Rain Rannu

When I was recently asked me to ruminate on the topic of “what does the new year have in store for mobile services” I wanted to write about how a time will come when we get rid of our TV-sets, because we are all watching TV on our mobiles. Or how face to face meetings will be rendered meaningless as video calls satisfy our need for interaction.
But as nothing of the kind is going to happen this year, I had to ask the visionary John Strand to help me to come up with a new topic. According to him this year in mobile business one should seek inspiration from three fields not at all connected to mobiles: aviation, supermarkets, and pharmaceutical companies.
Aviation
What inspiration has the aviation to offer? Strand says that the mobile business is going through a similar price revolution as the aviation a few years ago when low fares airlines’ offensive destroyed the business model of expensive airlines.
Competition between mobile operators results in lower prices for the clients. Skype threatens to reach the mobiles this year. The European Union has undertaken a plan to regulate roaming prices, making calling abroad cheaper than it is at present.
All that receives a warm welcome from the consumers – as did the low fares airlines a few years ago. Only those mobile operators, like airline companies, are successful who do not attempt to maintain high tariffs at all costs (like a German operator who blocked mobile-Skype in its network), but adjust. They offer low-priced services to those who like flying cheap, but expensive services to those who appreciate the luxury of the business class.
Supermarkets
What inspiration have the supermarkets to offer for the mobile market? That when providing extra services – like SMS things, mobile parking, logos-games-sounds – the operator is increasingly more turning into a department store or a supermarket, not a producer.
It is good and convenient to buy merchandise on the operator’s home page or WAP page, but someone else produces the merchandise. It is those who are close to the consumers, who are able to recognize the needs of niches, and who are small and flexible enough to come out quickly with new services. Like supermarkets, the operator brings together the producer and the buyer. And the producer of a successful service does not necessarily have to be a professional in the mobile business any more, but it can easily be a private person, a small company, a schoolboy or -girl.
Pharmaceutical companies
But how could the pharmaceutical companies inspire the mobile market? By showing that in order to keep up with the competition, one has to innovate.
Like in the pharmaceutical industry, once a patent has expired the market is flooded with generic drugs, so will every successful mobile service soon be copied. Innovation on the mobile market (unlike the pharmaceutical industry) does not have to be money- or technology-intensive. As the last year’s most successful new mobile services demonstrate (for example SMS loan), it is often enough to combine smartly the existing resources and technology in order to be successful.
It is the latter that is still missing in case of mobile TVs and video calls mentioned in the beginning of the article. One has only thought about the elaborate technology, but not the wishes of a user.
In Japan video calls became popular only with the appearance of user-created animation characters who moved on the screen according to the mood of the conversation and whom everyone was able to create, download, and forward. Mobile TV will have a breakthrough when a service like YouTube is created, which enables users to create and share clips.
What will be a working “smart combination” in Canada does not depend solely on the operator, but also on small companies and users.