2004 Conference Archives

LEFT TO THEIR OWN DEVICES - The Challenges Faced by Content Owners Trying to Reach an Ever-expanding Mobile Device Market

Mobileway, the leading global provider of mobile services, discusses how the mounting popularity of multi-media messaging and gaming presents content providers with the formidable challenge of providing content formats to suit the vast range of mobile devices on the market.

Today, walking in to a mobile phone retailer and choosing a new handset is akin to buying a new car. Consumers are faced with a bewildering range of makes and models all with differing functionalities, added extras and a great choice of colours, as long as you like silver! Talk of polyphonic, GPRS, triband, MMS, bluetooth, Wap-enablement, Java™ gaming and 'X-press on™' colour fascias has proved to not only baffle mobile users into buying the latest handset on the market, but also to keep content owners awake at night wondering how to tackle the growing problem of designing content to suit this rapidly expanding device portfolio.

The mobile content business has experienced enormous growth over the past few years due mainly to the unexpected popularity of SMS-based services and the younger generation's insatiable appetite for ringtones and logos. While many believe that SMS is reaching its peak, the emergence of picture messages, Java gaming and polyphonic ringtones over the past year has ensured that the potential for companies creating digital content remains attractive. According to figures published by W2F, the mobile content market will generate around 1.9 billion Euros for third party content providers in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific this year, a figure expected to increase to more than 6.5 billion Euros by 2006. With this increased potential however, increased complexity invariably follows.

SMS has both suffered and benefited from its simplicity. While many large name brands failed to be seduced by the potential of 160 characters of text, the standard format does mean that one size truly does fit all. This is far from the case with MMS and Java gaming. As there is presently no uniform standard between handsets, pictures have to be 're-purposed' for almost every individual handset. With more than 200 handsets on the market accepting different file formats, image sizes and resolutions, content owners are faced with an enormous task to get just one MMS to look and sound great on every handset.

So in the absence of industry cooperation, how can content owners overcome the growing issue of handset diversity? Ringtone and logo providers have traditionally ironed out any incompatibility problems by either limiting availability to certain handset types or by requesting that users text in a specific code following the usual 5-digit number to specifically request a format suitable for their mobile handset - for example, Nokia users text 87140 NOK TIMBERLAKE to get the latest Justin Timberlake ring tone. However, classifying handsets according to their manufacturers is no longer a sufficient means of differentiating between format types as manufacturers have begun producing devices based on a number of different operating systems and standards.

Also with a market devoted to providing an intuitive and automated user experience, complicating the procedure by asking users to follow multi-step instructions simply increases the margin for error, and annoys end users. All of these points help to build the case for automated device management at the delivery level, which is where content aggregators or end-to-end service providers, such as Mobileway, rise to the challenge.

In a bid to simplify the path to mobile content, service providers endeavour to build solutions that will arm content owners with the tools to easily manage and distribute their portfolio of sounds and images.

Case study - Rivals Digital Media

Rivals Digital Media prides itself on being the leader in cross platform digital publishing. The company formed by the merger of Rivals.net and 365 two years ago, publishes a range of football, rugby, golf and cricket content through its own established brands as well as on behalf of clients such as the leading sport magazine Rugby world. The company was named Best Consumer Interactive Publisher at the Association of Online Publishers Interactive Publishing Awards in October 2002.

Having successfully run a number of SMS services ranging from sporting alerts to horoscopes over the past few years, Rivals was very quick to recognise the potential of MMS to satisfy and entertain its leagues of sporting fans even further. With a catalogue of more than 200 images, the challenge to deploy content to its fans was enormous. The company approached Mobileway to help overcome this challenge and deploy multi-media services to reach the widest possible user base. Mobileway developed its Content Manager platform to provide Rivals Digital Media with not only a simple means of uploading, managing and storing its content portfolio but even more importantly to provide a means of handling device management to ensure that the right size of image with the correct resolution to maximise the user experience is sent out in response to a purchase request.

The images themselves are stored in different sizes and resolutions to cover the various screen sizes available on today's devices. Users simply text in their request for a piece of content according to the short code and keyword published in an advert to trigger both the payment and the delivery of the image. On receiving the SMS message the Content Manager in turn sends a request to Mobileway's MMS hub.

If the handset is MMS compliant the SMS triggering the MMS image will contain the necessary information to inform Mobileway that the content can be sent in the form of an MMS message. However, if the handset is not MMS compliant, Mobileway's MMS hub sends out a WAP Push message. On receipt of this WAP push the user's phone connects to the server to download the content enabling Mobileway to gain information regarding the browser or device type, known as the User Agent Profile. Armed with this information the Content Manager can trigger the download of the appropriate image size for the user's handset. This entire process is transparent to the end user and so the service appears to be deployed seamlessly. Using this process ensures that the end user receives the best quality image available without any need to follow any complicated instructions based on individual device make and model.

Together Mobileway and Rivals Digital Media successfully deployed the first premium rate, cross-network MMS services on O2 and Vodafone in February of this year, and have continued to work together to develop and extend the offer, run simultaneous campaigns and deliver peaks of up to 2000 downloads a day to sports fans at a variety of tariff levels for both static and animated images regardless of the sophistication of their handsets.

Images and animations are just two of the types of content download reliant upon gaining information about the user's device type. The growing popularity of multi-level, multi-player gaming has brought about a surge in the development of J2ME™ based devices running various versions of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) which provides the core functionality for applications running on these devices. In order for J2ME to succeed, content managers need to ensure the correct version of MIDP is detected and the Java game sent to the user is the best version for the detected handset.

Also the recent publicity push around the launch of video phones working off 3rd generation (3G) wireless technology has heightened the interest in finding video solutions for 2.5 generation phones operating on GSM and GPRS networks today. Depending on the handset and the mobile network, a compliant device can receive the video clip via WAP Push in some cases, or even directly streamed using a play list feature based upon a user's particular interest. Some video messaging solutions require a player to be downloaded to the handset before the clip can be viewed; others deliver the player along with the clip in the same message. In both cases, content owners must ensure the solution is the most suitable for the mobile device. As the video download market takes off, the ability for content managers to successfully handle the sheer variety of handsets will play a key role in its continued development.

It is clear that the mobile content market continues to grow at a rapid pace and device management remains vital to its success in terms of fuelling consumer demand for increasingly rich content. As the market becomes increasingly complex and inevitably more expensive, companies will find it more and more difficult to compete, and barriers to entry will grow particularly as competition from established non-mobile players steps up.

As mobile content becomes richer and even more compelling, consumers become more prepared to pay a premium and in return expect a premium level of service. To meet growing consumer demands, companies need to seek out comprehensive solutions to address issues such as device management to ensure that end users continue to enjoy the right type of content delivered in a seamless way.

For many, a trusted delivery partner is the preferred option. Some may attempt to manage the process in-house, but scale and flexibility often dictate that the costs are too high. Regardless of the preferred route to the customer, it is critical that the customer experience is always put first. Mobile content is at a critical point on the adoption curve, and quality of content delivery will dictate the winners and losers of the mobile game.

As with buying a car, the more money you spend the higher the level of service you expect and the more extras you want thrown in - who knows, the next generation of mobile devices may come fitted with heated keypad, body coloured fascias and cup holders as standard!

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