Don’t forget the smaller markets. This was the warning to content providers at the Mobile Internet Forum in Zurich in November. Growing interest in new applications, coupled with fewer competitors, makes smaller markets ripe for the picking.
Raimondas Mikalajünas from Lithuanian operator Bité says smaller markets are good places to introduce and try new applications in real life because they tend to be more open to new services. He says content providers often neglect these areas because they don’t believe they are profitable enough. “But what they forget is that there is less competition in these markets.
“Content providers must stop complaining that the market is not expanding and that they don’t get paid in the right way. They need to look outside their usual market where they have been present for the past years and see all the potential that new markets possess.”
Mikalajünas, Mobile Internet manager at Bité and guest speaker at the forum, says his company has worked out a business model comparable with a supermarket. Bité manages logistics, rents premises to partners and promotes different application brands. It is up to the user to pick and mix.
“As a supermarket we have to promote ourselves as the number-one shopping place in town and manage consumer propositions,” Mikalajünas says. “We have to do what we are good at and cooperate with relevant industries in other areas, such as the retailing industry does.”
Mikalajünas criticizes large operators and content providers for having content that is too limited and too general. “Instead of being open to a wide selection of content large operators pick out certain applications they choose to offer,” he says. “A really wide range of content is more likely to make a broader number of users satisfied and get more traffic in the network.”
Bité shares all revenues with the content provider. The bigger the turnover the bigger the share for the content provider, who is encouraged to develop cost-effective applications.
Mikalajünas says that because the revenue-sharing model already has been worked out, it is easy for content providers to fill the shelves in the supermarket. Bité works with standard interfaces and an open architecture, which makes it easy to monitor and change content online. This saves time and money when the shelves have to be refilled.
| Fact box Bité: |
- Bité Plus – Bité’s mobile-content supermarket is filled with as many brands and goods as possible.
- Fully owned by TDC
- EUR 102 million turnover in 2002 (52 percent growth compared with 2001)
- 80 percent of users choose premium services.
|
Karin Hanson
