Mobile's rapid growth has led to a flurry of activity as content owners attempt to carve out market positions, but the sector remains extremely complex. While a growing number of companies claim to be cashing in on mobile, there is a dearth of data about audience usage and revenue models.
Claire Tavernier, senior vp interactive at FremantleMedia Licensing Worldwide (FLW), says her company is making money out of taking entertainment brands into the mobile space: "This is definitely a commercial venture for us. But we are also experimenting with a range of business models. A big part of our strategy is trying to find the kind of content that will help the market take off."
In the US, classic Fremantle gameshow brands such as Family Feud and The Price is Right are licensed to games specialist Mobliss - which distributes them to mobile networks. Meanwhile, in the UK, FLW has hooked up with a range of mobile networks to provide SMS content, video and games based on the second series of music format The X Factor.
FLW formed an exclusive partnership with mobile network 3 for the first series of The X Factor but this time has gone non-exclusive. Content has been licensed to ITV Mobile and X Factor fans will be able to watch clips of memorable events from the show. There is also news and gossip via SMS and MMS alerts, ringtone and wallpaper downloads, competitions, games and quizzes.
Entertainment programming generally lends itself well to mobile. While content from iconic brands such as Endemol's Big Brother and Fremantle's Idols are a natural extension of the onscreen product, the likes of Celador's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? have the kind of familiar, easy-to-play game mechanics that mobile users flock to.
It's not just contemporary entertainment that is finding its way into the mobile space. Fremantle believes clips of classic comedies like Mr Bean and Benny Hill will work well in mobile although there are rights clearance issues. In the meantime Virgin Mobile and Comedy Central in the US have a joint venture that gives Virgin subscribers access to games, screen savers, wallpapers and ringtones based on the channel's content.
Drama is also going mobile. At the start of this year Twentieth Century Fox entered a joint venture with Vodafone, which involved producing original one-minute episodes based on its hit drama 24. The resulting mobisodes have rolled out exclusively to Vodafone subscribers in more than 20 territories.
From Fox's perspective, the aim was to promote the latest 24 TV series - while Vodafone's goal was to drive uptake of its service. The result is that the content is free in this case.
In the US, Disney's ABC Network has teamed up with mobile content specialist Proteus to enable viewers to personalise their phones with content from daytime soaps like General Hospital and primetime hits such as Alias. Starting out with ringtones, graphics and premium text messaging, the ultimate goal is to deliver games, chat applications and video clips.
Deals of this kind provide an insight into whether mobile can complement, rather than cannibalize, TV viewing. Advocates suggest mobile could one day provide a fallback position for someone who has, for example, missed an episode of a show, making it possible to miss episode three and rejoin for episode four.
Much activity is driven by the desire to promote brands and build new revenues, but some deals are constructed to give networks a winning edge over rivals. In August, Vodafone live! customers in Holland were able to watch the inhabitants of the latest Big Brother house three days before the first episode appeared on TV. For the first time, fans of the show could also watch 24/7 coverage of the show via mobile at a price of [euro]0.50 (US$0.60) for ten minutes.
Animation is a natural fit for mobile with Nelvana reporting that Beyblade ringtones, screensavers and wallpapers have generated decent revenue. Nelvana is now launching mobile content ranging from short-form animation clips through to full-blown episodes in partnership with channel operators YTV and Treehouse and mobile TV pioneer MobiTV. Right now the content is primarily TV-based. But senior manager of licensing, interactive, Scott MacMillan believes original mobile is on the way: "Before long I think we'll see dedicated content that reflects the medium's strengths. It will be short-form, self-contained stories with an aesthetic tailored to the mobile screen's size. There'll also be more emphasis on mobile's interactive capabilities."
French distributor Moonscoop has also ventured into mobile. It has teamed up with mobile publisher Overloaded to develop wireless games based on animated series Funky Cops. The first game was available for download to mobiles in September 2005, supported by additional downloads, ranging from wallpapers, realtones and video. "Funky Cops is ideal for gaming and its strong (pre)teen fan base are big users of mobiles so we believe this is a perfect fit," says Moonscoop CEO Axel Dauchez.
A new distribution marketplace is growing up around mobile and in both of the aforementioned cases, the content providers were put in touch with mobile partners by TV for Mobile - a French company that specializes in mobile content rights distribution.
UK-based Extreme Group has recently struck deals to supply action sports content to networks including Orange in the UK (using MobiTV as an intermediary) and 3 in Austria. Ben Barrett, MD of distribution arm Extreme Entertainment, says there is growing demand for content. "Three years ago we were doing mobile deals and making next to nothing. But in the last year we've started doing licence fee/revenue sharing deals that bring in four times as much as used to be available." The most popular content at present is iconic images and bloopers.
The notion of community plays a key role. Extreme recently launched ExtremeMob, a pre-pay mobile service for under 24s. Like Disney Mobile, ExtremeMob is what is called an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), a network within a network that in this case is available via Vodafone UK.
Attempts to populate the mobile space threaten domestic free-to-air channels by eroding already declining audience share. So it's no surprise to see them also looking to create mobile propositions. In September, UK commercial network ITV launched a mobile service that works with all WAP-enabled phones, and people access it by texting 63330. It will be marketed heavily via ITV's TV networks.
From launch, users of ITV Mobile will be able to get highlights or made-for-mobile footage from shows like Coronation Street and I'm a Celebrity. There is also showbiz news and gossip, news and sports bulletins, competitions, games, ringtones and wallpapers.
ITV will not charge users to download or browse the portal. "Some content will be free - but there are also video downloads, wallpaper and ringtones available at price points up to [pounds sterling]5," says ITV mobile supremo Jim Godfrey. Further down the line, there are also plans for a service called ITV Local, which will offer local news and weather, community activities, travel and property advertising. This opens up the option for ITV to develop local advertising.
The arrival of TV channel brands in the mobile space complicates things for rights owners. The sheer number of services coming on stream also makes the job of finding a route to market harder for rights holders. Aside from legacy TV brands like ITV and spin-off TV brands like Flux (see panel), it's likely that internet service providers like Yahoo! and Google will want to play in the mobile space. And while mobile networks operators are ambivalent about launching their own branded channels, 3, Vodafone Live! and Orange TV are beginning to take on quasi media-owner status.
There's more confusion to come with the race to deliver fully-fledged mobile TV. Right now, consumer trials in the UK, France, Spain and Australia, among others, are exploring the potential to deliver long form TV content to mobiles via DAB and DVB-H technologies and the likes of Sky, Discovery, CNN, Cartoon Network, Canal+ and the BBC have signed up.
It's easy to get carried away with mobile's potential. But how excited should we be? "The Crazy Frog phenomenon proves money can be made in mobile licensing. But that was an unusual case," says Graham Saltmarsh, licensing manager at Nelvana. "Games, meanwhile, will be popular, but with handheld games becoming so advanced, mobile titles will have to be exceptional to stand out. And while some mobiles can take 30 minutes of footage, that seems like a long time to squint at a tiny screen. I think rights holders will earn mobile revenues but probably not the huge amounts initially dreamt about."QQ]
Major mobile activity
The US studios aim to pursue their audience wherever it goes, whether that's the movies, TV, retail, theme parks, live events or new media and it's clear that games and licensed product are a big priority.
Time Warner recently detailed a $7.5 million strategic investment in California-based Glu Mobile, which creates games, ringtones and screensavers for the likes of Cartoon Network and Nick.
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton is now doubling up on his day job by taking a seat on the Jamdat board.
Aside from its free services, Fox's mobile division and mobile games company I-Play have inked a deal that will see 24 transformed into a mobile game, wallpapers and ringtones. The view from within Fox is that 24 has the potential to turn non-downloaders into mobile game players, hitting demos that to date have not necessarily been associated with gaming.
Disney is also cranking up activities and launching its own service via the Sprint network in the US. Disney Mobile, the new business unit, targets families. Disney, like its counterparts, already licenses ringtones, graphics and games for mobile users, but this is a step forward that sees content used as the basis of a more strategic play and by managing all aspects of the customer relationship from content to billing, Disney is behaving more like a retailer.
Disney subsidiaries are also exploring opportunities to license content in a way that parallels the classic TV distribution model. In its first-ever mobile video agreement in Europe, for example, Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) licensed excerpts of ABC Network's hit drama Lost to 3G mobile network 3. Users will be able to watch 2-3 minutes of recaps and previews from the show for [pounds sterling]0.50 (US$0.88). BVITV will get an undisclosed share.
Attila Gazdag, MD of Walt Disney Internet Group, Europe, says BVITV's plunge into the mobile space is in response to demand. "Consumer interest in mobile content is growing at a tremendous pace, especially for more advanced content," he says. "People are now seeing that mobile is really a new entertainment platform." Gazdag has followed up the Lost deal by licensing Desperate Housewives to Vodafone Italia!, a link that is structured to coincide with the show's broadcast on RAI.
Flux Panel
MTV Mobile has launched Flux - a mobile entertainment community launched in Japan on June 30. Already available via the KDDI and NTTDoCoMo mobile networks, Flux will soon also be up on Vodafone, giving it universal coverage of the Japanese mobile market.
The fact that it happened in Japan is no accident, says Tony Elison, senior vp of Viacom International Japan. "There are something like 90 million mobiles in Japan, of which 33 million are 3G. That makes Japan the most advanced market in the world and the ideal location for developing new mobile concepts."
Flux is a US$3 a month subscription-based service delivering music and entertainment via mobile and online. Users get 300 points that they can trade for content. Targeting 13-34 year-olds, Flux content includes original video and animation from Japan's leading creatives, as well as programming from the global MTV library, including Dirty Sanchez, Jackass and Gutterpups. Original animations include Lightman, a superhero who battles against the forces of evil, and Hanamoski, a series of clips about an elephant with a very long trunk. Clips are one to two minutes long, what Elison calls "a digital snack."
A new report from IT company LogicaCMG reckons that the global market for mobile content will be worth [euro]7.6 billion by summer 2006. That equates to a threefold increase in the market in less than a year. LogicaCMG says that 20% of mobile owners worldwide have already downloaded content to their handsets. Within a year, it predicts, this will rise to around 60%.
Much of this is attributable to ringtones, games and music. LogicaCMG also identifies the download of video and movie clips as fast-growing markets - with 10% of mobile phone users expecting to download such content within the next year. Categorised separately, the research also predicts much greater use of news and sports downloads.