Personalized ring-tones and silly cartoon characters. Daily horoscopes and 'mobile Napsters.' Sports reports. Celebrity gossip and movie trailers. Wall Street without wires. Photos and video clips of the dog. Shopping till you drop. The latest sports. Serialized books and newsletters. Even playing 'Tomb Raider' with friends in other cities—while riding the bus to school. It's all going to be part of the mad, modern, commercialized era of mobile entertainment—and it's quickly sweeping the world of wireless communications. As WAP and iMode phones move into the mainstream, digital content providers have begun to roll out thousands of entertainment-oriented websites that let users download all kinds of customized sounds, images, news and information. A dizzying combination of amusing animations, favorite music, advertisements, moving and still images that once only cluttered our cities will soon be available ... on your cell phone or wireless PDA. But that's the future. Or is it? In Japan, NTT DoCoMo's "mobile Internet" service known as iMode has signed up more than 20 million customers since February, 1999—and is adding over 200, 000 more each week. iMode lets users retrieve personalized ring-tones, wacky animations of cartoon characters and daily horoscopes; read news about their favorite sports stars or celebrities; trade stocks or access their bank accounts; and more. Over 40,000 websites have sprung up to provide content to iMode users. NTT DoCoMo has already made a significant impact on the European scene. In June 2000 it paid € 4 billion for a 15% stake in the mobile division of Dutch PTO KPN Telecom and together they have so far won UMTS licenses in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany and, most recently, Belgium. In January this year DoCoMo created a new three-way alliance with KPN and Telecom Italia Mobile to in Europe, and in mid-March, announced a partnership with AT&T Wireless. In the U.S., Sprint PCS now offers a service called My Music that works with Samsung's Uproar phone, which features stereo ear buds and a built-in MP3 player. Subscribers to the My Music service can download MP3 files from their computer to their phone—allowing them to listen to up to an hour's worth of music whenever they're not using the phone. And that's just the beginning. As communications and digital content providers gear up to deliver mobile entertainment services to an ever-growing audience, they need to bear in mind some basic principles: - It's all about convenience. High-definition televisions, radios, CD/DVD players and dozens of other consumer electronics devices are—and always will be—far better products on which to enjoy a true entertainment experience. But they aren't necessarily very mobile—and you don't always have them with you. Mobile entertainment is all about portability and convenience—it's taking a few moments to read the news or sports, or to enjoy a brief game or song.
- Keep it simple...at least at first. As early adopters of Wireless Web services know, accessing a graphics-heavy, HTML website via a wireless connection is an exercise in futility. Some website developers may be tempted to follow the dot-com 'gold rush' pattern, as they attempt to 'virtualize' almost every facet of life. A word of advice: Don't do it. Mobile entertainment needs to be simple, fast and easy-to-use. It needs to connect with people on an emotional level, delivering content that's personal and of value to them.
- It's a 'youth thing.' One element of iMode's immense success was DoCoMo's deliberate appeal to Japan's craze-hungry youth culture. More than 90 percent of young people aged 20 to 29 own a mobile phone, and entertainment accounts for 40 percent of iMode traffic and over half of downloaded data. "Young people have a very different attitude toward personal relationships," notes Masahiro Yotsumoto, research director at The Dentsu Institute for Human Studies. "Instead of having one good friend nearby, they prefer to have 200 mobile ones."
- Got no game? Get it. Two of the biggest applications on iMode are gaming and downloadable cartoons. Users can purchase daily Pokemon cartoons via subscription for $3 per month and pay through their regular monthly billing process. These games and cartoons are craze-driven, and their swift adoption is due to the ease with which users can spread the word to friends and colleagues via messaging or word of mouth. And game playing adds incremental revenues, as users download options and services that can help them in the game itself, such as skilled game characters or extra 'lives.'
- Consider the 'pay to play' model. The principle of pay-to-play (or pay-to-listen or pay-to-view) is no different than the direction the music industry is headed, following the success of P2P file-sharing services such as Napster. In the mobile world, the concept of consumers owning content (CDs, videos, games, even books) could decline, if carriers offered free access to basic online entertainment services or small monthly subscriptions for everyday, 'bite-sized' services. Companies can introduce these new revenue models now, or they may be forced to do so later.
- Mobilizing Madison Avenue. For many customers, shopping is the ultimate entertainment. That's why retailers and advertisers are salivating over the potential of new technology that lets them reach the mobile masses. By 2004, GartnerGroup predicts that wireless devices will account for a full 40 percent of all consumer e-commerce transactions—and interesting, entertaining mobile advertising could be the catalyst to make that happen.
- Above all...make it entertaining. This one seems so obvious, but it's important to remember that entertainment is 'fashion for the mind.' Consumer tastes are fickle—what's hot today is not tomorrow. It's all about creativity, trends and catchiness. Word of mouth sells. Successful sites will learn to not only tap into these mass-market feelings, but to create them as well. Push the envelope—and make your product offerings visually and aurally interesting and exciting.
"The success of iMode was due to its open attitude to content providers and to its targeting of the youth market," says Barry Nolan, president of marketing at Parthus Technology. And entertainment played a key role in that success, accounting for 40 percent of iMode traffic and half of downloaded data. While the youth market was the first to embrace iMode, it has since developed into a mass-market phenomenon and now features entertainment offerings for older users. Other services also play an important role in the spread of iMode, including finance, travel, news and information. iMode's success at targeting the under age 30 market, and then becoming a mainstream consumer product for other age groups is repeating itself as the mobile Internet takes off in other parts of the world. Throughout Europe, Short Messaging Service (SMS) originally caught on through youth culture and has now hit the mainstream—over 25 million SMS messages a day are sent in the UK alone, with 1 billion per month expected by mid 2001, according to the Mobile Data Association—and similar services are beginning to pop up in the U.S. The era of mobile entertainment has begun. Talk to someone about this topic  To Top
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