Mobile Entertainment

January started things off with a bang, with Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone. The device delighted Apple fans with a gorgeous touchscreen supporting a raft of innovative features – but giving doubters something to carp about thanks to the lack of 3G support, closed OS and crappy camera.

The fall-out of the 2005/6 D2C debacle claimed a high profile victim in February when Monstermob was finally sold to Zed, the Spanish giant that survived and thrived by developing its own IP and diversifying into community services. A few lessons there then.

Spring was actually pretty uneventful. DoCoMo became the first operator to offer an 'all you can eat' music service (with Napster), 3 introduced its X-Series multimedia package and Moto unveiled its Z8 'media monster'. It wasn't enough to save Zander though.

June began with good news for the much-maligned ringtone - Akon broke all records with 11 million mastertone sales in the US. Meanwhile, Omnifone launched its flat rate music service with Telenor Sweden… it timed the announcement just as Apple launched iPhone with AT&T in the US.

The content-led MVNO dream was shattered in July when Amp'd - receiver of huge amounts of investment from people who maybe should have known better - closed its doors.
On the upside, the D2C sector took a huge step forward when Jamster launched the Yellow Plan in the US - the only place Simpsons fans could gets hold of ringtones that screamed 'd'oh!'. Not one operator got to wet its beak with Simpson's content (the game aside). How they must have wept.

In August everyone went on holiday. Except Nokia. It chose the slowest news month of the year to unveil Ovi, its bold step into the world of mobile content services. Ovi means door. A few slammed in the Finnish company's face when operators got wind of the plans. But interestingly not as many as people thought.

Autumn arrived in busy fashion, with the UK D2C space receiving a boost with the launch of the PayForIt WAP billing initiative, ad funded MVNO Blyk opening for business and Apple signing up O2, Orange and T-Mobile as European iPhone partners. 'Apple. Orange. Pair' was our headline. Can you see what we did with that?

But all that news was arguably overshadowed by Google’s entry into mobile in November. No, it wasn’t a device or a network, but an open software initiative. It put up a $10 million prize fund to encourage developers. Who knows where it might lead?