Mobile Search Report

Rating: Mobile Search come-back

Last year I published this report around the time of CTIA. It got some good publicity - but over the past six weeks its been clicked on 4,086 times from the BKI Media website. This tells me that either there are a lot of operator RFP’s going on at the moment or Mobile Search is back on the agenda.

As any good SEO would tell you - take advantage on any peak in traffic with more self-promotion. Here goes - here is the report on Mobile Search Strategy….

Executive Summary
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 USD 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:

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

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

o 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.

Read more here: http://www.bkimedia.com/pdf/CTIABKImediareport.pdf

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