General Management Article: "The New Battleground for Mobile Phone Players"

General Management @ Knowledge Zone

The New Battleground for Mobile Phone Players

- by Anish Chandy *

Part - III

UK’s largest carrier - Vodafone provides the entire bouquet of services. They work with a number of independent content providers which was the next step after they pioneered the concept of the carrier branded phone. They have also moved into the licensing space with SFR in France and Swisscom in Switzerland. While choosing licensing partners these cellular behemoths have to take the brand fit into account.

The NTT DocoMo model has been replicated with varying degrees of success by different operators - T-Mobile’s T-Zones, AT&T’s mMode, Orange World and Verizon’s GetItNow. Alcatel is partnering VRTVStudios to push their content via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services). SK Telecom has taken content management to the next level when they hired a boy band to promote their 3G service.

Reuters has also jumped onto the content bandwagon, they are developing a Java-based news delivery system that will feed content such as real time breaking news items, picture alerts and headlines linked to mini-stories to wireless carriers. The initial target market is Japan. Reuters has been providing web based content to various markets so the switch to the cellular phone may not be very difficult. Media giants like AOL Time Warner and Disney are marketing their animated characters as brand ambassadors for various products. Some of the most respected banks in the world are in the process of developing software that is compatible with the cell phone and the ATM machine. This would eliminate the need for a credit card.

The logical sequel to the content management business would be the introduction of an element of AI (Artificial Intelligence). There could be a day when the cellular phone is programmed to store the various search words keyed in by the user. After a certain point in time it would begin to throw up relevant information without the user taking the trouble of keying in the search words.

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* Contributed by: -
Anish Chandy,
PGP 2003-05,
TAPMI, Manipal,
Published in Bi-annual Journal of TAPMI - 'Amartya'.