Can any One.Tel what the future holds for News Corp?

I was intrigued by Paul Carr’s take on the News Corp/Bing/Google story in TechCrunch today. In particular I enjoyed the closing remarks…

“And that’s where we see Murdoch’s real genius: he has managed to use his illusion of influence to get all of these benefits without having to commit himself to anything, or expose himself in any way.”

I found myself asking the question: If this then is all an illusion why is the illusion so transparent? and, once again, Why all this effort chasing yesterday’s dream?

As you probably know we’ve spent the past two weeks looking at why the Mobile Web and the New Plastic Fantastic are not going to be the solutions to the current problems facing the Newspapers, TV and Magazine Industries.

In the end we discovered that the biggest losers so far in the Mobile Web market have made the mistake of thinking that content was the hook to build a successful MNVO business.

The New York Times and News Corp may have enormous online traffic but they do not have the relationship intimacy with their customers that is a prerequisite for a sustainable and profitable MVNO business.

When I put together these earlier posts I had forgotten completely that NewsCorp had already been down the MVNO path here in Australia.

It happen almost a decade ago, it was with a company called One.Tel.

The MobCon Explorer

We are almost two-thirds of the way through the MobCon journey and so while Silicon Valley has spent the weekend giving thanks we have been busy housekeeping. You’ll notice the FLINK! vs Search vs Twitter experiment has been relocated and can be accessed from the top menu.

The MobCon Explorer page has been updated to include most of the MobCon Theory revealed in the journey so far.

Of perhaps more interest to those of you who have tuned in each week is the news that we are building the ultimate MobCon Explorer Widget. With this Yahoo! widget you will be able to explore the infinite options of “How to make money from the MobCon“ from the privacy of your desktop.

The MobCon Explorer

Why do the smartest people operate the dumbest businesses?

One from the Archives (Circa 2000)

I think everyone at sometime has probably dreamed about running their own business. The freedom to do it better by doing it your way.

But beware your dream doesn’t become a nightmare. The price of freedom is high.

99% of all start-ups fail within 10 years.

So ask yourself this question: How can I survive the odds?

The self-employed professional tends to value freedom and independence. For these people industry respect and quality are equal, if not more important, drivers than money.

That’s why the successfully self-employed are always very busy people.

They think in terms: My expertise, My time, My money

A retailer you can bank on?

 Ten years ago the management mantra of the day was all about Doing More With Less. In response talented young bankers were busy building successful careers surfing the concurrent waves of eBusiness and online banking.  

At the same time the industry’s leaders were openly posing the Million Dollar question: Who would we rather have as a customer? The Millionaire driving the BMW or 1o,000 Pensioners?

 

This was the start of the decade long trend in Retail Banking away from competing on product to competing for relationships.

The Ying Yang of Innovation

One from the Archives (Circa 1990)

This piece was originally entitled the Ying Yang of Design and it was distributed as lecture notes to a Design class. It deals with the urban myth of Western Innovation vs Eastern Imitation and how the two very different approaches to innovation do in fact compliment each other. So much so that any organisation that can embrace both styles of innovation will inevitably become a market leader in any industry. I have updated it to include collaborative innovation as per the recent piece on The Discipline of Innovation Teams.

As I have said before companies can either innovate, imitate or acquire the future.

It’s the New Plastic and yes, it feels Fantastic

In Point, click and discover the future of advertising? I documented how advertisers and marketers were getting hyped up about the ultimate advertising and promotions platform.

In A Telco you can Bank on? and MasterCard shows its hand in the high stakes game of Mobile Payments we had a look at the new mobile banking and payments platform.

Now let’s take a look at the ultimate retail platform. The New Plastic Fantastic.

Are your customers packing the new plastic?

If you run a business or a marketing and promotions program based on a loyalty card, rewards card, points card, advantage card, club card, credit card or debit card then very soon (if haven’t already) you’ll be thinking about the benefits of migrating your customers to New Plastic.

New Plastic? You guessed it, the Mobile Phone.

Now your “New Plastic” strategy could take shape in one of two ways.

• You could just build lots of Mobile Apps and distribute them to all your members (Thereby adding to the costs of managing the program), or
• You could turn your Loyalty Program Cost Center into a Profit Center by offering your customers the opportunity to sign up to your branded mobile phone network.

Interested in Plan B? Let’s show you how and why you should be thinking about becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).

A Quick Bite of the Apple

TechCrunch’s story today that Apple And Android Now Make Up 75 Percent Of U.S. Smartphone Web Traffic provides an interesting insight into the world-wide growth of the Mobile Web.

The report indicates that 50% of the World’s Mobile Web requests are made by iPhone/iTouch owners. Unfortunately what the report doesn’t tell us is what percentage of iPhone/iTouch owners use their device to access the Mobile Web.

As you will recall from a couple of weeks back Apple now has an estimated 2.5% share of the Global Mobile Handset Market. If we had the data on the number of iPhone/iTouch owners who are actively using the mobile web then we would be able to produce a quick estimate of the current size of the Mobile Web market.

At the moment I only have the figures published by Telstra which estimates mobile data at about 2% of Mobile Revenues.

Having said that I do have some old data from 2007 that indicated 75% of iPhone owners send SMS’s and 50% have accessed social networking sites. So let’s assume for argument’s sake that 50% is an active indicator of probable mobile web usage.

This would suggest that the estimated number of handset owners currently accessing the mobile web, at least on Smart Phones, equals about 2.5% of the world mobile phone market. A figure that is pretty much in line with Telstra’s mobile data revenues.

Small change for the Telcos today but,  as I said in More Eyeballs and More Revenues but is it the future of the mass media?, the potential market for the Mobile Web is enormous. It could be at least 3 times bigger than the “desktop” Internet.

The figures are from AdMob’s quarterly mobile metrics report.

Even the games developers are discovering that online… Analog Dollars equals Digital Pennies

Earlier this year I wondered if online games developers suffered from the same 10:10 rule that plagued the online newspapers. (i.e. 10 times the traffic for 1/10 the revenues). Or was it only the online print publishers that suffer from the Analog Dollars = Digital Pennies problem?

To break even on the web you need to generate 100 times the traffic. That’s why when we say Analog Dollars = Digital Pennies it means exactly that. Today $1 of revenue offline translates into 1 cent in revenue online.

Console Games vs Online Games

As you can see I remapped the sales of the biggest selling retail console game titles and the traffic of the busiest online games sites into a single set of metrics. I discovered that the worst case scenario was around 30 times the traffic for 1/3rd the revenues which I guess translates pretty much into the 10:10 problem.

The Business of Blogging

Continuing on with the theme of News junkie or the future of journalism? I now want to take a look at the Business of Blogging.

24/7 Wall St has recently published a list of The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs In America.

7 of the Top 25 most valuable blogs are tech blogs.

TechBlogs, as we all know, are an extremely competitive part of the online content business so it will be interesting to see how all that “Free Market” energy translates into Advertising Revenues and, more importantly, a return on Shareholder Investment.