–Verizon’s restructuring of its content/marketing division received the thumb’s up from JCMOKE:
The movement of mobile content into Bill Stone’ group is, largely a good idea. This indicates that VZW recognizes the importaance of the data revenue stream. VZW further recognizes it is lagging behind Sprint in terms of data usage and adoption.
Bill Stone’s group is more mainstream within the company and is better positioned to evangelize for a greater marketing emphasis on data. Bill is in a much stronger position to lobby for ad campaigns, promotions and media buys.
On the topic of companies struggling to work out how to succeed in mobile content, a self-described Infospace Employee gave an opinion on why the company wasn’t doing better than it should:
Shawn is 100% correct. When he was in charge we at least had a simple and cohesive vision: To be the largest ringtone company. Jim and Kathy did a good job at cutting costs but they have no vision. We never see them in the LA office. It takes forever to get any decisions made and they won’t invest in new projects that could make us more money. They don’t even know how to respond to competitors that are simply moving faster than us. They lucked into the Moviso acquisition which made them so much money they all got such large cash bonuses that they had to be disclosed in the quarterly financial statements. Meanwhile, all of us who made it possible get 2% raises and worthless stock options. And they wonder why people are leaving in droves.
–I opined that Apple shouldn’t form an MVNO, and Karel disagreed:
I believe that for Apple MVNO makes sense, because by controlling majority of online music download (which would be the case if Apple would go more agresively into mobile domain) Apple would gain power over record labels, thus would be able to put pressure on the music value chain and increase its own margins. Mobile phones are for Apple in my opinion trojan horse to sell more ipods since mobile combined with ipod will be always just mobile. Mobile market is way bigger than ipod market and its great opportunity to recrute new customers for ipod. Same way as mobile phones with digital camera drive interest of people in digital cameras.
It’s an interesting point…when people started using the digital cameras that came with their phone some of them developed a passion for photography and found that the camera on their handset wasn’t good enough. It’s possible that putting MP3 players on mobile phones with large memories will result in some people developing a passion for listening to music (and watching videos, etc) all the time, and they’ll want better devices. Though if that were Apple’s strategy they’d be better served licensing their software so it could be put on all mobile phones.
–Gideon Marken responded to the reports of ringtone piracy with the suggest that using the Flash Communication Server would solve the problem.
In my recent research – I found that Flash Communication Server (FCS)will stream mp3 files to the user in a way that the browser does not ‘cache’ the file – because there isn’t a file. FCS streamd the data but never the whole mp3 file – nor does it reveal the location of the file. This is the problem with most Flash mp3 players – they pull down an XML file that sits in your cache – a user w/ some basic skills can type about:cache in their browser address bar – search for XML – locate the file – grab the URLS and download directly! So that’s no good – and embeding the mp3 right in the page isn’t good either – and that’s where FCS can come in and fit your needs.
The end result is an embeded flash/mp3 sample of your ringtones – but there isn’t a way to obtain the actual mp3. The only thing a user could do, is record it – or use some type of steam to mp3 tool – which will not meet their needs in terms of ringtones.
–Joshua Jabs, Research Analyst at Piper Jaffray & CO is unimpressed with the record labels’ plans for the mobile music market.
A couple of glaring misconceptions either on the part of the author or the industry (cellular/telcom) in this news.com article. I’m guessing the carriers aren’t this clueless, but who knows.
Most glaring misconceptions:
1) The wireless broadband connection that news.com and others are talking about is $80 a month (just for the connection). Add paid downloads on top of that and how much of the target audience is going to pay? I say very little, at least until the connection cost has been commoditized. For music to take off in its current form, especially in the U.S., it needs to go dual delivery.
2) The article points out that people are willing to pay $3 for a ringtone as validation that the customer is willing to pay more than $3 for a song download. THIS GUY and THE CARRIERS, must be new to digital media if they think this is true. Ringtones are meant for personalization and purchased only occasionally. Music is for entertainment and purchased in much higher volumes. Both are music, but with very different purposes. While a customer may be willing to pay more than $0.99 for the impulse download our survey shows that even $0.99 is too much for the average consumer.
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