Some mobile content ads loudly trumpet “no subscriptions, no hidden costs”. Some in turn proudly claim “get more value by subscribing now!” Add to this reports of consumers getting ripped off by services (the most infamous being the Crazy Frog “but I didn’t know I was being subscribed” debacle in the UK and US), and you end up with some very confused consumers. Is a subscription service good or bad?
If you download cellphone content regularly then it’s good, as you get huge discounts of 50 percent or more. If you only buy a bit of content every so often, then the “want it, get it” model is better.
Most of the bad experiences consumers have had with mobile content providers are that people unknowingly subscribed to a service, and then are shocked to find out that money has been billed to their cellphone, or that they subscribed to a service and later struggled to unsubscribe.
Luckily, in South Africa, these kinds of experiences are not as common as in Europe and the US, partly thanks to the strong self-regulation by the industry through the Wireless Application Service Provider Association (Waspa). The local industry also picked up very quickly on the lessons learned overseas – that confused customers are unhappy customers.
The “pay-as-you download” services will always be popular, but we expect subscription services to come into their own again. New bundles and services are being developed that are aimed at specific groups to provide more of the stuff that excites them, like their favourite sport or bands, giving them a mix of content that pay as you go services don’t offer.
In subscription models you sign up, and for a small fortnightly fee you get to download content at a huge discount. For example, the Jippii pricing is R5 to subscribe and get a free piece of content, then R5 more every two weeks that lets you download all content for half price (i.e. R2.50 for a polyphonic ringtone instead of R5, or R5 for covertones instead of R10). If you download even two ringtones every fortnight, your subscription has saved you money. For the people who download regularly (and there are a lot of them— Jippii has subscribers to over 600,000 packages), subscription can really save you money.
But the sweetest part is that subscriptions increasingly offer tailored content to groups of subscribers giving them material they want to get regularly, such as sports scores or targeted news. For example, a rugby-related service would include “info pushes” of scores and news being sent during the season, with additional content like team logos or pictures of Breyton Paulse (if you have a small screen) or Victor Matfield (if you have a big one) as wallpaper downloads, all at a discount.
These services can be created for all sorts of special interest groups, like theatre or live music lovers, informing them of events happening in their area and providing them with related pictures, music tracks and ringtones. It gets even better if you use the profiles generated on signup along with cellphone location technology to tell where a subscriber is to give them remarkably specific information that is really useful to them, wherever they are at the time.
We have not even seen the tip of the iceberg in mobile content and services. The ability to join communities that interact with, or get value from, mobile content services is incredible.
The trend is already starting in the US and Europe, where a combination of websites, blogs, forums and mobile info services and chat is becoming very popular, especially with the so-called “m-generation” of 15 to 25-year-olds that actually prefer to use their mobile phones to using a PC on the internet. Subscription-based services will become a core component of these new communities by enabling more and more connections through mobile technology.
And the wonderful thing is that even a 60-year-old rugby lover can enjoy the new generation of subscription services.
Greg Brophy is the CEO of iTouch