music sales in comparison to the mobile music?
We forecast physical CD sales to continue declining and digital sales to grow steadily.

What are the estimates for music handsets market?
Without giving away too many of the details from our new study, we forecast a very strong future for the sales of mp3 enabled mobile handsets. We estimate that there will be over 1.7 billion mp3 enabled handsets in circulation by 2011, representing a little over 40% of handsets in use worldwide at that time.

Will the mobile kill the stand-alone MP3 players?
Not exactly, no. We believe that the mobile handset will become the primary portable music device for the mass market, but as the whole digital music market grows, so sales of stand alone mp3 players will continue to grow also – so it’s good news for everyone! There will also remain to be a hard core of dedicated music fans who will carry both, as the stand alone players will maintain a lead over mobile handsets in terms of playback quality, storage capacity and so on.

What can you say about the importance of music to the mobile telecoms industry and the impact of digital music on 3G services?
If the services are structured right and priced appropriately, we believe that digital music has the potential to become a fairly substantial ARPU booster for operators. Music will never generate the kind of revenues that SMS makes, but as a value added non-voice service music could become a great revenue booster for operators.

Any examples of marketing best practices in the music/mobile music industry?
Yes, but we’ve written another entire report about that, called ‘Strategies for Creating End-User Demand for Mobile Data Services’, so readers will have to check that out on our site for more details!

What can you say about the positioning of major players and advertising opportunities in the digital music market?
We see substantial opportunities for major brand advertisers to use mobile music as a way to move more advertising spend onto the mobile platform. We believe there are great opportunities to sponsor or subsidize downloads and we think youth-focused brands could make a real impact here.

What are the key drivers for mobile music appeal?
The appeal of music is widespread. To be fair, as with most other services on the mobile platform, the youth segment will surely lead the market as the early adopters, but it would be foolish and short-sighted to think the market starts and ends there. Music is widely enjoyed by all ages from 9 months to 90 years old, so mobile music services should be designed to appeal to all age groups and demographics. Services need to be easy-to-use, cheap, quick and reliable, and the spread of content on offer must appeal to all tastes. Driving the uptake of OTA services will need innovative marketing, which may be where the advertisers come into play, and mobility will need to be positioned as complimentary, not competitive to wireline services. If consumers can believe there is little difference in price between downloading OTA or on the PC at home, they will download OTA whenever they feel like it.

Do culture and orientation influence mobile music consumption? How?
Sure, in all the obvious ways that culture influences taste in music.

Which are the most developed mobile music markets?
Japan, South Korea, the UK, the USA is fast coming on.

What is going to be the next *big thing* in the mobile music market?
Seeing if the price is right!

Also, I just thought about it, do you want to say something about the new iPhone?
OK Xen, I'll tell you what I have to say about the iPhone - but you'll have to tune in next Thursday for it!

Thank you John!

Prepaid Ringback Tones

Today I want to present a very creative strategy for marketing ringback tones and ringtones: the Fun cards.

Hutch is advertising new Fun cards for ringtones, Caller Tunes and a card for Caller Tunes Shuffle. These cards have a 16-digit code which users can buy in shops. There is a wide selection of cards with different tones. After taking the time to choose, users scratch the Fun card for the code and SMS it to 123. Within seconds, they will receive the ringtones or the caller tune they had requested to play on their Hutch phone.

What's in it for the mobile operator you ask?

First, and most important, the Fun cards marketing strategy enables impulsive purchase of ringback tones (i.e. short decision making and leveraging the need for immediate gratifications). Second, it increases ringback tones’ visibility in points of sale. Third, it positions Hutch as an innovative, creative, dynamic and cool mobile operator.

Also, this form of buying ringback tones enables a subscriber to purchase a Fun card for any other mobile subscriber, friend or family and give it as a present. And you can always use it yourself :)

To view Hutch's ad click here

Myxer: Sending Your Web Content to the Mobile

Myxer.com (a service of mVisible), the place where you can easily make and share mobile content, has announced the launch of MyxerMagic - a free download that lets you send any online image to your mobile or your friends’ mobile right from your web browser.

The browser extension can be downloaded for free. After downloading you’ll find the “Myxer - Send image to phone!” command on your right mouse-click menu. Also you can re-size, re-shape and manipulate the image to best fit a phone’s display before sending it. MyxerMagic works with ANY mobile device that accepts MMS regardless of your operator.

“Myxer is about more than just customizing your mobile phone with ringtones and wallpapers - it’s really about leveraging the respective strengths of the internet and the mobile phone to make digital content easily discoverable and accessible anywhere you are […] MyxerMagic completely rewrites the rules of how user-generated content is consumed, because for the first time ever, all digital content is one click away from being mobile content.”

I took Myxer to a test drive and really liked Myxer! However, there are two points to be considered: the copyrights issues and spam. A few more things intrigued me so I asked the Myxer people, and here are their answers:

What is your business model?
Myxer: mVisible's main sales channels are the selling of advertising on its Myxertm Web site and on mobile phones, as well as offering content providers the option to sell premium content. 

How is Myxer positioned in this market?
Myxer: mVisible's main competitors are the existing mobile ecosystem and an uneducated market that needs to be informed that Myxer provides greater access for both content providers and mobile phone users alike. It offers more diversified content, it works on any mobile carrier, and it supports a free marketplace. While there are other companies dabbling in the "off-deck" mobile content space, mVisible is the only company to provide the full range of proprietary Myxer technologies and services combined.  Other companies doing parts of what Myxer does include JivJiv, Xingtone, PocketFuzz, Phonezoo and MyNumo.

What are the barriers to users' adoption of Myxer?
Myxer: The biggest barrier to adoption is the lack of standards that exist on cell phones today.  Each cell phone and carrier combination can present to the user a completely different user interface for downloading ringtones and wallpaper from that of a different combination. We spend a great deal of time and effort on user education in this area so it really has become lemonade out of lemons because this has become a unique company advantage for us. The standards and user education problem is becoming and will become less acute over time because there are improvements being made to the user interface and the users are becoming educated in how this works for their particular environment. 

Thank you Lynn, the most dedicated PR manager I’ve met so far! :)

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part I)

I'm happy to welcome John White from Portio Research Ltd to review the market of mobile music here at Xellular Identity.

John White is Business Development Director for Portio Research and has over 17 years experience in the technical publishing industry. Working in the IT sector previously and in the telecoms industry for the last 9 or 10 years, John has extensive experience in the mobile sector. John has been Editor and contributing author for the newly-released Digital Music Futures 2007-2011 report. 

So first, let's meet John:

XM: Hi John. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
JW: Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks, I hope you are too?

XM: I'm great thanks, great things are happening lately! What brought you to the world of mobile?
JW: I spent a lot of time working in IT and publishing, and I came into the world of mobile through that route about 10 years ago, as a publisher.

XM: What takes up your time other than mobile?
JW: Mostly my three kids, but also my wife, my dog, running, kung-fu, a lot of reading, a bit of rock climbing, fixing up the house, trying to keep my family as ‘green’ and environmentally friendly as possible, enjoying watching lots of movies and many more interests besides…when my children allow me time for them!

XM: Well, heading going to the music market, what are the estimates for mobile music market for the next years?
JW: Overall, we forecast 5 or 6 years of healthy growth for the entire digital music market. How much of that market is mobile will depend on a number of key factors, not least price.

XM: The guys at Mobhappy predict that: “Full-track music downloads over mobile will largely fail, leading operators and content providers to finally realize there are other aspects to mobile music”. What do you think?
JW: Reading that article, I can only agree that IF price and user-friendliness are not sorted out, full-track OTA downloads will never take off as a mass market service. Operators and record companies need to work together to set the price at the right competitive level to stimulate demand. OTA downloads cannot command much of a premium over wireline downloads, as the value-add is pretty minimal. Maybe some teenagers may think that downloading the latest music track from a certain artist is an essential activity that cannot wait a few hours, and so those few may be prepared to pay a substantial premium for the service. But, for the majority of people, if an OTA download is twice the price or five times the price of the same track bought online using a wireline connection, then most people will be happy to wait until they are at home and can download the track for much less. With iTunes setting the $0.99 USD / £0.79 GBP price point as an industry benchmark, we believe that MNOs will be limited to pricing OTA downloads in the $1 to $2 Dollar (approx £1.50 GBP) range in order to remain competitive. MNOs may think this sounds low, but if it successfully stimulates high demand and the MNOs then manage to win considerable market share, establishing themselves as a major route to market for record companies, then the prices should lead to a solid boost to ARPU through growing volumes of downloads.

XM: Lately, I hear many speak about the decline in the ringtones market, is this correct? What is the reason for this trend? What about ringback tones?
JW: Yes, we believe so - let’s face it, if full track downloads are priced at only 1 or 2 dollars, who will want to pay $5 bucks for a ringtone? Of course, we do not forecast instant overnight destruction of the ringtone industry, no, as there will still be huge (and growing) demand in markets where music download services are not yet available. Ringtones and ringback tones will continue to grow in the huge Asian markets (China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc) and in other regions, but in 3G markets such as Western Europe, as OTA music download services proliferate, ringtone prices will surely collapse. Demand for ringtones will diminish in these regions over the coming years.

XM: How does the mobile music industry affect the global music market?
JW: The overall value of the worldwide music industry has been in decline for several years, falling from a high-point of $39.7 billion USD in 2000 to just $32.1 billion USD in
2006. However, we believe that the value of the global music market is set to reverse and grow again back to $38.8 billion USD by 2011. The reason for the growth in the market is the increased consumption of digital music. Revenue from physical sales of music (CD singles and albums) will continue to decline, but the value of digital music will grow over the coming years. Mobile will contribute to this growth, but as mentioned previously, it all depends on getting the price and marketing right.

John White will be here next Thursday for more talkin' about the music market. If you can't wait, you can read more info regarding the report on Digital Music Future by Portio Research, you can follow the link.

Thank you John and see you next week! :)

Communication Technologies in Fiction

I was going through Cellular News and found the following:

"A novel in which the entire narrative consists of mobile phone text messages was published Wednesday in Finland. "The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies, roughly 1,000 altogether, are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in such messages."

[via Cellular News]

This made me try to remember if I have ever read about a mobile phone in fiction (not in professional literature)... I couldn't think of any examples... However, I do remember that the first and only time I've ever read about an IM conversation was in Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" written back in 1995! I don't want to spoil the fun so go grab the book, be amazed from the prehistoric IM chat session described and enjoy.

If you happen to know who was the first author to describe\write about the telephone, mobile phone, TV, PC etc' in fiction\literature please comment or drop me a line. Thanks :) 

Ovum: The Market of Mobile Content - long, hard slog!

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to welcome Michele MacKenzie from Ovum to review the market of mobile content here at Xellular Identity. Michele is a Senior Analyst and a Service Manager for the Ovum advisory service and Practice Leader for Ovum's Consumer Practice. Michele has over seven years' experience in the telecoms industry, specializing in mobile communications and wireless Internet.

Michele, the stage is yours:

A few years ago the mobile content market grew quickly, but growth was fuelled solely by a special kind of content: personalisation, that is ringtones, logos and wallpapers. People regard their phones as highly personal items, and content for making them even more personal quickly proved to be highly popular.

However, in the more general content areas such as news and music, mobile has taken longer to develop and has grown more slowly. Mobile operators have had to deal with big challenges in re-purposing themselves as content media, in terms of technology, internal organisation, relationships with other businesses and relationships with their customers. Progress on all those fronts has been slow, and it is not over yet.

So although the availability of mobile content has taken big strides forward in recent years, we expect revenue growth to be steady rather than spectacular over the next few years. We forecast that global revenues will grow from around US$31bn in 2005 to US$55.5bn in 2010. In 2005 and until the middle of the forecasting period, personalisation applications continue to dominate. But from 2007/8 onwards other application groups such as Alerts and mobile TV and video will increase their contribution to revenue growth. Ovum expects revenues from rich content - music, games and video and TV - many of which are core 3G applications, to drive wireless content revenues from 2008 onwards.

The market place for mobile content was dominated, in earlier years, by the closed portals of the mobile operators. Those days are over now. We estimate that in Europe 50-70% of content revenues are driven from outside the operator-branded portal. The figure is lower in the US, around 40%, but is growing fast. Operators need to move fast in order to capture and maximise these revenues, by putting in place a well thought through off-portal strategy. An on portal and off portal strategy are not mutually exclusive, they complement each other and are both needed. The walled garden is no longer viable: a single portal will not meet all of consumers’ growing demands. And operators benefit from off-portal content too: it drives revenues from data traffic, and we believe it will also help open the way for advertising revenues going forward.

On the global level, mobile content, including data traffic, is around 5% of total consumer service revenues at present. We expect this to hover at around 5 or 6 % throughout our forecast period. The wireless content market still faces a huge number of challenges. Many of the new higher value services such as music, video and mobile TV will go through a bedding down phase and will take some time to reach the mass market, not least of all because of low handset penetration supporting the new services and other key enablers such as DRM. Many players have now made those initial investments and have done the groundwork to either launch the service or prepare for launch. Many are now addressing the early market and looking at how to bring those services to the mass market. Two new areas of great potential are social networking and mobile advertising. These two key areas are intrinsically linked: mobile social networking services can drive mobile advertising revenues. But both are embryonic at present, and wireless players are still grappling with the issues they involve: they are a long way from mass-market uptake.

The key challenges that wireless players are facing when it comes to growing the wireless content market are:

• Increased competition in a convergent world
  Consumers are targeted with content and entertainment services by their TV providers as well as their fixed and broadband service providers and in addition by their mobile providers. On top of that, they may well already have their email or instant messaging account with one of the large Internet portals such as Yahoo! which will also be offering them a range of services. This is where mobile players need to think more carefully about a multiplatform strategy and partnering with other players out there. The market is very crowded with many players looking for a share of both the end-user revenue and the advertising revenue.


• Wireless players move out of the comfort zone
  Providing music and TV services is a different business to personalistion. Wireless players are now exposed to greater competition (see above) which means lower margins. Many will struggle to differentiate and build the business and some will do well to take on the facilitator role rather than compete head on as a service provider. These roles are not mutually exclusive.


• Wireless operators need to harness the off portal opportunity
  There is a growing trend for wireless operators to absorb or subsidise the traffic charges for on portal services. This of course is an area of contention for off portal players, many of whom are reviewing their options having seen increased barriers to entering the rich content market due to prohibitive traffic charges. In order for the rich wireless content market to grow it will be critical for the wireless operators to look at a wholesale data strategy for third parties or flat rate data packages. If you don’t do it somebody else will so it is better to plan your strategy early on.

Do’s and Don’ts To Promote VAS On The Web

Today everyone is talking about viral marketing methods and the importance of a good PR agency... I was going through a few operators' websites and realized that while there are many good examples of web marketing, many operators don't really use their websites to build users' awareness to VAS. So here is my list of 'Do's and Dont's' to promote your ringback tones on the web (you can use it for other VAS as well):

1. Think of your users in everything you do

Some users probably don't know what a ringback tone (Caller Tone/ Caller Tune/ Answer Tone/ Funtone) is, while others never have set it before and need a simple and clear explanation how and where to set it. Some users were looking for something else at the operators' websites and made an impulsive decision to buy while others know what a ringback tones is and entered the website with a planned purchase. Keep in mind that you need to address all these different scenarios and more.

When