Where mobile meets media….the end of the beginning? -May 12th

By Dan Jelfs

Dimitry Shaprio’s April 29^th blog about video being the killer app got me thinking about media and what media companies do in the mobile space. Mainstream media companies appear to be facing many challenges, with declining advertising revenues, and challenges in matching available revenues with the cost of media production. In addition the mobile space represents a whole new world of opportunity for media companies, yet mobile media remains mainly unproven even ten years after media companies first started addressing the mobile opportunity with simple text message/SMS based applications.

That mobile media remains unproven means unclear revenue models and therefore risk to media companies. Does a media company wait until the mobile business models become clearer, and in so doing miss the market opportunity? or will they take a more aggressive approach and risk destroying legacy business models?

Personally I think we are FINALLY at an inflexion point for mobile media (…the end of the beginning), that will see media companies take a more aggressive approach with respect to their mobile strategies.

Why? The mobile platform has matured in the last 12 months to a point where brand owners of high quality premium content can create user experiences which make sense, are easy-to-use, are consistent across mobile platforms and maintain or even enhance the values of the media brand at an editorial and production level.

The relevant enabling technologies have come together to create this matured platform include graphically rich touch user interfaces, (which drive 5 to 10 times more consumption of content than non-touch), increased processor speeds, graphics acceleration, increasing air interface bandwidth, and open-source software positively impacting cost and competition in the smartphone segment, to a point where the price of a smartphone suggests that they will soon be a mass market proposition.

So what’s needed to spark the revolution ? Firstly, proof of working business models must be presented and successful case stories shared combined with a strong leverage of the existing mobile ecosystem support mechanisms to help rapidly propagate developments and to review the challenge of delivering to multiple device platforms and types.