Rush is on for content providers to secure phone deck real estate. Put content catalogues on the handset, rather than on the mobile Internet thats the cry ringing out from a group of spec
Rush is on for content providers to secure phone deck real estate.
Put content catalogues on the handset, rather than on the mobile Internet thats the cry ringing out from a group of specialist companies with competing solutions.
In the past month In-Fusio, Action Engine, Nokia, Elata and Volantis have thrown their hats in with new products aimed at content providers, consumer brands, aggregators and even operators. Though they differ in execution, the aim is the same: to deliver a portal that resides on the device and only connects to the mobile Internet when the user wants to download some content.
The advantages to the content provider are clear: they get their own piece of real estate on their customers phones. And for consumers these products allow quicker and cheaper browsing.
The gang of four are just the latest to enter the market, with Mad4Games already launched in the UK . More will follow as multimedia-enabled phones grow in penetration.
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Anne Baker, director of marketing at Action Engine, said: We think content providers and end users are looking for faster and more intuitive ways of getting to stuff. And solutions like ours demonstrably do it better than by accessing portals and browsing purely online.
To round up the latest announcements:
* Elata launched evolution as a service in which an on-device catalogue is regularly refreshed with previews and links to new content downloads.
* In-Fusio announced EGE-Lite, a content catalogue created for third parties which comprises community features.
* Action Engine unveiled Brand-n-Go, which is based on a platform it claims is 20 times faster and requires 80 per cent fewer clicks than browsers.
* Volantis launched XDIME Player, which it claims is completely device-independent and requires zero programming. This makes it score over Java-based catalogue that have to be tweaked for different phones.
