I wrote a while back about Paul Golding’s idea for giving better resources to developers about the many and varied handsets available to them. Anyone who has ever tried to develop an application for a mobile device knows that it’s a complete nightmare to try to get it working across all handsets, operators and payment plans (or even some of them!) at the same time.
One of the issues is a lack of a central resource or repository of information on handsets. While Paul wanted this to be provided by operators, it was always more realistic to see this coming from an independent source and one has been launched today by Mobile Research - the Mobile Device Database.
It looks to be a very comprehensive resource, covering all operators and handsets currently sold in the US market. They’ll be expanding into Europe soon too, though if they cover all markets, the complexities are a little mind boggling.
The service is available on a subscription basis, the price of which is not disclosed in the press release or on the website.
While the service sounds great, I always find it annoying when companies don’t disclose the cost of doing business with them. If I’m interested, I now have to contact their sales team. If I then find out it’s $5,000 a month, this is way beyond my (fictional) budget. This means they’ve wasted my time and theirs to produce a lead which is useless. So a guideline price would be very useful, fellas.
Or does anyone think it’s a good idea to be cagey about your pricing policy? The only exception might be real luxury goods where the "if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it" principle might conceivably apply.
I’m not sure how in-depth it goes, but M:Metrics offers similar data on handsets as well as tracks the content and services offered by the carriers in the U.S.
I agree with you on the lack of pricing information on the website and press release. It would have been nice if they could havesaid monthly subs start at $XXX. There is also no call to action to get the info which is a no-no in my book. I had to ping one of the founders’ blog to try and get pricing info for my clients.
On a side note, the website is a bit sparse with info on the service and the people behind the company. Hard for a potential customer to assess if they are worth doing business with IMHO.
Well that is some good constructive criticism. One of the issues with selling data is how do you price it’s use. About 70 percent of the requests/contact we get are for companies that want to resell the data in some way. So that gets complicated.
However for end-user customers that do not plan on reselling the data as part of a service, the price for the US market is $28,500 per year. The reason we are selling the service as a yearly subscription is because customers get data for all devices in the database(currently 120+) up front, as well as ongoing updates.
I have added the end-user pricing to the site under the available markets page until I can put together a more complete “subscription information” page.
Thanks for the thoughtful input.
- David Adams
CEO, Mobile Research
But of course this is relatively a moot subject since a far more comprehensive and constantly updated my mobile/wireless specialists exists in xml format here:
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
An irreplaceable, free, comprehensive wireless/mobile resource I refer to time and time again.
I wonder how Mobile Research’s prices compare to M:Metrics…any ideas?