NIC HARALAMBOUS

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Barriers to entry for media in the "mobile boom"

Nic Haralambous

As many people know the mobile industry is big business, especially here in SA and in the broader African market.I've been making some inroads in to trying to undestand the mobile market as fully as possible recently.I am lookingt at the mobile market as someone heavily involved in the media industry and trying to find a place for the media in the mobile market. I am not considering the mobile market from the point of view of a startup, website, portal, communication idea or gaming company. I am looking at the mobile market from the perspective of an organisation that produces weekly content that goes in to a newspaper.There are some things that I have noticed and some problems that I have seen with the theory that mobile is going to be the next big thing very soon.Lets begin with three quick points:

  1. Communication is actually THE mobile market
  2. Social Networking is the up-and-commer
  3. Gaming is already making a mark - a massive one - on the market
  4. The service providers are the ones making the money

And now let us go through the barriers to entry that I feel exist for media in the mobile market.

  1. Newspaper content is a push market
  2. Mobile users want to own their content - pull it towards themselves
  3. Understanding of extensive mobile web surfing is low in higher LSM's
  4. Portals are non-exist, with the exception of service providers

The basic barriers that I have listed above make it extremely difficult for media organisations to make a valuable stand in the mobile market. Users are looking to interact with one another and content. This means they want to create the content, interact with it, send it to their friends, invite their friends to interact with eachother and their content. This is difficult as a media organisation when you are producing the content and pushing it to the market.I am interested to know if you agree with these barriers? Do you think that media is stuck in a "push" business model? Or are they making inroads in to the "pull" of content creation, distribution and user interaction?