It boils down to content Content is crucial in attracting phone users. What are some of the challenges facing content developers? Alfred Siew 8.28.2002 Computertimes Java games offered by Orange Gum Like their counterparts in Japan, mobile phone content developers here have begun to take entertainment to the phone. However, it is not all smooth sailing for them here. For a start, local operators aren't keen to follow their Japanese counterparts when it comes to sharing revenue with developers. Content developers and providers in Japan get a large cut of the revenue, and possibly even airtime, generated by an application, but that is unlikely here. inTouch Wireless Services, which offers the AirCard postcard service, shares the user-generated revenue with an operator who owns the customers, and also with Nokia, which agreed to put the AirCard software on the Nokia 7650 phone in Asia-Pacific. Not that Mr Kendro Hendra, inTouch's managing director is unhappy. He said he is glad that he gets most of the revenue generated from each postcard sent with the service. However, he does not get to lay his hands on the coveted airtime or transport charge which an operator earns from the kilobytes used by consumers. Mr Chye Hoon Pin, SingTel Mobile's senior director of consumer products, explained that transport charges are low here, compared to those in Japan. It is therefore difficult to split this with a content developer. He added that an operator sometimes also helps with marketing the content. In this case, the operator actually helps to promote the game or service to its customers. However, some local developers have gone their own way and done their marketing either by themselves or by partnering with overseas operators in markets such as Malaysia, Taiwan and China. BuzzCity is an example. It has teamed up with Malaysia's Digi and China's China Mobile and China Unicom, but decided to buy only a link to operators here from a third-party bandwidth provider, revealed Dr Lai Kok Fung, BuzzCity's chief executive officer. With its own promotions and advertisements, BuzzCity has attracted chat-room traffic amounting to "tens of thousands" of messages every day. Java not all unified Business terms aside, there are other problems to be resolved with mobile entertainment content, especially for Java games. Currently, there are different Java toolkits being offered by each phone maker. This means that creating extra features for a dozen new phones may require a developer to customise a game for each handset out there, said Mr Hendra. For example, even if a developer has created blinking light and vibrating effects for a Nokia 7650, he may have to customise it for a Sony Ericsson phone. This adds hassle to development work. Still, developers are glad that Nokia, the leading phone maker, is standardising the screen sizes on its phones and grouping them into a few categories. This means developers can create games according to a group of phones rather than cater to each and every model.