Industry experts predict that the success of mobile content will be about allowing people to interact with each other.SAN FRANCISCO—If Trip Hawkins has it right—and he's a multimillionaire who has been right more than a few times in his business career—then the online wireless IT and entertainment industry had better realize soon that "it isn't all about content. Not now, it isn't, anyway."
Hawkins, founder of the wildly successful Electronic Arts Inc. in 1982 and now founder and CEO of mobile game maker Digital Chocolate Inc., was one of a triumvirate of keynoters Wednesday at CTIA's (Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association) Wireless IT and Entertainment 2005 conference at the Moscone Center here.
Rob Glaser, Chairman/CEO of Real Networks Inc. and Edgar Bronfman Jr., Chairman/CEO of Warner Music Group, also addressed the audience of about 3,000.
"I know that's a surprising statement, but look at the revenue breakdown in the business: Content sales—meaning games, music, video, etc.—brings in less than 1 percent of all wireless IT revenue. Voice is a $98 billion dollar market, and data is at $4 billion. But content is only a small slice of the $4 billion data figure," Hawkins said.
"What I see at this time is that there is a $94 billion gap to make up, and I think the mobile content industry can indeed catch up to voice. But I believe it'll take about eight years to do it," Hawkins said.
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This will be accomplished by the creation of more and more successful "social apps," as he called them—online games and services that help bring people together in "virtual villages," which Hawkins, and other visionary IT entrepreneurs, see as becoming more and more instrumental in people's lives.
These games and services will bring about "new excuses (to engage in) social context," he said.
"Look at all the most successful online services we have now," Hawkins said. "Text messaging, e-mail, chat, voice, personalization of services ... they're all about people connecting with old friends, meeting new friends, and how they want themselves to be represented.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Delivery, Not Content, is Driving Mobile IT Industry
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