Mobile Portal’s All The Rage

Mobile portals are incredibly important for content developers, being the primary way to deliver content to consumers. However, not everybody can (or even wants to) get their product onto a carriers portal or some other giant site. Hence a growing number of offerings for “do-it-yourself” mobile portals – which makes sense, since it is the mobile internet, after all. People developing content for the internet don’t try to get it on Disney’s page, they tend to create their own website. A couple of new offerings for mobile portals were launched today…

JivjivJivjiv (I don’t know what the name means either) is an online store aimed at the small or individual content providers. “Our friendly storefront introduces previously unaffordable
marketing and sales opportunities to artists and businesses that create or produce music, photography, and other forms of arts and entertainment,” according to CEO Joshua Wachs. The stores are not individually branded, they are all part of the Jivjiv website – kind of like shops in a shopping mall. However, they are free to set up…Jivjiv takes a cut of sales. Therefore there is very little risk for the content developers, but they do have to market their store or no-one will go there. I like this because anyone can sell mobile content now – you could put up website with downloads (for example the prolific Claude Bossett, who even offers Moconews wallpaper and ringtones) but now you can actually be renumerated for your content.

On a more complicated note is an on-handset portal solution offered by Silk and Bango. The software adds an icon to the phones menu which allows users to go directly to a brands WAP store. “The combination of Silk’s user interface and Bango’s browse and buy capability gives users a first range experience,” commented Martin Harris, Bango’s Director of Sales. “Silk’s expertise in building Symbian and Java applications compliments our own focus on content discovery and billing.”

Related stories:
The Myth Of The Wireless Walled Garden
Mobile Portals On The Handset

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