ICH MARKE DU JANE

As one could read today at our ally blog Mobile Zeitgeist, reports show that Mobile TV has worldwide still no return in investment. Even the asian markets do not succeed in generating revenue. Why is that, and why is no one in Germany, in a country full of TV influence, trying to launch a proper service? There are several aspects to look at:

a) Business Plan: All cases for now had tried to offer Mobile TV as full service, as own product with an almost independent revenue stream. This will not work ever! People who judged Mobile TV as the "new SMS", the killer service for mobile usage, were not able to convince a single customer that he needs to buy Mobile TV for a fixed fee besides their cost for telephony and data. A customer would only be willing to pay more if he gets an added value. Which leads to the second point, the content:

b) Mobile Content: We have in terms of Mobile TV a clash of industries, Telcos meet Media companies. The first ones know a lot about networking, communication, hardware and the billing habits of their customer. The media companies are professionals in advertising and producing TV content. No one of them could offer Mobile TV on their own, due to the fact that they are missing crucial facts, the content or the mobile service behaviour. The telcos have no clue about content, they simply do not know how to produce entertainment. The TV provider are definitely lacking in knowledge about mobile habits and circumstances a telco user is usually in.

c) The misunderstanding of convergence: For that I need to quote one of the most famous TV persons in Germany I was listening to while he gave his key speech at one of the panels about Mobile Convergence at the CeBIT last week, Georg Thoma, chairman of the first private TV channel in Germany, RTL. He said: "Some people keep on telling me that the cell phone is going to be a swiss army knife ("Eierlegende Wollmichsau" in german), but for me a "handy" is only for calling. I cannot imagine to watch a lovely TV series on my handset. Let’s face it – the screens are just too small. Mobile TV might work in asian countries like South Korea, but because we have such great TV channels in Germany, convergence will not work here." As you can imagine I need to take a deep breath here and it still feels painfull to write it down … Still, what does it tell us? It means that aldery ignorant TV bosses fear that their well known business (streaming of popular TV content) will not stay forever and that the generation of 60+ need to keep the TV provider alive. Well, a risky strategy I would assume.

So what do we need to get Mobile TV successfully integrated into the Mobile Services/Propositions?

1) First of all we need to understand that Mobile TV is only another form of mobile video and that it could only be profitable as add-on product of mobile internet and convergent TV offering.

2) Content needs to be tailored for mobile situations. A customer has two kinds of Mobile TV needs: a) boredom and b) event/social driven. For a) we need customer specific on demand content that is short and concise and could be consumed immediately within some minutes (popular Soaps, Documentations etc.). For b) I need a broadcasting of live events like Olympics, Elactions or other social happenings whereby the point in time is crucial. Both offerings combined are valuable for a consumer and he would be willing to pay a extra fee or receive advertisment.

3) TV stations need to understand and ask the youth about their way of entertainment and TV consumption. If they would really focus on that they would need to change their business model immediately. Pure mainstream TV offerings will vanish soon – advertisers (like Eplus recently announced) will look for more efficient ways to communicate with their customers. TV will be one part of a proper entertainment proposition: watch your personal entertainment stream when and wherever you want!

Which leads to the last point: Who is going to offer that? Well, that is properly the hardest one – for now I do not see any company capable to to this – but I would be very happy to see someone prove me wrong!

Tags: mobile internet, Mobile TV

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 01:55 and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.