"Competition for the US mobile search market promises to be fierce, thanks to the large US online ad market and strong pushes by portals. By 2011, mobile search will account for around $715 million, or almost 15% of a total mobile advertising market worth nearly $4.7 billion", according to a leading market research firm. [1] Depending on a researcher's particular bias toward telecom, Web or technology factors, the published forecasts for global mobile search vary from $1.5 billion by 2011 (from Informa Telecoms & Media) to over $11 billion by 2008 (according to Piper Jaffray). [2]
Mobile Search is important for the usability of mobile content for the same reasons as internet search engines became important to the usability of internet content. Early internet content was largely provided by portals such as Netscape. As the depth of available content grew, portals were unable to provide total coverage. As a result internet search engines such as Google and AltaVista proved popular as a way of allowing users to find the increasingly specialist content they were looking for.
There is a similar situation developing in the mobile content industry. Given early adopter usage of mobile services, there has been a vast increase in the depth of content developed for mobile phones. There are now few large organizations that do not offer a mobile service of some sort. Most of the operators run their own portals that showcase the best available content. However, given the limitations of a mobile phones screen size and general navigability, most of available content that has been written for mobile users is effectively invisible to users. Research from Qpass suggests that less than 36% of an operator's portal is within 30 seconds navigation distance for the user - this being the expected time users expect to find content in.
The early deals are taking place as cell phone operators recognize that mobile Internet search is an inherently different business than its desktop counterpart. Whereas people might use a Web-connected personal computer to search for information about an 18th-century British author, they are more likely to use cell phones to find targeted information like news, weather and sports. Cell phones also offer much less space to enter in search terms and smaller screens to display results.
Some of the advancements by the major portals in Internet search, such as Google's famous page-ranking scheme, don't apply in the mobile world since people aren't searching for Web sites as much as answers to specific questions. Alltel's group president of operations, Kevin Beebe, says the Internet search giants aren't yet delivering the kind of results the mobile content industry wants. "What they're trying to do is take that core search capability and just jam it onto the phone," Mr. Beebe said. "That's probably not the right approach."
"Mobile search is a battle to define perhaps the most important new interface with the consumer," says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer Senior Analyst and the author of the new report, Mobile Search: Clash of the Titans. "Whoever cracks the consumer and commercial code for delivering and monetizing relevant answers for people on the go will secure a license to print money, at least for a time."
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