Mobile: Can we deliver value and still make profit ?!

The world is becoming so connected and as experts envision, if the Internet was the killer application in the nineties, it is definitely the mobile phone for the current era. So many big players like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are investing huge sums into research on mobile technology. If e-mail was the killer application for the internet, the one for mobile phones has always been voice. There have been so many technology and content players trying to serve data but very few have struck gold. So far, the only way companies are making money is through value-added services like caller tunes and so on, but at a very high cost.

The challenge is whether you will be able to deliver services on mobiles the Google way- free of cost to the end user and still making a profitable business. Of course, the mobile doesn’t have much of a real estate when compared to that of a computer monitor. But if you can get it there, there is nothing like it!

One day when I was about to start for shopping, I wanted to find out the best deals in town. I just went ahead and started browsing the news paper for an advertisement on some apparel offers, which I had seen a few days back. I had to go through newspapers at least 5 or 6 days old for over half an hour to find the advertisement with the details of the offer, address and other info.

1. Firstly, what if there was a small code in every advertisement or some smart tag where in I just punch the code of an interesting advertisement in my mobile (non-camera mobile) and message it to a toll-free/local number and I get the vital details of that offer back in my mobile immediately? In case I have a camera mobile, I just take a picture of the smart tag in the advertisement and message it to get all the relevant details like type of offer, address, phone number, etc. So, whenever I come across an advert in newspapers or hoardings or the TV or Internet, I needn’t remember a thing. I just take a pic or send the message and I get the necessary info permanently stored for my future use.

2. Practically speaking, very few people will actually go and do whatever was there in the previous point. There is a good chance that I see it and I miss the code or I am not in a position to note it at that time. What if I had a search engine, which just searches and lists advertisements and offers? When clicked, it takes me to the original seller. And if necessary, I can send the details to my mobile or email it or bookmark it over or save it in some form for future reference. This way, we can maintain the service for free and charge the seller for every potential inquiry or click. After browsing for couple of hours, the closest thing I could find was http://www.ixigo.com/ which is a similar search engine for offers but only on travel business. These people list the deals & offers and the rest of transaction is done in the actual airlines website (say a jetairways.com or spicejet.com). So there is zero liability.

3. If the same search engine is available on mobile phones, it is the best someone can get. I go out for shopping to a ‘X’ showroom and find that I don’t like anything. Once I come out, I am not left with much choice. If I had a search engine on my mobile, which is simple and intuitive, I can probably search for offers around that area and then check them out. It just becomes a point of right information at the right time to make it profitable for all the stake holders.

This is just a rough idea. But if we can find out the loopholes and build a business model out of this, it could turn out to be a success story.

One company which is doing something similar to this is mginger.com . Mginger sends targeted advertisements based on the profile of the user. Mginger adds value by:

• furnishing users with offers relating to the choice he/she has given.
• paying the users for receiving those ads by sharing a part of its profit.

Even here, it is more of a “push” model and there is lot of scope in this space if we can make it a two-way communication!

Lets us wait and see what the future looks like…