Thoughts from IMS World Forum: Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation

01 June 2010

Many speakers were critical of efforts to build operator application stores. Indeed, we saw some example of such application stores, but few CSPs had even a basic business model for them that could be clearly articulated. Perhaps application stores make sense in certain areas, but for the overall consumer market, they already exist - outside of the CSP domain. As we commented in the Moriana keynote, although 16% of the applications offered through Apple are games, these constitute 65% of the total volume of downloads. There's money in this - but not much, maybe as much as $45 million per billion downloads. So why is this interesting to CSPs? Why replicate this?

Instead, wouldn't it be better to offer much more targeted services and focus on enabling ecosystems to service specific segments that can offer more profitable relationships? In short, don't go for the so-called long tail; that can take care of itself. Rather, go for applications that deliver real value and have a fair price. Consider opportunities in the enterprise and SME market, look for key verticals and work out how you can increase the data spend of those customers that aren't going crazy for free applications but just want to get online.

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