3G will shake up the Media Industry
| Once the 3G rollout is complete and terminals reach critical mass and over, those Media Companies who are not in the mobile game, will start facing even more problems as they hang on to their declining traditional business areas. |
Why? Because young mobile consumers are already saving money anywhere they can – so they can spend more money on using their mobile phone and mobile services! Money being saved is hurting spending on many different traditional areas such as: candy, CD sales, video rentals, watching TV (loss of advertising revenue) and more. Strand Consult has seen this trend in many countries, but it is very apparent in Korea, according to the latest reports on the Korean Mobile Markets from Strand Consult. Average revenue pr. User (ARPU) in Korea is almost as large as the biggest European countries and has grown almost overnight as younger mobile consumers switch to java enabled colour mobile terminals and download speeds of up to 144Kb/s. Mobile services are growing and being used daily by many Korean consumers and the media companies are lining up to become part of this fast growing business. Todays Korean mobile market is the closest thing Strand Consult has seen, to what the European 3G market will look like in 2 or 3 years time. Some mobile operators have already announced hopes that in 5 years, up to 50% of their turnover will derive from mobile services. According to one of our latest reports “How to make money on mobile services ” which looks at how the European market for mobile services will develop in the coming years – that figure will be much less, actually only 32% and 16% of that is still actually traditional person to person SMS based services. But a goal of 50% is not unrealistic – it could be achieved if the operators start defining their 2.5G and 3G business- and revenue sharing strategies today – something most of them unfortunately have not spent much time on yet. On the other hand, many media companies already have content that is or will be attractive to the mobile operators, but if they do not understand the mobile business, the opportunities, how the mobile operators work and the business and revenue models behind the operators way of thinking today, that content stands little or no chance of ever finding it’s way to a mobile terminal. In the coming years, the mobile platforms will be one of the only major sources of new revenue for media companies, as their traditional markets decline and customers fragment and have gone online. Advertising revenue is down on almost all platforms, including print and TV and the interest in banner advertising on the Internet is almost non-existent. Many media companies are very dependant on advertising revenue as part of their income and will have difficulty surviving at all without their advertisers. Today Strand Consult has sold our reports to over 70 national and international mobile operators world wide and a growing number of the major content providers, who are looking for an insight on this emerging market and how the operators work. Through workshops and consulting, based on the mobile market reports that we publish, Strand Consult is helping International media companies define their mobile strategies, ensuring that they understand the way that the mobile operators work and position themselves and their content in the middle of the 2,5G and 3G road. |
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