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August 14, 2008
NAA’s New Development & Growth Guide Focuses on Mobile for Newspapers
 Today, the Newspaper Association of America's Digital Edge released a new development and growth guide for newspapers – this time focusing on mobile. The guide is available now at www.naa.org/mobile. Here’s the promo:
Mobile devices – frequently called the “third screen” – are an important distribution platform for newspapers. Mobile sites and services have great revenue potential, and they can build a newspaper’s audience and brand. NAA’s “Moving to Mobile,” a development and growth guide, includes information on mobile ads, local search, setting up mobile programs, reaching youth and e-readers. It also includes case studies from newspapers successful in this area.
Mark Desautels, vice president of Wireless Internet Development at CTIA - The Wireless Association, wrote the introduction to “Moving to Mobile.” The following are excerpts from an interview with Desautels about the mobile Web and what it means for newspapers going forward. For the complete interview, please see Desaultes’ introduction to “Moving to Mobile.”
NAA: What are the three most telling or significant statistics right now in terms of U.S. mobile usage (and why)?
Desautels: 1) SMS text messaging continues to grow annually at triple digit rates, and is approaching 2 billion messages a day in the United States. The significance is that consumers are comfortable with interacting with each other, and even third parties, via text messaging, and that SMS will be an important platform for news distribution companies to utilize to interact with their subscribers going forward.
2) 87: That's the percentage of the U.S. population who are mobile phone subscribers, a phenomenal penetration rate that virtually ensures overlap with all newspaper subscribers.
3) 20 percent: That's the approximate percentage of wireless industry revenues attributable to non-voice (data) services, representing an amount that is still growing at double digit rates annually….
NAA: In terms of trends, do you see U.S. mobile device users adopting the mobile Web at a faster or slower rate in next few years?
Desautels: Mobile Web use is going to explode from here going forward. Sophisticated devices with great user interfaces, such as the iPhone, have demonstrated that customers would like to do, when mobile, many of the same things they do on a wireline Internet connection, and the existing wireless networks have demonstrated that they are capable of enabling such use. As those devices begin to proliferate across the base of wireless subscribers, we would anticipate a similar increase in demand for mobile Internet access and services….
NAA: What do you think will be the tipping point for the mobile Web? (Will it be cheaper data plans from carriers, faster networks, or more widespread adoption?)
Desautels: All of those things – lower prices, faster networks, better devices, more adoption – and something else: the integration into mobile applications of location-based information. One of the biggest drivers of Internet usage is the convenience it provides; the mobile Internet can provide exponentially more….
NAA: What should newspapers do to encourage mobile Web adoption?
Desautels: To the extent that a newspaper digitizes its content and provides access via a Web site, more and more mobile subscribers will be able to access that content as the conditions described above, in terms of device and network capabilities proliferate. And they will. But newspapers can also help drive mobile Web adoption by incorporating SMS text alert services for content of specific subscriber interest, as well as by enabling their Web sites to accept breaking news content from mobile devices. Because it is a two-way data communications system, mobile devices and networks will enable newspapers to both push their digitized content to subscribers as well as receive information back, in real time, vastly enhancing value to both….
NAA: What newspaper content do you think is most suited for the mobile Web?
Desautels: The simple answer is that anything newspaper subscribers want on the wired Internet, they will want on the wireless Internet. However, the opportunity to provide new services based on the current set of information that newspapers collect and are paid to distribute, such as advertising, could prove to be where the sweet spot is....
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