Qmobile, Where Are You?

Qmobile can do better, Qmobile can do more.  Or really, Qmobile would be better off doing more of what they already have been doing.  And the greater Black Web 2.0 community would benefit if they did.

Go to qmobile.com and take a look at the clients and partners listed on their website.  See anything interesting?  For one, you should notice that BET is one of the television broadcasters they support and that they list Smooth Girl On Da Go as one of their client brands.  But the first thing that should catch your eye is the collection of clients listed under print media.  All of them are fairly popular black men’s magazines.

From what I can tell, the service they provide to King, XXL, Black Men, and Smooth is fairly simple.  Qmobile provides all of these magazines with the ability to distribute their video and picture content over mobile phones, and those publishers charge fans of their magazine brands to access said content.  Mobile content should be more and more significant nowadays for companies whose main line of business is in print media, an industry that has been going through a tailspin for the last few years.  Advertising dollars, subscription, and newsstand revenues have been dropping because consumers can find much of the content they want online, advertisers have been shifting some of their spending online (and don’t pay as much for it as they do in print), media companies have had a hard time monetizing content on the web, and the souring economy has only accelerated the decline.  So diversified revenue is extremely important.  And the difference between mobile and the internet is that access to content is controlled.  It’s much harder for customers to get around paying for it.

So why isn’t Qmobile taking full advantage of this by bringing on other well known black print media brands?  I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the business and the print media companies could surely use the revenue stream.  To be fair, the kind of content that Qmobile helped its currents print media partners distribute is probably too titillating for the likes of Ebony or Jet.  But is that even relevant?  Qmobile only need to distribute video and image content across mobile platforms, no matter what that content actually is.

Black Enterprise has print magazines, blogs, and most notably, two television/video series that they distribute via TV One and their own website.  Maybe their business executive and entrepreneurial readers want to see those series but don’t have any free time in their busy schedules save their morning commutes on the train.  But they do have cell phones.  Maybe they want a video podcast-like program they can access every morning and evening.  Maybe they want daily news via text messaging updating them on selected markets and black-owned companies.

Honey is developing its new website for launch, and given readers’ comments in regards to Black Web 2.0’s post on the women’s online-only magazine, they may very well be depending on more than the usual content and audience for advertisers revenue model, and mobile isn’t out of the picture.

And what of the magazines that are really hurting because no-one is buying, but don’t like the web because none of the people who read their website will pay to do so?  Maybe they are willing to try a mobile-only magazine, product, or texting service.

See the connection?  See the opportunity?  I do.  And if I start seeing Jet, Jewel, and Uptown listed as Qmobile’s newest clients, I am going to be calling in and asking for my cut.