Big wired names dominate the tiny screen

The giants of the wired Internet are turning out to be the giants of the wireless Internet, too, a similar trend to what's happening in the voice-over-IP arena. New data from M:Metrics shows that 12.8 million subscribers accessed Yahoo's mobile services in an average month last quarter, making it the most popular content provider on the wireless Internet. But even the runners-up were familiar names to the wired world, AOL took second place, followed by MSN and Google. The most accessed news site was ESPN, which could be a good indicator of the potential success of the new Mobile ESPN MVNO that was scheduled to launch in a promotional flurry during the Superbowl this past Sunday.

In fact, the top five players in each of M:Metrics' four major categories — weather, news, search and map/directory services — were all names that are well-established in some other commercial medium: CNN, Yellow Pages, Mapquest. The mobile Internet seems to evolving in the exact opposite way of the wired Internet. On the wired side, new brands with new business models (Amazon.com, Yahoo) staked their URLs in the young World Wide Web, while the traditional print and broadcast media followed. But instead of new wireless brands fulfilling the same role in the wireless Web, the established Web media is leading the way.

The wireless net is a new medium for entrepreneurs to play in, but that new medium is its own greatest inhibitor, said Seamus McAteer, M:Metrics senior analyst. With small screens, awkward navigation tools, and dwindling customer patience, getting traffic on a mobile Web site or application is all about placement, McAteer said. Almost every single well-performing wireless content provider has a premium slot on several, if not all, of the carriers' content decks, McAteer said, making their wares the content of least resistance. But that could change as the wireless Web evolves.

“The closed carrier portals and the limited interfaces make it difficult for new brands to break in,” McAteer said. “But as we get more powerful browsers and more powerful phones, we'll have new ways to seek out content. We'll start seeing new business models and new entrepreneurs.”

If those new brands don't emerge, it would certainly be a shame, McAteer said. If the Web today was only repurposed content from the Disneys, Time Warners and Sonys of the world, the Internet would be a far less intriguing place.

“If the wireless medium is defined by the online brands it would be a disappointment,” he said. “Each medium should be defined by its own unique brands.”