Most small independent companies making rich media content for mobile phones could be gone within the coming four years. That's what two Wireless World Forum analysts said in a report they released July 12, based on what they told Wired was three months of interviewing 400 industry executives and studying the mobile phone markets on three continents.
Analysts Graham Brown and Joshua Dhaliwal's report said they think "many" independent content providers might be making rich media for cell phones, but they don't have marketing plans or strategies to get them sold. The pair said "many of these companies" think their ideas alone are strong enough, but they actually lack effective "distribution strategies for payment, marketing and delivery of the product," the magazine said.
"Most content providers believe they can become a small part of an increasing pie," Brown told Wired, "and that's their weakness." He added that that doesn't mean no one will make it in that business, but he and Dhaliwal suggested in their analysis report that most cell phone media content was likely to come from video games and downloadable music.
And because they saw kingpin companies like MTV, Disney, AOL, and Universal already making their way providing cell phone content, the pair told Wired, it means little if any room for small independents who don't have the ways to get their content to their target markets.
