Feature Stories
Recurring Revenue from Mobile Content
by Sondra Sneed
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20 years later, the mobile content ecosystem has evolved to create both entertainment for consumers and software packages that are valuable to enterprise mobile customers.
For many years now, Zsigo's WDA has been a sort of talent agency or gateway for content providers to reach the carriers so that games, ringtones, pictures, and other content can be downloaded from the carrier's on-deck platform. But now Zsigo's company is taking their longstanding brokering skills and impressive carrier relationships to the dealer/retailer for the first time.
Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer for MultiMedia Intelligence, and mobile content platform expert, said WDA's proposition is special. "What makes WDA unique is that it is allowing the retailer to participate in subscription revenues," he said. "In the typical model, the retailer will sell a piece of electronic equipment, then the manufacturers actively try and sell subscription services for that device. Apple's iPod ecosystem is a good example. The retailer is excluded from those sales. The Wireless Dealer Agency however, would allow the retailer to participate in the ongoing revenue streams."
MultiMedia Intelligence's recent report, Mobile Content Platforms: Mobile 2.0 and Advertising Join the Party, covers software platforms that deliver and monetize content to mobile handsets. Dickson as its chief researcher went on to say that the subscription model is WDA's biggest asset with regard to the financial transaction in its consumer product.
"Subscriptions are sold once - and transacted only once a month - they provide a guarantee of revenue, even if usage wanes from time to time. In mobile," Dickson continued, "subscription revenue is the ambrosia of mobile content."
WDA is bringing residual income opportunities to retailers that are garnered from two customer pools and the products are white-labeled, which facilitates branding and customer loyalty to the stores.
The consumer model being formulated, allows customers to access unlimited ringtones, wallpapers, and pictures for $9.99 a month. Then as entertainment content grows in availability, those products such as music titles, movies and games can be purchased a' la carte by subscribers. The retailer will get an estimated 30 percent of that recurring benefit through a branded portal that is "powered by" WDA's content library. But resellers will have a lucrative revenue opportunity with WDA for enterprise customers as well.
BlackBerries are popular devices within the business sector because they are not carrier locked and are capable of utilizing 3rd party software for business mobility. Other devices fit that description as well and WDA is helping the retailer move beyond the hardware and get into software license sales by providing a tool that allows for multiple license distribution and deployment, simultaneously.
"What I've done that I think is the most innovative," starts Zsigo, "is that I have created a program that a dealer installs on their own system." The software that he is talking about is used like this: First the reseller loads-up all of their business customer's information. So let's say a company with a hundred or so mobile users needs to deploy software to each employee's device. "You basically type in the name, address, email, and phone number of all of the users and press the magic button and the system goes out to discover all of the devices to bring them back into the management console," he explains. "Then you pick a piece of software that you need to install and the console tells you how many people in the organization are compatible with that piece of software. Finally you click a couple more buttons and administer the licenses directly to those devices. It's amazing to watch it work. We've shown it to a couple of carriers and analysts in confidence and they've said there's nothing else like it. So that will be part of our offer in October when we roll it out. A dealer will be able to completely administer software onto their customer's devices."
Estimates are that dealers can drive between $30 - $100/user/month in license revenue for business customers, generating tens of thousands of dollars in net profit annually with WDA's model. This rev share will also provide the medium for which the independent store can evolve more rapidly to a "full-service dealer" store model.
"As an agency, we don't put our name on the product, it's only the people who are creating, and selling the content whose names will be out there," says Scott Burnell, Director of Content for Games and Applications for the company. "Who WDA is and what we do relates to anything that can be downloaded to a mobile device, whether it's music or mobile applications. We work with the developers, publishers, licensers, and the carriers themselves. We also don't compete with any of our partners because years ago when the company started, Konny Zsigo was a software engineer who trained developers on how to get a direct contract with Tier 1 carriers. He trained in the software development specifications and eventually helped to set up the developer programs at Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. Eventually content developers were just hiring him to represent their finished products to the carriers for resale, rather than trying to get noticed individually."
Those requests challenged Zsigo to change the way his company was structured and it went from a training consultancy to a talent agency representing the product creators to the carriers. Now those carriers only do business with WDA as the clearinghouse so they are not bombarded with developers and content providers directly. As a result, WDA is now in partnership with both sides of the content game and primed to bring that module to the retailer for distribution and at last, a hand into the content sales arena.
For more information about subscription-based content revenue and / or mobile application deployment software being launched from WDA,
Contact Scott Burnell at 517-337-2701