Battle for mobile content market rages

Handset manufacturers and mobile operators are set for a major competition for the mobile content market in the coming years.

This follows a keen interest by mobile device makers to forge direct close ties with their customers by building and availing vast proprietary mobile applications which are downloaded for free and others for a small price.

Mobile applications are now seen as a key driver of future handsets sales, a fact demonstrated by Apple’s iPhone whose phenomenal growth has been helped by the large number of applications on the company’s virtual online store.

On the other hand, mobile operators are eyeing the mobile content market as revenues from traditional channels like voice and data fall in the wake of rising competition.

Nokia, for instance, is intensifying its push for global usage of Ovi, its online application store.

The firm is working with local innovators to create locally relevant content as its current global competition for a $1 million mobile application award takes off.

“If they can create compelling applications that has solutions for the local market, we can host that application on Ovi and highlight it for local traffic,” said Ms Agatha Gikunda, Nokia Head of Solutions, East and Southern Africa.

“Local developers have a choice to write applications for mobile operators or for us. Most of the local mobile operators have national operations while we offer the world,” she told Business Daily, adding that Nokia works with multinational mobile operators like South Africa’s MTN.

Mobile service providers have ventured mainly into entertainment content provision, including ring tones, music, and short video downloads.

In addition, they offer aggregated news content.

Analysts say the global model of the mobile device business is set to deepen, with strategies employed in more developed economies trickling to the local scene.

Though most of the content and application are from third parties and form a negligible revenue base for handset manufacturers, their importance lies in building a larger loyal customer base in the handsets market.

“In 2010, the battle for supremacy in value-added services will intensify in the triangle between mobile operators, device manufacturers, and internet portals,” Carsten Brinkschulte, the CEO of Synchronica, a mobile technology firm based in the UK, said.

“Over the past few years, operators increasingly have come under attack in particular from device manufacturers like Apple, RIM, and Nokia who are massively pushing device-specific services, differentiating their product offerings, establishing direct relationships with the end-users and locking them into services hosted by the manufacturers.”

The outstanding examples of device manufacturer-specific and dependent services are Apple’s App Store, MobileMe, iTunes, RIM’s BlackBerry Internet Services, as well as Nokia’s Ovi.