Wireless Application Market

Not being too familiar with Microsoft’s announced Skymarket nor the Xbox 360’s offerings apart from DVD games, I am curious about the author’s mention of a philosophical question regarding a “threat to core business and the development of a possible new MSFT which embraces the democratization of software revenues with 3rd party providers.”

So is Microsoft shifting from the King Kong that crushes competitors with brute strength into a love-stricken softie that wants to elope with the little blondes of the industry? With the Yahoo buy seemingly out of the picture, perhaps Microsoft will make a move to acquire or partner with a major mobile player like RIMM???

Other ponderings:

So what does Handango provide for their 40-70% Is this merely for access and convenience? What factors will change this percentage? What do wireless provider app stores charge?

With the abundant availability of third party applications, what is the status of malware (Is there an equivalent of the Nigerian prince e-mail scam) and what counters are various players in the mobile ecosystem developing?

Adobe Mobile Economy

What caught my attention most about this article was the dominance of mobile operators (Verizon, AT&T, etc) in the U.S.A. versus the rest of the world.  As we are all aware: “In the U.S. most customers get their handsets through their mobile operator”…”but in the rest of the world it is common to buy handsets from independent retailers and sign up for service separately.”

The article also estimates that these mobile operators serve as a portal for 70-80% of the mobile content in North America compared to only about 30% in Europe.  This of course gives the operator both more control of the actual content as well as control of the revenue streams.   I’m certainly not and expert on the mobile world  nor the health industry, but I can’t help but wonder if some of the too-numerous-to list flaws inherent  in the U.S. health care system already exist or may trickle into the mobile communication arena???  Hence,

What does the American consumer gain from the dominance of a few  major mobile companies?

On a somewhat similar topic, the article discusses the five key actors in mobile value chain:  Content owners, designers and developer, publishers and aggregators, provisioning and hosting providers, and market and delivery agents.  That seems like a lot of words and a lot of middle men who all want a cut of revenue…

As technologies improve and communication forms evolve, which of these players will gain strength and which will be marginalized?

ABI Research, a subsidiary of Stuff You Probably Already Knew Enterprises, presents some data that leads to a conclusion that people who use the newest and most advanced mobile device are likely to be young and engaged in online social networking.

But seriously, I’d like to see a vastly larger sample that accounted for all the standard variables. Within such a study, I’d be curious to see how many of the “normal” mobile users who answered in the same way as the majority of “social” users answered “yes” multiple times? Is there a small minority of “normal” users that behaves the same way as most “social” users and exploits most or all of the features that the best phones offer, or is it different users responding “yes” to one category but “no” to all the others?

I’m a bit surprised that the number of socials who play games was so much higher than the normal mobile users. With my old “dumb” cell phone, when I had time to kill and no other way to entertain myself, basic cell phone games often did the trick. Now that I have the G1 (aka the google phone) I’ll usually surf the web, etc, over playing a game.

Also, the 363 billion annual text messages for an average of 113 per subscriber each month is amusing. I’d like to see some more data about the people who go way over 1000 (and thus balance out all those folks who send none or few). Being the big brother of three text-happy tween/teen siblings, I have some guesses about who they are. Remember when cell phones weren’t allowed in school?…Unless you were Zack Morris of course…

Questions:

What are the major factors behind the average mobile users’ limited acceptance of mobile device potential?

What tactics could the mobile industry use to counter these obstacles?