Research Publication – Mobile Ecosystems – Territorial Waters – Thematic update.

May 6th 2019: Radio Free Mobile updates its coverage of mobile ecosystems with the publication of: Mobile Ecosystems – Territorial Waters – Thematic update.

RFM research subscribers will receive their copy directly by email. 

Media consumption is now the most important digital life segment. However, its rise has also gone hand in hand with content creators wanting to distribute their own content leaving the distributors and platforms under threat. This is enabling new players to gain traction with users. Consequently, RFM has replaced Microsoft, Twitter, and Sony with ByteDance, Fortnite, and KaiOS as ecosystem contenders and offerings to watch over the coming years.

• Humdrum hardware. The smartphone market is well and truly mature. With no new device category or form factor on the horizon, hardware growth has become a thing of the past. Weakening pricing for storage, memory, and displays is testament to this fact leaving all the running to be done by content and services.
• All about media consumption. Fast networks have led users to consume more and more content on their devices resulting in Media Consumption becoming the biggest segment of RFM’s Digital Life Pie. A large part of this is audio where owned music and streaming are the most important. Podcasting is still small but with lots of potential for expansion
• Territorial waters: Media consumption has also become a battleground between the platforms and the content creators with many wanting to distribute their own content directly to users. The result is likely to be fragmentation where the experience for users becomes more disconnected and frustrating.
• New players. Against this backdrop, new players are emerging to challenge the status quo. ByteDance is coming from Media Consumption, Fortnite from Gaming while KaiOS aims to enable smartphone Digital Life services for the very low end.
• ByteDance is the operator of TikTok (Toutiao) with over 500m MaU and uses what it refers to as “AI” to categorise user-generated content and recommend it to its users based on their viewing history. RFM does not see this “AI” as a long-term barrier to entry meaning that ByteDance must continue to dominate with critical mass to keep its place in the pantheon.
• Fortnite is owned by Epic Games and is close to having enough users to be a highly successful ecosystem in its own right. Epic is using this power to attempt to break the oligopoly in gaming as well as Google’s stranglehold on app distribution on Android.
• KaiOS is like Apple in that its key proposition is the distribution of apps and services to users in an easy and fun to use way. Its monetisation is much different having chosen to take the advertising route. This has the potential to work well in the emerging markets where it is focused and where price is critical and privacy an afterthought.