Last week we attended a mobile forum in London aimed at the ‘little guys’ within the mobile industry. With no major operators there flexing their muscles it was more a meeting of minds to discuss the road ahead for the businesses that lie beyond the network portals

The question is who’s got the map?
The mobile industry is currently worth £700bn and I wrote in my last post how major players in other sectors, such as Sony BMG were getting in on that slice of pie. In fact in Asia said label is currently making more revenue from ringtones than they are in music licensing. With movements like this it’s no wonder they’re predicting mobile to become the world’s first trillion dollar industry. It’s also this personalisation aspect of the mobile media which is bringing a whole new set of buzzwords to the table. My current favourite…’communitainment’. It’s companies such as Blyk who are marketing themselves as communitainment specialists, connecting young people with the brands they like. Now, Blyk may only deal with the narrow demographic of 16-24 year olds, but a survey not so long ago conducted by Orange across a wider age range showed that in fact 50% of mobile users wanted to interact more with their favourite brands. And with a predicted 5bn people owning a mobile phone by 2015, that’s a lot of people (that’s twice as many people who will own a TV, and five times as many people who will have an internet connection).

This of course means that all these people will have to be engaged in some way. And it’s certainly not happening suitably yet, often blurring the lines and crossing into spamming territory. In the rare cases that it does work, it works well. The average click through rate on the internet is 1-2%, while Blyk who provide tailored campaigns to subscribers who have opted-in to the service have reported a 29% average click-through rate across 700 campaigns. That’s where the advantages of mobile lie.

But there are also other revenue streams in mobile for the entrepreneurially minded. While 95% of the industry’s value is based on making calls and sending SMS, there are also plenty of other service slowly growing an appetite for data. Think navigation, POS terminals, fleet management systems, gaming consoles, set-top boxes and you will see where the niche operator can offer connectivity. It’s all made for mobile.

So what about the mass market consumer? If it’s all about being ‘made for mobile’ what will you and I be engaged with in years to come? Facebook dominates internet metrics and is now present across many blackberries in real-estate form, while also being easily accessible via mid-range phones through its mobile portal. But what will be the new Facebook on mobile? Will it be Facebook? Well the general consensus seems to be no. It’s certainly filling a void at the moment, however the ultimate winner will be one which utilises mobile’s unique qualities such as direct communication, VOIP, personalisation, redemption and GPS. People, especially young people, are prepared to give away information such as location in exchange for a richer social experience.

So what is this wondrous mobile solution? Well many people have so far tried to address this issue, and many people have failed. Thinking caps on ladies and gents.

Tags: Blyk, communitainment, facebook, mobile