The frugal and the frivolous: mobiles diverge at the crossroads

In an article on mobile handsets becoming either high-powered supertoys or extremely simple budget phones is a few gems on where industry leaders wish the mobile content market to head…
“Craig Ehrlich, a board member at Hutchison, owner of the “3 network”, and the chairman of the GSM Association, says the sector does not want to go the way of the internet, where most service providers earn little or no money from the content carried across their networks…”We want people to understand our business model,” says Mr Ehrlich. “It differs from fixed-line businesses, from the internet and even the motion picture business. And we want it to stay different. We don’t want to go down the road of the ‘all you can eat’ model.” Which is unfortunate for them, because most industry commentators believe the success of Japan’s mobile content industry is based exactly on the all-you-can-eat model, and Verizon recently followed suit with V Cast. Still, South Korea has a different model

However, “Niclas Ericson, head of broadcast and media rights at football governing body Fifa, explained how the association would control rights for big events, such as the World Cup. Mobile users might be prevented from viewing internet or TV broadcast footage on their phones, and instead would only be able to view content authorised by Fifa for a mobile device.” I realize sports associations get a lot of money by selling broadcast rights to their games, but this may be going too far. Mobile phones can access the internet, and should be able to access all the internet. Having content created specifically for mobile phones makes it far easier to watch on the smaller and less powerful device, and therefore can be charged to represent the added value, it doesn’t need to be forced on people.

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