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High potential seen for 'simple' consumer mobile email
(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)There is huge untapped demand for mobile email services in the consumer market, claimed delegates at this week's Global Messaging conference and exhibition in London.
While mobile email services have so far been targeted mainly at the enterprise market, there is a much larger addressable market in the consumer space, the delegates said.
"Operators started with the enterprise market because it was easier, cleaner, and has proven success," said Nikki Gore, senior director of product marketing for Critical Path, which supplies messaging software and services to operators.
"The consumer market is a little bit messier but operators cannot ignore the consumer market for too long," Gore added.
Gore emphasised that consumer mobile email can be a profitable business once operators understand their customers better and ensure that the investment made in launching the service will warrant the yield.
But Gore and others warned that for consumer services to be successful it is important to make mobile email far easier to use and more targeted at what a user actually needs or wants.
"There is not a 'one-size-fits-all' solution for consumer mobile email," commented Andy Pearson, director of product strategy at OZ Communications, which supplies consumer email services to Cingular Wireless in the U.S and Bouygues in France, with three further operator deals pending.
Gore said the consumer market has a much higher potential, but only if service providers "deliver what consumers want at the right price".
She cited research that claimed 20%-40% of consumers said they would want mobile email services. But she noted that this percentage rose significantly to 75%-85% when consumers were asked if they'd like to receive emails from family and friends.
"Segmentation is key to success," stressed Gore. "You need to find out about the user community."
She added that the services must be technically very easy to set up and use, and must also not require a user to buy a new phone.
"They cannot be expected to buy a new device just to get a data service," Gore stressed. "Consumers are emotional and cheap."
Pearson said consumer email is "quite radically different" from enterprise email, and added that even "dumbed down" enterprise solutions are often too complicated for the average consumer.
His company's solution is to merely offer consumers mobile access to the Web-based or ISP accounts they already have, making use of recognisable email brands and mass-market devices.
"You need to keep it simple," Pearson stressed. "Don't clutter the device with too many features."
He also advised operators to keep email pricing plans in line with existing plans.
"Don't try to get users to adopt something alien," he warned. "Keep it flexible, simple and affordable."
Meanwhile Steven van Zanen, director of marketing at the mobile messaging unit of LogicaCMG, agreed that mobile operators must make more efforts to understand their consumers to ensure long-term success.
He stressed that operators now need to educate their consumers about new services, citing MMS picture messaging as one service that has so far failed to live up to expectations due to poor marketing.
"If it's relevant people will pay for it," said van Zanen. "Relevance will be determined by niche markets you need to root out these niches and market to them not stick to the 'one-size-fits-all' approach."
Van Zanen stressed that it is now crucial for operators to move more into data since their voice business will eventually be eroded by "disruptive" technologies such as voice over IP (VoIP). He said they must also rid themselves of their "silo" approach to individual services and provide a single architecture for their entire business.
"Operators need to change top-down more quickly than they realise," he commented, adding that mobile operators need to become "more relevant to the consumer".
Van Zanen welcomed Vodafone's recent change of strategy from focusing purely on mobile services to addressing fixed and mobile convergence.
"They should buy Tiscali," he said, with reference to recent speculation that the mobile operator is contemplating buying fixed and broadband players. "They'll be Tiscafone before they know it."
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