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Last modified:
16 Mar 2008
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Guerrilla Warfare: Winning Revenues from Mobile Search

By Bena Roberts
Chief analyst, BKI Media

Mobile search will be the honey of the mobile Internet, making it a stickier community that will generate revenues, lock-in users and bolster loyalty. If only it was so easy. The mobile search market is already a poorly choreographed opera, where the mobile operators are the actors that are not aware whether they should be shaking hands or banging heads with the search company directors.

Google’s carrot dangling has opened the door for the company into the mobile space through partnerships with T-Mobile, Motorola and several others. BKI Media predict that the mobile search market will be worth $ 13 billion by 2011 and this indicates why Google wants its fingers in the mobile pie. But history and the plight of AOL warn mobile operators that banking on Google to drive portal revenues, share intellectual property and grow business is risky. Google has its own ambitions (such as Google Talk and free WiFi). Mobile operators need to create strategies that defend, not embrace, Google. It’s easy to dismiss voice as dead, but it’s simply not true. Voice is the money maker for mobile operators and whilst Google is cosying up to operators on the storefront of the mobile portal, it’s eager to steal the voice market revenues via the back door.

Search engines will become the engine of the mobile portal, but by no means does offering mobile search mean that revenues will follow. Mobile operators will only beat the drum of victory if they use search as a tool to join a community of value added services and offers including recommendations, advertising and social networking as the instruments of their success. BKI Media has identified three main areas that must be encompassed into a wireless Internet strategy to ensure success and competitive prowess (Table 1.1: The Tripod of Success):

• Strategic – own intellectual property. Learn from Google and raise the bar on your market valuation by controlling intellectual property from mobile search. Don’t simply follow a “they have, so we have to” strategy and shake hands with a brand capable of threatening operator existence.

• Tactical – control advertising, and revenue share partnerships, to ensure control of the customer and that brand values are not diluted by third parties.
• Operational – ensure fast route to market and a channel where new offers can be pushed to consumers or businesses instantly. Ensure operational strategy includes:

Social networking – adding a recommendation engine will engage consumers and drive revenues by encouraging click through.

Business portals – make sure business portals are on your competitive radar.

Enterprise Search – vital information in-front and behind the firewall.

Mobile operators that follow the tripod of success will win revenues from the mobile Internet and will show return on long, painful and lengthy investment in to the mobile portal. The legs of the tripod clearly indicate the strategic, tactical and operational best practices that will deliver results.

The full report is here ... www.bkimedia.com/CTIABKImediareport.pdf