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Originally Posted by Andy Sjostrom
All mobile operators and handset makers; pay close attention now! The real mobile Internet is coming to a device near you - very soon, users are taking control over their devices! Instant messaging, backgrounds and ringing tones can no longer drive any multi-million dollar business plans. Want to make money in this market? Here's what you need to do: Innovate!
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Unfortunatelly that is wishful thinking. Now that operators are facing uncertain times with expensive 3G network building and license fees, are they going to abandon their only certain source of money? Would they call such a strategy innovative or wise?
One more thing to be taken into account is ringtones. Microsoft will back up their Smartphone OS with extensive software and service support, if they want people to start using devices which are powered by their OS. That will include downloadable ringtones and graphics, but all of them cannot be free. The users will demand for example latest pop tunes as ringtones, but because these tones cannot be offered without paying copyright fees to the artists / record companies, the service isn't going to be free. Of course many users know how to create their own WAV files, but many are illiterate in that regard. Many are simply too lazy to create a tune of their own, if there are reany tunes for them to download. Therefore they'll use Microsoft's Mobile MSN portal, because that's what MS wants anyway.
Either way, the users will end up paying at least for some services, whether the service provider is Microsoft, a handset manufacturer or an operator. I don't like that either, but that's just the way it is.