The Mobile Content Mess

While carriers believe that they'll always be able to profit directly off of content sales, some are noticing that there's an awful lot of wheeling and dealing in the space as companies are buying each other, changing their offerings, or trying to jump into new lines of business. All this really means is that the mobile content market is very much up in the air, and no one is quite sure where or how the money will be made - so the strategy right now is to throw as much stuff on the wall as possible and see what sticks. Of course, we go back to previous statements in this area: you can't compete on content that has no differentiated value. Companies that want to make money on "content" need, instead, to look at making money on "services" - which means the regular and timely delivery of that content and the ability to let the user add value to it. Content, by it's very nature, tends towards free - because it's easy to share and move on. The value is in getting specific content in the right place and at the right time. Companies that focus on providing that piece will do much better than those that think people will pay for plain old "content".

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