Elisabeth van de Kar

Mobile information and entertainment services: business models and service networks

The mobile telecommunications industry is undergoing a rapid change, which is increasing the interdependency of firms in the sector. This trend increases the likelihood that mobile information and entertainment services will be delivered through inter-organisational networks of firms. These networks are the topic of this research. In particular, we examine service networks and the possible influence of business models on their characteristics. Using data from five case studies of mobile service networks, we examine the influence of revenue models and network membership benefits on network characteristics. The results of this exploratory research demonstrate that revenue models have a relationship with governance and that both revenue sharing agreements and governance mechanisms become less standardised with greater distance from the end user. In the conclusion we discuss the implications of these findings for research on both inter-firm service networks and business models.

Design guidelines for mobile information and entertainment services: based on the Radio538 ringtunes i-mode service case study

The mobile telecommunications industry is undergoing rapid change, which is increasing the interdependency of firms in the sector. Mobile information and entertainment services will be delivered through inter-organizational networks of firms. This means the problems of service design must be resolved in the context of a complex value network. To shed light on these problems we present a case study of a ringtone service and from this develop guidelines for the design of similar services.

Involving users early on in the design process: closing the gap between mobile information services and their users

Designing mobile information services, including mobile Internet services, mobile banking, interactive mobile television, location-based services etc. that capture a mass market has not been easy, and there have been many disappointments over the past years. There are still uncertainties with regard to the kinds of mobile services users want and need. We argue that users wants and needs depend on their context, which means that users should play an important role in the design process of mobile information services, through a structured approach in which developers and users work together. In this paper, we present a group-based approach to include the user early on in the design process in an efficient way. We have applied the group-based approach in three cases, i.e. mobile services for campus visitors, wireless applications for the process industry and services for crisis management. In all cases, involving users early on in the design process enabled the developers to gather useful information for designing mobile information services.