By: Wim Van Daele, Director, Communications – Mobile Commerce, Video & Immersive Communications - Alcatel-Lucent
In 2010, almost 11 billion applications were downloaded through app stores worldwide; by 2013, this number is expected to mount to 60 billion downloads (a five-fold increase in three years)1. At a time when many operators are experiencing declining voice average revenue per user (ARPU) and subscriber growth rates, they are embracing the digital media opportunity to help drive additional data/media revenues and new device sales by leveraging evolving application and content value chains.
But very often, solutions addressing this opportunity are implemented in a way that has not been very well considered: they foresee “stovepipe” infrastructures for every content type and screen – resulting in increased complexity/cost, and a mediocre user experience with little room for cross-selling and bundled service offerings.
Alcatel-Lucent proposes a different way of working, enabling service providers to display, retail and deliver a rich blend of music, applications, games, e-books and more – across all consumer touch points from a single, cloud-based “entertainment hub”. It is a one-stop shop we call the Alcatel-Lucent Digital Media Store. It is a capability that allows consumers to easily discover, acquire and use any content, across all their connected devices and wherever they are.
This approach – combined with personalized discovery and retailing – contributes to differentiation and brand equity, and puts service providers in a strategic position to rapidly launch advanced multi-content services and achieve higher content revenues by offering more content, with greater relevance, across more user touch points.
Interested in learning more about this service provider opportunity, Alcatel-Lucent’s proposed way forward – and some preliminary results from our approach? The ALU application and content value chain resource library is a great place to start. In addition, our experts look forward to talking to you!
1 Source: Worldwide and U.S. Mobile Applications, Storefronts, and Developer 2010-2014 Forecasts and Year-End 2010 Vendor Market Shares: The ‘Appification’ of Everything. IDC, December, 2010.
