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Features
Content Delivery >> Mobile Rah!
12/29/2005
What's Up Next?
THE WORLD OF mobile content delivery is changing monthly. Today, most aggregators sell ring tones, still images, and video clips. Tomorrow, many of these companies will be supplementing their product offerings with text messages and news alerts that offer users upto- the-minute information on sports and other issues of interest.
Already, some aggregators have piloted this approach. Smartphones Technologies , for instance, recently rolled out a number of test projects revolving around Short Message Service (SMS) communications of no more than 140 to 160 characters per message. CEO Mike Merrill declines to specify where these trials are taking place, but notes that initially, the company will be broadcasting information such as scores, locker room reports, and more.
“Different schools have different desires, so as we figure out what it is that schools want to do, we’ll broaden the program a bit,” he says. “We’re trying to build flexibility into the program so our customers can use it as much or as little as they want to.”
According to Merrill, SMS is only the beginning. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, Smartphones and other aggregators ultimately are shooting for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), an enhanced transmission service that enables graphics, video clips, and sound files to be transmitted over mobile phones. Once this technology becomes reality, experts predict that advertisements will begin appearing on mobile content airwaves, as well.
Rich Routman, VP of Business Development at Collegiate Images , agrees, predicting that as more and more companies turn to MMS, the high-fidelity 3G Network that exists today (but is largely unpopulated) will become more crowded, both with legitimate traffic and with advertisements.
“I don’t think mobile advertising will relate to a ton of additional consumer product market sales, but it certainly will be present in the near future,” he says. How schools utilize these advertisements, he adds, is up to them. “One year from now, the mobile content industry could change again. That’s the beauty of it all.”
“There is no arguing that cell phones are the tools of choice with today’s generation,” says David Lovell, director of Marketing at the University of Miami (FL). “This [mobile sports content] lets us extend our brand and create a new revenue stream, while giving our fans something they’ll love.”
Market Leaders: Who’s Doing What
The current world of mobile content can be divided into two: content aggregators and content distributors. Aggregators are those firms that pull together content and put it up for sale. Distributors, on the other hand, are cellular carriers such as Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint Nextel. Carriers present customers with the opportunities to purchase content at every turn, incorporating fight songs and other types of mobile content into broad-sweeping initiatives targeted at college-bound teenage customers. Students can either purchase content from their cell phone providers, or buy it directly from the aggregators, where it usually costs less.
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