Telstra Still Searching For Successful Mobile Content

Australian incumbent Telstra is still trying to find a successful way to promote mobile content…last month I posted about its i-Mode service having an 87% usage rate, but the article failed to point out that Telstra has signed up less than 50,000 to the service, after paying $10 million in licence fees to DoCoMo and another estimated $10 million in advertising…looks like the comment by Dave was right…I assumed the service had been made available to all Telstra’s customers.
So Telstra is building a second software platform to be sold alongside i-Mode. Dubbed ‘Project Active’ for the trial, the service is regurgitating assets from Telstra’s previous failed forays into mobile content — WAP and Loop. Personally, I think the problem is more with Telstra’s business model than with its content or technology, when I left Australia they were pretty expensive…
At the beginning of the year Telstra paid $450 million to share Hutchison’s 3G network, but has reportedly pushed aside Ericsson — which Hutchison was using as an outsourcer and which the telco once described as a “wife”.
Related stories:
Mobile Content Gathers Pace in Australia
The Telly-Phones
Aussie Regulator On Alert Over Mobile Content War

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