Mobile audiobook service, GoSpoken, gets the Mr Operator treatment

If you haven’t been following our new Mr Operator series, dig in here and find out more.

The intent behind this series is to give mobile applications developers (and other related service companies) the ability to have their service ‘reviewed’ exactly as a mobile operator would. I don’t like to publish negativity, unless we’re skewering Orange for rubbish mobile data, for example, however this series breaks from that convention. Mr Operator will sometimes be direct and harsh (depending on your perspective). But it’ll be 100% unfiltered, exactly as if you were sat in front of him pitching this morning.

Today, in his first critical review, Mr Operator looks at mobile audiobook service, GoSpoken, a service I reckoned was a brilliant concept (see my post).

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GoSpoken is one of those classic services where on the face of it, things look sweet. You have an existing sister media worth billions (print books) and a target device audience of many tens of millions (‘any handset that can play music’).

Where GoSpoken gets hard from an MNO perspective is in the detail. First of all, the discovery is easy – shortcode SMS is understood by most customers. Enter the code, get a link back in an SMS. Click on link.

That’s where the wheels start to fall off the user experience. On an S60 v3 Symbian device, the popups start, every one presenting the customer an opportunity NOT to proceed. Through the purchase and download process the customer is given many choices, most admittedly beyond GoSpoken’s control. Even for a savvy user with a new device it is not a user-friendly experience.

Should you succeed in getting the payment made and the download underway, in good HSPA coverage with an HSPA device (by GoSpoken’s own PR that’s only 4% of the UK base) you are not home free. As the download proceeds, it is highly likely other phone things will be going on. Calls, etc. Every interruption is bad news. The number of people who can multitask on a mobile (assuming the device CAN multitask) can be counted at one MoMo meeting, so as soon as any button is pressed, the d/l is hidden. Depending on the OS, you may or may not get a warning when the d/l fails/succeeds. If it fails – even with 1kb to go out of 16MB – you are probably back to square one, although they do somehow remember you’ve paid. Also, you are at the mercy of the OS as to where the file got stored and whether the music player is smart enough to find it automatically.

So if – despite the mobile industry’s best efforts – you succeed in pressing play on your new Andy McNab ‘tune’, you should be happy. You are now – from a typical MNO perspective – one of only a very lucky few.

MNO hat on. Downloaded audiobooks currently total £7m in the UK, and I imagine the vast majority are via iTunes or other PC-based methods, onto non-mobile devices. GoSpoken are seeking a slice of that pie, and it’s important to realise that that pie is the size it is even with the widespread existence of the friendliest purchase/download/sync/listen package known to man – iTunes+iPod. GoSpoken on mobile is in my opinion an order of magnitude harder than iTunes+iPod, and has the additional customer fear factor of not being backed up (lost device? new number? whither then?). Thus the achievable market is an order of magnitude smaller.

SMS Text News readers, you take the smell test: With a CD audiobook version compatible with *any* stereo or car, and crucially with iTunes+iPod, and only twice the price, what would you prefer to splash out on? Hard media or something intangible that will be hell to shift come free upgrade time?

It is this smell test MNO product managers will apply. Yes, anything that drives data package purchase is good, but if the resultant hassles melt your call centre you will not be popular come review time. Bog standard Google search is doing a nice job of driving data add-ons now, so why would an MNO do a deal to white label audio books from GoSpoken, put them on-portal and back them in above-the-line marketing (thus accepting liability for customer issues) just to shift a few more data packages? Would/could GoSpoken lock the files to the user’s handset or network as a retention play? If they did would you still pay £8? It looks like too much risk for such a small achievable market.

My free advice to GoSpoken? Sell entire books on dirt cheap 64MB miniSD, shipped next day after payment via SMS. That gives the customer a once-only immediately satisfied purchase decision, something tangible that can go in the phone, takes no time to insert/play and can be backed up/listened to on PC. Plus the addressable market of microSD-compatible devices is larger than the HSPA device + coverage + flat-rate plan one.

Supermarket analogy time: yup, GoSpoken does what it says on the tin. Problem is, it’s a niche line, most customers will find the tin’s bloody hard to open (let alone cook) so MNO’s will just stock something else.

Regards
Mr Operator

n.b. Several devices I tried wouldn’t even start the d/l – I got ‘protocol error’ messages. Now this may have something to do with the OMA DRM, maybe not. I understand GoSpoken are working on a non-DRM format, which ties in with the iTunes/Amazon/man&dog realization that DRM is a dead duck that scares off purchasers and makes device upgrades hell for users. If so, great – one hurdle down. . .

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Thank you, Mr Operator.

If you’d like to give your product or service the Mr Operator treatment, email me (ewan@smstextnews.com) a brief overview and we’ll line you up.