The Mobile Future

I went to the Future of Content and Creativity event at the RSA on Wednesday. Gerd Leonhard gave a great talk (I've seen him a few times before and he's always good) about content, copyright and control, including some good points on the change in thinking needed in content payment models. Also on the bill was Richard Titus (currently Controller, Future Media, Audio & Music and Mobile at the BBC, but soon to take the helm at Associated). Richard's framing of the new environment was very good. Three key points for me:

1. Rapid commoditization of technology into open standards means that user experience becomes the key differentiator, and live event-driven information and data become the true premium content
2. There are only 3 ways to monetize content and services: subscription, transaction and sponsorship. There may be multiple variations on these themes but this, is essentially, it.
3. As consumptive behaviours mutate, the line between active and passive continues to blur, on-demand vs live barriers disappear, time-shifting vs place shifting. He gave a current example. When the BBC launched the i-player onto mobile, they noticed some odd consumption habits which appeared to indicate a spike in mobile viewing late in the evening. When they looked into this, they discovered that this was because people were using the mobile i-player as a second television to view TV in bed.

The Mobile Future - RSA

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Comments

[John]

Impressed that you remembered all that without taking notes.

[Conrad]

Thanks for sharing this! As evidenced by the BBC i-player example, the notion that mobile consumption is reserved only for need-based activities like search will dissipate. As phones get smarter and networks get faster we'll start to see richer and richer mobile experiences and content which will lead to new reasons for mobile users to explore, discover and generally consume.

[R. Titus]

Thanks for the props - BTW I agree with Conrad, sort of.. really the issue is around context, form and time - with the latter being the big issue.

Mobile devices are absolutely competitive to non-mobile devices in the home, but their small screens will always make them a second class citizens. In the wild (when mobile) they shine - particularly when they become more adept at personalization.

Lastly, time - people in "mobile situations" have limited time, not the 20+ minutes required for an iplayer video programme, they do have time for intermittent content (like radio) which they can listen to and drop in and out of as they are doing other things, or drop out of coverage areas.

At the end of the day these are different platforms with a similar delivery technology framework, which means, if you are smart, you can leverage your old investment in this new technology.

Best

[neilperkin]

Thanks for the comments.

Richard - thanks for stopping by. Think you made (and make) some good points, and agree with you about context and time. All important.