Deliver A Song

Do you even know what M-Commerce is?

Well you better learn fast. Predictions in Europe for
M-Commerce, the second largest market behind Asia, are for a
spend of €7.4 Billion in 2006 that’s over $8 Billion. That’s
twice the predicted spend of traditional web services!

So what is M-Commerce? It’s very simple, mobile / cell phone
based sales. Usually relating to content such as games,
wallpaper, ringtones etc. But there’s much more to it than that.
Keep reading.

What’s the big deal? More people own a mobile phone than a PC,
they’re better integrated in to daily life. People are very
comfortable using them. They are now in fact heavily relied
upon, as the phone feature is only a small part of what can be
perceived as a miniature multi-purpose multi-capable portable
computer.

Mobile Growth Mobile growth already outstrips all other
communication channels. Half of all Americans are mobile phone
subscribers. In the UK the ownership of a mobile phone is
equivalent to 1.5 phones per head of population. According to
research, mobile content services will be worth $121 Billion
worldwide by 2008. White label distribution of ringtones,
images, games and other promotions will drive up to 1/5th of the
revenue generated. It’s estimated 1.5 Billion people worldwide
own a mobile phone.

With more and more technology add-ons to tempt the consumer
these devices are now Cameras, MP3 players, game consoles, voice
notepads, picture albums, diary organiser, PDF readers etc etc.

In fact I’m writing this article on my PDA / Phone whilst sat in
the sunshine in the garden. With two taps on the screen I can
hook up to my home wireless network and check my emails, browse
the net, update my Blog or edit and publish article submissions
on one of my sites all via broadband.

We are not that far away from always on Net connections. Once
this arrives it will allow anyone to do this almost wherever
they are. Certainly in the major cities around the world. When
this happens there will be a third Internet boom as Joe public
try’s out the Net connection again that was always too shoddy to
use in the past.

And what will they want? Content! ringtones, wallpaper, games,
MP3’s etc

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The real money isn’t even going
to be made via a Net sale. The real money will be made via
SMS(Short Message Service), MMS(Multimedia Messaging System) and
this ones a goldmine…Micro payments.

Recent research has shown a doubling of worldwide revenue from
streaming TV and sports bulletin subscriptions. 380 million
people worldwide are expected to subscribe to similar services
in 2005. Including TV show bulletins particularly from ‘reality
TV’ shows, News bulletins or Soap updates.

Big deal you’re not a TV network how can you make some money out
of this boom? I’ll go into that in a second but first I want to
go back to those Micro payments I mentioned earlier. The real
gold dust.

Micro Payment Profits Micro payments have been around for a
while here in the UK. A smaller land mass has allowed for a
quicker rollout of mobile technologies here. Nationwide Network
coverage is easier to achieve. I believe the first example in
the US to take it mainstream was by the ‘American Idol’ show.
Viewers voted for the acts on the show via their mobile phone.
They where then charged a small premium for their vote on top of
their networks regular SMS charge. Think of the millions of
votes that the show attracted and the revenue generated.

That’s micro payments in action.

The beauty of this is that people don’t feel like they’re
spending money because they don’t need to whip out their credit
card, it’s an easier payment method, usually involving a simple
text to a small number and the payment is small. They also trust
their mobile for making payments unlike an online transaction.

Any payments made will appear on their next phone bill. People
are already used to paying in this way, they’re comfortable with
it. Whether it’s to vote for an act on a TV show, for a game
download or to grab the latest ringtone.

What have you got that you could take micro payments for? You
should be considering how you can utilise your current website
network to tap into this market. Do you offer subscriptions? Is
there a service you offer that you could convert to
subscriptions.

How Can You Make Some Money? Here’s a quick example. Your
newsletter. Would your subscribers be willing to pay a small
premium to have your newsletter delivered directly to their
mobile? Wherever they are, without the need to be sat in front
of a PC. Thus bypassing the SPAM filter problem and guaranteeing
they receive your valuable content. You could sell it as
valuable service for your customers with added content not
available on your site or via your regular newsletter.

Or offer them up to the minute breaking news in their industry,
which they receive as it breaks and not when they check their
email five hours later when it’s to late to take action.

Digital artists sell your wallpaper designs direct to the
consumer via the mobile phone. New bands forget the record
company contract sell your music via MP3’s direct to the
consumer. Investment advisors get subscribers to your ‘Hot Tips’
bulletins. Store owners offer a sale bulletin service etc etc

The Future The omnipresent Google are moving forward with major
mobile initiatives. Spending vast amounts of money to stake a
claim in this fledgling market. There’s the mobile version of
Froogle for one and they’ve also developed mobile business
listings specifically for the potentially huge ‘local search’
market. They also offer a free SMS based information service
http://www.google.com/sms/ and http://www.google.co.uk/sms/

Another major company Real Networks, creators of Real media
Player, recently bought Finnish mobile phone game developers Mr
Goodliving for $15M. Essentially buying a back catalogue of high
profile mobile games.

NTL a cable TV company here in the UK recently streamed the
Grand National, the biggest race horse meet here in the UK, live
to Nokia owning subscribers.

This is early days and that’s a small glimpse of the future.

The M-Commerce Market is very different from the online market
in terms of what content consumers are currently paying for. The
biggest revenue generators online, 70%, are porn and dating
sites. A similar percentage via mobile is for games, music and
video. Films, that’s another one, Nokia are now distributing
Hollywood movies via memory card!

The technology specifically 3G, an always on network with
transfer rates of 384kbs a second, is here and trickling into
mainstream culture. These devices are in fact capable of
1920kbs. Compare that to GPRS at 56kbs. You don’t need these
speeds to take advantage of this market but you should keep them
in mind to realise the full potential of where mobile
communication is going.

Here’s a brief, eye opening, wish list from consumers for future
mobile phone payment abilities:-

10 Use your mobile as a key 9 Marketing communications 8 Retail
checkout payments 7 Vending machine payments 6 Flight check in 5
Credit / debit cards 4 Season tickets 3 Loyalty cards 2 Parking
Meter payments 1 Mobile Coupon redemption

Getting Started How do you Accept Payments? Reverse SMS is very
popular at the moment. It provides the ability for you to direct
consumers to secret download links on your site whilst taking
payment through a premium SMS message. Another method known as
‘WAP Push’ sends a link via SMS that automatically launches when
the message is opened. You will need to set up your own WAP /
SMS Gateway on your server which will require server
administrator access to use both these solutions.

But there are other easier solutions a number of websites are
springing up that allow you to upload your content available for
download, games, video, wallpaper, MP3’s etc . A small fee is
taken from each paid download by the SMS Gateway company.

I’ve compiled a list of useful links to a number of the above
solutions and I’ve also thrown in a couple of links to
‘mobaphile’ websites were you will find some interesting
predictions for the future development of mobile phones along
with some real off the wall ideas for making money with mobiles.
http://www.how-to-make-money-online.info/m-commerce-resources.php

To paraphrase a strap line ‘The future’s bright the future’s
mobile’

Darren Yates
http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/mcommerce-twice-the-cash-value-of-ecommerce-1093.html

Since the first Nokia mobile cell phone and the Nokia tune the mobile phone industry has exploded, and also did the ringtones market. There didn’t only come more customers to buy the ringtones but there was a huge climb in the technology behind ringtones as well.

The first Nokia tune was a simple monophonic ringtones with only one beep sound. Soon after the Nokia tune there came a lot of other monophonic ringtones and even real songs that were composed to monophonic ringtones. But the technology did not stop. Because some years after the first Nokia tune the first polyphonic ringtones came out. Polyphonic ringtones became a big hype and every one who had a mobile cell phone wanted a new one that supported polyphonic ringtones. These polyphonic ringtones consist of more beeps than just one, so it sounds like a real song but without any singing. And the drums and the piano were very realistic. But after the polyphonic ringtones the technology behind ringtones slowed down a little bit. For a few years many companies were looking to find the best quality ringtone sound with the least file size. But after a while the mobile phone companies started to create and use bigger memory chips in their phones, and upgraded the quality of the sound. So after a while it became possible to have MP3 songs on your mobile phone and play them with good quality of sound. The first realtones are born…

But the first realtones weren’t actually the realtones we use to know. Because it was a little bit too risky to set up deals with record label companies to use their artists songs. Just because they didn’t know if anyone would be interested in the realtones. And the mobile phones that supported the realtones were very expensive and almost nobody had one. So the first realtones were actually called truetones. Truetones are mp3 sounds of real things. Like a mowing cat or the mowing of a cow. You even had a Yihaa! as a truetone or a big burp or a fart. But eventually more people bought a MP3 supported mobile phone as they became less expensive and those people actually bought those truetones. And eventually the market became bigger and bigger. The next thing after the truetones were the covertones. Covertones are the covers of real existing songs. But it was useless to make those because the productional costs were very high and you still had to pay a lot of money to the record label companies. So after the flop of covertones the ringtone providers switched to realtones. Real songs of real artists.

But why did it took so long before the realtones came? Well, that is really easy to answer: money. The realtone providers had and still have to make deals with record companies these deals go deep into the $100.000’s only for the deal! After the deal you still have to pay for every realtone you sell! So it is really expensive to legally offer those realtones. And you have to make deals with a lot of record label companies because there are a lot of artists at different companies. So there just was not a big market for the realtones at first and the ringtone companies had to wait until the big crowds got into the MP3 supported mobile phones.

There are some negative things about realtones, the quality of the sound on your phone is most of the time not as good as the real song so you might hear a different way of the song on your mobile phone than when you listen to the preview. Also, realtones are very expensive because of the high record deals. Realtones sometimes even cost two times as much as a polyphonic ringtone. And when you buy a realtone online you pay more for the realtone then when you buy the full song online!

But there are also some bright sides of realtones. Realtones are mp3 ringtones so they’re the newest thing and you can really show off when you have one! Also the realtones of the future are probably going to be a lot less expensive because the market gets bigger and bigger every day. Also the mobile phones of the future have better technology and better sound. There are even now mobile phones which have about 4 gigabytes of memory storage and it’s only going to be more in the future. So with realtones you can make turn your mobile phone into a media system.

So the realtones might be a little expensive right now, but in the future they’re going to be big, really big!

Pete Moret
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/realtones-theyre-new-theyre-hot-and-theyre-totally-mp3-songs-72176.html

Since the first Nokia tune, which is still the standard sound for Nokia phones, there has changed a lot. The original goal of ringtones was to personalize your mobile phone. So when it rings you will be able to know it is your phone that is ringing, and not someone else’s.

The first ringtones that personalized your phone were the monophonic ringtones, these ringtones are based on one single beep-like tone. And at the time they first came out they were the newest gadget to show-off with. These days they’re a bit boring. Because after the monophonic ringtones the polyphonic ringtones came. Polyphonic ringtones are ringtones that are based upon more beep-like tones. So it sounds almost like real music. Polyphonic ringtones are the standard nowadays, but realtones are coming in fast.

Realtones are ringtones that are not based on beepy sounds like the monophonic ringtones and the polyphonic ringtones. Realtones are actually the real sounds of artists. Realtones are 30 seconds during mp3 songs. Realtones are totally it these days! But they’re very expensive, because there must be made big contracts with music label companies. And companies who legally sell realtones have to pay a lot for every sold item. But witch realtones you can do a lot of things, they don’t necessary need to be real songs of real artists. You can also record a burping sound, or a chewing cow as a realtone! Those sounds are called truetones. But let’s get to the point. Let’s get to the ultimate way to personalize your mobile cell phone.

The ultimate way to personalize your mobile cell phone are nametones or naam ringtones. Nametones are actually realtones, or mp3 ringtones. Those nametones (or naam ringtones) are songs that are recorded with your name in it. So when your phone rings you don’t hear Madonna’s newest hit, no you hear your phone shouting at you to pick up your phone! So you always know when it is your phone when you hear a phone ringing. There are different sorts of nametones, you have nametones in the form of a song where someone is singing that you’re phone rings. Those nametones are in different sorts of genres like hardcore, hip hop, bubbling, pop and a lot more! Also there are celebrities telling you to pick up your phone, or just normal people with a funny voice and some swearing tell you to pick up your phone.

The only problem is that if someone else with the same name get’s called and that person has the same nametone like you, you both pick up your phone. But… at least you’ll have a good laugh!

Pete Moret
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/the-ultimate-way-to-personalize-your-cell-phone-nametones-72174.html