Hard work for mobile content providers: Study

New Delhi, Nov 2 (UNI) With telecom operators continuing to flood the market with new devices, mobile phone content providers are being increasingly challenged to ensure that different media pieces such as ringtones, graphics, games and videos are properly adapted for all these target devices.

Delivering a satisfactory end-user experience is paramount for the growth of the industry and this is easier said than done as the seemingly simple process of mobile media adaptation actually involves several considerations and processes before delivery.

New analysis from Frost&Sullivan Strategic Insight into Mobile Content Adaptation Markets - Porting with Transcoding and Rendering, reveals that the main technologies and methodologies used for content adaptation include manual transformation, in-house automation tools or third-party automation tools.

"Mobile content adaptation involves several processes such as porting, transcoding, quality assurance and operator certification before the content can actually be introduced on the networks," Frost&Sullivan Industry Analyst Vikrant Gandhi said.

"Participants in the mobile industry adopt one of the several available models for the above and the suitability of each approach is determined by factors such as distribution model, company size and resources, target geography and time to market, among others." For example, large content providers that have been active in the mobile content space may typically develop a framework of their own to handle mobile content adaptation. On the other hand, smaller mobile content industry participants are likely to handle processes manually, in-house, or work with a large content aggregator for mobile content adaptation.

Content developers are not the only end users of the tools provided by third-party porting solution providers and markets indicate healthy opportunities in the area of mobile porting.

This also means that not only the large mobile content providers themselves, but also the smaller porting providers that partner with the large mobile content vendors could become the users of these solutions.

Presented with these alternatives, the challenge for content providers is to choose the most suitable approach with a long-term perspective on increased efficiencies and the payback period. Large content providers, for instance, will clearly want to compare the cost and benefits of deploying in-house solutions to using third-party media adaptation solutions.

Increased transactions and reduction in manpower resources could be some immediate benefits for them to consider.

"Device profiling and testing and content adaptation personnel are the main costs to be considered for a large content aggregator handling content transcoding in-house," Mr Gandhi said.

"For third-party installations, the primary costs are those related to software deployment and personnel and although these solutions may not entirely eliminate the requirement for personnel, they can considerably reduce the number of manual resources needed for mobile content transcoding and device profiling." UNI RT DKS BS1601