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Mobile Content Development

Untapped potential for local companies

Edward Apurba Singh
AROUND the world, there are almost 3 billion mobile phone users and in some cases, the mobile craze endangers PC proliferation. The secret of cell phone's popularity is its broad-spectrum applications. Today mobile phone use is not limited to voice calls only. It now incorporates many intuitive features that have a deep impact on human psyche.
The breakthrough in cellphone technology has spiked the demand for relevant applications, for which reason the term “mobile content” has come in the limelight. Mobile content basically encompasses different exciting stuffs such as music, video, games etc.
Mobile content is an emerging source of revenue for network operators. Moreover, the widespread availability of mobile internet paves the way for developing and distributing more innovative contents to the subscribers.
Market analysis firm Juniper Research predicts that mobile entertainment revenues will rise from just over $20 billion worldwide in 2007 to more than $64 billion by 2012. Juniper said the upward revenue trend would be reflected in different areas of ■mobile content.
For instance, music content will rise from $9 billion in 2007 to $ 17.5 billion by 2012, games from $5 billion to $16 billion and mobile TV from $4.1 billion to $11.9 billion.
China's mobile market is the world’s largest. BDA China, a Beijing consulting firm, estimates that subscribers spend an average of about six yuan (about 75 US cents) on mobile content downloads. Ring-back tones alone take in as much as $430 million a year, BDA says.
Berg Insight, a research firm, predicts that the market for mobile content and entertainment services in Western Europe could grow to around GBP 32 billion by 2012. It estimates that over 50 percent of the mobile subscribers in Western Europe will regularly access some kind of mobile content and entertainment by 2012. Juniper also predicts a huge surge in the mobile games market in North America by 2012 and that will be up to $3 billion by 2012.
Recent forecast by ABI Research, a technology research firm, stated that due to the expansion of 3G networks and cheap tariff plan, the mobile TV subscriber base will increase up
lectual Property Rights) as well."
We re glad to know about the BTRC's new initiative regarding mobile content business. I have several suggestions - recognise mobile content development as an industry, create partnership between content providers, BTRC and operators, and create a proper framework for financial activities".
"Mobile content business is still operator-centric. We need freedom to distribute content from our own platform in order to create more opportunity and ensure sustainable growth ", said Jamil.
In Bangladesh content development opportunity is rapidly increasing and many companies are now working in different areas, including entertainment content (ring tones, logos, wall-papers, karaoke, mobile comics, picture message, animations etc), advertising and promotion,
to 462 million worldwide by 2012. Projecting on the Asia-Pacific region, ABI predicts the increment of subscribers from 24 million in 2007 to 260 million by 2012 where South Korea and Japan will lead the trend.
Bangladesh, however, has not been able to achieve much success in mobile content business. In Bangladesh, mobile content business started in 2002. Since then this sector has seen sluggish growth, due to the lack of policy and proper strategy.
The situation, however, is improving day by day. But piracy is still the major problem, hindering the growth of this industry. The total size of mobile content market in Bangladesh is around 50 crore. The market witnessed healthy growth during 2004-06. The growth slightly dropped in 2007. Experts, however, project a double-digit growth in 2008.
People in the 14-32 age bracket are the main subscribers of mobile content. Bangla flock songs, wallpaper of Hindi cinemas and differ-
ent games are in high demand in the local market Genuine contents are developed from the source file. For frontend application, .Net and PHP are widely used while Oracle and MySQL are the best solutions for database.
The six carriers are the main content distributors. Content development firms develop their contents and then provide them for the operators. Based on the agreement, a content developer can only sell their contents through the network of particular operators.
Mobile network technology has a great influence on the mobile content business. For example, if 3G system becomes a commonplace in Bangladesh in the near future, the content business will get a boost as the new age system will provide high-speed data transmission facilities, effectively accelerating the growth of rich audio-video content.
The big advantage in mobile content business is that it does not require a huge start-up capital. It just requires a small invest-
ment and, most importantly, imagination. Experience in music is expected in audio content development, a degree in art is preferred in graphical content development and experience in Java is a must for developing game content.
Several companies such as ICE Technologies, TTBC, TBS, Wintrade and VU Mobile are leading way in content business in the local market. Rubaiyat Jamil, chief executive officer (CEO) of ICE Technologies, told StarTech that they ‘‘need active support from the cell phone operators to raise awareness of content piracy because they are the physical distribution channels.” At this moment only two percent contents are legal, he said.
He said, “We need BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission) to come forward and back this emerging industry. Very soon we'll be going to set up Content Providers' Association in order to expedite the growth of the business and protect the IPR (Intel-
voting/survey/public opinion, lifestyle content (horoscope, sports, news, movies, fitness), interactive content, custom applications development (banking/sales force automation) and service for media (print media/TVchannels).
Low-quality content stands in the way of subscribers' satisfaction, threatening the industry. Low-quality contents are actually pirated versions which are created from the CD or from web downloads. At present there is no law to crackdown on this malpractice. Easy access to adult content is also a big concern. The BTRC and mobile network operators can work together to hammer out a solution in this regard.
In rural areas, agriculture-related content (price information) could be delivered from the mobile platform. Weather-related content is valuable to people in the costal areas. Mobile content is an emerging source of revenue for the economy. We need timely steps to tap the opportunity.