Analysts Say "The Mobility Premium" Under Threat
A new analyst report is full of gloom and doom for mobile operators, saying there’s a confluence of factors that threaten “the mobility premium” — which they never define, but seems to be the idea that because something’s on a mobile phone, it can demand a higher price from consumers. Though they’re much more verbose, the basic idea is that people won’t pay above the odds for crappy content and services, particularly when there are so many easy alternatives. It appears to be coming as quite a wakeup call to operators that they can’t just force-feed uncompelling content to users, and that even though it’s on a phone, their content has to compete against other non-mobile content. Their worst fears — of being relegated to a bit pipe — will come true if they don’t adapt. They’re so afraid of a world in which they’d just serve data, but doing a poor job of providing content merely hastens that future.
