Gametech 2011: Smartphone Gaming--Apps and Beyond

Who was there?: Rob Muir, Optus product manager, games and music; Jenny Goodridge, Samsung head of content and retention; Brent Artindale, games manager for Telstra BigPond; and Kimmy Taylor, product manager for game applications, Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

What they talked about: Though the panel was made up of three of the nation's largest telecommunications carriers, all of whom are direct competitors to each other, things remained affable. The trio agreed that content remains key to securing customer business and keeping audiences loyal to their services.

Branded content from the major game publishers and software developers remains dominant in the downloadable games and applications category, and members of the audience questioned whether the premium prices that come with branded content--particularly the $6.99 price tag of Telco apps in the company's walled garden infrastructures--still have a place in the 99-cent app world. All panelists agreed that factors such as unmetered downloads through the service providers, as well as items being billed to the customer's monthly statement and allowing buyers to settle at the end of the month, rather than supply credit card details, remain advantageous.

Likewise, open market app storefronts like iTunes and the Android marketplace mean that consumers gravitate towards the highest-quality content being released. The audience will ultimately determine content's fate by voting with its dollars, propping up high-quality works and burying those that fail to impress. The three companies also confirmed that while their business was in providing access to the items, they also play a pivotal role as curators of the digital wares, weeding out games that failed to sell and pushing the cream to the top. While each acknowledged that customers typically remain loyal to a content delivery platform once they've invested in goods from the store, failure to offer up quality games and applications that work across a wide range of the handsets currently in use on their networks is a significant threat to their ongoing success.

Samsung continued the interoperability theme, saying that it was essential that where possible, software must be able to work across multiple devices such as phones, tablet PCs, and, moving forward, the company's line of smart TVs. Currently it sees issues with the dissemination of development platforms, specifically citing Google's Honeycomb update. While it had access to the software early, if those developing are unable to get their hands on it until its widely launched, content creators are already behind, missing the opportunity to offer high-quality apps and games at launch.

Optus' Rob Muir also said that devices such as Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play (better known as the PlayStation phone) muddied the waters of content delivery and loyalty with its multitude of stores. In addition to offering access to the telco's own portal, Sony's PlayStation Network and the Android marketplace are also available. He also noted that the current classification review marks an important step for mobile content, helping appropriately label mature content that may have received its first outing on more-powerful handheld devices like Sony's PSP.

Windows Phone 7 was a distant third operating system during the discussion, with Muir responding to a question about the Microsoft product by saying, "We haven't seen strong sales of those handsets." He identified a lack of "hero product" as the cause of the platform's inability to gain traction with consumers. Samsung reaffirmed its loyalty to the operating system, with additional handsets already on the company's road map.

Takeaway: Regardless of cost, content remains king on mobile devices. Android's software and store fragmentation hampers its uptake, but it remains a huge competitor to Apple's iPhone. Developers of apps and games need only produce high-quality content, and the audience will flock to purchase.