The Effect of Carrier Control on The U.S. Mobile Market

M:Metrics recently claimed that 90% of all content sold is via the carrier deck… Senior Analyst Mark Donovan talks about what effect this has on the market.
“It’s important to note that the U.S. mobile industry is not indicative of where the market is at on a global level. The European mobile industry has thrived thanks to government-mandated technology standardization. Thanks to this inter-carrier cooperation, half of all mobile products are purchased “off-deck” directly from the game’s developer or publisher, instead of from the carrier itself. Since carriers still take a cut of every download whether it’s done through them or not, the system allows everyone to win.”
The result of this large reliance on carriers to sell content in the US means that placement on the carrier deck is all important: “Verizon currently offers 481 games for download. So if there are five or so games listed per page, with each game receiving perhaps 16 characters for a description, it makes a huge difference whether your title is number 11 in that line-up, or number 432.”
So if the a game seems to be doing well it will be placed high in the carrier deck — which means it will do well. I think it also means branded games will have an advantage as carriers place them higher in the deck because they have an easily recognisable name.
At CTIA, Michael Gallelli, Director of Product Marketing, T-Mobile USA said: “As a carrier we look for games where the game play isn’t necessarily as good but it’s got a good title. The interesting thing is that our customers find the good gamesâ

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