Superscape becoming Supercharged?

Glad to hear that TBB.

This was the bit from the Voda interview that talked about revenue share.


MobileIndustry: One of the constant topics of conversation in this industry is the revenue share between the operator and the publisher or developer of a title. Do you see that split changing in the coming years? Will the launch of services like i-mode cause a shift in that area?

Tim Harrison: The revenue share that Vodafone operates on is a figure that has come about by us looking at what our contribution to the value chain is, looking at the various functions that we perform within that, and looking at what the publisher or developer does within that value chain - looking at the conventional retail and distribution model, and moving that over. That's why the revenue share that we operate on, we believe, is the right revenue share.
However, it's absolutely correct that over the months to come, over the years to come, as the industry develops, different bits of that value chain will be performed by different players. So yes, I think that there naturally will be a shift in the way that revenues are split. It might even be that revenue share is a great model for an early industry, but it's not necessarily the best model for an industry in a state of maturity. For example, in the music area, where we run our full track service, the commercial deals there are not done on a revenue share basis - they're done on the basis of an agreed price per download, which is a model that makes more sense for that particular service.
Revenue share is always going to be something that's going to move around. Where we are at the moment, what we contribute to the value chain, what the rest of the industry contributes to the value chain - we believe the revenue share is correct. As the industry develops, as we see an increase in off-portal activity - where the content provider takes on more of the responsibility from a technical perspective, takes on more of the responsibility from the marketing perspective, takes on more of the risk - then obviously we may need to see an adjustment in the revenue shares to reflect the change in responsibility.

HoT