Portal Strategies

Portal strategies describes how to succeed with today’s mobile portals and how to prepare for the mobile content industry of tomorrow. The report covers tools available to portal owners to improve their services, including marketing, personalisation, and mobile search. The report also introduces a smart pipe strategy for mobile operators, suggesting they can create marketplaces where third party content owners and advertisers can reach consumers directly - without operators giving up their central role in the content ecosystem.

Key Coverage

• Improving content discovery using on-device portals, personalisation and search
• ‘Smart’ pipes: the future of the mobile operator portal
• Marketing a mobile portal to subscribers
• Managed services and content delivery platforms
• Content aggregators roles on-and off portal
• The rise of direct-to-consumer (D2C) and its impact on mobile operator portals

Market Data

• Mobile operator case studies; Alltel, Cingular Wireless, O2 UK, Orange
• Vendor profiles:
• Search: Jumptap, Medio Systems, Yahoo!
• Personalisation: Bango ChnagingWorlds
• Content delivery/managed services: July Systems, Morticity
• On-device portals: Cibenix, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sony Ericsson

Key Issues Addressed

• What are the leading operators like O2 doing today to make their portals more effective?
• What aspects of managing a portal can be outsourced and to whom?
• Why aren’t portal owners benefiting from the personalisation techniques employed by e-tailers like Amazon.com?
• How will operators make money out of mobile search?
• How should portal owners prepare for changes in the mobile content industry over next five years
• What will Orange and other global operators’ next-generation portals look like?

Please Note: Informa requires that clients sign a confidentiality agreement prior to fulfillment of PDF email delivery for all PDF orders.

CHAPTER 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The mobile portal

Rise of D2C

Improving the mobile portal

Figure 1.1: Short-term portal strategy

Smart pipes

Figure 1.2: Long-term portal strategy

Conclusion

CHAPTER 2

MARKET OVERVIEW AND INTRODUCTION

Mobile portals

The mobile content and services market

Global mobile users

Figure 2.1: Global mobile subscribers by region, 2006-2011 (million)

Mobile content and services users

Services used

Mobile content and service revenues

The mobile operator portal

Figure 2.2: Vodafone live! softkey

Figure 2.3: Vodafone live! 3G portal

Do-it-yourself or hire a pro?

Nurturing an ecosystem

Content discovery

Personalisation

Part of a wider toolchest

CHAPTER 3

PORTAL MANAGEMENT

Figure 3.1: Summary of portal functions and outsourcing potential

Selecting and refreshing content

Microsites

Figure 3.2: Sample games microsites on 3 Italy

Promoting the portal

Messaging

Figure 3.3: Vodafone live! promotional SMS

Retail

Case study: O2 Active UK

Managing the portal

Figure 3.4: O2 Active content categories

Figure 3.5: O2 Active partners

Content organisation

Marketing

CHAPTER 4

CONTENT DELIVERY

Service delivery platforms

Content delivery platforms

Figure 4.1: Components of a content delivery platform

Profiles of content delivery vendors

Motricity

Figure 4.2: Motricity Fuel platform

July Systems

Figure 4.3: July Systems platform

Managed services

Cingular Wireless

Retailing directly on the handset

The evolution of operator branding in the mobile phone UI

On-device portals

Cibenix

Figure 4.4: Cibenix on-device portals

Nokia Content Discoverer

Figure 4.5: Nokia Content Discoverer

Qualcomm BREW uiOne

Figure 4.6: BREW Gaming Signature Solution

Figure 4.7: BGSS teaser and product information screens

Figure 4.8: Alltel Celltop

Figure 4.9: Selected Celltop cells

Figure 4.10: PlayNow

CHAPTER 5

SEARCH

Mobile search

Figure 5.1: t-zones UK video categories

Overcoming the usability barrier

Driving mobile search usage

The pivotal role of relevancy

Mobile search enables targeted mobile advertising

Search monetisation models

Figure 5.2: Perceived importance of mobile search monetisation models to mobile operators

Mobile search provider profiles

JumpTap

Medio Systems

Yahoo!

Figure 5.3: Yahoo! oneSearch

Figure 5.4: Yahoo! publisher services

Mobile search 2.0

Recommendation and social search

CHAPTER 6

PERSONALISATION

Personalised shopping: the online standard

Figure 6.1: Personalisation techniques

Figure 6.2: Amazon.com personalisation samples

Personalisation on mobile: not there yet

Figure 6.3: Barriers to consumers purchasing mobile content

Figure 6.4: Importance of portal improvements to increasing mobile content sales

Bango fingerprint

Figure 6.5: Bango ‘My Downloads’ feature

Personalisation platforms

Figure 6.6: Comparison of vendor support for personalisation features

ChangingWorlds’ ClixSmart

Figure 6.7: ChangingWorlds sample portal

Figure 6.8: ClixSmart recommendation system

CHAPTER 7

CONTENT AGGREGATORS

The role of the content aggregator

Figure 7.1: Content aggregators’ role in mobile content distribution

On-portal roles

Aggregating content

Aggregating distribution channels

Aggregating content as part of an end-to-end solution

Off-portal roles

Content aggregator landscape

Figure 7.2: Content aggregator quadrant

Publishing

Figure 7.3: Content aggregator quadrant with example companies

Platform provision

Figure 7.4: Selected content aggregators by country

CHAPTER 8

DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER

Figure 8.1: Casino Royale web storefront

The growing importance of D2C

Figure 8.2: Perceived importance of mobile content distribution channels, 2006 and 2011

Brand momentum

News Corporation/Fox/Jamba

MTV

BBC

Payment mechanisms

Premium SMS

Limitations of premium SMS

Figure 8.3: Perceived importance of mobile content payment mechanisms, 2006 and 2011

WAP billing

Revenue shares

Figure 8.4: Industry estimation of fair revenue shares between content provider and operator

The interaction between operator portals and D2C.

The ‘friendly sphere’ D2C model

Figure 8.5: On- and off-portal share of transactions processed by Qpass in the US,

April 2004 to April 2006

Figure 8.6: Share of Alltel mobile content revenue derived from on- and off-portal

transactions, 2004-2006

Gallery

Figure 8.7: Gallery link on Orange World France

Convergent on- and off-portal strategies

CHAPTER 9

CONCLUSIONS

Maximising portal value in the short-term

Figure 9.1: Short-term portal strategy

The future of the operator portal

Landline lessons

Figure 9.2: BT Yahoo! home page

Mobile operators respond

Figure 9.3: web’n’walk home page

Case study: Orange

Barriers and solutions

Smart pipes

Figure 9.4: Long-term portal strategy

Conclusion

APPENDIX

INDUSTRY SURVEY

Methodology

Figure A.1: Profile of survey respondents by industry sector

Figure A.2: Profile of survey respondents by location

Figure A.3: Profile of survey respondents by role

4Q06 Mobile Content Industry Survey questionnaire

GLOSSARY