Application Developers to Save 3G?

date: January 15, 2002

The future of the whole mobile industry hangs on the success of a handful of small application developers argues The Saviour of 3G, a new report by Mobile Metrix and distributed by BWCS. The report ranks the world’s leading 125 mobile application developers and content providers. Based on extensive research among 3,000 such companies, The Saviour of 3G highlights the developers which are most likely to bring mobile users flocking to use next generation services.

“It’s clear that there are no killer applications per se for 3G,” argues the report’s author Dr Edward Nugent, “but there are certainly killer mobile service characteristics.”

The Saviour of 3G attempts, for the first time, to provide an analysis and classification of the most important players in this vital new market. Based on eight key criteria including financing, customer contracts, geographic focus and sales, the most promising companies identified by the report are: Cybird (Japan), Digital Bridges (UK), Disney (US), Infospace (US), iTouch (UK), Ludigames (France), Mforma (US) and Zed (Finland). Meanwhile, at country level, Finland with nine companies in the top 60 application and content providers, the UK (14 in the top 120), US, Japan and Israel are identified as the leading markets in the sector.

However, the report warns that operators must change their business models if mobile internet is to flourish outside Japan. “The traditional operator portal model will simply not be competitive in the long term as it inhibits the variety and quality of services available to the consumer. Already we have seen Vodafone, Telia and China Mobile adopt new business strategies and we believe others will have to follow suit” argues Nugent. The report also underlines that all mobile operators are in danger of missing business opportunities if they do not know enough about the wave of new application developers and implementing positive business models, or if they fail to fully understand consumers’ motivation for using new services.

The Saviour of 3G makes it clear that the success of 3G services will hinge on the flow of mobile applications and content. Nugent argues “This supply of new services is vital if mobile data usage is to rise to anywhere near levels predicted by analysts and operators alike. Yet, throughout the entire sector there is scarcely any real understanding or analysis of the content and applications industry which is the key to mobile internet success. This report is designed to fill the void.”

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