The mobile content consumer has many options when it comes to sourcing content; their preferred method is based on downing via a PC. This is both the cheapest (free) and most convenient in terms of finding what they want. Therefore, when presenting a retail solution to the user, the mobile operator must consider the value added they provide over and above the free Web solution. What are the required features?

Content – The key aspect of content retail is to provide both the block buster titles as well as the long tail ‘niche’ titles. This can be both time consuming as you deal with so many titles but also confuses the consumer portal. Most mobile operators act as ‘corner shop’ highly priced with a limited selection, whereas they should aim to be a supermarket with a large selection of both premium and low cost products.

Search – With a small screen and a large portfolio of content the user finds it hard to acquire the content they desire. The ability to search within a genre adds a great deal of value and saves time and data charges.

Profiling – Knowing what the user has purchased before and using selected personal details us to present a more suitable content catalogue for that user. This provides increased revenue per user.

Loyalty – The greatest retailers are the supermarkets and they over a 50 year period have devised some of the best inceptives to maintain customer loyalty. The most successful is the loyalty card which gains points that can be redeemed within the store.

Recommendations – People like to share experiences and the ability to recommend content provides benefits for both the sender and receiving party. We have seen that 24% of users, who receive a recommendation to purchase content, follow these instructions. After-all, if one of your friends finds it interesting then why shouldn’t you?

Community – Forming a community around the retail solution benefits the retailer as they get a great deal of information, thoughts and general requests. They also create a sense of belonging which the user formulates as ownership.

One Button Process – The success of On-Device-Portals to provide a 100 to 500% increase in sales is based on the fact that they can find, purchase and download content using one button. The user interface allows them to

Open Retailer – Once you have provided these features, you have to deal with a hard question? What happens if the recommendation goes to user of another network? Again if we ask the Supermarkets, they provide a clear answer. If the person can pay sell to them. This mean you open up the retail solution to all users within the country of operation, which adds an additional aspect to above features.

Churn Engine – This ability to profile users from other networks and then offer a ‘subscription plan’ based on this knowledge, will lead to an increase your number of subscribers. Using this method you can make offers to users who you want based on usage and the community of users around them.

I guess the key question to the mobile operator is? Do you want to run a corner shop or be a supermarket?