10 Dec 2010 | Simon Andrews

Mobile Fix – Operators dilemma; new business models; and Facebook commerce

In the latest Mobile Fix, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, wonders who will pick up the bill for the bandwidth needed by mobile web players…

Operators Dilemma

Our thinking about operators in recent weeks touched upon an issue that is not going away – will operators continue to pick up the bill for the bandwidth needed by the mobile web players?

Whilst network coverage has always been an issue in the US – where the coverage of AT&T, Sprint and Verizon in different locations is researched and compared – it’s never been that big a thing over here. But as people start to experience dropped calls and slow data, this may change. A new UK mobile service tests the data speed on peoples smartphones and builds a crowd-sourced map that shows who does best around town.

And as this becomes an issue for users, the operators are looking to the people who cause all this data usage to contribute to the cost. This conversation is part of the bigger confrontation between operators and the web players. As one analyst says;

“They want a bigger piece not only of the pie but also ownership of the customer,” he said of web companies. “There’s clearly a big battle.”

And for brands this could be relevant really soon if operators decide to focus on advertising as an easy win – it’s a lot less risky to turn off video ads than it is to turn off Facebook .

New Business models

One thing that makes mobile so interesting is that thinking through the mobile opportunity can quickly get to business model issues.

We’re convinced there is real competitive advantage for the early winners on mobile as we believe peoples repertoire will be narrower than that on the web. And the new situations thrown up by ubiquitous mobile web access mean that businesses can look for new problems to solve for their customers.

The bridge between online and offline is one of the clearest areas where this works and Google are probably leading the charge here – particularly with the way they are using Google Goggles.

Talking of Angry Birds we were surprised to see it is no longer the top grossing app in the Apple store – having been replaced by a Smurf game. We’ve had first hand experience of the Smurf game business model; taking candy from kids is not new nor that innovative – but it’s obviously profitable.