Deck The Halls!

Oliver Starr of Mobile Crunch is at it again, after some intense comments on his post on Berggi, he now tackles the issue on having services being run on carrier's deck or off deck. This issue is very important as it most probably dictates the future trend of mobile.

Here is my take on the issue (as posted on Mobilecrunch.com):

[Comment by godie — November 25, 2006 @ 6:19 am]

Ok here’s my final take on the on or off deck issue with some data from our own services (i wont be naming them).

Case 1:

Back in 2005 we launched a mobile service for a very popular social website based in the US with telco’s backing up the promotion which aims to target 5 Million users of their website.

On the First 2 hours alone we have 75K+ users registering for the service after Ads on TV appeared sponsored by the telco, the day ended up with around 100K+ users registering. On the succeeding days were hitting 100-150K+, but after 3 months the active usage drops around 7K+ per month; that’s when the telco promotion ended (off deck).

The 2nd case:

Early January 2006 we launched a Web/Mobile2.0 platform allow companies to promote their product via mobile instantly with capabilities for Infotxt (SMS/MMS), Mobile to Email, Mobile to Web, Mobile polls… all the works!; all the companies need to do is promote them (off deck). Most of the initial clients struggled at 15+K users at best, its then decided we have to put them “on deck”, by “cross-selling” (it works like google ads but via SMS) their mobile service with our existing on deck services. In 1 months alone, their service usage started to increase dramatically by 100%.

You see, being on telco’s deck (at least here in the Philippines) gives you that kind of promotion mileage: Web (via telco’s portal), SMS/MMS broadcast, print, radio, and TV — It’s unbeatable, by just being in carrier’s deck, a service here can reach 35 Million Philippine users in a week; that’s 6 times more market penetration compared to promoting it via print, radio and TV combined.

Lastly with the increasing number of scams via mobile, viruses and mobile data theft, being on carrier’s deck give users enough assurance that you are running a legitimate service especially for services that requires installed applications on users’ phone.

These data might be only true for Asia,but if anyone out there willing to share data for US and Europe then maybe we can finally figure out what’s the global trend.