“To be global – get local”. Understanding the local needs and peculiarities of the target market is one of the biggest challenges in globalizing your mobile content services. Translating the user interface is the first step and your first challenge. You must accurately convey the information the user needs without sounding like a machine translation. Slang, catchy phrases, and customized graphics that appeal to the local culture is a must.
Now, what will this market buy? Someone in Brazil is not likely to buy a Cricket mobile game, the Polish flag, or songs that have no appeal to them. Brazil in particular is one of the few countries in the world that actually consume more national than international content – not only music, but television, films, and games. You need someone local to be in tune with the local trends and popular taste.
Copyright is a nightmare wherever you go. Brazil in particular stands out as one of the most expensive and bureaucratic systems around. The fixing fees for a song in the ringtone format are US$110 as opposed to and average of US$10 to US$20 elsewhere. In addition to that, the decentralized management of the publishers with two main entities managing 80% of the market and independent publishers operating their licensing individually. Locating the rightful owners of popular songs is a nightmare. Get someone local to do it.
This local guy will also be able to open doors and close negotiations with local distribution channels. Operators are constantly being approached by companies from around the world with a “unique” service but no local presence or support. From our experience, once they see a local representative and local staff, their attitude changes dramatically.
Deal closed? Ready to sell? How do you sell!? Each market has slight variations on how mobile content is purchased, even if the technical delivery is always through SMS, Brew, or WAP. In Europe for example users are comfortable with sending a song code to a specific SMS number they get from a newspaper add. That does not exist in Brazil… yet.
Users are used to requesting songs through the SIM Card service menu or sending a specific syntax (TOP) to receive a list of the songs, and then completing the purchase through a series of SMS messages. Tell the user to type in a WAP URL… what is WAP? Where is it in my phone? Do I have to have a service provider to access the Web on WAP?
In addition to that, the content format has to be compatible with what the market supports. Europe is GSM. The Americas are GSM, CDMA, TDMA, and Amps (analogue phones). Therefore, in evaluating the market and your content library, you must be sure that you will support all of these “legacy” handsets – which are the vast majority. Also estimating correctly what percentage of this market will actually be able to purchase a piece of content – both in terms of content compatibility and in terms of purchasing power is a challenge to a newcomer.
Finally, understanding the local laws, taxes and ways to conduct business in the foreign market is essential. When doing revenue forecasts one must understand how and when taxes are deducted, how can you reduce the impact of them in your cash flow, and what kind of operations you can do within the local laws.