The only mobile content predictions you need to read!

I realized that I couldn’t mock everyone else’s predictions without putting up some of my own – put up or shut up, so to speak. So here they are: the eight things that will inevitably come to pass in 2005. Some are humorous, some are serious, some are scary, but all are inevitable. All. If you feel that I have missed something, please let me know. In the event that you do point out something that I am forced to agree is likely to come to pass, I’ll give you a free subscription to the moconewsletter which comes out three times a week and is choc-ful of all the good articles here on moconews.net.

  • Mobile Piracy will be a big issue in 2005, despite the new DRM alliance. RIAA will insist that mobile carriers monitor every piece of data sent between mobiles to ensure there is no “copyright infringing” music being sent – which they will interpret as any kind of music file. Protestations that there are plenty of files which the recording industry does not own copyright to will fall on deaf ears. Someone will create a software program to circumvent the DRM system used by the carriers, and RIAA will sue them.
  • 2005 will see a standards war between 4G and Super 3G – despite the fact that they are pretty much the same thing. The term 4G was being tossed around at least two years ago, but Japanese giant NTT DoCoMo recently gathered 25 other industry participants in a DoCoGang to promote a new technology named “Super 3G”, which sounds exactly the same as 4G. Arguments will rage back and forth, and will go something like this:
    4G purists: We named it first, it’s 4G! Besides, it’s tradition.
    DoCoGang: But it’s so unimaginative. I mean come on, 2G, 3G, 4G, what next? 5G? Whoopie-doo. We break the boring cycle with something new, Super 3G!
    4G purists: Oh yeah? Well what comes after Super 3G? Super Duper 3G?
    DoCoGang: Your mothers wear army boots!
    Unfortunately the dispute will not end in 2005.

  • There will be a much hyped announcement that 4G (or Super 3G, whichever) has arrived “here and now!” despite previous predictions that the technology wouldn’t come in until around 2009, give or take some months. Upon closer inspection it will be revealed that the promoter of the new technology has simply stuck a WiFi chip into a mobile phone handset. The handset flops because the battery life is only 29 minutes, and major media outlets will claim 4G is an abject failure.
  • There will be a strange mixture of joy and consternation in the mobile content industry when 33 consecutive days go by without a new service being heralded as “the killer app of 3G mobile content”. Amid concerns of a either a downturn in the industry, advertising executives being kidnapped by aliens or the secret service or a sneaking suspicion that the last application released (the ability to take a photo of yourself at a particular location and then leave it “wirelessly attached” their for future mobile users to find) was actually the “one true killer app”, news editors will be torn between whether to call the mobile content industry “dead” or “mature”. Luckily, before everything gets too out of hand, Microsoft releases an application that connects your phone directly to your refridgerator AND your garage door, and confidently claims it is the “killer 3G app”. As everyone settles back down the only people left scratching their heads are authors of dictionaries – wondering whether to add “app” to next years addition.
  • Mobile content will become increasingly cross-promotional. Viewers of mobile videos will be presented with codes to buy ringtones and images based on the video, while players of some games will find they have to download (and hence, buy) certain mobile videos to get the information they need to finish the game. In a similar vein, product placement in mobile games will be set backwards when players of one FPS find that not only can they buy bottles of Pepsi from the local store, they can use said bottles to bludgeon their enemies to death. Despite a rise in sales, Pepsi sues the game makers claiming harm to its reputation.
  • Mobisodes will do reasonably well in the first half of 2005, but the second half will see every other show swept away by a cheaply made “reality mobile cameras” style show created by a group of otherwise useless 20-somethings and released on a moblog. The group will parlay their newfound fame into a music deal (one hit single which sells more as ringtones), a guest appearance on The Late Show and several photos in magazines.
  • There will be a mobile phone camera paparazzi rage incident where some haples celebrity ends up punching someone who is taking a picture of them with a mobile phone.
  • Mobile cocktails – services that are “a mix of services that change, that are frequently updated and adjusted distribution channels” – will come to be the most successful form of advertising on mobile phones, at least for strong brands. Companies such as large music or book stores and cinema complexes will find that by adding images and the occaisional ringtone to special deals they offer anyway they can convince people to view the companies ads on their mobiles almost continuously. Meanwhile, consumers will be happy to have easy access to good deals. For once, everyone is happy…

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