Authors
Plain old billing is where the real pot of gold could be for carriers in the content-and-apps world
In the rush by operators to roll out app stores, cross-network widgets and other services designed to lure Web developers and users, it is easy to forget that perhaps the greatest asset that operators have to secure themselves a long-term place in the digital-content value chain is plain old billing.
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Mobile is conspicuous for its absence in the latest O2 Money announcements, says Guillermo Escofet
UK cellco O2 announced this week that it is entering the personal-finance sector with the launch in August of two prepaid Visa cards in conjunction with NatWest bank. In a press release issued by O2, a NatWest executive is quoted as saying that these “groundbreaking” cards will “really raise the bar in terms of the added value customers will get from the interaction with their mobile phone.”
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Can mobile TV become a ‘must have’ in a country like Iraq?
As operators and vendors bring out handsets featuring the latest applications dreamed up by technologists in their labs, the questions “nice to have, but would I want to pay for it?” and “what the hell for?” often spring to mind. Read the rest of this entry »
Developers face pricing and fragmentation quandaries as app-store bandwagon rolls
Application stores are becoming a trend among handset manufacturers and mobile operators, appearing to bode well for application developers, which have traditionally been neglected in the mobile content value chain. But developers are faced with a host of dilemmas regarding pricing and development costs as firms rush to launch their app-store offerings.
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The spotlight has turned from content to applications on mobile
There was a time when the mobile entertainment industry was all about content – about music, images and video produced by the big media brands and about how mobile could act as a new distribution channel for that content. Read the rest of this entry »
Analyst
Guillermo Escofet
Guillermo is editor of fortnightly newsletter Mobile Media and of the Content & Applications Intelligence Centre, a web-based service that aggregates information on mobile data services from all publications at Informa. In his role Guillermo is responsible for much of the journalistic coverage provided by Informa of the mobile content and data applications industry globally. Guillermo has recently written exposés on the revenue deals struck between mobile operators and the big online-search brands and on the failure of GSM carriers in the US to monetise the expensive mobile location systems they’ve deployed under the E911 mandate. He was also the first to break the news of Orange and T-Mobile joining forces to trial MBMS mobile TV technology TDTV in the UK. Guillermo is an experienced journalist who has worked in business and current affairs journalism in Europe and Latin America. He has edited an aviation business title, worked as a newspaper reporter and foreign correspondent in Central America and Mexico City, and first became involved with Informa as a stringer for Latincom in Mexico. For the past four years he has worked as part of Informa’s Content & Applications editorial team, first as editor of Mobile Location Analyst, Mobile Enterprise Analyst and Mobile Messaging Analyst, and now as editor of Mobile Media. Areas of expertise: mobile content and messaging, wireless enterprise services, mobile location services
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