Mobile Music Business Models in Asia's Emerging Markets

In the telecom business, there has been a heavy competition from Internet, media and handset vendors companies. These over-the-top (OTT) players offer compiling telecom services, cause a transformation in the telecom business ecosystem, and the most challenging services posed here are media services. China, India and Indonesia, as world’s emerging markets in Asia, are predicted to take the largest share in the global mobile traffic explosion by 2015. It is critical for mobile network operators (MNOs) in this region to explore strategy for mobile media services, as mobile broadband is likely preferred compared to fixed broadband. In this paper, we analyze and compare mobile music business models used in these markets and structure the relation models between the key actors, using Actors, Relations and Business Activities (ARA) model. We present the economic models that are emerging, and an insight of why and how these multitudes actors are betting on currently. We found that the MNOs generally have a much stronger position compared to their counterparts in the developed markets, and the personalization services, like ring-back tone, are still a huge success. The actors tend to deliver the services by their own, rather than to collaborate in a horizontal business setting.