How to Monetise the Mobile Internet

Should the mobile internet business model replicate the internet business model of free services monetised through ads and page views? It would be a shame if it does.

The mobile internet offers a much better model of monetising services than the internet because -

a. Consumers are exposed to paying for mobile entertainment services like ringtones, jokes etc... unlike the internet where consumers expect services to be free. Hence the model of asking subscribers to pay for using mobile internet services is more palatable.

b. Monetising through ads like the internet is still at least 2 years away and is not a sustainable revenue source. With the slowdown, marketers are not willing to spend on mainstream ad media like hoardings so for mobile advertising to succeed in these times, it will take nothing short of a miracle.

So how do you monetise the mobile internet? Well, let me illustrate with some real world examples...I and my friends recently suddenly made plans to eat out as we were heading home from work and we wanted a location that was not too far away from our residences…What did we do? We fired up our trusty Mobile phones and logged on to burrp.com (a site that specializes in restaurant listings in India) from our phone browsers. A few search queries later, presto, we found a restaurant listing that fit in with our requirement. We were satisfied, the mobile operator was satisfied since we just burnt some data and added to their data charges kitty and Burrp.com was happy since they got some users to use the mobile portal. The question is how will a company like Burrp make money out of our transaction? They replicated the internet model...We used their services completely for Free and our page views were hardly worth monetizing…

On the other hand, my other experience with the mobile internet shows that there is a smarter way of making money. I was on vacation in a village in Karnataka and needed to know if my seats on the train back home was confirmed and out of the waiting list. Well, the fastest way I could check that was that I could log on to the Indian Railways site on my laptop but I just could not connect to the internet due to the remoteness of my location… The only other way to do so was to log on to the mobile portal of the Indian Railways through my operator wap portal. To my relief, it opens up. Every bit of information on the mobile portal is transaction-based, a few Rupees here, a few Rupees there and I gladly pay to get the information that I need. I get the information that I need and am happy even the service is not free; the mobile operator too is really happy since I used up my data plan and also paid a few Rupees to access the Railway service; the Indian railways are really happy too since they have a satisfied consumer who transacted with them.

The Indian Railways provide the same set of services on the internet for free but charges them on the mobile portal. The pricing is extremely low but considering the volume of users using the services, I’m sure it makes healthy revenues. They might not have the flashy web 2.0 bells and whistles on the mobile portal but they got the business model of the mobile internet just right- Pay as you use on the mobile portal. In my opinion, this is the sustainable business model for telecom operators, content providers and mobile internet service companies, at least till mobile advertising becomes a sustainable revenue stream.

Telecom Operators in partnership with Content partner must ensure that this model evolves on the mobile internet. Companies that think otherwise and are replicating the internet business model are doomed. Just like the internet made brick and mortar business models obsolete, the mobile internet business model might make the internet model obsolete.