MEF partners with TM Forum to address $5 billion losses experienced by mobile content suppliers

Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) and TM Forum today announced the launch of a joint initiative to address the estimated $5 billion in annual losses experienced by content suppliers across the mobile content value chain. These losses are attributable to incorrect reporting of revenue, and according to MEF calculations, comprise as much as 25 percent of the $18 billion mobile content services market.

A combined team of MEF member companies and TM Forum will develop and publish work focused on sales reporting metrics. These metrics will enable service providers, content aggregators and providers to build a common understanding of the quality and quantity of services delivered, which in turn will improve the measure of revenue flows for these services across the value chain. This effort will build on existing MEF work designed to improve trust and profits across the value chain.

“The mobile entertainment industry is throwing away up to 10% of its gross revenue due to inconsistent and inaccurate content sales reporting. The challenge will be finding some common ground between all the different parties involved and their individual needs, but MEF’s consultation on content sales reporting is designed to be a best practice template that can be adopted throughout the industry. By building this first step on sales reporting metrics together with TM Forum, we hope to address specific issues around timeliness, relevance, accuracy and consistency of reports.”

Suhail Bhat, Policy & Initiative Director, Mobile Entertainment Forum

Keith Willetts, chairman and CEO of TM Forum, added “We believe this partnership will bring major benefits to both TM Forum and MEF members as well as accelerating cooperation between the content and service provider communities. The end goal is a win-win where the market for these sorts of services grows, losses are stemmed and profitability increases. It is critical that all the players in the value chain understand how to work together to tackle these challenges.”

Creating, delivering and monetizing content and digital media services are creating new demands on business models and operations. Over the longer term, MEF and the TM Forum will look at the bigger picture of lowering the cost of rolling out content and media services across mobile networks. The aim of this long-term view will be to stimulate the ability of different players to effectively trade together in an automated fashion and grow the overall market by enabling new joint market approaches.