ANUJ KUMAR explains how application developers aim to create scalable mobile media opportunities and force-multiply the monetizing possibilities for content providers, advertisers, OEMs and network operators .

Anuj Kumar is Founder & Executive Director (South Asia), Affle. Kumar has extensive experience in the media and advertising. He started his career in advertising, working with the leading advertising & media companies - JWT & GroupM MindShare, managing the advertising business of some of the largest advertisers.

He later moved to ESPN STAR Sports, where his role included programming, acquisitions,& sales strategy formulation. He was part of the core team that worked on $500mn.+ acquisition bid for the Indian Cricket telecast rights. He was also actively involved in engaging key advertisers at strategic levels, for ESPN's sports properties. At Affle, Kumar leads the business in India and South- East Asia and has had significant success in forging & managing partnerships with multiple stakeholders. Kumar holds a Bachelor's in Economics from St. Stephen's College and a Masters in Communications from MICA..

With the wide array of mobile handsets that are available in the market and with the expected evolution of next generation mobile phones, consumers would also be increasingly looking at better connectivity, better interaction, better access and an enhanced user experience. Application developers will thus have to enable more media applications on the mobile phone and develop compelling applications that engage and enable consumers to discover a wide range of user-friendly features and functionalities on their mobile phones.

At the same time, the nature and structure of partnerships and alliances that they strike with operators, content providers, advertisers and OEMs/handset manufacturers and manage the technology infrastructure which would enable mobile media opportunities will go a long way in accelerating distribution and user acceptance of such next generation media applications. The endeavor would be to make communications richer, coax customers to effect more transactions securely and access different kinds of content in their own time and in their own space. As a first step, application developers looking to innovate and introduce new applications like SMS 2.0, Twitter or related social networking and mobile blogging applications would do well to remember that the core functionality or the primary function for users is to stay in touch or connected whenever and wherever at any point of time. This is irrespective of the new, enhanced or "rich" features or services which could be available in smart phones or in mid range "high feature" phones. The challenges for application developers and other players in the burgeoning emerging mobile media ecosystem is to add value to the existing plain-vanilla SMS applications, existing and future IM and social networking applications and thereby help people to stay in touch and connected in better, richer ways

Primarily, from a user perspective, the most important thing which can be discerned worldwide is that despite the many new features, functionalities and services that may be available on the mobile phone, they generally lie unutilized or unused as most users are comfortable with the basic services or features. This holds cue for application developers to ensure that new applications which are developed and introduced by operators/OEMs integrate well with the default behavior of the users, or with functionalities which users use intuitively, by habit or the sheer convenience that they entail. These messaging applications (such as SMS 2.0) should reside as the default core messaging application -after the customer downloads it- on the handset and not some feature/function which the consumer has to access on the menu or discover on the phone. SMS 2.0 and related messaging applications score over others as they blend mobile media with the normal messaging behavior of the user.

The challenge is more in terms of the efficacy of the solution rather than the discovery part on the part of the users. The key is in usage and discovering such 'high-value' applications because even if you have a killer application, so to speak, and users find it difficult to discover or difficult to handle, then they wouldn't move to it at all. So the next generation SMS application has to give better functionalities and features to the user which he did not get with the existing text messaging application. The user will download such an application once he sees the value that he is getting from the upgrade and the fact that it is enhancing the functionality of his existing SMS application and without deviating from the core/primary purpose of his being able to keep in touch conveniently. These include improved core messaging (color messages, fun emoticons, more personalized messaging experience), enhanced messages features, interactive messaging features etc. So at one level, application developers are looking at enabling much richer communications happening on the SMS window and at the other level looking at the creation of a media window on the mobile through SMS. It is by leveraging the eyeball assured nature of SMS that SMS 2.0 will create an interactive media opportunity. User acceptance and distribution strategies/channels can be worked out by striking effective alliances with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and OEMs. Operators can promote such messaging applications through their call centers, advertise about them and make them available free to consumers. At the same time, they can zero rate the user traffic back to content developers and advertisers in order to enable them to craft personalized services which the user wants to avail of at his convenience. The media opportunities on the SMS window are immense and can result in opportunities to access personalized content (spanning sports, movies, location-based services and other niche services).

With respect to OEMs, application developers can approach OEMs with the value proposition of these next generation messaging applications and the way they offer enhanced services to users. The significant revenue potential because of the media nature of the product has already excited a number of OEMs/handset manufacturers and most are keen about integrating such applications in order to provide enhanced user experiences. For the OEMs, an application like SMS 2.0 provides a value add, which gets them new users and also creates a potential for existing users to discover more mobile applications.

The other challenges also center around the content creation part and how best dominant Web-based content creation companies and vendors can create content customized for the mobile window (accounting for the form factor characteristics like screen size, image resolution, navigability etc.). Fortunately, apart from many new start-ups which are looking to create content services specifically for the mobile phone platform, a number of leading companies focused on developing Internet -based content are also increasingly looking at mobile content as another major revenue stream. Clearly, the advertising-subsidized models will make acceptance of mobile media more widespread, unleash the media potential of the platform and increase revenue making potential for many players in the ecosystem. (As told to PALLAB DUTTA)