A carrier's perspective on creating a mobile multimedia service

Abstract

Carriers sit at the center of the complex intercompany ecosystems that bring mobile products and services to the consumer mass market. In fact, to a large extent, carriers create, shape, and coordinate these systems. Carriers provide the large monetary investments needed to begin development and are responsible for creating and maintaining the long-term customer relationships that sustain products once they are launched. This article describes the creation of Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Services launched in August 2004 from the view of the design team within the carrier. This view provides insight into how business and research constraints play out to influence the design of mass market services.

A critical evaluation of location based services and their potential

“…However, LBS are services like any other and so broadly the same range of business models are available, with the same success factors: LBS developers still need channels to Journal of Location Based Services 29 reach customers and collect revenue; there still need to be demonstrable profit margins, given the cost of finance that applies in each case; and the service has to be compelling enough to drive repeat use or recommendations. Many commentators on LBS have assumed that the dominant (or even the only) channel for business-to-consumers (b2c) services would be through existing mobile operators (Balaji et al 2005). At present most mobile operators outside Japan (Grajski and Kirk 2003) are delivering applications to subscribers using web portals optimised for mobile device browsers.…”

Viewing Angle Matters-Screen Type Does Not

“…Six months later, in April 2006, Disney began making many of these same TV shows downloadable for free to iPods and personal computers (PCs) by including ads inserted in the content, which viewers were unable to skip through (Fleetwood, 2006). Today, watching video on these other screens—the PC and the “third screen” (Balaji, Landers, Kates, & Moritz, 2005), mobile devices like the cell phone and the video iPod—has become an essential part of everyday life for many people (O’Hara, Mitchell, & Vorbau, 2007). In TV's new landscape, advertisers will increasingly need to follow their audiences onto these other screens to ensure they reach their target markets with effective levels of exposure.…”

Visualization of Interfirm Relations in a Converging Mobile Ecosystem

“…Some have examined the role of specific players in the industry, such as network operators (Peppard and Rylander, 2006) and device manufacturers (Dittrich and Duysters, 2007). Others have focused on the products and services created in the mobile ecosystem, such as mobile marketing (Becker, 2005), mobile multimedia (Balaji et al, 2005), mobile content (Peppard and Rylander, 2006), and mobile business (Coursaris et al, 2006).…”