Mobile Ticketing – Opportunities Unlimited
Continuing with the theme of Mobile Transactions (Mobile Payments – Will the Consumers Adopt; Mobile Payments Business Models) from the last two posts, in this article, I am going to pick up Mobile Ticketing. Mobile ticketing is the process whereby consumers can order, pay for, obtain and validate tickets from any location and at any time using mobile phones. It is yet another illustration of horizontal convergence where the mobile phones are impacting the value chain of other industries.
Mobile Ticketing is likely to redefine the tickets transaction cost in any industry where tickets are issued to the consumers. The benefits would be most but not limiting to the airlines, mass transit system, cinema/events/concert, trade shows, etc.
Mobile ticketing can increase the sales as the tickets can be sold till the very last moment. Imagine the consumers roaming in a mall and suddenly decide to watch a movie but not sure if the tickets are available and would not be sold out before they reach the venue. With a mobile phone, the consumers can not only enquire about the tickets but can also book and receive them. On top of this, they can spend extra time in mall as they need not reach the movie hall in advance as the redemption of the mobile tickets is quick. The movie halls are able to sell their tickets which would have otherwise gone unsold and are able to reduce the manpower as well. Fewer ticket windows would be required if many consumers start to prefer mobile ticketing and even the check-in process can be automated. The consumer convenience is enormous in this process as the tickets could be bought, cancelled and re-issued at the click of a button. The tickets are immediately delivered and hence the uncertainty over delivery is not there. The tickets can also have promotional coupons or vouchers that the consumer can redeem at the food counter. Additional benefit that I see is consumer loyalty as this process gives huge consumer convenience. The biggest benefit of mobile ticketing to my mind is to the environment. The reduction in paper tickets would lead to lower carbon footprint.
According to a Juniper research released early last year, over 2.6 billion mobile tickets will be delivered to just over 208 million mobile phone users by 2011. The mobile ticketing industry would have transactions worth $87 billion by 2011 and savings for the airline industry alone would be of $500 million each year by migrating to mobile boarding passes.
Typical mobile ticketing process entails enquiry on availability of tickets, pricing details, payment, receipt of ticket and then redemption of the ticket at the venue. The payment for the ticket could be made either by credit/debit card on line or through mobile payments. There are essentially two types of mobile ticketing technologies – Code based (Bar Code or Text) and Contactless (RFID or NFC)
A code for mobile ticketing is defined as any readable representation of the information in a visual format that is displayed on the mobile screen. The code could be read by the sight or by a machine and can be delivered as SMS, MMS or WAP push. Text message is the simplistic form of mobile ticket that can be send on any type of mobile phone is currently a preferred method in many countries. bCode is providing character based codes that is delivered by SMS and is popular in United States and Australia. Another form of code that is popular is bar codes. A digital signature may also be attached to the tickets to avoid duplication or fraud. There are two types of bar codes one-dimensional (1D) or two-dimensional (2D)
1D barcodes can be up to 7 digits in length. They appear just like regular barcodes found on retail items.
2D “data matrix” barcodes are capable of holding more information as they contain multiple rows of unique data and up to 16 characters. 2D bar codes are provided by PDF417, DataMatrix, etc. QR code, a form of 2D code is very popular in Japan. Prominent examples of bar code based companies providing mobile ticketing technologies are Mobiqa, TynTec, GaviTech AG, etc. Barcodes may contain enormous data and can alternatively be used for other promotional activities (see the Scan Life video at the end of the article)
Contactless – Contactless mobile tickets use the Near Field Communications (NFC) or RFID technology. Smart Card based contactless tickets are already popular in mass transit ticketing. Key technologies in contactless ticketing are FeliCa, MIFARE and NXP. MIFARE is being used in London Underground Oyster Cards whereas FeliCa is being used for Hong Kong underground. The contactless technology is now integrated with mobile phones.
The code based mobile tickets are likely to continue to remain popular in the near future unless the cost of NFC chips comes down. NFC would become mainstream due to its convenience factor for mobile payments. The best thing about mobile ticketing is that it gives so much convenience to consumers that the consumer acceptance is unlikely to be low. The transactions would increase on its own as more and more players start to offer this service.
Below are two videos that would explain the mobile ticketing better and would also illustrate the other uses of barcodes.
Mobile Ticketing Made Easy
ScanLife 2D Barcode Overview
Part 1: Mobile Payments – Will the Consumers Adopt
Part 2: Mobile Payments Business Models
Part 4: Mobile Money Transfer
(The views expressed in the article are my own view and do not reflect the views of my employer)
If you liked this article, you may consider subscribing to Telecom Circle to get all the articles in your mail box
Related Posts:
14 Comments
Trackbacks
- Mobile Ticketing - Opportunites Unlimited | Real Rumors
- Topics about Models » Archive » Mobile Ticketing - Opportunites Unlimited
- Mobile Ticketing - Opportunites Unlimited | Telecom Circle | Blogs about All Online Information for RSS and XML
- In ‘Search’ of Business Excellence « Ecommerce, Mobile Telecom & Technology
Loading ...
There are a couple of significant obstacles to this being adopted, at least in the US.
1. Different mobile networks are not compatible with each other, so a different solution is needed to support each mobile network.
2. Very high mobile network charges. With current SMS payment gateways, network providers commonly charge a whopping 30% – 50% fee.
3. Per-day limits imposed by mobile networks. Right now, many mobile networks in different countries impose a $5 USD limit (or some other similar amount) per day, so if someone purchased a ticket costing $50 USD, it would take at least 10 days or more for all the micropayments to clear. This would be very frustrating for most people. In US cities, a simple movie ticket costs $9 USD or more, so the $5 per day limit will prevent the user from being able to use the ticket for 2 days while the payments go through.
4. Americans are not culturally used to paying for services on their mobile phone. This cultural change has happened more in other countries, so it might be more successful in Europe or Asia, but it is a big hurdle in the US.
If these were overcome, then I would give more thought to this type of ticketing system.
Mohit,
1. I do not see Brians issues as the REAL obstacles…
2. Instead, it mightbe that consumers are JUST NOT USED and DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE to do online mobile internet transactions.
3. Let us be precise: This is about the “ordering” part, where online time is frequently dear, touchscreen or small buttonskeyboard are a hassle and often you need to register cumbersomely before you can actually PLACE your order.
4. No problem to do this at your PC. The actual DELIVERY of the ticket to the handset is widely accepted and may, in a 2nd step, accustom the consumer and lead to acceptance of the mobile ordering part.
5. Now that e.g. airlines use the 2D scanners, the equipment starts to become available at feasible price levels…
These were, btw, key thesis for a study I carried out for T-Mobile as early as 2002… and I believe, things have not changed so far!
In the first video it looks like they sent a barcode to an iPhone. How’s that possible? It cannot be an MMS as the iPhone doesn’t do MMS. Well, without jailbreaking I mean and I don’t think anyone would take it for granted that their customers do that to their phones, right? Any other ideas like fake video or something?
In India – mobile ticketing/ payments will have limited market as 90 % + market is pre-paid and average balance being in the range of Rs. 50- 100, resulting in higher ticket sizes not being possible. Embedding credit card info on a wallet model can be prospected – but will need real time communication with the servers over GPRS and hence data plan ( not to mention unwillingness by many to use credit cards over digital platforms)
Bar code applications were tried by us but due to problems with MMS in the Indian networks/ phones, it did not suceed. RFID is yet to get in and you have rightly said that it’s expensive and not a default configuration in phones.. but even it gets in, will people have the balance to pay. Another big question is if the payment is debited from a balance maintained with the Telecom operator ( post or pre-paid) – what is the payment collection fee, considering their margins/ govt taxes going to be ?
There are quite a few significant obstacles, below are just a few:
1. Mobile payments mechanism. Paying through your mobile has always been an issue. There isn’t a one click solution at the moment and solution like Bango require user’s to enter their credit card details over the phone which not many of us feel at ease with. PayForIT or Premium SMS charges are very high for the retailer to make any profit from and different networks have different charge ranging from 30-50%.
2. New technologies such as NFC or RFID are not common at the moment and in a few places they are, its the same situation with PayForIT where the charges are applied to the user’s bill and the network taking away a huge chunk of the the profit.
3. Even if the networks reduce the amount they charge the seller when using PayForIT or premium SMS, it is still limited to a maximum purchase of £10 which may be alrite for micro payments but not tickets.
4. Lack of industry standards amongst network operators is another huge issue that makes it extremely difficult for developers. For e.g. Sprint in the US requires a different method using GCD’s for the delivery of any media over the phone and Orange likes to include their own ad headers that mess up with the content unless taken care of.
5. Redemption method is another huge issue. How would the voucher be redeemed at the venue that would not require the venue to install or purchase a new equipment and certainly would not make the queues worst. Imagine the operator trying to read some code and punch it into the system during a football match with long queues forming up.
6. Once above all is streamlined we have users to think of.. How can we make it easy and user friendly for users and get them to embrace this new culture of payments.
I am sure i have missed a few points. Please feel free to comment or add to this.
Regards
4G networks will start to appear in Europe (ip v6 tcpip based) soon for mobile phones and there are a couple of network operators getting into bed with each other and sharing their phone masts in order to cut costs, which will be passed onto subscribers. The barriers will dissolve over the next few years. Estimates are that by 2012 between 70% and 80% of internet traffic will be by a mobile device.
Hi Mohit
You started another interesting discussion. I agree with Antoine on all his principle points. Allow me to add a much more mundane analogy. Whenever I’m in Johannesburg, South Africa I’m met with countless promotion guys and gals at EVERY traffic light, handing out pamphlets.
Now we ALL know that this is one of the most outdated direct advertising method imaginable. Yet, countless companies spend thousands of Dollars (or in South Africa Rands) in the hope of some return.
Here’s the twist: they DO get a return. Not even close to what other marketing and advertising methods could generate (e.g. such as mobile), but WHO CARES?
The general line of thought always was, is and will be for a LOOOONG time: “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with FACTS!!!:
Kind Regards
Alexander Gregori
* myMOBworld
* Mobile Marketing Winner$ Team Leader
* Web Site http://mymobworld.com
* Blog http://alexandergregori.wordpress.com
* Twitter http://twitter.com/alexgregori
* LinkedIn http://linkedin.com/in/alexandergregori
Unless mobile ticketing is more convenient than other forms of payment/ticketing, then why would anyone use it?
As a credit card carrying adult with internet at home work and on mobile, I can order e-tickets online or over the phone for cinema, airline, parking and present my credit card for redemption and with total trust. It costs me nothing (generally, and in some cases I get % back), it’s much the same experience irrelevant of vendor, it’s universal across national boundaries and most importantly it’s easy. To move from that space I would need a compelling reason, and I don’t see m-ticketing giving that.
However with pre-adult I think there might be a market. That possibly also could be sustainable past credit-card-carrying-age if it can be made natural and easy for that group. At present I don’t think we are there, there are too many methodologies (NFC, RFID, Bluetooth, SMS, MMS barcode vouchers) which makes the experience unnatural, device sensitive, and transaction costs with SMS/MMS are too high.
Solve those issues it might stand a chance of mass adoption.
I feel the reason behind it is Adoption of new technology, Govt regulation and fear of hacking. Slowly it is picking in ASIA Pac . To make consumer comfort level high , some universal regulation for this is required and thus people will be more comfortable
Incredible anaysis of new emerging technology. Though there will always be a debate in terms of who will pay for the latest technologies like NFC etc Operators don’t see any reason to promote. Handset manufactures don’t wana make handsets untill there is enough scope. Text/barcode is definately a useful option right now. However, as per regulations in india, we hace challenge in terms payment in end-2-end encrypted environment which make java apps a suitable option. However, we are facing huge challenge in terms of downloadig java app by customers. Will definately try any useful option to tackle these challenges.