Why dominating the mobile phone screen is a no brainer

Wed, 10 March 2010 0 Comments

The concept of media has come a long way when it simply defined newspaper, magazines, radio and TV.

All you have to do is point Percy at the porcelain to be reminded not to take drugs, check your prostate or not to drink and drive. While the floors of supermarkets, most public spaces, the back doors of public lavatories and even the skies have been taken over what we are facing is media fragmentation.

And that’s even on Facebook, Twitter and the new fangled and very disturbing video site Chatroulette (if you've a few hours to spare).

Yet there is another space, ripe as a medium, which over the next five years or so will be the biggest battleground for eyeballs in the world. I'm talking about the screen of the mobile phone. Currently, the screen is owned by either the phone manufacturer or the phone network through which the consumer bought their SIM card.

When I look at my screen I'm reminded in small letters on the top left I’m with Optus 3G. But really my front screen is defined by the apps I bought from the iTunes store -  Google, Google feed reader, Foursquare, Tweetie, Google Maps and Tramtracker among many more.

Not a single old media property made it onto my first page of the screen. While The Age Good Food Guide makes it to the second page with LinkedIn, YouTube and PayPal followed on the fourth by Fairfax Radio news, ABC Mobile and the New York Times. Considering a mobile phone is owned by nearly every single right minded adult in Australia, it is surprising that no local old media companies have created an app that is so indispensible that I have to have it on the front page. 

I’m not talking about a phone optimised internet site but an app that really uses all of a phone’s features.

In the old days I’d read the newspaper to find out the weather, what was on TV, my stars and some news. Some days I may even play Sudoku. And last Saturday stuck in floods and the hail I’d have loved my phone to warn me what was coming outside a feed from the Bureau of Meteorology.

I’m wondering why newspapers aren’t using their brands to create multiple applications to build loyalty and have at least ownership of a small amount of space on the screen of my smart phone. As I said earlier, over the next five years these phones will become even more valuable real estate, not only as a mobile computing device but also as a gateway for contactless micropayments.

They’ll be more important to the average punter than a debit or credit card. There is an advantage to the early entrants on places such as the internet and I’m guessing mobile phones are the same. It’s an amazing battleground with some of the largest audiences in the country.

Grabbing a share of that phone screen real estate has to be a marketing no brainer.