> Revenue is not split that generously. I don't remember or know how it
> is at the moment, since I haven't been in mobile business for almost a
> year ( I worked in Wapit ) - but basicly what I remember was that
> operators made all the money. If one sms-message ( to the service ) did
> cost a 4 or 5 finnish marks to the user - and application had to send
> message back to the user too - there was something like 0.50 marks left
> for the application creator. But then there were lots of different
> fees, and to reserve a short servicenumber one had to pay sick amount
> of money ( considering how much money can be made ,-( ).
No wonder WapIt went bankrupt ;) No, really, a 5mk premium priced service
in Finland yields 2.5 - 3mk to the application creator, depending on
operator. Service numbers cost under 2k mk / number / month for all
operators, which isn't all that much. But you're right; the 40-50%
commission the operators take here in Finland is quite much compared to the
9% taken by NTT DoCoMo.
> So in conclusion you had to be either operator or have enough
> mediaspace to create successfull mobile-business.
You are quite right. The operator is always the winner, and for a service
provider to make serious money, he'd better own a good marketing channel
(tv, internet portal, magazine, etc.). You don't find a commercial media
here in Finland that somehow wouldn't be in the business of selling logos,
ringtones or chat services. That's probably why IOBOX closed it's
operations in Finland; they simply didn't have the resources make their
services known (and hence didn't make enough money).
But what is positive is that these services are being offered on equal
terms to all service providers, so entering the market really isn't that
hard. If I remember correctly, Sonera sells space on it's WAP portal, so as
WAP gets more popular, there might be a hope for third party service
providers without a million dollar marketing budget. It'll get interesting.
- Anders
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Received on Wed Nov 21 10:33:33 2001