Research and Markets have a report on 2006 Global Mobile Data usage. Here are a few insights…

• Current mobile technologies are not well suited for economically viable business models for mobile data
• The lack of suitable infrastructure has hampered the growth of mobile data
• The business models that these (mobile) operators offer are hopelessly inadequate
• very few sustainable models are currently in operation
• The rest of the world is waiting on MVNO models that provide content providers with the freedom to distribute their own products and manage their own billing and customer service.

There are some real opportunities here for third parties (such as Yahoo, Google etc) and brands to take over where network operators have failed. However, one of the greatest barriers for them is payment. The only convenient way to pay is currently premium SMS which network operators control (and take a huge profit share). Maybe some large payment provider such as Visa, Mastercard or Paypal needs to create/invent a convenient, global and cost-effective mobile payment system. Only then will off-portal services become viable.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Mobile, Network Operators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.