As the name suggests, AIMIA’s ‘Commercialising Mobile Content Forum’ was very much about the business of the mobile sector – about “successful mobile content that pays the rent”. A dozen or so presenters gave their views on the dollars in the dot mob. The following reports on some of the event, and some of the presentations.

The first panel was all about protecting digital rights in a mobile space.

Joseph Deutsch, from NDS, talked about their digital rights management technology that would, rather than simply blocking distribution, enable rights holders to maximise revenue generation by controlling the way the content was distributed. For example, the DRM schemes would enable previewing, pay-per-view, and other “business models” through which users can interact with the content. Effectively, what NDS is creating are strategies to generate revenue from the “super distribution” of content.

Jill Connell, represented the Copyright Agency Limited, a not-for-profit that collects copyright fees from users and distributes it back to the original creators. After Jill convinced the audience why copyright is important, she suggested today’s solutions may not be optimum. But there was no mention of creative commons. Nor was there any speculation on the role a collecting agency might play in a world where software enables the rights owner to directly bill the end user.

There were some questions from the audience about how rights management schemes behave in an environment of self-publishing. We were told self-publishing was only going to “escalate” but no answers were given on how the relationships between the audience and the ‘publisher’ would work.

The second panel was titled “New Ways of Creating Value through Content Aggregation”.

We were told the introduction of 3G was going to enable a higher quality of content delivery. Steve Watson from Legion pointed out that Australians take two years to upgrade their mobile phones. So, it will take another 12 to 18 months before a critical audience mass for 3G was available. Also, he pointed out the fragmented marketplace caused by different handsets and different networks make it a challenge for content provides “to deliver a seamless experience for the end consumer”.

There was general agreement that music was going to be popular on mobile phones. In terms of revenue generation, the use of downloadable tunes and animations in promoting brands (VB, Holden, Ford) was discussed.

Angelo Tilocca, from ABC Enterprises indicated that mobile content was good for revenue generation, especially for his organization, where advertising is currently not permitted. Radio station, Triple J already had a number of mobile sites and with the evolution of 3G, Angelo assured everyone there’ll be more video content for mobiles delivered out of the ABC.

Yahoo Australia’s MD Cliff Rosenberg is a believer in ‘my media’. He said that currently we are in phase one – where ring-tones and wallpaper provides us with the ability to be unique. However, Yahoo is looking forward to the next phase - which is about having all the content you want on your mobile. Yahoo’s “Connected Life” will achieve this “ultimate goal” of automatically syncing everything on the PC with the mobile phone. “That’s utopia” claims Cliff, who hopes users will pay $3 or $4 per month for such a service. And it sounded like Yahoo was going down the subscription model rather than banking on revenue generation through user profiling and advertising.

Sebastian Baldwin from Sensis suggested the mobile business was like where the web was seven years ago – but rather than blind hype, the mobile hype was “more real”. He went on to stress the difference with the web was the possibility of location-based services. Sensis are developing different products and business models for the ‘saving time’ and ‘killing time’ user modes.

The third and final panel was about the challenges of digital distribution, and it gave a glimpse to how the bigger players were thinking.

Ben Kinealy – head of entertainment at Hutchison 3 stated that we are “just touching on the tip of the iceberg” and that “it’s going to get much bigger”. But he advised us the Pay TV world and the movie industry work on the full demographic and stressed “we need to step beyond the 12 to 25 age bracket”. Ben predicted that the lucrative ring-tone and wallpaper market would be killed off soon and “that’s a good thing”. 3’s plan is a positioning strategy – get people using what they were already familiar with before introducing new, unique stuff. And he was siding on a subscription model – though a free access model was necessary to expose users to new content.

Mark Wells is managing Foxtel’s experiments with mobile television. Foxtel are currently doing a DBHS trial and they are planning on a larger consumer trial at the end of the year. Mark said Foxtel doesn’t have a business model yet. He was concerned about reaction of Foxtel executives to the quality of the small screen. However, no-one reminded Mark the audience probably won’t be the executive market who are used to getting their daily moving image dose on massive plasma screens.

According to Tom Freed from Real Networks, trust is a major issue and the audience for rich mobile content isn’t large. So, at the moment, it’s better for content providers to align themselves with the network operator. Real Networks is “big on subscriptions” and they were interested in the “tremendous opportunity” offered by personalised content. And a mobile version of Real’s Rhapsody was in the offerings.

Tom ensured left everyone with his version of a reality check: “bottom line is it’s a numbers game… how do I reach them?… And how much will they pay?”.

It’s a good thing that we don’t all function by Tom’s “numbers game”. But I wonder if we’ll have to under the current terms of conditions of the mobile environment