Over 86% of industry insiders interviewed by Valista said it should take less than a month to launch new mobile content and services with an operator. This expectation is far from reality, as 80% of respondents stated that it actually takes three to nine months to introduce new mobile content and services.
Fran Heeran, CTO at Valista, commented on the findings: “It’s clear that the mobile industry is looking for more streamlined ways to onboard and manage content and services. It can typically take months to introduce new mobile content and services across all the carriers.
“This clearly needs to change as content and services lose relevancy with each passing month and some content is never considered because of the production time,” Heeran added. “Mobile service and content providers need to be able to react to the market quickly and provision new mobile content and services in a more dynamic fashion.”
Regarding which channel will experience the highest growth for content purchases in the next two years, respondents were split almost evenly with 51% opting for the broadband and cable channel, and 48% predicting mobile.
The Valista survey, conducted at the Building Blocks 2008 conference held last week in San Jose, California, also found that the mobile industry is not taking advantage of customer loyalty programs as a way to encourage consumers to buy more downloaded content.
Surprisingly, none of the respondents said that they use any form of loyalty scheme as an incentive to increase content purchasing or encourage repeat buyers. Over 70% of those surveyed, however, use other promotion methods to entice customers to purchase more content and services, including discounts, free trials and product bundling.
Over three quarters of respondents said the thought there was an increasing preference for putting charges on the mobile bill, yet over 78% of participants said that broadband customers today still use credit and debit cards, and Paypal to pay for digital content and services.