MSearchGroove

Peggy Anne Salz

The increasing popularity of personalization and recommendation solutions – not to mention the march of upwards of as many as 30 on-device portal companies – speaks volumes about the importance of encouraging users to explore content they might like – before they ask for it. They range from SurfKitchen, which counts 20 operator wins, to Nellymoser, which has sealed deals with 10+ content companies. (I’ll have exclusive interviews with c-level execs at both companies – tied to announcements under embargo at this point in time – so stay tuned.) Little wonder triple the number of operators have harnessed the idle screen to promote content to users directly on their handsets. And let’s not forget the brands and media companies using technology from the likes of RefreshMobile and Finland’s Sendandsee to make their mobilized content and magazines the first item users see when they look at their phones. Finally, personalized search has made a huge and welcome debut. (I’m thinking of oneSearch that intuits users’ intention from search queries, and Medio Systems that emphasizes recommendation in the service it provides to T-Mobile in the U.S.) Google and JumpTap have also told me how personalization figures in their roadmap – but they have a way to go.

A company that is often cast as an ODP (although its client-server solution is more like personalization on steroids) is mPortal, a U.S.-based enabler of mobile content and applications that has purposely focused on feature phones. Its Springboard suite of products, which includes configurable client software and a network content management solution, enables content providers (such as Disney Mobile) to deliver personalized services and encourage content discovery based on relevant recommendations. To this end, mPortal has tied up with Telcordia to target MVNOs with a one-stop shop of content and real-time news feeds. (The addition of mPortal’s Springboard smart client exposes static and dynamic content and displays it on the idle screen.)

I caught up with DP Venkatesh, mPortal CEO, to hear his take on the ODP market (and the inevitable shake-out), the outlook for mobile search and his company’s push to deploy triple-play content discovery - an approach that combines a software client, a storefront and an infotainment channel of pre-packaged content. In his view, the industry is ready to ride the “next wave” in content discovery, a development that is driven – in part – by the recognition that enabling “discovery, preview and purchase” is what will drive the mobile content business.

Listen to the podcast here.

One-size-doesn’t-fit-all: “We’re doing a lot of work right now in the MVNO space, primarily because those are the players who are much more focused on differentiation. An MVNO by definition is not a one-size-fits-all; [it’s a] very targeted segment of the market that they’re going after.” mPortal is also “seeing a lot more growth [in operator interest in content discovery] and you’ll see us make announcements in the near future with some operators where we’re working with them to figure out how do you solve the battle of making content easier to discover, easier to purchase and easier to download.” In the case of operators, the interest is strongest in plugging into the back-end to bubble up feeds such as news, weather and entertainment and bring them to the on-device portal.

The mobile advertising opp: No ambitions to be in the ad server business here. The company’s offer – which combines a smart client and a content delivery platform - interfaces with advertisers. “So, we see [companies like] Google or Yahoo, or even the mobile advertising players who are already building ad server networks, as partners….We see displaying advertising as an extension of what our product does.” And what will drive advertising overall? “You’ll see a lot more growth over the next 18 to 36 months”, largely driven by the fact that the economics are clear and the pieces are falling into place for subscription-based and ad-supported content models.

Crowded spaces: The market can’t support 30+ ODPs. So expect either consolidation or a redefinition of what an ODP is. For sure, not every company with a smart client qualifies – and only a handful have client-server solutions. “I expect there to be 2 or 3 players, I also expect there may be dominant players in one platform – so, somebody may own the smart phone segment, or somebody may own …high-end devices. I don’t see somebody coming in across GSM and CDMA smart phone and Symbian and dominating the space.” He adds: “Given the size of the market, I think even having 10 percent market share in a market that is potentially in the 10s or 100s of billions of dollars, when you look at the overall content market, [is] a very significant space and that’s why we are very excited about our future.”

The power of previews: “The mobile industry lags the Web industry by a large margin because only now are people beginning to track some of the data from mobile content downloads and mobile content discovery. Having an ODP like the mPortal smart client gives the operators or the service providers an edge because we’re able to look at not just download behavior, but also what are people looking at.” This capability is at the core of the Disney Mobile service, where “knowing what a person is previewing, but not necessarily purchasing, it gives you an eye into intent, and that is a very key metric. If you looked at the Shakira ringtone 3 times, your intent to buy a Shakira ringtone or a similar ringtone is much higher, and that data or information is very critical for the service provider to have. This is the kind of data we’re serving back to our customers.”

Social networks rock!: mPortal is quietly and cleverly experimenting with some customers to “create a mini user group or a smaller social network” made up of all the people that make up each individual user’s social circle. The end-game is about combining this with insight into what users buy and preview with their mobile phones. “So, we’re headed towards the path where, on one side, we’re aggregating the data and providing it to our customers.” But, at the same time, mPortal is going into granular detail to look at what all the user’s friends have downloaded. “I think there’s a treasure trove of information there, and harnessing that and providing it to our service provider customers is what we’re doing.” Armed with the analytics, operators and service providers can come up with recommendations, match the right users with the right content to get the right results.

The mobile search attraction: “It’s more about discovery. It does not mean that search is not viable, it does not mean that search will not be a significant part of the mobile market. What it means is that discovery is going to be where a lot of the battles are going to be fought and won, and you will see players making it more easy for you to discover services and that may be a back door for the mobile operators to win against the more established Web players, because the operators play a very central role in the triangle of the content and applications as well as the devices as well as the networks.” In a word, mobile search may get the traffic at first, but content discovery will convince users to come back for more. “That’s essential to building a compelling discovery experience as well as an overall user experience for mobile.Real growth will come only when someone cracks the code on mobile content discovery.”

• Posted in
• Personalization, Recommendation, Web 2.0, On-Device Portals, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Podcasts

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