On Technology and the Future: Education, IoT, AI, Mobility, Games

Tag: mobile content

Nokia opens doors (if you read Finnish, that is)

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On 30/08/2007

Nokia launched its new Ovi platform to great fanfare. Ovi is apparently Finnish for “doors“, which gives a hint on what they intend to do: lots of door-opening to “delivering experiences and services”, which now is their business according to CEO Kallasvuo.

There is not too much on tangible details so far. Ovi is supposed to be the door (geddit?) to a bundle of services, namely their new music service, their revived N-Gage gaming brand (now a service and not a device anymore; good New York Times article here) and Nokia Maps. Then, it is said, it shall also “the entry point for other Web and mobile services”. Which ones? Dunno…

Nokia is of course perfectly positioned to try and unify a content experience on the fragmented mobile space: its massive market share in most markets around the world allow it to push its platform onto a lot of existing devices. As an attempt of unifying the scattered environment, this is probably as good as it will get in the shorter term, so fingers crossed!

Games shine on Orange

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On 16/05/2007

In Games

Mobile games outsell other types of content, including ringtones and wallpapers on Orange UK, we read. Orange published its first digital media index which also showed that Orange customers send 872m text messages a month, with most sent between 4pm and 8pm as people plan a night out.

In Q1/2007, almost 750,000 games were downloaded. This compares to only 65,000 and 250,000 tracks, ringtones and music video. This is rather noteworthy. So why is it?

Games are the only category of the above that is tied to the commercial ecosphere of today (be it via carrier deck or from a D2C portal, etc): I can download a picture from the web and bluetooth it or sideload it to my phone and it will work. Phones understand jpeg. I can do the same with a music track. Phones understand mp3. I cannot do the same with a Java game. Phones do understand Java but it is an executable, so you need an installer file, etc. Higher complexity. Too complicated to do it for me, buy it then…

Games have an additional particularity and that is that they need to be thoroughly adapted to the small screen. A song sounds the same (assuming you have a good pair of headphones), a picture will be, well, smaller on a small screen but otherwise undistorted. A game requires interaction, and this is being done very differently on a phone. So we may well see the above numbers drifting further apart…

A whole Armada: Nokia, Vodafone, Sony BMG! And for what?

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On 04/05/2007

One of my true favourites, Groove Armada, have teamed up with all the heavyweights to bring their music, more specifically, their new album “Soundboy Rocks” to the very cutting edge of digital: whenever you b uy a Nokia N76 in a Vodafone store, you will get 1) a voucher and 2) a PIN to take to 3) a website to 4) download a song (you can store 1 copy on your computer and 1 on your phone, sorry, multimedia device). Easy, isn’t it?

I would hope this will work (if only to help the good folks from Groove Armada) but the whole approach would appear a wee bit cumbersome: with every click, you lose consumers. With every change from one media to another (retail to mobile, mobile to web, retail to web, etc.) you lose them tenfold. So why on earth don’t they just run and show off a mobile download service and/or pre-install some content to demonstrate the superb capabilities of Nokia’s really fine devices? I don’t get it…

When one reads on, it becomes clear, that this is clearly more a PR affair for both sides: the remainder is a hilarious marketing blurp: Nokia loves Sony who love Nokia who love everyone else… Vodafone’s role, other than providing the retail space and being represented on the rather lame microsite with a logo – below the fold – isn’t entirely clear. Executives showing their superiors that they actually do “something” in mobile? Is it just me or does this appear somehow pieced together?

It is NOT (only) the kids playing mobile games

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On 25/04/2007

In Games

Here‘s some always again interesting finds on mobile game demographics re-confirmed :

29% of all 25-34 year-old US-Americans downloaded mobile games in 2006, and 27% of the 18-24 year-olds but only 15% of 13-17 year-olds. The older folks also play more: 50% of the two older age groups vs 41% of the teens play mobile games on a daily basis.

The picture is naturally somewhat distorted as proportionately more adults own mobile phones than teens (although the latter catch up quickly).

However, considering that, in the UK, the average credit kids have on their pre-paid phones (which most of them have) is a meagre £5, which leaves little to no wiggling space when compared to game prices of £3-5 per pop: they simply don’t have the dough to buy more.

Another re-confirmed suspicion highlights the distribution challenge: 29 million US-Americans play mobile games, only 7 million download them, and that means 22 million play whatever is on their handset – whether it is a good or a bad one. 22 million gamers that do not access all the great games that are out there show that there is a severe disconnect regarding a) discovery and b) marketing and distribution in general. Whilst these will not be the only factors, they are significant.

Cellcom does Mobile Advertising…

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On 21/04/2007

Israel’s largest mobile operator Cellcom has launched an advertising-funded games service, reports MobileIndustry.biz. The game titles (no word on which ones these are) are free to subscribers and the network has apparently enlisted some of the heavyweights as advertisers: Disney, Nokia, McDonalds, Diadora, Adidas and Samsung are all listed to have “already signed up”. Campaigns are apparently being designed by Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO and McCann, so on that front all ingredients should be there.

Unfortunately, the press release remains a bit foggy on how it is actually done. It talks of “ads appear[ing] as product placement in the game and within different areas of a games environment” and they say that “[t]he digital coupons and product placement methods used in the trial have proven themselves with high conversion rates among [their] clients” but no numbers or more insight is being offered.

With the limited information provided, the question unfortunately remains if this is only a PR coup on the flavour of the month or if it is indeed commercially viable. Next time?

Update: Some results of the trial can now be found here.

Amp'd ARPU >$100, >$30 on data, >$15 on content

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On 10/04/2007


Now, this should be welcome news to the mobile content folks: more than $30 ARPU on data consumption vs the industry average $6.74 (which is what IDC reported), and more than half of that are from content (more than double the industry average).

These are the figures MVNO Amp’d has released. Some juicy mobile content stuff in there:

– 5% of original content sees 30% of all downloads.
– The niche lives: ultimate fighting and super-cross see a lot of traction.
– Amp’d subscribers download more full music tracks than ringtones (which nicely confirms my explanation of that trend set out a few days ago here).

Congrats!

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