Wireless Business Forecast articles from June 2005

Wireless Business Forecast archives from June 2005

Youth Market Craves Mobitainment: Mobile-Centric Kids Just Want to Have 3G Fun.
June 2, 2005... Young people are ready to look at their mobile phones as being full-blown extensions of their familiar media experiences, according to research from TMNG, and 3G multimedia services may get some traction in the in the 13-to-34-year-old age...

And the [Garden] Walls Come Tumbling Down.(mobile phone content market)
June 2, 2005... The fox already is in the henhouse, so you'd better start selling it some chickens, say proponents of third parties selling mobile content outside of a carrier's walled garden. "Off-portal sales grew at an average monthly rate of 141 percent...

Oh, Behave: Do Mobile Content Guidelines Make Phones Safe for Consumers...Or Marketers?(Mobile Marketing Association and CTIA)
June 2, 2005... Claiming that it was trying to maintain consumer privacy and control, the Mobile Marketing Association and CTIA--The Wireless Association released their "Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services" last week to...

Fox Takes The Early Mobile Lead.
June 2, 2005... Hot on the heels of multiple successes this year in TV ratings, film blockbusters and newspapers, Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp. has emerged as a clear leader among legacy media brands experimenting in mobile. The company made its interest in...

A Poll In Your Pocket.(CLX)(mobile consumer-survey service)
June 2, 2005... Get paid to text message? It sounds like another Internet scam, but legit marketing firm CLX is initiating a mobile consumer-survey service for brands that compensates users for answering SMS polls. Users get referred to the service from the...

Higher Data ARPU? It Ain't Rocket Science.(Average Revenue Per Unit)
June 2, 2005... Research firm IDC says carriers generated $1.6 billion in data services revenue in 4Q04. Considering that fee-based content on the Web is worth about $1.8 billion for an entire year, the mobile figures are impressive. Data is responsible for...

Outlook 'Neutral:' Cellcos Face A Challenging 2005.(Illustration)
June 2, 2005... Standard & Poor's issued a 'neutral' outlook for the major wireless carrier stocks last week, citing inevitable declines in subscriber growth rates, offset only partially by rising ARPU. Subscriber levels are likely to rise only 6 percent to...

"Check out two new executive presentations on TelecomWeb's Managed Services Report: Lucent's '2005 Cable Market Strategy' and 'Managed Services For Next- Generation Networks'.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2005... The first half of 2005 saw many changes in telecom service-provider technologies, businesses and markets. To keep up with the resulting new network- management issues, TelecomWeb's "Managed Services Report" provides information on network...

Deal Sheet.
June 2, 2005... Who's Doing What?: Mooobile, a division of Enquire SI, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain; 011 34 922771305 Launches adult Web service and claims distribution deals with more than 20 unnamed global partners What to Expect Near-Term:...

A Tale of Three Models: Can Off-Carrier Strategies Work?
June 16, 2005... As off-carrier content distribution gears up (WBF, 6.2.05), a new generation of startups finds itself re-living the late 1990s. Just as dotcom companies looked to different strategic approaches for pulling eyeballs to their otherwise unknown...

Where the Girls Are: Gaming.
June 16, 2005... Mobile gaming is a chick thing. Despite all of the hype and marketing effort (3D games, console franchises, et. al.) aimed at that young male game core, the real sweet spot of mobile gaming is among women in most genres and among the...

Taking Entertainment Assets Wireless.
June 16, 2005... By Chris Ruff, vice president/Marketing and Product Management, UIEvolution Conditions have never been better for multiplying the revenue-generating power of entertainment content through wireless network availability. The ongoing...

Mobile Game Sales Surge In May.
June 16, 2005... Mobile gaming revenue leapt substantially as a share of total content sales, according to WBF's exclusive monthly spot check with QPass. Compared with April's marketshare breakdown, gaming went from 18 percent to 25.67 percent of revenues...

Your Cheap But Inconvenient In-Box: Yahoo! And Sprint Do E-Mail.
June 16, 2005... Yahoo! and Sprint tried to send a shot across the bow of Research in Motion by launching a low-priced mobile e-mail solution, called Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. At $2.99 per month, registered Yahoo! users can access their Yahoo! e- mail accounts...

Multimedia Functionality Vaults Ahead Of Users, Models.
June 16, 2005... Hot on the heels of his report showing that only 9 percent of mobile customers are "very interested" in MP3 playback, and only 11 percent are "very interested" in mobile TV, inStat analyst Neil Strother tells WBF that business models,...

Brewing Up Winning Apps: The 2005 Brew Awards.
June 16, 2005... The 2005 Brew Developer Awards expanded its portfolio this year to embrace ringtones and to single out technology innovations as well as a people's choice category for the most popular app among attendees at the recent Qualcomm Brew 2005...

Deal Sheet.
June 16, 2005... Who's Doing What?: AG Interactive [AM], headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio; 310/909-5522 Launches branded content and services with Def Jam Enterprises, headquartered in Los Angeles; 212/840-9399 What Happens Short Term?: Def Jam Mobile is...

Rousing Rabble: Is The Phone The Perfect Blogging Device?
June 30, 2005... We've heard many mobile executives sniff at the notion of people blogging from and to their cellphones. Most of them are 30-something or older, they've never made a blog entry themselves, and they still seem to think that "media" is defined...

Big Media's Bad Attitude: WDA's Konny Zsigo On What Content Brands Get Wrong About Wireless.(Wireless Developer Agency)(Interview)
June 30, 2005... While Konny Zsigo, founder and head of Wireless Developer Agency, may not be Mike Ovitz, he is the closest thing the fledgling mobile-content industry has to a power agent. He has been in the industry since the late 1980s and, in recent...

Your 3G Pacifier: The Underserved Kiddie Market.(Brief Article)
June 30, 2005... IDC confirms what WDA head Konny Zsigo (see interview in this issue) tells us about the undiscovered kiddies sector with phones. Hi-tech parents are replacing candy with cellphones as a means to keep impatient toddler tyrants quiet. Verizon...

Searching The Mobile Web Google's Way.
June 30, 2005... The Google approach to any given problem is to throw technology at it, so the company is testing a mobile search service that focuses solely on Web-based sites already formatted for phones. When you go to the Google search page from a WAP...

Verizon Wireless Exploits The Cingular/AT&T Merger.
June 30, 2005... Despite a massive ad campaign touting the nation's biggest network, Cingular has not been able to mask the growing pains from its merger with AT&T Wireless, according to Merrill Lynch research. In testing 80 wireless stores during the past...

The 2-Percent Mobile Marketing Solution.(cellphone marketing)
June 30, 2005... Despite remarkable interest among advertisers to get onto the phone deck, the actual marketing spend to cellphones will only be about 2 percent of the overall $47 billion expected in worldwide online ad revenues in 2010, says Strategy...

Deal Sheet.(National Football League)(Cybird Company Ltd.)
June 30, 2005... Who's Doing What: National Football League, headquartered in New York City; 212/450-2000 Is shopping exclusive rights to its video contents to Sprint [FON], headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., 800/829-0965 What It Means Short Term:...