Research company Juniper recently reported that 3G subscribers will grow to 300 million by 2010 with the total mobile subscriber market coming in at approximately 2.7 billion. Some reports indicate that the market for mobile content will be worth $50.7 billion by 2010.
Clearly, there’s potential for a lot of money to be made. In Ireland, Vodafone, and 3 are battling it out to win the hearts and minds of 3G users, while O2 has not yet completed its 3G rollout.
Meteor is the only mobile phone company without a 3G licence, yet it supplies mobile content to all its customers, called Meteor Stuff, using what David McLoughlin of Meteor described as a WAP 2.5G or GPRS platform. Finnish company Akumitti provides the platform and content service for Meteor and has built a portal focusing on the download side of the service.
McLoughlin said 50% of Meteor’s downloads are ringtones and in recent months the drive to real tones has really taken off. “The content is designed to suit the service,” said McLoughlin. “For example, we don’t offer full track downloads, we offer real tones – a 12 to 20 second piece of music to make it your ringtone. “Is 3G a mass market product? There’s been a lot of hype about it and there are a lot of apps that will do well on it, but what’s been made available at the moment … they haven’t really taken off.”
Live has evolved
One person who wouldn’t share that view is Martin Wells, Vodafone’s head of consumer data. He explained that Vodafone Live’s service has evolved from being a 2.5G network to its present configuration. Vodafone now uses a series of platforms to support the whole Vodafone Live service. These platforms are architected in such a way that the user experience is seamless. Wells said it has been the evolution of handsets that has been the driver behind the improved services from 3G operators. “You get a better visual and browsing experience with the latest phones and it’s going to get better. Many handsets now have a HTML browser for websites. But there is still some way to go before it is rendered correctly, ensuring the user experience is a good one. The next 12 months will see the user experience improve.”
Wells was quick to dismiss the idea of 3G as an unsuccessful product or being pushed on people who don’t really want it. “No way, we’re not into pushing content that people are not interested in. For us there are three key areas – music, news and sport and entertainment. As the internet starts to become more of a reality on the phone and the improved rendering by organisations such as Dot-mobi, more people will see the benefit in having it.”
O2 on the move
While not yet offering a 3G service, O2 is continuing to rollout its 3G coverage which is currently at just over 50% of the country. Whether it will offer a full blown 3G service is a moot point considering I-mode company NTT Docomo doesn’t provide one in Japan. In the meantime we have the I-mode offering a WAP-like mobile internet service. The markup language used for I-mode is compact HTML (cHTML) rather than the WML used for WAP.
Big in Japan, I-mode has been chipping away at the market in Europe and while it’s not quite a 3G platform it is able to run on an I-mode enabled 3G handset. The fact that the handset has to be I-mode enabled is something of a fly in O2’s ointment, as they don’t seem to be ubiquitous in the various phone outlets.
According to O2’s Emma Hynes the I-mode platform in Ireland was built in conjunction with Docomo in Japan. Hynes said one of the major differentiators of the service is that partners, such as Paddy Power, actually provide the content and are behind their own site – replicating what you’d view on a PC. I-mode has most of the usual stuff: you can download ringtones, football results, news, video clips and so on.
3 need pre-pay
At the moment 3’s Achilles heel is that it doesn’t have a prepaid service which is excluding it from around 75% of the market which prefers the pay as you go option. Nonetheless, Karl Taylor, head of applications and service at 3 is happy with its rollout. “We design and create a lot of the content ourselves. It’s then sent to production facilities and onto the cornerstone of our content management system which is called a LAM or live asset management network.
We have an easier portal environment than the other providers because we went straight for XHTML browser so we don’t have to support WAP and reduce the number of browser versions we have.”
Taylor is also excited at the prospect of web browsing being a bigger feature on 3’s services. “Hutchinson is a shareholder in the dot-mobi part of the Internet. We look at that as one of the enablers that’s going to make mobile internet access worthwhile. And allow us to create the right type of content at source to make for a good viewer experience.”
Graeme Slattery, head of communications for 3 said 3G still has to reach the mass market but pointed to the growth of mobile music downloading as the application to bring many into the fold.
Mobile services on test*
Here’s to what expect if you make a move to a mobile-driven content service. I have got down and dirty with the phones to try and figure out which service offers the most engaging and reliable services, and of course, the most compelling tariffs.
Planet 3
I love the ringtones on Planet 3. On St Patrick’s day, you could download plenty of tones for the day that was in it. I particularly liked the real tone national anthem and being the patriot that I was willing to part with €2. I also downloaded the Jaws and the X-files themes, again for the same price.
3’s portal is easy to navigate and nicely designed. The free to browse areas are well highlighted as are the paid for service and content.
As with most of the other providers there’s a plethora of news, entertainment, sport and music to get through. The video quality isn’t bad though I’d argue the football clips can be hard to see at time depending on the players’ motion.
Meteor Stuff
Not 3G but nonetheless a simple, lean service with plenty of the usual content suspects. Navigation was OK. When you click through the links you end up at the top of the page viewing the Meteor Stuff banner and have to scroll down to see the page you’ve clicked for. This is quite annoying really.
Besides browsing through the usual stuff, I decided to buy a comedy realtone for which I paid €5 for about 20 seconds of Eamon Dunphy impersonator Garry Cooke. €5! What a rip off – has Eddie Hobbs been informed about this?
Vodafone Live
The presentation on Vodafone Live reminded me a bit of WAP and lacked 3’s snazzier presentation. Navigation was straightforward enough though a bit more clunky than some of the other services. I thought the design of the portal was very unappealing, but perhaps it is more sober approach to that of, for example, 3. It will attract an older crowd. Again, plenty of content to be viewed for free and paid for. Bought a V for Vendetta movie clip which set me back over €2!
O2 I-mode
For my money I-mode seems to be caught between two stools. I asked is this a business device or is it a consumer device? The marketing would seem to indicate, to me anyway, that there’s more of a business vibe to it because the mobile e-mail aspect of the device is played up.
Like Meteor’s service, it’s lean and simple – though the presentation here is more attractive and the content is straightforward, without any bells or whistles. While it hasn’t got the depth of content of a Vodafone Live or Planet 3, it still has enough information to keep you busy. Though you can’t help feeling that I-mode is just a stop gap until O2 figure out its 3G strategy.
Overall impressions
Hmmm … I have to say I was underwhelmed by the 3G experience. I’m not saying it’s bad, in fact it’s quite a pleasant way to kill time especially if you’re commuting. Nonetheless, a lot of the paid for content is ludicrously overpriced for what you get and downloads can still be frustratingly long. Do make sure you get a good handset and also check 3G coverage for your area – no point in buying an enabled phone if your area is in the 3G badlands.
If you can subscribe to Planet 3, then as a pure 3G dedicated company, it offers the best user experience and within an area of coverage, the downloads will be fast and its menus very easy to navigate through. Vodafone seems to struggle as it attempts to serve both GPRS and 3G customers with the one system. Bottom line, 3 screams video and music while Vodafone says text services dominate. * The following reviews are based on the service and not the handsets, though it should be noted that the better the handset the richer the user experience.
What’s it gonna cost?
Mobile phone companies have often been accused of Byzantine pricing structures. With 3G it could be argued it’s more of the same with different costs and prices for different sections. Although it’s unlikely that it’s done to confuse the customer it can be a brain churning experience getting to grips with the cost structure. Here, we’ll look at some of the more popular content pricing structures for the 3G providers and the GPRS crowd.
Vodafone
This operator has two options – pay as you use, 2c/Kb up to 512 Kbs and 0.5c/Kb for any usage over 512Kbs. Or one of two add-on options that can be selected by Pay Monthly (billpay) customers. You can buy a 3Mb bundle for the month for €11.99 or a 6Mb bundle for €18 per month.
With content such as music you can subscribe to it and buy bundles – four full track downloads will set you back €5.96 for the month. Buying it outside the package offer, it’s €1.99 for a full track download. Single downloads of video clips cost €1 while full length music video cost €2
If you’re a news junkie it’ll cost you €1 to see the latest video clips from RTE, Sky and so on. Footie fans will have to fork out €2 to see the goals from the premiership, previews and interviews. Ringtone enthusiasts will have to pay €5 for a real tone, €3 for a polyphonic one. When choosing a 3G service it’s best to go through all of the charges with the agent.
3
Pick a monthly tariff for 3’s voce service and the following is included at no extra cost:
Sky sports bulletins, stories and football videos, Barclay’s and UEFA previews, match videos and round-ups, League tables, fixtures, results, Rugby Union audio bulletin, GAA Games news (text and pictures); RTE video news bulletins (roughly 40 minutes per day), Local news and weather, trailers for new releases and movie reviews.
What you pay for:
Music in full video downloads at €2 per video.
Full audio download – €2 per track (includes free download of same track to your computer)
Realtones – €5, Ringtones- €3
Online/Multiplayer – 50c per game
Meteor
Meteor’s GPRS WAP service costs 3c per Kb or 2.50 per ½ Mb downloaded.
Ringtones are Meteor’s bread and butter and start at €2 for monotones, €3 for polytones, premium ringtones and speech tones cost €5.
Games cost from €3 to €5.
Wallpapers and animations from €3 to €5.Video clips come in at €3.
O2 I-mode
I-mode’s WAP service will see you paying 1c per Kb. To flesh this out a bit: If you’re browsing and booking a hotel room or a flight, this will cost you around 31c. A search on Daft.ie for five apartments in Dublin cost 81 c.
For ring tones and music track downloads there’s a monthly subscription service up to €3 – for that you get a certain monthly amount of tones, wallpaper, games and so on.
Ltd
