Enjoy!

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Alan Quayle

“Hi, my name is Alan Quayle, on my weblog, www.alanquayle.com/blog, you can see I’ve been writing about the importance of application developers to operators for several years.  I recently presented on why operators need developers: (click here)

I’m helping the leading SDP supplier identify application developers that should be part of its solution to operators.  Local applications are important to mobile and broadband operators, because:

a) its just easier for operators to work with a local developer

b) local developers better understand the subtleties of their culture to create better applications

Please let me know and if you’re deployed with an operator.  I’ll put it into a list and recommend to the supplier they need to partner with you to win deals in your country.  I hope it generates some business for you.”

Christopher Billich when presenting at MobileMonday Indonesia launch, Dec 2007

Infinita have just released three new reports on the top mobile social networking services in Japan. Without a doubt, all three – mobagetown, GREE and mixi - are doing some incredibly cool things in terms of service design, strategy and business model that are highly relevant to social networking plays, advertisers/brands, agencies, carriers and mobile games studios/publishers trying to figure out the SNS equation on mobile anywhere.

mobagetown Research Report (V2.0) – 206 pages

“Social Networking, Games and Avatars: The Incredible Success Story of
Japan’s No. 1 Mobile Portal”
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mobagetown_research_report_v20.html
Samples: http://www.slideshare.net/cbillich/mobagetown-research-report-v20

Mobile GREE Research Report (V1.0) – 180 pages
“Rags to Riches: GREE’s Transformation into a Top Player”
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mobile_gree_research_report_v10.html
Samples: http://www.slideshare.net/cbillich/mobile-gree-research-report-v10

mixi Mobile Research Report (V2.0) – 111 pages
“Going Mobile: Japan’s Most Successful Social Networking Service on the Big Small Screen”
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mixi_mobile_research_report_v20.html
Samples: http://www.slideshare.net/cbillich/mixi-mobile-research-report-v20

All three are priced at US$ 3,000 each for a company license; they also distribute them as a bundle for US$ 6,750:
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mega_bundle.html

(English version in progress… )

Dalam perspektif persaingan di industri selular saat ini, tampak jelas para operator baru mau tak mau harus terjun ke pasar tarif voice murah. Seiring waktu berjalan, persaingan tak terbatas pada segmen penyediaan tarif voice murah, untuk bisa eksis dalam kompetisi para operator harus menyiapkan strategi pengembangan konten yang menarik. Nah, bagaimana posisi pengembangan konten bagi keunggulan bersaing di segmen operator baru?

Dimensi keunggulan bersaing operator telekomunikasi bisa dilihat dari tiga hal. Pertama adalah Network dan Infrastruktur, kedua adalah Kualitas Layanan (Customer Intimacy), dan yang ketiga, Diferensiasi Service dan Konten. Sebagai operator baru, bisa jadi susah untuk bersaing dalam hal network infrastruktur dan juga kualitas layanan. Sehingga sangat menarik untuk bisa menonjolkan keunggulan bersaing dari sisi value added services (VAS) terutama dalam hal pengembangan mobile content. Apalagi jika diamati, layanan suara dan SMS sepertinya makin turun dari hari ke hari, tetapi bisa dibilang jarang terjadi penurunan tarif untuk layanan nilai tambah.

Namun sebagai operator baru, tentu bukan hal yang mudah bagi manajemen untuk mengembangkan konten dan delivery technology-nya mengingat umumnya pemegang saham lebih tertarik untuk mengejar jumlah subscriber.

Pada tulisan ini, secara garis besar, tantangan pengembangan konten terbagi dalam dua faktor utama, yaitu faktor eksternal dan faktor internal yang dihadapi oleh operator selular. Tantangan industri dan gerakan kompetitor, terutama pemain incumbent merupakan faktor eksternal yang utama. Industri konten bergerak (mobile content) bisa dikatakan saat ini mengalami publikasi negatif terutama dalam pemberitaan SMS premium. Banyak keluhan yang dilayangkan konsumen ke surat pembaca seputar susahnya untuk berhenti berlangganan dari layanan sampai isu perampokan pulsa. Tantangan ini masih ditambah dengan inovasi kompetitor yang sudah didukung dengan teknologi yang makin kaya seperti video portal, live streaming, ringback tone, dan on-device portal. Umumnya operator baru masih terjebak dengan pengembangan konten yang bersifat enhanced voice dan enhanced messaging.

Tantangan eksternal lain adalah trend dari Web 2.0 yang bisa dilihat sebagai tantangan business model dan tantangan distribusi konten yang baru. Konten bergerak dalam hal ini tetap merupakan perpanjangan konten digital dimana media penggeraknya adalah internet. Fenomena yang ada di internet sekarang seperti Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Flickr, dan blogging menggambarkan terjadinya evolusi penciptaan dan pendistribusian konten. Generasi C yang didominasi oleh digital native lebih menyukai user-generated content (UGC) yang bisa mendukung sifat narsisme mereka dan dikemas dengan pola distribusi yang mesh melalui social networking site (SNS). Sehingga bisa dikatakan trend ini merupakan tantangan, namun juga opportunity yang bisa dieksplorasi lebih oleh operator baru.

Kesiapan teknologi khususnya delivery platform untuk mobile content merupakan tantangan internal yang harus dihadapi oleh pelaku VAS dari operator baru. Ditengah beragamnya enabler untuk pendistribusian konten, operator baru perlu lebih selektif dalam memilih platform technology yang bisa menjadi killer application.

Isu komersialisasi layanan juga merupakan faktor internal yang menjadi tantangan operator baru. Yang termasuk dalam tantangan ini adalah adanya teknologi billing-charging yang bisa mendukung variasi transaksi dan pilihan tarif yang bisa di perceive sebagai simple dan value for money. Selain itu juga pola bagi hasil (revenue share) antara operator dengan content partner. Semakin menarik pola bagi hasil, content partner akan lebih leluasa dalam memberikan layanan konten. Operator baru perlu melakukan analisa perbandingan layanan konten dengan kategorisasi yang dilakukan oleh kompetitor.

Hal lain yang menjadi tantangan secara internal adalah komitmen manajemen untuk mendukung pengembangan konten sebagai nilai tambah. Isu strategik yang dihadapi oleh operator baru pada umumnya adalah subscriber growth (jumlah pelanggan) dan market coverage (jangkauan layanan) sehingga dukungan untuk pengembangan konten sebagai layanan nilai tambah, baru merupakan prioritas yang ke sekian dibanding isu stratejik lainnya. Pembuatan business case yang profitable dan sellable ke market adalah kunci untuk mengatasi tantangan ini.

Pada akhirnya berpulang kembali ke operator baru, apakah diferensiasi VAS melalui pengembangan mobile content bisa menjadi kunci sukses untuk menghadapi kompetitor yang ada. Namun diatas semua faktor yang ada diatas, dukungan dari Content Provider kepada operator baru merupakan hal yang crucial. Tanpa adanya dukungan CP, operator baru akan sulit menghadapi persaingan dalam layanan nilai tambah.

The results of this survey will be compiled during the month of July 2008. Findings report will be made available in August 2008 and will be blogged about on MOPocket. Your input and comments are invaluable to this study.

To help out and take the quick survey click here.

[via MOpocket]

The why is still a mystery, but also this is an encouraging trend that mobile Internet is potentially a big market here in our country. Interestingly, the same trend is confirmed by other global and regional (mobile) Internet players, like Opera Mini, AdMob, Buzzcity, etc.

One more thing.

Could you help Google to validate their findings (search log) by doing this search on your mobile phone?

Please enter a search in the format of
“Momo1234 operator plan phonetype”

Example:
“Momo1234 Telkomsel Prepaid 3G Nokia N95″
“Momo1234 Indosat Matrix Huawei Modem”

Welcome to the weekend Web, where people are spending a bigger slice of time online via wireless devices—and using a different set of sites than during the workweek. “At Google, we see the majority of our desktop traffic [in the U.S.] during weekdays,” says Matt Waddell, chief of staff for Google Mobile. “On mobile, the situation is completely reversed.” Mobile browsing surged 89% in the past year, with mobile page views increasing by 127%, according to researcher M:Metrics. The increase reflects growing availability of all-you-can eat data plans and increasingly sophisticated handheld devices such as the Apple iPhone.

Do you see the same trend in Indonesia? But, nevertheless, one thing for sure is “there’s an opportunity to do things that are unique” with mobile. Mobile technology was originally viewed as a way to extend the PC Web, not anymore? Understand the differences, and exploit it. Welcome to Mobile.

Bonus link:

• Christopher Billich’s presentation from 2nd Asia Mobile Marketing & Advertising Summit, slide 24-25 – “Something entirely new will arise from this, we just don’t know yet what it will be” (link) CORRECTED link

Ed.: that’s one quarter, so is it going to be like 35-40 trillion Rupiah a year? That’s a significant number, right? As a comparison, my consultant’s revenue estimate for Indonesia Telco operators is around 90 trillion rupiah.

Overall ad revenue growth was driven by ad spending in telco (operator and handset promotion). This category is growing by 78% to about 815 billion rupiah. Contributing about a quarter of the ad revenue growth.

Lastly, based on media type, TV still dominates where companies spend their ad dollars (62%), followed by newspaper (34%) and magazine / tabloids (4%). However, newspaper ad revenue grows by 38%.

Which makes me wonder, actually, what is the portion of ad served by mobile and online media? AdMob latest MobileMetric (March 2008) reported that Indonesia is serving 133 million ad impressions in March alone. That should count as something…

How we, the mobile player, are going to grab a significant portion of the ad spending?

Link:

• Kompas: Belanja Iklan Terus Membesar

Graphics (courtesy of Kompas)

He challenges the old perspective of monetizing music as product as wrong by starting “Instead of try to sell music in a particular way that they want to sell it, they must start offering in the way that people actually want to buy it”. A very good argument on how music industry should change to adapt to the new consumer in order to survive.

A move from “content is king” concept to “open is king” which is also my personal business religion. If you like the video, you may also want to visit Gerd at his blog at www.mediafuturist.com. He had recently published a book titled Mobile 2.0 (off course), which PDF version also provided as downloadable with “pay as you like” business model.

[update: company name/link correction] mobilestance.com interviewed Nihal Mehta, founder and CEO of Buzzd – the winner of MobileMonday Peer Awards 2008 Barcelona: here’s the link.

Buzzd combined social networking, LBS, behavior analytics into a very interesting mobile marketing services. Recently they struck a deal with Helio (another interesting MVNO to watch – albeit their recent challenges). Head on the above link for the interview and a YouTube video about how Buzzd works on Helio handset.