At 14:41 2001-12-21, you wrote:
>I-mode should be compared to Premium SMS/WAP serviced developed by more =
>and more European mobile operators, where ALL potential content =
>providers can develop and (very importantly) market their services, and =
>get a revenue share on it!=20
Hm... can they??? With what operators?
There are some operators trying to go in this direction, yes, like Telia in
Sweden with their pocketmode (www.pocketmode.com, is this renomme stealing
or not...).
But all these premium SMS service networks, except perhaps Monternet in
China, is considerably more complicated to develop for than i-mode. All
operators have their own awkward interfaces and report systems.
>So instead that trying to copy i-mode in Europe, the European mobile =
>operators must instead improve their existing revenue models for premium =
>SMS-services, and implement new revenue sharing models for premium =
>WAP-services.
I have a simple question. Why?
There is so much focus now on Premium SMS that it is becoming silly. Sure,
people send a lot of SMS between each other (like they email in Japan), but
how much do we really know about the interest and revenues from different
type of content services. Does anyone, Strand perhaps, have an enlightening
report on this? Or how many mobile content providers for GSM that earn any
type of decent money?
You may argue a lot about this from different perspectives, with or without
an i-mode biassed tone. The alarming thing with the GSM market is that the
ambition for and understanding of what compelling services may look like is
so low. It would really rather be time to understand and build the business
models and gardens (walled or not) for WAP 2 and J2ME rather than focusing
on and over-hyping yesterday's solutions.
Otherwize, I am afraid that we will not have that much of mobile Internet
on GSM. Calling Premium SMS for mobile Internet is a very bad joke. Maybe
we will soon also see trials of VoSMS (Voice over SMS transport)?
Or is everything a plot to force us to move to 3G. Make people puke by SMS
flooding and give them the 3G pain reliever as prescription?
/g
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Received on Fri Dec 28 12:29:03 2001