Mobile Convergence
Mobile Convergence describes how the Media, IT, Telecoms and Banking Indusrties will converge into a single “MobCon” industry. This industry will become the wireless exchange of the future.
The objective of owning the exchange is to profit from every transaction conducted within the exchange. This is why the Banking Industry, and not the Telcos, Media or IT, holds the golden key to unlocking future of MobCon profitability.
This is also why we will see Mobile Apps, Media, Devices and Network Access provided free to customers in exchange for the right to profit from the customers’ transactions in the future.
The question is will media have a role in this new convergence model or is it fundamentally redundant within the exchange model?
The online exchange business model is traffic = customers = revenues. Today we call this exchange model “Freemium”. The reason media struggles online is because it operates on a traffic = revenues model. The challenge media has yet to resolve online is how to turn traffic into customers.
Thanks to our original study of the New York Times problem we know that FLINK! is the reason why the web is such a poor media platform. It is also the reason why the web is such a great eCommerce platform.
What the media has failed to recognise is that online the media business model has evolved from Browse with us, Buy from them to Browse with us, Buy with us. Today media serves no function online other than to provide signposts to the exchange. The problem is once the exchange is discovered the signposts become redundant.
This is why US advertising revenues represented less than 0.5% of the total online economy in 2006.
The introduction of the mobile smart phone has accelerated this global trend towards profiting from the wireless exchange. It is also taking the wireless exchange out of the office and home into the marketplace. Today the market can interact with the wireless exchange in real time through the mobile device. This is why the future of mobile media is more about the next generation of ShopSavvy than Newspaper Pay Walls or reading the news on your iPad.
