Forbes has an excellent article (by Rob Tercek, former CSO of MForma and now his own startup) about the slowing growth of mobile content, and how it is “struggling to break out of the early adopter segment and achieve mass consumption”. The article posits five reasons for this slowdown in growth:
— Lack of focus on mobile content. Despite the fervent hope that mobile content will replace declining voice revenue, the very fact that it is still such a small percentage of total revenue means that carriers don’t promote it. “Wireless carriers promote themselves as reliable telephone services that offer “four bars” and nationwide coverage…The contradictions in the telecoms’ mentality are reflected in operating budgets. The content team at the typical mobile carrier is understaffed and underresourced, tucked away in the bowels of the marketing department.”
–Trying to fit everyone’s foot into one shoe. US and European carriers present mobile content in the same way to nearly everybody. Recently there’s been talk of niche marketing, and a few MVNOs are doing good things in that area, but generally speaking teenagers and grandparents are being offered the same content and marketing messages.
–Lackluster merchandising. What a polite way of saying that the mobile storefront tends to be crap. There’re difficult to browse, difficult to search, and often have long lags between pages, which causes people to just hang up.
–Carriers rely on content providers to stimulate consumer demand. “The resultant content offering seems tired, encrusted with the same names that dominate conventional media.”
–Consumer fatigue. “Mobile content consumption per handset tapers off six months after a new phone is purchased” (which may be why my plan offeres to replace the handset every six months). This is probably because after six months most people have the ringtone they want to hear when the phone rings, the wallpaper they want to look at when starting the phone and the game they want to play while they’re waiting. This is the problem with personalization by casual consumers — their consumption is casual, and once the phone is personalized there’s no need to buy more. The industry has to offer content that people are going to want to pay to see, but not want to keep.
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