The Great Debate: So, Who’s Suited to Supply Mobile Search, Anyway?

Looking back at the mobile search conference, one question ran through the sessions like a leit motif. Who should offer mobile search? Alastair France, Openwave solutions architect, cast his vote for mobile operators, adding that they should aim to collect and control the analytics and information about what searchers seek and do on the mobile Internet. “Personalization is absolutely critical and if this (search) data is not a part of the operator’s own property, then it can lead to a situation where operators lose control and become nothing more than big pipes.” Predictably, white-label search providers and personalization companies echoed the same very valid point.
But operators have a bigger problem than figuring out ways to maintain control of the search data: they have to get consumers to start using mobile search. Openwave’s France revealed a shocking “one-day snapshot of search use” based on the stats of an unnamed operator whose service France had analyzed just a few weeks earlier. “The percentage of all users that used any form of search was 3%.” Even more alarming was the inability of the panel to decide if that was good or bad news for the industry (3% is better than 2%, after all). Clearly, someone has to push search harder – but who should it be? Martin Vendel, TeliaSonera’s Head of Product Area Mobile, marketing, Products & Services, stood up for the usual suspects. “The strongest players are the existing ones; the existing search brands that the end-user is used to. Most search is done on the Internet รข

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