m.Net Blog

Posted by Scott Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer

m.Net is now able to offer its clients Paypal Mobile as a mobile payment method, and we have already launched our first PayPal Mobile site, Warner Music’s Steve Forde artist mobile-marketing WAP site.

With over 5 million Australian PayPal users, and as the default payment method for eBay, PayPal Mobile is not a niche opportunity.

Why am I so excited about this?

• Prior to this the only viable mass market opportunity for payments was Premium SMS. The challenge for the content owner with this method was the scale of the revenue share most telecommunication carriers require for these services. With PayPal Mobile the fees are more analogous to those of a credit card which potentially means a cheaper product for the mobile consumer and more revenue to the content owner.
• Premium SMS really only worked for digital goods for the mobile (e.g. ringtones, wallpapers, games) since the product delivery was to the handset. The benefit of PayPal is that a real-world delivery address is stored for purchases, so users don’t have to attempt to type an address using predictive text and a small phone keyboard. You can pay for physical goods now via your phone using PayPal Mobile with the knowledge that they will be delivered to your preferred delivery address.

It is very early days but this is development in mobile payments is encouraging for both consumers and retailers.

Posted by Horden Wiltshire, Chief Executive Officer

m.Net was pleased to be ranked number 5 in the Deloitte Australian Fast 50 awards announced last week and we were particularly pleased to be ranked number 1 in South Australia. To anyone thinking of joining m.Net: all I can say is we don’t expect things to slow down any time soon!

One of the interesting things to note from the awards was that of the ten fastest-growing companies in Australia three were mobile companies. The Rising Star award was also won by another mobile player (Amethon Solutions) providing further evidence of the opportunities in the mobile space.

So have we peaked and will we see the number of mobile players experiencing higher rates of growth plateau, or does the mobile industry still have a long way to run? Of course the reason we are in this business is because we think the latter but there is plenty of evidence to support this view.

If you have been following this blog you will be familiar with the concept of the off-deck tipping point. Scott, Marisa, and I have talked about the factors that impact on the ubiquitous uptake of mobile services that are outside the carrier portals. With data prices coming down, carrier portals opening up, and almost 50% of consumers now with a 3G phone in Australia the only factor remaining is user behaviour. All the signs are positive that customers are becoming more familiar with off deck services but it is still early days and we see plenty of growth over the next 3-5 years. Outside of North Asia, Australia has one of the higher adoption rates of 3G services because of the early launch of the services by “3″ in 2003 and the aggressive rollout of 3G by the country’s largest carrier, Telstra.

In my view Australia will reach the off-deck tipping point before many other countries in the world, which means we still have a few years until the global tipping point is reached. As we look to opportunities in global markets for new services we hope that there will many years in the Deloitte Fast 50 ahead!

Posted by Scott Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer

The full Australian-financial-year reporting season is over and I have trawled through the annual reports and press announcements (where available) to put together the following breakdown of the state of the mobile market.

So how big is the Australian Mobile market? Approximately 20.3 million subscribers.

The Australian mobile market by carrier

Telstra is streets ahead with approximately 42% of the total market share, followed by Optus with approximately 32%.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics population clock estimates there are 21,054,836 of us Aussies at the time of writing. The last census indicated that less than 20% of the population is children 15 years or younger. So the end result is that there are nearly 1.2 handsets for every adult Australian (over 15yrs).

The really interesting number for mobile Internet access is the 3G market size. My best estimate is that there are approximately 4.5 million 3G subscribers. In past quarters Hutchison has been the clear leader due to its early development of a 3G service and single-minded focus on this network. In the past quarter, the Telstra marketing machine has caught up and passed it. Telstra is now the leading network in terms of 3G subscribers.

The Australian 3G market by carrier

This is good news for marketers looking to explore the mobile Internet and the advanced marketing applications that it can provide, as approximately 22% of the market can now receive 3G content. We know many more 2G handsets are WAP-capable so this is really a scale opportunity for marketing. For me this is the tipping point where the opportunity for marketing is really interesting!

Posted by Marisa Maio Mackay, Director of Research

Mobile phones have had a profound impact on the way that Australians communicate and interact with each other and their environment. But the world of communication, information, and entertainment isn’t limited to that accessed through a mobile phone. Rather, it encompasses media through all channels — including the World-Wide Web, television, and print.

The challenge for mobile marketers is to leverage the unique strengths of each medium, and to understand the power of the today’s mobile phone. The television has a large screen, magazines are nice and glossy, and the World-Wide Web is fairly easy to navigate… so what do today’s media consumers want out of their mobile phones?

m.Net research suggests that mobile phone subscribers are most positive and receptive to services that:

• are practical;
• have intrinsic value;
• are free;
• are easy to use;
• are transparent — that communicate what the product or service is upfront; and
• are immediate in terms of delivering benefit.

Underlying all of these points is the need for the service or product to complement that which can be accessed through other channels. A common assumption is that people want the ability to access on their mobiles exactly that which can be accessed via computer web-browsers; however, the reality is that people want the mobile phone to enhance their lifestyles, not change or direct their behaviours.

So, providers – when creating the next ideal mobile service, remember that the mobile phone is a powerful force in the entertainment, information and communication space – but not the sole force. So give the people want they want: innovation, not replication!