By Boris Nemsic, Telekom Austria, coo wireless
Compelling content has become a key differentiator for operators in a competitive market, but with mobile penetration reaching saturation levels in many markets, is there scope for future value growth?
The simple answer is yes. High mobile saturation simply means that operators need to become more innovative in their offerings and look to other media industries to see how they can create more opportunities. Pay-for-TV providers are prime examples. Sky’s experience of two major growth spurts— at its launch in the early 1990s, and with the migration to digital in the late 1990s — is echoed by the initial launch of mobile phones and now the adoption of 3G services. Subscriber growth for Sky TV is back down to a minimum, yet it has increased customer spend year-on-year by offering the right services and content.
European perspective
Content is predominantly local with services largely dependent on specifics of the countries. While handsets in Japan have been used as a critical competitive differentiator in mobile data services, operators in Europe had to compete on everything else but handsets. In Austria, we have had to operate in a very competitive market. Consumers are amongst the most tech-savvy in Europe, so offering good content from a wide variety of sources has long been a key to our success. There are six operators in a tight market, but there are so many opportunities to attract and ‘grow’ customers.
Although add-on services are crucial to this growth, it’s important that operators don’t simply offer content before really understanding the complexities involved. A robust content model will be based on the network technology, usability, interoperability and customer profiling. Understanding the capabilities you have, your infrastructure and the type of services that your customers and prospects will want should form the bedrock of your content strategy. The right content models will enable operators to offer their customers compelling, accessible content at the right price to reduce churn and increase ARPU. Communicating with customers drives content services in three ways: Initial awareness of what’s on offer, customer trialing of the new content and ultimately the take up of new services. Understanding your customers is critical to developing and building the right content models. Mobile operators need to revisit their customer segments to understand their emotional needs as well as their functional requirements to develop mobile products that deliver content how and when the consumers want it.
User Experience
Good content works on mobile handsets because they have the anytime, anyplace element. A large proportion of mobile users are beginning to use handsets as more than simply a phone, but handset manufacturers and content providers still need to make downloading applications and content more user-friendly.
There are numerous elements in creating a good user experience. Beyond the handset, users need to like the look and feel of the graphical user interface (GUI) that sits on top of the operating systems. The technology has to be good enough for the content and vice-versa. Usability, speed and quality are enablers for compelling mobile services and products that add real value to the customers.
The proliferation of technology and media has made it both easier and harder to get the user experience right. The way in which content is delivered evolves constantly. Multi-media – music, images, videos, news, games, icons and ring tones; and the types of content – information, gaming, personalisation, content messaging, mobile entertainment and cross media services; makes it even more complex to provide the content which is desired by the individual customer. However, the sophistication of the media and applications makes for more exciting content.