Sprint Nextel Outsources Some Content Acquisition

Sprint has joined the ranks of the carriers who are getting sick and tired of mobile content…that’s a little harsh. Actually, the carrier has effectively outsourced its ringtones and wallpapers service, signing up Oasys Mobile and Moderati as the two “agent partners” for the service, which everyone else will have to go through to get their content on the Sprint deck. “Oasys Mobile and Moderati said they plan to review proposed content, make recommendations to Sprint Nextel, license the content from the rights-holder, format and test the content, present it to Sprint Nextel for final approval and push it live to customers.”
This could be a good idea because mobile carriers are not media companies, so it makes sense to outsource the complicated content side of things to companies that specialize in that area.
For Sprint, the deal should mean it gets new content quicker and won’t have to invest in signing deals with all the various content players. For Oasys and Moderati the benefit is obvious — as gatekeepers for one of the largest mobile operators in the world in terms of data revenue and the carrier with the highest US data ARPU they’d have to be brain-dead not to increase their revenues and profits.
This will be especially useful for Oasys, which is trying a number of innovative market practices but is still losing money hand over fist. In the second quarter it reported net losses of $1.78 million on revenues of $1.81 million (which is lower revenue but also lower net loss compared to the first quarter this year). Oasys lost the Sports Illustrated contract (which could be a good thing if it cost more than it made) and has “just finalized (a) partnership with a major music label to enhance the content offering of our new mobile lifestyle portal, OasysMobile.com”.
Related stories:
MTS Cuts Providers, Abandons I-mode

Comments have been disabled for this post