TM Forum and the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) have embarked on 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% of the $18 billion mobile content services market.
A combined team of TM Forum and MEF member companies 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, and on TM Forum work related to business process and revenue leakage issues that reflect service provider perspectives.
In the longer term, the TM Forum and MEF 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.
www.tmforum.org, www.m-e-f.org