Interesting report from the Yankee Group suggesting that revenues from the mobile web could be as high as $66 Billion, as opposed to the $9.5 Billion it actually is today.
Crucially, large numbers of consumers are being denied affordable and reliable mobile access to the internet and service providers are missing out on a huge revenue opportunity.
Not exactly a surprise for us here at MobHappy and our readers, I’m sure. But sometimes it takes an analyst that’s paid a lot of money to think deep thoughts, to state the bleeding obvious. I certainly don’t mind who operators listen to as long as they finally liberate the mobile web by taking away the threat of bill shock and uncertainty and allow it to fulfill its natural destiny.
Actually, there’s more to this analysis. The $66 Billion refers only to access fees and there’s further Billions to be gained in incremental revenues for other content, services and of course (my interpretation) advertising income.
I’ve written before that operators are spending an awful lot of time and effort trying to carve out a large share of the very small mobile advertising pie – currently sitting at around $1 or $2 Billion, I reckon. In fact, the whole of digital advertising market is only worth around $50 Billion. So, even if all digital advertising spend moved to operators tomorrow (which is quite clearly a ridiculous scenario), they could make a lot more money by pricing access properly.
Hmmm… so, does that mean that by focusing on something they can totally control and is certainly core to their business, they could (according to the Yankee Group) be making something like 66 times more money every year than they can by trying to enter a new market and one which is totally periphery to their business in terms of competence and culture?
That seems to be a “yes” then.
By the way, word on the street among the operator community is that they’re making these fixed price data packages available now, as if this is a closed issue and we can move on to other things. I’m afraid my view is that they’re doing far too little to kick-start this market and current efforts should be applauded for sure, but it’s only a very small step at the beginning of the journey.
Let’s aspire to mobile web pricing that compares favourably with PC access and watch the market explode and the dollars roll in.
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