Business Models for Mobile Media Services : A case study in China mainland market

Abstract: Mobile media OTT service such as mobile music and mobile video is believed to be the next big revenue driver for mobile operator’s mobile broadband business. The media industry is willing to take mobile distribution channel to increase the content value. In Europe, there are already several successful cooperation cases between online media service provider and mobile operator, such as Spotify and Telia. However, with more complicated market and business environment in China, the mobile media services are still under development with immature business models.This thesis report aims to identify the business models of mobile media services in Europe and China, and to give business solution and strategic recommendation after analysis on actors, business roles, resources and activities using several business model theories. Six interviews have been done with industrial people from mobile network operator, online media service provider and TV channel in Sweden and China. With Spotify and Telia cooperation as the major part of case study in Europe market, data was gathered through business intelligent reports and interviews in Sweden. Six elements of business model theory from Chesbrough & Rosenbloom are used to conduct business model analysis onTelia-Spotify case. The result shows that Spotify play a joint connection role between tons of content from music insustry and mobile connection provider Telia, delivering value of good user experience and brand. Telia put the value of network, billing capability and user resource in the partnership with Spotify and benefit from the differentiated mobile broadband service, in terms of incearsing customer experience and reducing churn rate. TV4 case is investigated to analyze thebusiness development of mobile video in Europe. The result shows that there are two obstacles when delivering TV content to mobile device from TV channel’s perspective. One is that there is no way to measure the advertisement rate on mobile device, the other is that it is difficult to do localized advertisement program on mobile network. In the business model analysis in China, actors from mobile operator, state-owned media group and Internet company are identified as well as their activities in mobile media service. ARA model theory is used to analyze the value network and give the clear map of different actors’relations. The result shows that mobile media service in China has different situation in platform development, partnership with labels, service provider organization property and revenue model. Chinese mobile operators as state-owned companies develop mobile media service platform ontheir own instead of cooperation with service provider to avoid political and finance risk. They have direct partnership with content provider and give 50% of media OTT service revenue to content provider. The pirate rate of music in China is high, which result in very little willingness to pay for the music streaming service. Internet companies can build freemium service model with both licensed music content and content from illegal aggregators on advertising revenue model. However in online video area, Chinese government have implement strict regulatory to protect the copyright of video content. The major part of online video service providers’ revenueis also advertising, but with only licensed video content. The main factor that makes the different business environment between Europe and China is that the state-owned economy force in China plays important role in mobile media area. State owned mobile operators take the most business roles in mobile media service, which makes the possibility to cooperate with Spotify-like Internet companies is low. The first patch 3G mobile licenses are only granted to eight state-owned media groups, which are the only possible content providers of mobile operators’ mobile video service. To address the problem of cooperation inbetween mobile operators and Internet companies, to setup joint venture is the recommended solution. High customer satisfied service platform should be developed to enlarge the value of service. The recognized service value will lower the piracy rate and make the subscription revenue model possible.