This year, I have been very pleased with how the mobile internet and mobile services are both moving forward. I have seen statistics of at least 20 European mobile operators sent directly from their PR guys (thanks btw). It’s great to see the improvement, and it’s good to watch how device manufacturers, media companies, and operators are reacting to the changes in the market.  

First, let’s see some numbers before we get to conclusions.

Mobile Internet Users are there, more coming

As an example – let’s take one of the largest European mobile operators - Orange UK, an operator with 15.6 million subscribers has published 3 beautiful media reports (Orange Digital Media Index), which the following data is from:

Orange World in UK has been visited:

  • H1 2007 2.172 mil. (13.9 %), 70 mil. page imp.
  • H2 2007 2.34 mil. (15 %), 73 mil. page imp., 250 000 visitors come every day
  • Q1 2008 2.64 mil. (17%), 99 mil. Page imp., 300 000 visitors come every day

This means that as of now, probably around 22 – 25 % UK population is on the mobile internet, which is a lot. Not big to the 63.8 % of population on the internet, but almost half there.

If you are interested, please read my older articles. I have written reports about mobile internet in 3 countries so far (Austria, Czech Republic, and Hungary). See more at http://blog.hungrymobile.com/tag/mobile-web-market/

The penetration of mobile internet in Europe is supposed to be somewhere around 8 – 10 % at this moment.

 

Who’s going to be the leader?

All companies in the ecosystem have different roles. Mobile operators are the provider of the technology and connectivity. The device manufacturers create great phones and embed services on these phones.

Now where’s the problem?

 

  • Some mobile operators think they can lead the market, and also offer services, which they themselves can fully filter and manage
  • OEM’s have up till now pretty much fallen for operator requests on what to do where, but thanks to the iPhone, which basically did everything on their own, other device manufacturers also see the potential that they have

 

Now the problem with operators thinking they can lead the market is the following - First, they don’t have the experience to handle mobile internet services. They have never done it, and even though they can try hard and hire the best people, it’s hard to manage something like this. Of course they want a big piece of the upcoming mobile advertising pie, but right now they’re not handling it perfectly. Also there are own strict company rules, the usual branding of the services, that all slows down the process of launching new mobile services.

Luckily, some of them understand the only possible way is to open the mobile internet to the off-portal world (and open their gardens).  Some of them already have a Google search box on the top of their page, and leave everything else to optimization of different sites, and relevancy that Google gives. That’s the best thing to do at this stage.  Of course the operators have to slightly filter the Google search results, so this (Vodafone Live Games finds T-Zones portal) doesn’t happen.

We can find it like this in several countries already, examples being Germany, UK, and the United States. But some of the operators have still not realized that’s the only option, and are closing the search down only to their portal, their categories are many times inaccessible, and their closed garden policy is killing the possibilities of mobile internet growth.

Now where is the money?

Other then mobile billing and products you need monetization for (I will come back to this later), mobile advertising is something both the operators and device manufacturers are looking at. Look at Nokia for example, who acquired a mobile advertising company Enpocket and also established their own mobile advertising unit (Nokia Ad Business). Now operators have also launched their local mobile advertising activities, which puts them into competition in this area – as the operators and both device manufacturers see revenue in this area.  

So now, let’s look closer at the OEM side of things. I here too many things about the iPhone and gPhone, everybody hears it, and honestly it’s getting a little boring. Couple million devices sold, couple million to go. I believe both of the concepts have some sort of market, don’t get me wrong , but what about the other companies?

  • Nokia – 1 billion mobile phones shipped worldwide (37 % market share)
  • Sony Ericsson – 300 million mobile phones sold (10 % market share)
  • Apple iPhone – 10 million mobile phones sold?

Nokia, the leading OEM

What I am trying to say is that there is a huge market beyond the iPhone, which not many are focusing at. Let’s look at world’s largest OEM – Nokia. If we would compare Nokia to all other connected media worldwide (all other hardwares in the world), Nokia would be the single leading company in terms of number of devices sold. 1 billion people are using Nokia phones every day, fo which right now around 100 million are connected to the mobile internet. Nokia also in the last 2 years acquired a set of companies, the biggest being Navteq, Symbian, Enpocket (mobile ad firm), Trolltech (IT company), Plazes (social networking), Twango (sharing of photos, thus came the OVI concept). Most of these companies are focused around services. Nokia is obviously heading to a concept where it will offer a full list of all services on it’s mobile phones.  

These acquisitions and services that Nokia has, can lead them into a great deal of services they can have directly on phones (Games, Maps, Music, etc.), and Nokia can become one of the largest supplier of these services worldwide.

So who is it going to be? Will it be mobile operators or device manufacturers? To see who will win, we will have to wait.

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