Fox Mobile Group was planning an entirely new mobile entertainment service which would offer “superior discoverability and price transparency” before the end of last year, but the crash of the economy pushed it out “by only about three months” CEO Mauro Montanaro (pictured, right) told MocoNews in January, adding that it would definitely be in the first half of the year. They missed the first three months, and in an interview with C21 Media it says they’re still aiming for the first half of the year; “Given the economic crisis we’re reviewing a lot of the activities today but we will launch the brand in 2009,” says Montanaro.
Montanaro said that the US is now ahead of Europe because of it has flat-rate data plans, and also complained that European operators guard too jealously data about their customers so content companies find it more difficult to develop services that strike the right note. Most amazingly he notes another problem with mobile content: “The cost of licensed content, particularly music, is increasing. “Funnily enough we have a situation where we have an economic crisis and everybody more or less is announcing that they’ll have challenges with their revenues in 2009 but the cost of licensing music and other items from other branded companies is going up. That forces companies to take a hard look at whether to make something by themselves or license it. When you look at what is selling on iPhone, most of it is unbranded.” That explains why Fox is making it’s own content…
slt yacine480@live.fr