Wireless Industry Fires Up Search Engines.

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Author: Bruno, Antony

MOBILE

During the past few years, entertainment companies have flooded the mobile market with wireless versions of popular titles in hopes of finding something that will resonate with consumers. But the story to date has been more about availability than usage: An estimated 97% of the content available goes unpurchased.

Now, a new class of wireless technologies is emerging with the sole purpose of helping mobile customers more easily discover new services and contentâ€"and buy them.

At the CTIAâ€"The Wireless Assn.'s Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference Sept. 26-28, mobile search was all the buzz. On the "Emerging Opportunities: New Media/Content" panel, the state of mobile search and discovery was identified as a major barrier to wireless entertainment sales.

"The mobile browsing experience is crap," said panelist Deep Nishar, director of product management at Google.

Google and Yahoo have mobile search engines, but they primarily point users to mobile-enabled Web sites outside a carrier's network. Wireless operators would much rather offer searches that limit users to the content that exists on their content deck, or at least give preference to it.

One company aiming to provide that is JumpTap, which introduced a carrier-focused search technology at the event. The service lets users search by keyword, such as a favorite artist. It then lists every piece of mobile content available for sale on the carrier's deck related to that artist, including ringtones, wallpaper and games. All are listed on a single screen and available for preview and immediate purchase.

Without such a service, searching for all available mobile content related to an artist involves hunting and pecking through the various mobile applications that carriers make available.

Another company, Motricity, operates a content delivery platform that includes a mobile search function, for carriers willing to sell content from outside their network portals. Motricity chief technical officer Jud Bowman says 40% of the sales made through its platform are titles found with the search capability.

Amp'd Mobile, an entertainment- and youth-focused carrier scheduled to go live in November, inked a deal with Fast Search & Transfer for a version of its mobile search technology, customized to Amp'd's younger audience.

Of course, mobile search only works if users are actively seeking information about a specific point of interest. Carriers say customer awareness is the most immediate priority.

"The minute they understand what they can do with these things their eyes just light up," says Jim Ryan, VP of consumer data at Cingular Wireless, who says that he strikes up conversations with strangers at sports bars just to show them how to use their phone. "Once I show them what it can do, they look at their phone like they've never seen it before."

Startup firm SnapIn has created a tutorial program that carriers can implement, offering users more information on the capabilities of their phones based on real-time usage. For instance, if a user purchased a ringtone, the tutorial would open a dialogue box that reads, "Did you know you can assign different ringtones to different contacts in your address book?" If the user then requests more information, the program would provide step-by-step instructions.

Bango, a company that facilitates about half of all off-portal content sales in Europe, has added a "browse and buy" feature to its service that sends a customized Web page to any user responding to a short-code advertisement. Rather than simply sending users the requested file, Bango adds a link to the file and a range of additional related content. The company says 46% of the information requests it receives on this system results in a sale, versus only 18% via traditional short message service.

Finally, a peer-driven discovery platform called Mophone debuted at the CTIA conference. Mophone is a social community site, much like myspace.com, but focused on the mobile user. It sells a variety of content from its site and allows members to share and recommend anything they have purchased.

"People need to be able to find what they're looking for," NPD Group analyst Clint Wheelock says. "There have been advances, but the carrier deck is often limiting."

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By Antony Bruno