Infoworld is reporting that Sprint sees many new opportunities emerging in mobile data services in the coming years, including the opportunity to sell advertising on its mobile entertainment offerings, a company executive told a wireless conference.
As margins become more razor thin, I suppose some sort of advertising model was inevitable on mobile phones and other mobile devices. Can you magine being forced to view an advertisement before dialing on your cellphone? Or even if they don't force you to view the ad full-screen, they could take up a huge chunk of real-estate on the LCD screen. Still, it may be inevitable, especially as larger high-res screens appear on cellphones along with multimedia capabilities, making them perfectly suited to display not just static color images, but multimedia applications such as videos or perhaps even mini-Shockwave applets.
As I told Skibare this morning via email, I would not be surprised to see the advertising model take off on the VoIP softclient space as well (see Screenshot of MSN Messenger with ad at bottom).
Already Microsoft displays advertisements on its MSN Messenger. Although Microsoft has tried and failed many times to penetrate the VoIP market and gain the marketshare and mindshare enjoyed by Skype, they still haven't been successful at it.
We could still see a big wig like Microsoft or Google create a VoIP softclient which is "free" except for a small window that displays advertisements.
I know, I know, I'm talking about Google VoIP again. Like we need another rumor-mill about Google jumping into VoIP, right?.
I think Google could have the advantage over Microsoft since Google could develop the VoIP softclient application for multiple operating systems (and make it open source), whereas Microsoft is unlikely to develop an "open source" application and certainly not design an application to run on Linux. Of course, Google could just do what Yahoo! did and buy the licensing rights from Xten and maybe customize the UI to display ads.
Google and Microsoft are looking for ways to make money in VoIP. Well, here's one way. Better hurry though. Skype has a huge head start! Clock is ticking.
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