Carriers Are Not In Competition

The second part of an interview with Karl Woods from mobile games company Kiloo covers the normal ground…poor quality games (the developers do the best they can with the money they are paid and the handsets the games run on), how to grow the industry (ad-supported or free demos) and so on. It’s a good read, nothing particularly new but well articulated.
The following paragraph caught my eye: “Some carriers think that they’re competitors with other carriers. Well, they’re not. They have their own user base, like Xbox versus PS2 – they’ve got their own market. We’re all in the same boat, let’s work together.”
I agree with this, at least in terms of mobile content and particularly in terms of mobile games. At the moment companies in the mobile games industry are not competing with each other, they’re competing with handheld console games, consumer ignorance, and even PC and console games. Trials have shown that a significant portion of people watch mobile TV in their own home, assumedly because someone else is using the television to watch a different show. Teens are particularly susceptible to this — their mobile phone is often the only entertainment device in the house they have complete control over. The carriers are not competing with each other on mobile games for two reasons: First, the number of people who choose a handset and service based on the games on offer can best be described as “negligible”. Second, mobile phones are social tools, and to be successful social tools they have to interact with as many different things as possible.
Related stories:
Kiloo Shapes Up For Acquisition

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