Mobile vs PC part I

If you go to Mexico, the government is trying to stimulate Internet access through PC penetration. So, there are different models, but I think mobile is the cheap way in. And the take-up patterns have been very different. If you go to the UK, you start with newspapers, then magazines, radio, television, PCs to get to the Internet, and then you went to mobile. In China and India, mobile has leapfrogged PC.

Mobile: User Generated Content

The market for mobile user-generated content (UGC) services like Tocmag will be worth $13.2bn by 2011, according to research published by Informa Telecoms and Media and the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF). Tocmag, which launched in the UK recently, offers users the ability to create six-page mobile magazines which can be filled with text, images, audio and video. As the first free UGC application for mobiles to go live, Tocmag’s launch is a significant milestone for the burgeoning ‘Mobile Web 2.0’ market, say Informa and the MEF.According to M:Metrics, 29% of UK mobile owners currently use the mobile Internet. According to the research, this figure will rise significantly over the next year as increasing numbers of mobile UGC services enter the fray. Informa and the MEF say that early efforts in this space, such as Orange’s highly-successful ‘buff or rough’ concept, suggest that mobile UGC will prove the ‘killer app’ for mobile internet. They argue, too, that this idea is well-supported by Tocmag’s impressive beta user stats. Between May this year and the official launch of the service two weeks ago, more than 10,000 Tocmags were built, generating almost 125,000 downloads – entirely by word of mouth.

In lieu of the Mobile User Generated Content rising, I think people would want to go beyond the "160 characters" limit and express themselves, whether it be love or business or war! Therefore, the need arises to develop an inexpensive module with mroe capacity and more expression (if possible.) Further, it leaves us no choice but emails over phone but many operators may be providing this service at a high cost or may not, at all!
To enhance the future of Mobile Content orientation, this magazine thingie rocks!

And now, Marketing Campaigns...

Agency BBDO and marketer Coca-Cola UK have each made claims that mobile will eventually replace TV as the most important medium for advertisers. And agencies such as Oglivy, Publicis and Saatchi are already conducting mobile marketing campaigns using text messaging. Yet many consumer-brand companies and their agencies lack the knowledge and technology to move beyond limited message-based mobile campaigns. Agencies and their clients are failing to take full advantage the cell phone-- what an executive at Quigley and Simpson calls "an exceptional response mechanism in the pocket of nearly every consumer.

Typical mobile campaigns employ text messaging to elicit a response from the consumer. For example, to obtain the offer for a free ringtone, a consumer either enters his or her phone number at a website or sends a text message to a "short code" published on product labeling or in the primary media. These actions trigger a series of back-and-forth text messages, culminating with a message containing a link to download the ringtone.

Text-message marketing campaigns are a good first step in mobile marketing and -- due largely to their relative novelty -- produce much higher response rates than internet-based email campaigns. However, text-message campaigns carry limitations. They generally elicit a simple, one-time response from the consumer: For example, "Yes, send me the free ringtone or a joke every week." These campaigns cannot engage the consumer in further communication beyond a simple opt in. As a result, the marketer is unable to re-engage with the consumer and advance the relationship.