December 6, 2001
GSA - the Global mobile Suppliers Association - is today publishing its Q4 Mobile Portals Survey - available at www.gsacom.com - at the GSM Americas event, taking place in Rio de Janeiro. The GSA Survey includes Latin American mobile portals for the first time - nine regional portals are featured, covering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. GSA is staging a major program of activities in South America this week, including: · A one-day seminar - Applications Adding to the Revenue Stream · Global Mobile Dialogue™ - How Will GSM Meet the Expectations in Latin America · Release of the Q4 GSA Mobile Portals Survey - including data on Latin America for the first time · GSM Americas conference · Participation in the first EDGE Operators' Forum
GSA's latest Mobile Portals Survey illustrates a general move towards third party service and content provision. Already a clear feature of the North American and Latin American mobile portals, this is now becoming favoured by many Western European portals as well - based on the increasing maturity of The ©Mobile Value Web, which represents all the elements required for mobile data service creation and delivery. The Q4 survey also charts the emergence of new revenue models, based on the increasing financial viability of content aggregation and production.
GSA President Alan Hadden comments: "Over the past year, GSA has concentrated on widening the geographic scope of the Mobile Portals Survey Series and, with the inclusion of Latin America, the great majority of the world's leading mobile markets are covered. The trend of third parties providing and branding the content to the end-user has created a challenge for the mobile portal operators, who are lacking the means to control the user experience under the third party provisioning model. There is also a move towards the introduction of premium service packages - billed separately from regular time-based billing models - reflecting that the commercial deployment of GPRS services is gaining pace. This is supported by the wider promotion of WAP over GPRS services.
"In Latin America, it is impressive to see that the roles of the companies participating in the mobile value web seem to be clearly defined. The operators have adopted a clear strategy for providing the access and billing infrastructure for the data services, while relying on third parties with regard to content aggregation and production. The overall impression of the portals surveyed is that portal design is thorough and visually pleasing, with a fair degree of diversity in how the services are defined and organised. GSA's quarterly Mobile Portals Survey is providing a unique and invaluable benchmark from which to chart the development of this important industry sector. The GSA Portal Survey builds on the key contribution made by GSA last year in promoting the GSM platform as the progressive, cost-effective route to third generation mobile services in Latin America."
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