Mobile phone subscribers, operators and content providers all have an important need for a comprehensive mobile content backup and transfer service. The data on a consumer’s mobile phone, which previously used to be just contacts, now includes calendars, tasks, pictures, licensed content (such as wallpapers, ringtones, and music) and purchased applications.

Sadashiva: Paper-based contact lists are becoming extinct.

SUBSCRIBERS
For subscribers, with an increasing amount of personal and work contact information on their phones, and mobile phone payment systems rapidly approaching from the horizon, one of their needs is to keep their personal content secure. In the unfortunate event subscribers lose their phones, or the fortunate event where they upgrade to new ones, they want the ability to rapidly restore their content to their new phones and be up and calling again quickly.

Aside from the obvious sensitivity of phone contacts, two-thirds of surveyed users indicated that they had text messages or photos of a sensitive nature. For that sensitive contact on their lost phone, a service that can remotely purge that content would give peace of mind and lessen the sense of violation that can accompany losing personal information.

In addition to content protection, consumers need a service that can provide the ability to manage their phone content. The paper address books of yesterday have largely been replaced with contacts lists in mobile phones and a mixed bag of miscellaneous sources such as e-mail and social networking “friends lists.”

Studies have determined that two-thirds of mobile phone users have no source of phone numbers other than their mobile phones, underscoring the importance of a service that can help them protect and manage their contact information. With these factors in mind, consumers more than ever need a backup service that can make it easy to back up, transfer and manage the all their contacts.

CARRIERS
Carriers want to become more than just the company that provides mobile phone service for their subscribers. Without unique services to differentiate themselves and build customer loyalty, the major competitive factor is limited to price and network coverage. To prevent such churn, carriers want to add value to their brands by providing services such as backup and restore for their customers’ contact information, including content and applications. These additions also can prepare carriers for the future when mobile social networking and mobile commerce will become a significant part of the customer’s mobile experience.

As a more tangible financial value proposition, backup and transfer services will directly reduce customer support costs for the carrier by reducing time spent on support calls dealing with lost phone content and time spent by store reps transferring customer content. It is estimated that 44% of mobile phone users delay upgrading to new phones because of the perceived difficulty in transferring their contacts information. When a customer gets a new phone, they could either re-enter their numbers by hand, ask all their friends to call them, or if they were lucky, they could let the store representative copy the numbers over using a data cable. Now with a fully functional backup and transfer service, that store rep can make the customer’s upgrade decision easier by moving over (and backing up) their numbers in just a few minutes, saving the rep’s time and more importantly, the customer’s time.

As an added benefit, when customer data is stored, that data can potentially be used by carriers to better know and understand how their subscribers use their phones, and then can be leveraged into other carrier-launched services. For example, contact information can be easily used with location-based applications.

CONTENT PROVIDERS
Aside from contact info and user-generated content, the other major types of mobile phone content are third-party applications loaded on to the phone and downloaded media such as ringtones and wallpapers. Surveys have shown that only about 13% of users re-purchase such content when they upgrade to a new phone. Therefore, without a service to transfer purchased mobile content, a phone upgrade event is actually bad for content providers as most of their customers fail to re-up their content. Consequently, content providers and developers need a service that will safeguard revenue and ensure that they are not left behind when their customers upgrade. Additionally, due to copyright and DRM considerations, content cannot be simply copied over – the service needs to provide an easy, painless way to manage the digital rights arbitration of the content.

The service could provide additional value by offering targeted recommendations and promotions based on past usage and purchase history, enabling content providers to maximize and leverage opportunities to sell additional content and drive revenue growth.

In conclusion, a mobile content backup and transfer product that can provide these services will meet all the combined needs of subscribers, carriers and content providers and itself become an invaluable part of the mobile phone ecosystem.

Sadashiva is the senior vice president of marketing for FusionOne.