News Corp makes strong three-pronged push into mobile content

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News Corp makes strong three-pronged push into mobile content

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 22 October, 2008

Rupert Murdoch's media giant News Corp is reorganizing its mobile business, hard on the heels of taking full control of content and ringtone distributor Jamba.

News Corp paid $200m for the remaining 49% of Jamba, most famous for owning the Crazy Frog ringtones, from Verisign and has now used this as the cornerstone of a new Fox Mobile Group, a three-legged operation designed to leverage the company's content creation capabilities and distribution channels. The company also opened a Singapore office to extend its mobile efforts across Asia.

"In part, we'll try to provide a positive consumer experience when dealing with mobile content, which is something the industry needs badly," said Fox Mobile Group CEO Mauro Montanaro. "We'll focus much more on a pull marketing approach rather than the push approach that we and everybody else have used so far. We're going to work very much with business-to-business companies, with carriers, even with OEMs to push our brands out there. Distribution is key." The company also plans to launch an entirely new mobile content brand, as yet unnamed, in the US early next year.

Fox aims to stay in the forefront of creating video and other content specifically for mobile platforms. It was a pioneer of 'mobisodes' - mini mobile episodes of popular TV series like '24'. "The consumer wants 15 minutes, tops," Montanaro said. "We're looking at snacks (for mobile consumption), we're also looking at TV series that can be replicated and repeated."

Although Jamba's traditional heartland of ringtones is losing momentum - with revenues even shrinking in the US - Fox will aim to look beyond video and flesh out its gaming content as well as creating 'hybrid' offerings that combine two or more types of content to form new categories. Fox believes its strong position as a media provider will lower its cost of customer acquisition and enable it to handle the great dilemma of mobile content - that users mainly want single purchases, but only subscription services generate sufficient revenue and cashflow, at least for content specialists.