Exploring a heterogeneous and fragmented digital ecosystem: Mobile content

This paper presents the mobile content domain as a heterogeneous and fragmented digital ecosystem. Several taxonomies are considered to distinguish between the different segments that compose the mobile content sector. Although they are useful to acknowledge a first level of fragmentation, the most usual classifications are just translations of other industries into the mobile domain and fail to gauge the attributes of mobile content that can drive its evolution. For this reason, an additional taxonomy is introduced which classifies mobile content as ‘adapted’, ‘re-purposed’, ‘specific’, and ‘augmented’. Heterogeneity in the mobile content domain is considered to derive from several main sources which are explored in the paper: players’ different origins and cultures, the production-delivery-consumption structure of content businesses, the diversity of content suitable for mobile usage and the diversity of circumstances for this usage. Finally, some conclusions are introduced, summarized in the idea that the concepts presented offer a better foundation to search for the drivers and barriers related to market and social acceptance of mobile content. Its main consequence, in the authors’ view, is that mobile content success will require a very segmented approach to its users’ characteristics and circumstances and a continuous process of interaction and learning.