Mobile users star in Mercury vision

BRISBANE company Mercury Mobility is moving into social networking with an offering aimed at getting 3G mobile phone users to spend more time and money on their phones.

Mercury, owned by listed distributor Cellnet, supplies ringtones, music and other content to carriers such as Hutchison Telecommunication’s 3 network.

Now it is taking on the likes of YouTube and News Corporation’s MySpace with a user-generated content service. News Corporation subsidiary News Limited publishes The Australian.

In a twist on the traditional 3G billing model, Mercury – which has content deals with Canadian telcos such as Bell Canada – is planning to pay users who post popular content on the service.

“We’ll launch in the next few months in North America, then here,” general manager Ben Grootemaat said.

“The exciting thing is the way the billing works: people pay us and we can pay people, for example payments for content can be credited to a phone bill.”

Mercury has an office in Toronto and recently opened in London as part of a push into Europe.

“There’s a huge takeup of 3G, so we will see growth in Australia, but it is a lot more substantial in the US,” Mr Grootemaat said.

Revenue from 3G services is the main growth path for carriers, with demand for advanced services growing as more users purchase newer handsets. Music is seen as a key piece of content, with mobile handsets now going head-to-head with music players such as the iPod and Microsoft’s yet-to-be-release Zune.

“The music business will be the key for revenue,” Mr Grootemaat said.

“A phone will be a camera, will contain an equal-to-iPod music device and will take calls.”

Mercury has exclusive distribution deals with Disney and the ABC. One of its services allows parents to download ABC Kids’ videos to their phones to help them entertain children.

Not all content is good, however. Mr Grootemaat is urging the federal Government to take a closer look at subscriber premium services, which offer ongoing – and often expensive – content subscriptions.

Some young people have been caught out by high mobile bills, largely resulting from downloading content such as ringtones and wallpaper.

“I’d encourage them to legislate,” he said. “We don’t do subscriber premium services. The people doing these things have really hurt the market.”

Source- http://australianit.news.com.au

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