Brands / Publishers Continue to Integrate Print, Mobile, On-line

As mobile is increasingly integrated into the marketing mix, brands and magazine publishers are finding all sorts of ways in which to integrate mobile with their printed and on-line editions.

The recent campaign by Allure featured the large scale use of 2D bar codes which readers could scan for a chance to win beauty product giveaways, a great way introduce new products and samples.

In the UK, a leading cosmetic brand Collection 2000 and IPC Media’s weekly glossy, ‘Look’ are collaborating to engage readers and promote the Collection 2000 brand through an innovative MMS competition. Readers are invited to send picture of themselves to a mobile Short Code for a chance to win prizes including a photo shoot and chance to appear in a future edition of the magazine.


Smart phones continue to revolutionise the way in which customers use mobiles and the way in which brands and publications interact with their customers. With the right tools and processes business of sizes can take advantage of the growing use of Smart Phones to promote business and win new customers.

Visa Gets Serious About Mobile Commerce - Will This Accelerate Mobile Commerce Adoption?

Following PayPal’s recent high profile and successful launch of PayPal for mobile on the iPhone, practical mobile commerce moved another step closer to wide spread adoption. 

Visa Inc’s approach to securing its own place in the mobile commerce space is to acquire CyberSource Corp, a long term provider of e-commerce transaction management solutions. The deal has in part been motivated by PayPal’s recent activities in the mobile payments space. For the industry, the $2B acquisition highlights the fact that mobile payments provide massive opportunities in the years ahead and that security will be one of the key challenges.

Mobile Commerce As A Separate Channel?

Currently, Visa sees mobile commerce as a separate channel from desktop based on-line commerce. This goes against the grain of many industry analysts who see the growing use of mobile internet as a potential threat to desk-top access. From a consumer’s viewpoint it is irrelevant. They just want the same ease of use and confidence whether they transact on desktop or mobile. For retailers, it might well be seen as a separate channel but only from the point of view understanding which channels are most effective at delivering sales. Their main requirement is to provide customers with a practical and secure mobile transaction environment.

New Opportunities For Business To Deliver Mobile Commerce

An increasing number of retailers want to get involved in mobile commerce but find it hard to do so. Navigating the range of mobile payment schemes and understanding the underlying rules, regulations and standards is daunting. Some retailers look at existing bill-to-phone methods and find them both expensive and restrictive. Others look at how they can enable users to submit credit card payments over mobile just they would on-line even though they accept that it is too cumbersome for consumers to enter the relevant data on a mobile device.

Visa’s announcement along with PayPal’s recent activities should give retailers who are serious about mobile commerce a cause for optimism. These players can ensure:

• Transaction fees that are much more in-line with retailer’s business models when compared to some bill-to-phone options
• Scalability both in terms of infrastructure and reach amongst the potential buying community

Consumer Acceptance

Consumer acceptance of mobile payment methods is of course key to wide spread adoption of mobile commerce. Solutions such as those enabled by PayPal and those created by the Visa / CyberSource tie-up will allow consumers to leverage their existing banking relationships and the familiarity and trust that goes with it. This will continue to make it more acceptable for consumers to transact on mobile so retailers more than ever before are beginning to have access to the correct mobile commerce enabling infrastructure.

Global CMO Survey: Digitally Empowered Clients Threaten Traditional Ad Agencies

Technology advancements and a radical shift in the way that customers engage with brands are creating challenges for traditional agencies. Whilst on the one hand the global economy starts to offer the promise of growth, a lack of appropriate skills threatens to remove access to this opportunity.

• Digitally empowered clients dissatisfied with agency online, viral and mobile marketing skills
• CMOs plan on more in-house skills development; less agency dependency
• Customer data management seen as moving up the agenda 

Digital Empowerment

One of the issues highlighted in the CMO Council’s State of Marketing Report, 2010, is that clients who have become more digitally empowered in recent years are dissatisfied with their agencies digital skills. Traditional agencies are struggling to convey to their clients that they can make channels such as mobile and social work. They are also not delivering viral marketing and are finding it harder to justify the online campaigns that they run.

Technology is the issue here. Creativity, branding and targeting have always been key areas of focus for agencies but mobile, social and online campaigning are driven by a combination of technology and vast amounts of customer data.

The rate at which technology continues to be developed makes it hard for traditional agencies to keep pace, leaving clients to bring in specialist agencies to the fill the skills gaps or do it themselves. Digitally empowered clients are also placing more focus on customer data. Specifically, how can the data that they have about their customers be used to improve campaign approach and planning? This highlights another issue with traditional ad agencies which is the lack of infrastructure or technology to manage the ever growing volumes of customer data.

Forward thinking agencies are already developing in-house skills or working with specialist agencies. However, it seems that this is not enough for clients who have started down the road of digital empowerment and believe that the best way forward is to increase their own knowledge, experience and technology assets.

Association of Online Publishers - Investing In Mobile A Top Priority

The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) in their annual census across 1,500 publishers and brands identified investing in mobile skills as a top agenda item for publishers in the year ahead.

Where To Invest?
Publishers that adopted mobile early will continue to test the promise offered by this channel whilst expanding their efforts into identifying business models that will replace declining revenues from existing channels, keep existing customers engaged and win new audiences. In pursuit of these objectives, investments should focus on the broader distribution of content and improved ability to monetise content effectively.

Investing In Distribution
Currently, mobile apps, almost exclusively iPhone apps, continue to be favoured as the best way of making content available on mobile. It almost guarantees a desirable user experience and whether charging for downloaded apps or providing them on a sponsored basis they are easy to monetise. However, with other smart phones enjoying more prominence, publishers that want to maintain an app only approach will need to develop them across several platforms or risk missing the opportunity to provide services to a broader customer base.

The other mobile channels - mobile internet, messaging, mobile video – also offer publishers a platform for distributing content to their readers, providing sponsorship opportunities to their advertisers and attracting new audiences. These should be considered alongside apps as additional methods for the delivery of content.

Mobile Internet - Data describing handset characteristics and capability is readily available and can be easily incorporated into mobile website publishing systems. This makes it easier to publish mobile sites that will adapt to each handset and ensure that the consumer gets the best user experience regardless of the handset that they are using.

Although it is not yet possible to provide as rich an experience when compared to apps, developments in HTML 5 are allowing the gap to be closed. Publishers wishing to broaden the audience that they can reach without going down the route of developing apps for each platform can still provide consumers with a rich experience through mobile internet sites.

Messaging - Messaging can be used to drive indirect content distribution. For example, SMS can be used to deliver scheduled notification or reminders of content availability. Links can be included with each message to ensure easy and immediate access to that content. Messaging in combination with suitable mobile payment options can also be used to sell subscriptions or support occasional content purchases.

MMS, is typically underused for business applications but it does provide a method for the delivery of rich content that can include text, audio, images and video. Several niche online and mobile only publications are already using MMS to distribute content rich news letters on a free or subscription basis.

Mobile Video - The rapid rate of smart phone adoption together with more readily available access to data subscriptions is allowing more and more consumers to enjoy mobile video content.

Whilst mobile video streaming is highly dependent on the willingness of network operators to provide sufficient bandwidth, the ability to quickly download clips that will last for a few minutes provides a practical alternative to streamed video or mobile TV. Whether it is news, information or entertainment, packaging this type of content as mobile video clips provides a rich, sharable user experience to consumers with appropriate smart phones.
As Publishers continue to invest in online video production, encoding content for distribution via mobile should also be considered.

Integration With Existing Channels – In adopting mobile more aggressively, integration with existing print and online channels should not be overlooked. As an example, some publications are already using 2D codes and short codes in print and online to connect with readers.

2D barcodes or SMS short code / key words combinations can be printed alongside product descriptions or featured articles. Readers can capture barcodes using readers installed on the phone and be directed to a mobile website for further information. Alternatively, readers can send a text message to the short code and receive an SMS that contains links to mobile sites or other downloadable content such as mobile video clips or eBooks that deepen their engagement with the product.

Mobile's Many Angles
There are many areas that Publishers should consider when incorporating mobile as a core part of their digital strategy. Apps are just one of them. Both Mobile Internet and Mobile Video continue to grow in importance and offer the possibility of enabling publishers to distribute a variety of rich content to their readers.

Google Sees Price Of Mobile Ad Units Increasing. Are There Alternatives?

The mobile industry is united in the thought that the use of mobile search and the high response rates associated with mobile ads will continue to grow. Taking this view one step further, Google exec Gundotra expects the actual price per mobile ad unit to increase and ultimately exceed the price of desk top ad units.

Paid Search Is Already Expensive. Can It Really Go Much Higher On Mobile?

For mobile ad unit pricing to increase, marketers will have to

• Increase their overall marketing budgets and
• Increase the amount that they allocate to mobile 

But the unit cost of paid search is already very high. It is difficult to see how it can go much higher and still present an attractive option for marketers even on mobile. This is especially true if there are credible alternatives.

One consequence of the increasing cost of paid search is the shift of budgets to Search Engine Optimisation. Another, more recent consequence is the growing use by marketers of Social Networks. Both of these will put pressure on the price of desktop search. This will be carried through to mobile.

  

Are There The Budgets Support Higher Priced Mobile Ads?

Marketers continue to shift their budgets to more personally engaging channels rather simply increase them. Mobile and social networks are amongst the beneficiaries. To anticipate a growth in the price per mobile ad unit and at the same time a growth in the use of mobile ignores the growing importance of Social Networks as a direct to consumer channel. Social Networks will continue to gain at the expense of mobile and here again, mobile search will come under pressure.

What Will Marketers Allocate To Mobile Search?

Determining the budget that should be allocated to mobile is difficult for advertisers and will continue to be so whilst it remains difficult to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of mobile advertising. comScore’s recent efforts in producing an industry standard model for mobile metrics will start to make measuring some aspects of mobile more transparent. This in turn will ensure a greater allocation of budgets to mobile. However, the increase will be shared across all mobile channels – Mobile Apps, Messaging, Mobile Video – not just search, and this too will put pressure on the price of mobile ad units.

  

Challengers To Mobile Search
Mobile search is on the increase and marketers do want to tap into this channel. However, marketing ROI is ultimately more important than the fashion of using mobile. If the cost of mobile search ad units does soar, there could be a shift away from search to other mobile channels and social networks.

   

m-health sector’s healthy opportunities? - Same old claims, same old problems

There is once again much focus on the opportunities presented by the m-health market. Several major mobile network operators have announced “new” m-health initiatives. O2, Orange, Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) and MTN are amongst those active in some way in the m-health market.

In fact m-health is not at all new since many of these operators have been active for a number of years. Orange for example announced the creation of their Orange Healthcare division back in 2007.

Before m-health it was e-health and along side these, tele-care, tele-medicine and other similar names exist to describe solutions that essentially have the same objectives. These are to alleviate the systemic pressures that are endemic in the healthcare industry such as the rising cost of healthcare and the inability of healthcare service supply to meet demand for services. These objectives are just as relevant to developed countries as well as developing countries. With the latter there is more focus on being able to deliver some form of affordable healthcare more broadly across the populations.

Statistics still not translating into Market Size
The McKinsey & Company report speaks of a $50bn to $60bn market for m-health in 2010 and cites this as one reason why operators are stepping up their efforts to create and deliver m-health services.

The magnitude of demand that will drive this market is based on a study of 3,000 consumers across 6 countries. Even though the countries involved in the study have the largest populations in the world, the number of consumers involved in the study is statistically insignificant given the fact that a large part of the target market is the 4 billion people using mobile phones that are struggling to access affordable healthcare.

The report suggests that 70% of respondents were very interested in using at least one m-health product and that “a surprisingly high number” were willing to pay. They would be, but this is not the same as saying that they could pay in which case the claimed market size starts to shrink quickly and significantly.

So what happened to e-health et al?
Analyst’s expectations for tele-care, tele-medicine and other related markets never reached their market expectations. Many pilots have been carried out and much experience has been gained. Work has been repeated and re-reported but the reality is that long-term commercial successes have been few. Most of the projects are government or research funded and do not readily translate into commercial success. Simply put, the huge potential is not matched by the ability or real willingness of people to pay despite what they say when questioned in a survey. Will it be any different for m-health?

Segment the m-health market to get a better understanding of the true market potential
In any consumer market, segmentation of the sector is critical in determining product / service functionality and price points. The m-health has yet to be subjected to this discipline in any substantial way because the market is still largely driven by government grants and research donations. The requirement to prove the technology, process or benefit far outweighs the requirement to prove the cost benefits.

At one extreme, sending SMS messages that carry public healthcare information and general advice to remote regions can easily be costed and is generally affordable. At the other extreme, solutions require the provision of high tech, personal medical devices that connect to remote monitoring centres either directly or through mobile phones. These kinds of solution are not affordable by developing countries and are only available on a limited basis in developed countries.

Search for the appropriate value chain continues
Over the years, the drive to incorporate technology as a key aspect of personal healthcare delivery has suffered from technological, logistical and legal issues amongst others. It is fair so say that with mobile operators being involved in m-health great strides can be made towards resolving some of the logistical issues. After all which industry is better placed to deliver and manage data and physical products directly to end users on such a grand scale? It is also fair to say that with organisations such as Continua driving standards for medical monitoring devices and electronic patient records great strides continue to be made towards resolving some of the technological issues that keep the availability of monitoring devices low and their prices unacceptably high.
The legal and support issues however remain largely unresolved. If anything, they will become even more complicated for anything other than simple SMS based m-health solutions. Who will take responsibility for loss of, or non-delivery of data at a critical moment? How can medical data, recommendations and advice be validated, assured, audited and tracked in an m-health driven system? Will the medical profession get behind m-health en-masse? If they do, how will the profession deal with the increased demand for advisory and follow-up services generated as a result of the sudden and huge increase in customers?

The role of mobile operators
Despite the size of the potential market, it continues to remain difficult to provide affordable solutions to a segment of the m-health market that would generate the most benefit for consumers and healthcare service providers alike.

If, by their involvement, operators are able to create an environment in which more of these support issues can be resolved, then further steps towards the mass adoption of m-health will have been taken.

Not All Doom and Gloom For Publishers Despite BBC's Plans For Mobile

The BBC’s mobile app strategy, announced last week at the Mobile World Congress has quickly been attacked by the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA). The issue they have is that the BBC will have a detrimental effect on the aspirations of the commercial sector for quality journalism. This comes just a few months after News Corporation launched an attack on the BBC, suggesting that the BBC’s state sponsored journalism was “threatening the plurality and independence of news provision”.

 

Both the NPA and News Corporation suggest that the BBC’s ability to deliver quality news content without having had to make any commercial investment puts the commercial sector for news and journalism at a disadvantage.

 

For their part, the BBC contends that all they are doing is delivering their content to the widest possible audience. Mobile apps are merely an extension of existing digital channels and supporting them is in line with their overall remit.

 

The Real Issue For Newspaper Publishers Is Not The BBC

 

Newspapers like any business need to make a profit. Their revenues have always been a combination of sales from circulation and ad revenues. Ad revenues need not be news related. The ads that they carry are merely a view of what the audience reading their publications might be interested in. Over the last decade the growth in use of digital media and change in reader habits has had a corrosive effect on both of these revenue streams. In particular:

• The number of free (ad sponsored) and paid for publications has increased
• There has been a proliferation of TV and on-line channels carrying news and advertising
• Readers pull the most up-to-date content from their preferred sources when they want it and have become used to getting most of what they want free of charge
• Advertisers seeking a better ROI have moved budgets from print to digital where direct marketing is easier to deliver and measure

 

The BBC did not instigate these changes nor does it drive them. Technology and consumer habits do. Publishers have just been slow to respond. Now, at a time when they need to act fast and decisively with respect to making their business models more relevant, mobile as an additional channel for accessing and receiving content has become more important to many groups of readers, especially the Millennial Generation who will form the bedrock of many publishers future customer base. This has added to the complexity of issues that publishers have to deal with and accelerated the pace at which they need to respond. However, identifying and implementing appropriate strategies continues to be slow and by sticking with the current business models publishers are guaranteeing the possibly terminal, but definitely irreversible revenue declines.

 

More Time Required To Transition To New Business Models

 

Whilst many NPA members have already embraced mobile technology, the traffic that they have been able to attract is substantially below what the BBC, with its global presence has been able to attract. Furthermore, revenues that they can generate from their efforts are limited and do not cover declining revenues elsewhere.

 

So although the NPA has a problem with the overall situation their comments only focus on a part of what the BBC does – provision of news. It does not take into account any of the other issues that are contributing to the demise of their member’s ability to provide news content in a commercially viable way. The stance that the NPA are taking, at least in public, of attacking the BBC’s plans for mobile apps is really a call for a “time out”. Since they can not possibly want to return to the old business models they must want time to figure out what the Millennial Generation want, how to provide it and how to generate sustainable revenues.

 

What Should The NPA Be Doing?

 

Whilst multi-sectioned publications either printed or online are very much the mainstay of many newspaper publishers, a reduced volume of highly relevant, current and sharable content is what characterises the Millennial Generation’s requirements. Publishers just need to figure out a way to deliver against these parameters and all could be well again.

 

To do this they will need to understand the paying customer more completely which is exactly what direct marketers and in particular mobile marketers are attempting to unravel. It requires a degree of customer profiling that that publishers who essentially have a mass media delivery model do not do. Understanding how customers’ requirements for news and information changes over time and how these might be affected by real world events for example would enable publishers to generate and make available more targeted bundles of information. If this can be truly differentiated from the generally available content, they could charge a premium.

 

This approach needs to be supported by the adoption of content delivery technology, payment and subscription models that enables publishers to:

 

• Transition from publication wide subscriptions models to a per article model
• improve relevancy and personalisation at a per reader level
• Provide a mechanism that allows readers to select and bundle the own content even if it requires integrating content from competing publications
• Present content in the format that that each reader wants whether that is mobile internet, mobile apps, on-line, email or even glossy print
• Provide the same content either ad free or ad sponsored

A View Of The Future

 

It is not all doom and gloom for publishers. The magazine consortium created by Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and Time Inc. that are aiming to build a viable digital newsstand provides an example of what alternative approaches the NPA might consider recommending for its’ members even whilst they continue to lobby the BBC Trust and Ministers at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to stop the BBC’s intrusion into mobile and all things digital.

 

GSMA / comScore Mobile Media Metrics - How Well Does It Help Campaign Planners?

The Mobile Media Metrics launched by the GSMA / comScore focuses on measuring mobile internet consumption and user behaviour. AdMob already did a great job of cracking open the operator’s walled gardens to ensure that not only did mobile internet usage grow way beyond their closed, on-deck portals, but that user behaviour could be measured. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) did a great job of bringing us the app store concept which also has great consumer reach and along with all of the other app stores now available are platforms of choice for many advertisers.

Mobile Media Metrics Needs To Include SMS, MMS and Mobile Video As Well
Before either the mobile internet or mobile apps reached the levels of prominence that they now enjoy, SMS and SMS Short Codes were already being used extensively by marketers. So at the very least, mobile media in the context of mobile advertising and marketing must also include mobile apps, SMS and Short Codes. For the more adventurous, MMS and mobile video also need to be included in the mix.


What Campaign / Media Planners Want
Campaign planners and media planners are genuinely interested in how effective the mobile element of their campaigns are but what they really want to know is, “for a given brand/product/demographic/marketing objective what is the most effective mix of mobile channels and how best do I use them.
This presents a real challenge for campaign planners since the answers require a set of metrics that go way beyond the scope of the current Mobile Media Metrics. Data will have to be drawn from across app stores, some of which the operators have no control over, or visibility of. Third party content providers would need to contribute data where content in the form of ad supported MMS or video was distributed so that the advertisers could measure visibility across these channels also. Of course, for each advertiser all of this data needs to be considered alongside data derived from campaigns directly to consumers who are already opted-in to receiving marketing messages from them.


So whilst brands and media buyers continue to be excited about mobile, the independent statistics that they apparently require before committing large spends may still be some way off. In the meantime mobile as a direct marketing channel will continue to grow and practitioners will, to a large extent, still have to derive and apply their own metrics to get the full picture.

Mobile Marketing - What Do Mobile Operators Really Know About Us?

An article in Marketing Week, 14th January 2010 – “Google, Apple deals show major potential of mobile” suggests that whilst these deals highlight the mobile marketing opportunity they will not offer advertisers the type of benefits that the operators can. True or biased?

Well, the idea hangs on the premise that operators:

1. have access to more channels
2. know their users’ interests
3. can offer incentives such as mobile services in return for receiving ads

Access to more channels?
Numerous third parties offer access to all mobile channels and they do this by going through the operators themselves or through mobile service aggregators. The advantage that the operators have is that they can make it unnecessarily hard or expensive to access these channels. Location based services is an example of this. However, they still make revenue where request for access to these channels is via a third party so I can not think that they will be too concerned.

Know their users?
What do they really know? They know what handsets we use, how often we use them and the tariffs that we are on. They know what services we use, when we are most likely to use them and how much we spend. For newer customers, the more forward thinking operators may know which mobile websites we have visited and which social networks we interact with but will have no idea what we thought of the banner ads that might have been presented.

Unless we use our mobile phones to engage in mobile commerce transactions, operators are unlikely to know which brands or advertisers I might like to hear from with a view to completing a transaction which is one of the things that an advertiser would like.

Opting in to receiving specific alerts and information from brands or advertisers is not the same as opting in to receiving information about brand categories.

Can offer incentives?
Blyk, albeit an MVNO proved that this would not work. Does more need to be said?

So What Do Mobile Operator’s Really Know About Us? Not As Much as The Brands and Advertisers Already Know
On balance, operators do not by themselves have enough information to deliver, on a consistent basis, relevant ads or information to most of their customer base.

Drawing up a set of algorithms that can take what information operators do have about their customers and converting this into accurate data about the brands and advertisers that we have any affiliation with or the lifestyle that we lead is someway off.

Google vs. China - Business vs. Censorship?

In a week when Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced that it was potentially going to close down its China operation, ITV, Britain’s largest commercial broadcaster announced that it was moving in through a partnership with Chinese state broadcaster Hunan Satellite Television. Chasing lucrative business opportunities in an environment where government censorship and control is high continues to be a fine balancing act with many affected business preferring to remain silent. Google has decided to buck the trend. Why now ? Why this way?


A Tale of Two Industries
Both Google and ITV cited government censorship and state control in their relevant announcements. For Google, the recent targeted attacks on the gmail accounts of some of their customers has triggered a publicly declared rethink of the terms and conditions under which they should continue to do business in China. Google has not said that these attacks were Government sponsored but on a personal level they are concerned with the particular group of people that were victims of the attacks. On a broader basis, the sustained and systematic cyber-attacks that are said to originate from China have given Google an opportunity to go public with its general feeling on the Chinese market. Simply put, Google no longer want to do business where the government continues to require censorship of search results and content despite having agreed to those terms in 2006.

On the other hand ITV are following the line that Google took back in 2006. They recognise China’s continuing rise in global importance along with the market opportunity that it presents. They want a piece of the business available and are prepared to operate under potential terms of censorship. No doubt, ITV will keep an eye on developments that relate to infringement of civil rights and privacy. As to how this will affect the way in which the Hunan / ITV partnership develops only time will tell.

What Has Changed For Google?
Certainly the conditions under which Google are required to operate in China have not changed. Google have changed. They are more dominant in the markets in which they operate and have become more powerful. With that comes the ability to try and set their own terms wherever they operate and so it is with China’s continued censorship of search results and content. However, they are not dominant in China and despite gaining ground there are question marks as to whether this is at all possible.

Poiitical Change Or Market Withdrawal?
Perhaps, if they were to win this battle and be able to offer totally uncensored search, they could leapfrog the incumbent Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and claim their customary first spot in yet another market. Thet also get brownie points for effecting social and poIitical change. If they do not win this battle and go ahead with the threatened closure they get to exit a market that they have not been able to dominate without the negativity associated with a high profile market withdrawal.

And The Reality Is?
Google’s Android is growing in popularity in China. Pulling the plug on that community is not an option and with mobile internet surging in popularity now is not the time to withdraw from the market. China hosts a Mobile Internet Summit in April 2010 which has been declared as a “new era for mobile internet”. This is a space that Google has made clear that it is very interested in and is therefore unlikely to stay away from this market.

Ade Bamigboye, CEO Mobile Flow

Google's Nexus One - Game Changer But How?

There has been much speculation over the last few months regarding Google’s plans for their branded smart phone. Rumours have turned to ‘leaks’ and there is strong indication that the pricing models will not be that disruptive after all. At a time when many analysts agree that the ingredients to support rapid growth in mobile enabled services are largely in place, an entry by a player such as Google will most definitely change the game for many of the industries existing players.

Business As Usual?
Operators and hand set manufacturers who feared the worst need not worry after all. It is business as usual, or is it?

Google’s planned purchase of Admob (announced at the end of 2009) signalled their belief that the size and potential of the mobile value added services market is relevant and of interest to them, that they intend to take a large slice and do it quickly.

The AdMob purchase, if it goes through to completion, will provide Google with a huge and immediate presence in the mobile internet marketing space to which no doubt they will add their own internet marketing technology and know-how. Launching their own handset /mobile operating system is the quickest way of gaining traction in the mobile apps and services space dominated by Symbian driven handsets. This does depend on the growing army of Android app developers to add value to Google’s proposition in much the same way that the iPhone app developers have done for Apple but it will happen.

For Google, these initiatives are simply a natural extension of what they have been doing since their inception, proving information access tools to the masses as well as a platform for vendors to promote their products and services. It just so happens that the “masses” are going mobile and so too must Google.

Market Growth Will Reduce The Impact On Existing Players
However Google take their slice it will be at the cost of existing players or combinations of players who despite being involved in this space from the outset did not innovate sufficiently with either technology or business models to become truly entrenched.

Luckily, the market for smart phones and mobile enabled services is growing. For those that do loose out to the Google / HTC combination in the short-term it might not be too painful and they might even have a chance to regroup and innovate.

Looking Ahead - Reconfiguring The Value Chain
The market for mobile services outside of voice calls is still in its infancy. There is a long way to go. Google’s entry on the mobile scene is not nearly as important as the impact that they will have on business models as the industry gains clarity over what works and what does not and as value chains become reconfigured to better support innovation in technology and services to provide consumers with what they want, relevant, affordable services.