Yahoo and Google are both moving strongly into mobiles, and although their approach is different they are having the same effect, according to this article. The branding war that has been fought for the past few years by mobile operators and handset manufacturers may have been lost by both sides, ambushed by a third force — PC brands.
“The handset majors, once unquestionably the strongest brand owners in the mobile value chain, have in the past few years been fighting to defend that position from the increasingly high profile branding of their operator customers, with activities like Vodafone Live! As handsets evolve beyond being mere voice instruments to carry complex content and services, the situation is only getting more perilous for the phonemakers, as content and applications providers’ brands also vie for attention. The threat to the handset manufacturer’s brand, and therefore some of its competitiveness and value, is particularly clear in the MVNO virtual operator sector, where operator and content brand can be merged, as in the case of Disney or sports broadcaster/MVNO ESPN….Again, this (Yahoo’s mobile hub service) is a role that carriers or even handset makers could have fulfilled in the past, but have failed to do so, with piecemeal offerings that will now be subsumed by offerings transferring from the PC internet world — threatening to make those PC-focused brands dominant over those of the mobile specialists.”
The other brand brought up in the story was Apple’s iTunes…
Related stories:
–Brand Owners Take Over Mobile Content
–Yahoo Better Than Google In Mobile?
–@ CES 2006: Interview: Marco Boerries, SVP-Connected Life, Yahoo
–Yahoo To Launch An Mobile Phone With Cingular
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