From a service provider's point of view, the Internet has proven to be an important driver of new service revenue in the form of broadband access and dial-up access, in its day. So far, though, mobile data has been a far-better business, despite moves toward openness that will render much wireless data a business uncomfortably similar to wired data (access dominated revenues, in other words).
The reason is that mobile services have been much more a walled garden that the Internet has been, so customers have gotten used to the idea that applications cost money in a mobile context where equivalents might not, in a broader Internet context.
”It’s not lost on mobile users that they still pay for almost everything on mobile,” says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer senior analyst.
Analysts at Telephia, now a part of Nielsen Mobile, point out that a typical monthly charge for location-based services in $9.23. Music services might add $4.99 while weather services might cost $2.82.
That's likely to change as more users switch to smart phones with Web browsing capabilities, though. It's hard to see many people paying for general purpose weather, sports, news or map-related information when they can just pull that information from their mobile browsers.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Why Mobile is a Better Business than Wireline or Internet
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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