Last month I was fortunate enough to be invited to a private roundtable of operator executives and entrepreneurs asked to share their ideas and opinions on the opportunities and challenges facing the mobile data industry. Now it’s a very rare day when these two constituencies can agree on anything, so imagine my surprise when both camps reached a consensus on the positive impacts that Web 2.0 services will have on non-voice revenues.

The operators expressed their envy and excitement about the pace of innovation and consumer adoption of Web 2.0 services on the internet, and with certainty predicted good fortunes and optimism for the entire value chain when these Web 2.0 services have been migrated to mobile.

Indeed this group isn’t alone in its optimism for this “Web 2.0 to Mobile” migration strategy. It seems not a month went by in 2007 without an announcement by a handset vendor, a mobile operator, a media company, or hundreds of entrepreneurial software startups, investing in technical and marketing initiatives and ultimately clamoring to align themselves with one of the Web 2.0 superstars.

Okay I admit it. I just don’t get it. Perhaps I’m slow because I’m Canadian, but I just don’t understand the business rationale or source of optimism related to this “Web 2.0 to Mobile” migration strategy.

If this optimism is being driven by the scale of revenues that Web 2.0 companies generate from advertising on the internet, and how this can in some shape or form lead to a new revenue stream for mobile operators, then the operators have misunderstood the revenue scale potential. Indeed most tier-1 mobile operators generate more annual revenues from mobile games, than Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and Flickr generate from advertising from their entire global audiences online.

Download pdf Forget Web 2.0, where’s SMS 2.0?