PRIYA MEHRA distills the importance of leveraging consumer insights, involving consumers in creative/development processes and ultimately empowering them in order to gauge the acceptance and ultimate success of Next Generation Applications.

Priya Mehra is Manager, Strategy Lab, Telecom, Media& Entertainment, Capgemini Consulting India Pvt. Ltd. She also leads a group of strategy consultants, who deliver thought leadership and strategic insights into various developments in the telecom and media markets. Her recent work includes assessing the case for WiMAX, evaluating the need for fiber deployment in Europe and studying operator strategies for launching online services such as IM.She has also worked on strategy consulting projects with European telecom operators. Prior to joining the Lab, Mehra worked for a mobile operator where she was instrumental in launching voice and data products for the Enterprise market.

Leveraging Consumer Insights to Plan and Develop New Applications Rollout
At the outset, it must be mentioned that there is no right answer regarding the acceptance or adoption of the next "killer" or "breakthrough" application of the future. Quite a few applications which have hitherto not been accepted fast enough, have with necessary modifications, gone onto become mainstream applications or Next Generation Applications (NGA) in the future. SMS did emerge as a phenomenally accepted application but subsequent to that, there haven't been too many successes; with the limited acceptability of video calling well documented.

There are some indications of what could be interesting in the mobile space and there are two angles that can be explored. However, the two critical aspects viz. the technology side of view and the consumer insights/interests side of view tend to clash sometimes.

Speaking purely from the insights gained into consumer behavior and the evolving characteristics of how people communicate, entertain and interact with each other, it can be said that new ways of communicating and networking which are of immense interest to consumers are emerging. While Instant Messaging (IM) on mobiles has not been that great an experience on mobile handsets yet (speed, performance issues), these services along with gaming are still capturing more interest compared to video calling.

Digital socialization and online communities have significantly contributed to the increased demand for IM-based services and products. Most of the Next Generation Applications (NGA) or advanced applications seem to be emerging from the online space.

This coupled with the widespread consumer use of personal digital devices has only accelerated the trends towards acceptance of social networking and other media applications. All these examples reflect the difficulty in predicting consumer behavior, which is set to become even more complex with the increasing number of options available to consumers for communicating and consuming media. Only those players willing to listen, learn and incorporate consumer insights will be able to offer innovative services.

The opportunities definitely exist but there's a long way to go before capitalizing on them and monetizing the returns become possible.

Next Generation Applications and Services
In today's choice-filled world, engaging the time-starved and attention-deficient consumer is becoming increasingly difficult. Players need to look at delivering new and innovative services to capture the consumer's interest. Understanding what creates an addictive experience will be crucial to win the attention of the increasingly elusive consumer. The growth in time spent on activities like gaming or social networking reveals that consumers have an increasing dependency on these services. In some cases, addiction can be extreme. Let's look at social networking and uploading of personal information, images and photos kind of stuff. 40-50 % of the people who have camera phones upload photos/images onto their PCs or various online sites. But only 1/10th of these people regularly do it from a mobile phone.

The reasons being the inherent performance characteristics of the mobile networks, or issues related to operators initiatives around pricing or marketing. Clearly, mass adoption can take place only after such issues are addressed. If other systems and related activities like mobile networks, operators' influence and set of promotional/marketing activities, revenue sharing, the billings mechanisms are in place; then maybe they could be the next killer apps or widely adopted applications.

Gaming, in fact, is the single biggest contributor to the increase in media time over the past 5 years, accounting for 66% of the growth in media use. Gaming is one application in which the time spent over the last 5 years has just multiplied and it is the biggest contributor to the time spent on media and communication so far. As against usage of other leisure and recreation-based applications, gaming is one of the least multi-tasked activities and should be one of the most widely accepted applications.

A number of these applications are entertainment/leisure oriented and are accessed when people tend to have more time on hand while commuting, while waiting for somebody or while not interacting physically with people at any point in time. A social networking and micro-blogging service like Twitter ( a service which allows users to send text-based posts up to 140 characters long via SMS, instant messaging etc.) is one such leisure application which should see tremendous acceptance if all the related mechanics of making it available are worked out efficiently.

Cultural Mindsets and Geographical Work Environs
To cite the example of Mobile TV; it went through an amazing amount of hype in the recent past but it's not taken off in the way that it was expected to in a sports-crazy continent like Europe-given that Mobile TV is amenable to services like sports clips, match fillers, short capsules etc. In many ways, cultural mindsets and incumbent work environments in different geographies greatly influence acceptance or slow adoption-if not outright rejection- of many applications. In South Korea and Japan, millions of commuters use public transport to get to work and back home -primarily high speed trains or mass rapid transport systems services- and therefore spend a lot of time commuting. Typically, in a subway, in Tokyo, you will find many people immersed in their big screen phones watching video or playing games. So entertainment, leisure and recreational-based services have been accepted more easily in Japan and South Korea than say in the US, where commuting is more automobile-driven.

The user-generated content nature of most such services empower the consumers, giving them more control, allowing them to personalize, remix or modify content and will activate more interactions, engagements and thereby fuel greater usage. With the emergence of such applications, user demand and acceptance will center around the geographical influences, cultural polemics and work environment dynamics.

Thus, some will be more acceptable (with certain customization aspects involved) in some markets more than in others. It must be pointed out that the US experience has been slightly different from that of Asian and European markets especially with regards to the acceptance of certain applications. IM, for eg., has been a big hit in the US while SMS never really took off due to inter-operability issues and other factors.

The engaging experiences and the usage patterns of digital media devices by US consumers have been quite different and therefore indications of happenings or successes in other markets might not be reflected in the US market.

Test Beds and Consumer Involvement in Creative/Development Processes
Internal sources of innovation such as marketing and R&D departments can be complemented by the active involvement of consumers. Consumers are increasingly interested in giving their opinions and expressing their ideas online.

But the important issues center around whether operators are doing enough to propagate or perpetuate the acceptance or even introduction of Next Generation Applications. To be sure, operators and developers are entering into a lot of partnerships but it might not be happening at the pace at which partnerships are happening in the online space. Further, most operators have still not developed the right mindset or orientation to deliver content, which in itself is an altogether different business from traditional telephony. Telecommunication companies have been guilty of being too "technologically minded" and obsessing about network operations, business models, billing mechanisms etc. Fortunately, and due to the pressures created by the burgeoning demand for telecom, media and entertainment applications, some of them are reinventing themselves.

On the Internet, there is something new or a success story being showcased almost every six months or so. Relatively speaking, application development and new services rollout has been much faster in the online space and Beta Testing has helped developers and companies a lot in this regard. Mobile operators can take a lot of cues from happenings and practices in the online space and ensure greater user participation. Customer feedback and participation can be leveraged for product development, where consumers can become valuable test beds and an important source of ideas. Swisscom Mobile, for example, has set up an online "lab" that allows users to test Beta versions of products, give feedback and submit new ideas.

Other players like BT and Orange have also followed suit. It is pertinent to note that telecom operators traditionally invest/sink in millions of dollars in R & D and innovation projects to develop products and applications over substantially long periods of time. But new entertainment, media and communication products have to roll out faster and product development cycles can be shortened and risks mitigated as far as possible with such test beds, online labs, ideas blogs and related customer involvement initiatives. Consumer-led innovation can help strengthen the ties between customers and brands, because consumers feel empowered by their involvement in the product development process. It can also benefit companies' bottom lines by ensuring that product development resources are deployed according to consumers' initial responses, thus increasing the chances of meeting consumer needs. Telecom players, therefore, need to redesign their traditional relationships with the consumer, leveraging consumer involvement and insights at every stage of the product lifecycle and creating new sources of value to gain consumer attention.

(As told to PALLAB DUTTA)
[Additional research inputs have been culled from Capgemini Telecom & Media Insights White Paper"Digital Natives : How Is the Younger Generation Reshaping the Telecom and Media Landscape?"-Authored by Jerome Buvat, Priya Mehra & Benjamin Braunschvig, with the requisite permission.]