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Strategy Analytics estimates that global annual revenues from mobile entertainment and content will rise from $26.4 billion in 2005 to $91.8 billion in 2009. That's a 350% revenue increase over a short four-year period. And that's why it's time for consumer brands to embrace the mobile channel.

Major consumer brands have always been aware of the mobile channel, but looked at it as fragmented because of the closed gardens owned by the carriers. And in turn, the carriers' interest is their own and not that of the brands.

Now there is a ubiquitous route to the mobile channel—independent of the operators—which opens up possibilities for advertising campaigns, like pan-European and global ones, that until now have been practically impossible.

.mobi matters

With the recent launch of the .mobi domain—the first and only top-level domain exclusively for mobile phones—there has been significant investment from brands who see their strategy embracing the mobile channel.

For a pan-European brand now to launch a campaign that moves across borders, a company only needs to manage a .mobi domain rather than an array of short codes. Short codes campaigns are not only limited by geography but they are:

• expensive because of the costs in educating customers on what short codes to use
• awkward in putting the burden on customers to remember the sequence of short codes for what they want.

Instead, brands could consider on-pack promotions where it will be easier for customers to opt in and data capture. Campaigns that focus on a "voting" mechanism can gain enormous traction because consumers will be able to cast their vote across all carriers throughout any country where the campaign is active.

The other major change that .mobi brings is in the business model and value chain, which swings the focus away from the carrier and instead encourages brands to engage more strong with the mobile channel since they can will be able to keep a greater portion of revenue while the operators benefit from increased mobile data usage.

.mobi extends sunrise period to September 22, 2006

With brands across the world coming to understand how they can benefit from a .mobi domain, dotMobi—the ICANN-designated registry for the .mobi top-level domain for the mobile Internet—is extending its current trademark sunrise period filing deadline to September 22. This will give the trademark community an additional 30 days to prepare and submit applications This also moves the commencement of the dotMobi general registration period to 26 September 2006.

dotMobi, backed by thirteen major companies including Ericsson, GSM Association, Google, Hutchison, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, Telefonica Moviles, TIM (Telecom Italia), T-Mobile and Vodaphone, has received thousands of applications from famous mark holders in the first few weeks of its sunrise period, well ahead of its plan, and wants to continue to offer maximum protection for trademark holders.

.mobi sunrise rules include a back-dated July 11, 2005 cut-off for Sunrise applications to ensure that long-term trademark holders have the first chance to secure their trademark domain names, which will encourage the development of content.

Additional information and FAQs on the .mobi sunrise period and WHOIS information for current registrants can be found at the company's web site at mtld.mobi. 

Related topics: DNS, Domain Names, Domain Registries, Mobile, Top-Level Domains, Whois