TABLE OF CONTENTS Ask many in the mobile phone industry what will keep the revenue of the main operators growing in the coming years, and you just might hear content, content, content . Paradoxically this is also the biggest challenge for service providers as, no matter how good the content, if it is not distributed effectively it is unlikely to catch the eye of consumers and if they can't see it, they simply can't buy it. The content market is currently flourishing, with the Wireless World Forum predicting that the mobile games market will climb to $1.93 billion in 2006, so the opportunity to make money from mobile content is there but how do you take advantage of it, and how do you get your content delivered to the user's mobile device?
You must first consider all possible routes to market, including mobile operators, aggregators, device manufacturers, consumer-facing portals and more. While going directly to your mobile operator of choice might seem the most obvious route to success, it may not be effective or even realistic. Mobile operators have a limited number of resources, and many have decided to focus their efforts on branded content which already has brand recognition. The difficulty of building a direct relationship with operators should not act as a deterrent; there are more and more developer channels opening up, and many operators now rely on outside parties to source content. An interesting model is the tiered access...
