Wirelessnorth.ca

Carriers are makng money on mobile data, but they are terrified of losing their existing data customer base. Lowering prices will indeed let mobile data take off, but the lack of volume to make up for the reduced margins is not economically sound.

Carrier technology strategy groups typically have no influence over price points, as many (if not most) spend most of their time focused exclusively on broader technology infrastructures (e.g. 3G/4G, WiMax, IMS infrastructure) and not individual point/application frameworks. The teams, in my opinion, that are tasked with generating new mobile applications, have little to no say on pricing strategy, because there aren’t a few key drivers to success in the space.

Mobile applications need to be targeted to a hypersegmented market. I propose that mobile application marketing teams (often just 1 or 2 people interfacing with technology platform specialists) should be aiming for microcelebrity status instead of mass market appeal, especially for the Canadian mobile market.

In order to truthfully market “national coverage”, Canadian carriers have needed to capitalize negative NPV infrastructure build-outs across our vast country. Similar to provincial equalization payments, a large portion of Canadian carrier revenues from major metropolitan areas must necessarily be used to cover OPEX in money-losing regions.

The combination of large land mass and population size (i.e. density is low) contributes to the fear that Canadian carriers feel whenever they are told by consumers to reconsider their mobile data prices. In my opinion (based on pure speculation), marketing directors need to start experimenting more aggressively, and should look to sign-up a target market of 1500-2000 customers per data service.

I’m personally afraid that even that target isn’t truly achievable with today’s current processes, as it would mean a radical shift in the way such services are pitched and approved internally by forcing marketing teams to be responsible for 10 micro-services instead of one broad mass-market service.

The big elephant in the room is that mass-market services are few and far between (e.g. downloadable ringers, graphics, wallpapers, full-length songs, movies, streaming video/autio, MMS, and SMS). Carriers believe that they can prop up and drive adoption through major initiatives. Nobody yet has been able to put together a business case, despite the mounting popularity on the frontlines, that an eco-system of mobile micro-services catering (relatively) tiny markets, in combination with existing (and planned) major capital intensive initiatives, are what will help drive ARPU.

“Sounds like a long-tail”. Sure does. Easy to rant about — hard to implement, especially more so given current organizational structures and lack of focus in mobile data mandates at the director level.

Hey, I do indeed read Wirelessnorth.

My comment re: “But do I really want to have Yahoo controlling how my application/widget gets displayed?” is that we don’t have any interest in controlling how you display your application/widget. Our interest is in enabling more useful mobile applications and widgets.

What Blueprint will do is make it easy for developers to mobilize information. If you go to http://mobile.yahoo.ca/go/tryit , you can play with a Yahoo! Go emulator, with the ability to browse, enable and use widgets.

In my experience (I’m speaking from my own perspective and not as a spokesman for Yahoo!), the problem with mobile applications is not that they aren’t differentiated enough. It’s that they either 1) don’t exist (at least the ones I want don’t) or 2) aren’t particularly usable/useful.

As an example of what kinds of things Blueprint enables check out the Caltrain widget in the Yahoo! Go emulator. It’s dead-easy to use and is utterly useful (if you’re a Bay area commuter, that is). And it probably took a developer about an hour to build.

The value that we’re bringing is to allow developers and content providers who aren’t already heavily invested in mobile (i.e. most of them) the ability to open up new and easy ways to get their applications on mobile devices. We feel that for many developers, but not necessarily ALL developers, the benefit of being able to write an application once and have it work across all Yahoo!-tested devices AND to give the application a distribution platform (via the widget gallery) is more important than being able to apply a funky background theme.

If an application truly merits a highly differentiated graphic presentation, then there are lots of options out there. But even seasoned mobile developers bemoan the effort and cost of testing applications across multiple device families, let alone multiple individual devices.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. My closing point is simply that Blueprint (and, for that matter, Android) merely represent more options for current or prospective wireless developers. And, from my perspective, more choice ultimately benefits everyone.

Incidentally, I think “clash” is kind of overstating it a bit, no?

:)

It’s the sensational headlines that grab attention :)

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