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Mar 12, 2009 Mobile

Today’s announcement that MTN would be taking over retail space for up to 17 Musica stores raised eyebrows for many. What is a cell phone company doing with music store?

Well if I think of it, MTN is a telecommunications company (telco) and what we are seeing is probably a signal that the business model of these companies is changing.

The business model for telecommunication providers has been changing and adapting longer than most people would realise. Many people, including myself, have thought of telcos as simply voice service providers.
Over the last 15 years as we embrace the internet, we saw telcos as infrastructure providers for the communications lines for us so that we can call our loved ones and push internet data.

One has to realise though that telcos are more of application providers. The applications have been changing all the time. The killer application at the inception of the Telcos has been seen as messaging; from the age of morse code and till recently the age of the internet.
It should not surprising to me to see MTN moving into this space. A move into the music distribution simply makes sense. With the growing preference digitally distributed music, MTN are just paying attention, they would be well placed to close the gap between the producer of music on the one side and the consumer on the other.
The signal has been there for a long time.

We have seen our local artists benefit from music distributions via wireless application service providers. Many ring tones appear on countless catalogues and only a short code away through companies such as ExactMobile etc.
So, the next announcement I am anticipating from the likes of MTN is a scramble for the creme of these wireless application service providers crop.