Mobile Entertainment: New Developments | all that's mobile and social

This panel of experts will explore the explosive growth of entertainment, games and video on mobile devices. Executives at some of the most innovative mobile entertainment firms give their perspectives on the state of the industry. What are the lessons learned and what business models are working at present? How are consumers responding to new product offerings? What are the technological — and business model — chokepoints to a more robust wireless entertainment experience?

Current State of the Mobile Web

Nic Covey of Nielsen Mobile kicked off the panel by sharing some statistics about mobile web usage in the US today. It was interesting how low these percentages are, though he emphasized that this is still a market of 40 million mobile data users currently in the US.

Current Mobile Wed Statistics:

2% of customers access video on their cell phone
3% download mobile handset software
5% are data plan users
9% download ringtones

The panelists weighed in on the potential reasons for the limited penetration of mobile web users as compared to the number of handsets. Myk Willis from Myxer commented on the complexity of getting rich content on the phone because of the convoluted mobile ecosystem. Donna Campbell of Ericsson talked about the challenges with the overall User Experience including interface, quality and even price point, which I agree is a major limiting factor for most potential consumers.

What’s Working

Alice Kim of MTV Networks shared that they have been trying a lot of approaches to rich mobile content and for them music videos are reasonably their top downloaded. What comes next is interesting though: The second most watched MTV mobile products are actually created specifically for the mobile handset. They’re also seeing people starting to watch long-form video as opposed to just clips as the experience improves.

Kajeet is actually finding a lot of success in creating usable mobile web experience which has resulted in 70% of their subscribers using the mobile web. By creating a rich client and programming good content, they’ve eliminated the challenges of poor user experience in discovering content.

Myxer has high quality games and video available, but personalization accounts for 90% of their usage. Ringtones and wallpapers are still the most sought after mobile content and they’re seeing the most demand for user-generated content. People want ringtones that are not only fun or cool, but also unique. Myxer works with content owners and sees a huge spike in usage and engagement when premium content is released freely. Further, his customers are seeing revenue increase using ad-supported models which is a very powerful statement.

Fundamental Industry Shift

Alice Kim also commented on the fundamental shift in the mobile media industry from a carrier-centric model toward open distribution. She called the current state of content delivery a walled garden and we all know that model doesn’t fly on the internet. MTV is very bullish on ad supported media delivery and is in the process of rolling out free ad supported content channels.

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