One thing I love about traveling, and trust me there aren't that many, is that I get to grab all these freebie business magazines. I picked one up the other day and came upon an article about
Bluetooth--stereo Bluetooth and the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP).
Now, for the uninitiated, Bluetooth is short-range radio technology that allows you to network devices
wirelessly. Many mobile phones, PDAs, laptops and desktop PCs are Bluetooth-enabled. The wireless link can be up to approximately 30 feet and allows data to be exchanged between 2 Bluetooth--enabled
devices. One of the advantages of Bluetooth is that the devices do not need line-of-sight (meaning they do not need to be able to "see" each other) and data exchange rates can reach upward of 700
kilobits per second. A2DP, on the other hand, is a technology that allows users to stream music from a mobile phone, for example, to a headset without wires.
So now that I have bored the pants
off you with the technology, let's focus for a moment on the application. There has been much made of the "problems" that Bluetooth has caused the entertainment, think music, industry in Europe,
because people are "trading" content files off of their mobile handsets without necessarily paying for the content. Think of this as Bluetooth piracy. In fact, The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF)
recently published an analysis that claimed that, and I quote, "around 80% of mobile phone content has been hacked or downloaded onto mobile phones, illegally from websites, or through the use of
Bluetooth, memory cards and other storage devices . . . . Combined, these activities are predicted to cost the mobile entertainment industry around 2.7 billion [euros] this year alone. An additional
800 million [euros] is missed due to the lack of widespread interoperability for content across PCs, mobiles and MP3 players. In total a staggering 3.5 billion [euros] of revenue will not be realized,
which is in excess of half the income from the entire European mobile entertainment industry."
Now while I agree that this has a huge negative impact on the industry, let's try and look at the
glass as half-full for a moment. Here in the U.S., Bluetooth-enabled handsets are growing. A recent study commissioned by the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland found
that 11 percent of those surveyed had Bluetooth technology as a current feature of their mobile phone, 45 percent had used the technology, and 30 percent considered the technology desirable to
have--more so than picture messaging, text messaging and the mobile Internet. Now, if we took that usage and interest, applied demographic segmentation and device penetration in the market and came up
with the number of handsets that were owned by, let's say, 16- to 25-year-olds, all of the sudden we could turn this trading behavior that Bluetooth technology enables on its ear.
The music
industry was a bit late to the game, but even they are trying their hand at using "traditional" Internet-based peer-to-peer networks as a marketing platform. Now, let's take that mobile set and see
how we can capitalize on that emerging trading behavior as a new marketing vehicle. In much the same way that brands are starting to tap into online social networks, brands should also be looking at
these personal mobile social networks as the next frontier. I guess we could call it miral initiatives--the application of a viral campaign on a mobile platform.
Now some of you may be
stunned, knowing that I am generally a "glass-is-half-empty" kind of gal, that I would be touting a strategy that is at least two years out before becoming mass. But I guess the adage about old dogs
and new tricks is true, but not as true as the one about history repeating itself. My suggestion is simply that maybe it is time we start looking at the upside of the downside of technology. You tell
me.