Big Dreams for Tiny Screens - The Future of Mobile Entertainment

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/business/yourmoney/21mobile.html?ex=1148875200&en=6ddaa0952263117b&ei=5070&emc=eta1' target='_blank'>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/business/yourmoney/21mobile.html?ex=1148875200&en=6ddaa0952263117b&ei=5070&emc=eta1</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Digital Chocolate is this company's name, and the business focuses solely on developing games and applications for mobile phones. Although it has some trappings of a Silicon Valley start-up, circa 1999 — one recent morning a 20-something employee rolled up for work here on a skateboard — Digital Chocolate differs in one significant way. Its founder and chief executive, Trip Hawkins, is not a typical bootstrapping young entrepreneur. Mr. Hawkins, 52, was employee No. 68 at Apple Computer before he left that company in 1982 to start Electronic Arts, now the pre-eminent video game maker. Never shy about expressing his opinions, Mr. Hawkins, not surprisingly, brandishes a theory about programming for the mobile phone."</i><br /><br />This is a pretty interesting article on the future direction that mobile entertainment/games is going in. I like the social connection idea. I think there's a great need for games to be more interactive and multi-player. I'm just not sure about the monthly fees. Then again, I've never been a fan of ongoing monthly fees. Give it a read and let us know what you think.

[edgar]

This kind of delivery goes back to our discussion in February about market segmentation. More and more you will see these services not be add-ons to your carrier but in replacement to your carrier. The 3 or 4 major carriers will continue to be there, and the major player will be the one that changes their business model from simply selling handsets and having ARPU (avg revenue per user) based on minutes to ARPU based on additional services such as custom data or video. Minutes themselves would go down in price.

Much like the new ESPN or Disney services, MVNOs buys bulk then resells their own phones, their own contracts with their full service attached (611 &amp; 411 customer services as well), you will see more and more MVNO's coming out and reselling their brand of entertainment or information complete with handsets and full customer service - moving the unchanging carrier more to the periphery

This is what I was trying to explain before about the major carriers having to change their model or they will become byte and minute bulk distributors instead of primary carriers, ala landline carrier AT&amp;T long distance.

-Edgar

I'm looking forward to that dinner Jerry is buying me in 2008!

[Rocco Augusto]

Awesome find Edgar :)

I enjoyed this piece :)