Capitalizing on Content in Australia

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Is there a market in Australia for content – and how will it unfold? The latest generation of mobile phones has introduced a new market – the opportunity to sell content for mobile phones. People now look at creating products to use on your mobile rather just finding ways to use the phone. In Australia, this has evolved in such way that carriers are keeping a tight grip on content – Telstra, Hutchison, Vodafone and Optus all attempt to lure customers with the promise of a large range of content and services provided exclusively on their own network. Australia is yet to see a boom in the numbers of independent mobile content providers The uptake and prevalence of M-commerce in Australia has so far concentrated on the delivery of services, entry to competitions or explicit marketing exercises. There is one view that content will drive a greater uptake and utilization of M-Commerce and that the content provision will almost certainly be closely related to the business of the network operator. Another view is that content could diversify and be provided by independent content providers. When the boom comes – and there are signs that it is imminent – it will almost certainly will be focused on the youth market. The 2003 W2F mobile youth report detailed that youth in the Asia Pacific region spent almost 14 percent of their total leisure spending on mobile products including content – in a year and this is expected to increase to over 16 per cent by 2006. The provision of downloadable ringtones, games and wallpaper are probably the best examples of mobile