Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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Sunday, January 14, 2007
Yahoo! vs Google vs News Corp (etc), the mobile war is on
It's no question they will fight it out during 2007. There's a huge mobile advertizing potential they need to grab, and there are also other possible revenue streams they need to cover before the other party does, like music sales etc.
I wonder where Microsoft will be in all of this, with it's MSN service etc. They will surely try to fight, but looks like an underdog in comparison.
Yahoo Tells Road Rogues To Go (an easily misunderstood title) outlines Yahoo!'s known intentions, which includes broader support for handsets and more mobile-enabling of existing PC-accessed services, as well as new services.
Note also that these players need to either compete with or acquire other companies in not the least the Web 2.0 field, so likely there will be more acquisitions happening this year. E.g. Digg looks like an interesting acquisition object. As you already know, News Corp owns MySpace, Google acquired YouTube for an insane amount of money, and there have been talks about Yahoo! or News Corp acquiring Digg, etc.
It's also clear many others (big and small) will jump on the Web 2.0 and mobile bandwagon and introduce both copycat and unique services. As there are not that many companies that can acquire such services, they need to stand out somehow and be first (easy to say, hard to achieve). Except for advertizing and possibly online music sales, there are yet few other clear revenue streams from such services, as most of them are completely free for users, so an exit through acquisition will be critical, and if you are one of the late-arrival copycats you can kiss that possibility goodbye.
I wonder where Microsoft will be in all of this, with it's MSN service etc. They will surely try to fight, but looks like an underdog in comparison.
Yahoo Tells Road Rogues To Go (an easily misunderstood title) outlines Yahoo!'s known intentions, which includes broader support for handsets and more mobile-enabling of existing PC-accessed services, as well as new services.
Note also that these players need to either compete with or acquire other companies in not the least the Web 2.0 field, so likely there will be more acquisitions happening this year. E.g. Digg looks like an interesting acquisition object. As you already know, News Corp owns MySpace, Google acquired YouTube for an insane amount of money, and there have been talks about Yahoo! or News Corp acquiring Digg, etc.
It's also clear many others (big and small) will jump on the Web 2.0 and mobile bandwagon and introduce both copycat and unique services. As there are not that many companies that can acquire such services, they need to stand out somehow and be first (easy to say, hard to achieve). Except for advertizing and possibly online music sales, there are yet few other clear revenue streams from such services, as most of them are completely free for users, so an exit through acquisition will be critical, and if you are one of the late-arrival copycats you can kiss that possibility goodbye.
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To "stand out" with unique service
and new revenue streams would be the real test, especially when all the hot ones all started as freebie service (MySpace, YouTube).
Of course we all know that once the territory is well marked (say in 2008?), the "freebie" may start to change color.
The successful web service models,
at least on the technical level,
may not be all good for copying to the mobile world. The limitations on mobile devices are obvious and the traditional web traversal approach won't work right.
There are people doing "one-click-to-YOUR-data" now for mobile (e.g. http://www.MobileShortcut.com, http://www.ad-more.com) where information are NOT for browsing, yet are for direct one-click serving. Of course this means that the mobile part becomes the complementary part of the main web (from PC), but the DIY marketing approach for people to extend their web content to mobile world with careful filtering of most suitable and brief data, with unique self-own one-click shortcut to the mobile point, should make better sense than trying to force PC web style browsing on mobile.
- Metha Hong
and new revenue streams would be the real test, especially when all the hot ones all started as freebie service (MySpace, YouTube).
Of course we all know that once the territory is well marked (say in 2008?), the "freebie" may start to change color.
The successful web service models,
at least on the technical level,
may not be all good for copying to the mobile world. The limitations on mobile devices are obvious and the traditional web traversal approach won't work right.
There are people doing "one-click-to-YOUR-data" now for mobile (e.g. http://www.MobileShortcut.com, http://www.ad-more.com) where information are NOT for browsing, yet are for direct one-click serving. Of course this means that the mobile part becomes the complementary part of the main web (from PC), but the DIY marketing approach for people to extend their web content to mobile world with careful filtering of most suitable and brief data, with unique self-own one-click shortcut to the mobile point, should make better sense than trying to force PC web style browsing on mobile.
- Metha Hong
I believe there will be a real shift to mostly mobile phone generated content.
You mention phones are limited, which depends on how you look at it. Arbitrary browsing is mainly a large screen phenomenon, so copying that to phones is not ideal, but generating and arguably also consuming photos, videos and audio is probably done much better on a phone than a PC (the phone is designed for it, and hence "superior" to a PC).
Young people own their phones much more than they own their PCs, so it's logical communication with communities etc will move over to mobile.
I might be stretching it a little bit, but again, looking at mobile phones as limited devices is simply wrong. They are different, not more limited. Thinking them limited is a traditional view of what a computing/communication device should be like.
You mention phones are limited, which depends on how you look at it. Arbitrary browsing is mainly a large screen phenomenon, so copying that to phones is not ideal, but generating and arguably also consuming photos, videos and audio is probably done much better on a phone than a PC (the phone is designed for it, and hence "superior" to a PC).
Young people own their phones much more than they own their PCs, so it's logical communication with communities etc will move over to mobile.
I might be stretching it a little bit, but again, looking at mobile phones as limited devices is simply wrong. They are different, not more limited. Thinking them limited is a traditional view of what a computing/communication device should be like.
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