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The future of on-device portals

by: admin Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

Rating: camera; action; engine.

Usually when companies send me emails about the iphone and “their thoughts” I tend to ignore it and put it in the bucket of self-evangelising dribble. But, I just received an email from Action Engine about the resurgence in the On Device Portal Space and something hit me.

Action Engine ask: “Why haven’t the mobile operators, who are searching for ways to increase the discovery and use of content, implemented more ODP solutions?”

The Action Engine response:
To answer this question we first need to look at past mistakes from the initial ODP implementations that failed to gain traction in the market. This first generation of deployments faltered for several reasons including:

- difficulties downloading the ODP onto the handset;
- a flawed business model that prevented consumers from exploring ODPs;
- limited handset coverage and a variety of different handset standards; and
- difficulties that content companies and mobile operators had trying to manage and support the ODP once it was launched.

Wow.
This is the first time I have heard an on-device portal company accept and actually highlight the problems in the ODP space. What a breakthrough! Last year when I wrote surfkitchen vs uiOne – I got no end of abuse. I was accused of being “over harsh”. But the fact is that I was being honest.

I have suddenly become an Action Engine fan. It has realised that it and every one in the ODP space has underachieved but there is a new interest and it’s taking advantage.

About time!

What we think?

Since Yahoo! launched Go! every media company and search provider and their dog has been interested in the ODP space. But is the Go! application any good? I have to say, I, like everyone else downloaded it back in February and used it avidly for the first three weeks – then I got my first bill. The increase of GBP 20 on mobile data didn’t appeal and now I only use it to test. Since then I also have an X-Series and I am addicted to using the Yahoo! search because it’s embedded and because its free to search.

So using myself as a guinea pig – cost is the major hiccup to the ODP application. It’s easy to download –but costly to run.

On top of that comments such as the iPhone are improving the ODP don’t ring true as its just too soon to test. An ODP needs at least six months of success before self evangelism comes into play.

But despite that we are positive on the ODP space moving forward and feel that there is huge potential in the media, search and advertising space for ODP services. We predict that all branded and white label search companies will add an on device portal. But more importantly I see vast potential in the ODP space for the ad market. I am writing this up for Ads and 2.0 Analyst.

If you want to read the full version of what Action Engine wrote drop me an email.