Febrile mobile data
Jinfo Blog

23rd November 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

Scarcely a week goes by without a mainstream business information provider announcing a new mobile development. Although many are designed for business use, some are specifically targeted at the consumer market – and the fee vs free issue is as live here as anywhere else. Most of the leading business information providers featured in a presentation by Gary Price, of FreePint’s Resourceshelf, on mobile access to information to the Websearch University last September. The list included LexisNexis, Westlaw, Hoover’s, Factiva, the Economist and the Financial Times (http://digbig.com/5barba). Much more has been happening since then. Among new applications, the Economist’s first iPhone app is a ‘which MBA?’ service to accompany its global business school league table data; the online MBA data is free but a search feature that creates personalised rankings is for subscribers only, with paidContent:UK believing that it could be a money spinner (http://digbig.com/5barbc). LexisNexis’s first iPhone app allows users to get cases from Lexis.com and then ‘Sheparadize’ them using Shepard’s Citations Service to ensure that the case law citations are still ‘good law’. Writing in LexisNexis’s Martindale-Hubbell Connected blog (http://digbig.com/5barbd), Mike Mintz says that the app is free, but you do in fact need a Lexis.com account before you can access it. Mintz’s claim attracted a handful of grumbles, forcing him to concede that the application wasn’t ‘free’ at all – and he did go on to dangle the prospect of an eventual ‘lite’ version, allowing users to pull citations and the case, with no editorial content or Shepard’s element. Elsewhere, Editor & Publisher reports that the Wall Street Journal has been closing a free loophole; although its mobile reader apps are free, business and financial content on Blackberry and iPhone is now available to subscribers only (http://digbig.com/5barbf). Meanwhile New Media Age reports that the FT also plans to introduce a paywall for its mobile service, on a similar basis to its part free FT.com; it’s launching on Blackberry and relaunching on iPhone to make subscription easier. And Reuters is planning to build on its free News Pro iPhone app with a range of consumer products (http://digbig.com/5barbh – items available to subscribers only). With experiments in both business-to-business and consumer services, there’s quite likely to be a blurring of the boundaries between them. Indeed, Gartner puts money transfer at no 1 in its Top Ten Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012 (http://digbig.com/5barbj); it’s reasonable to assume that, where there are transaction services, there are opportunities for information provision too. At no 3 in Gartner’s list is mobile search. Outsell had been planning a Mobile Search Forecast Report for last October, but VIP has been told that it’s currently ‘postponed’. It’s a febrile situation, and worth keeping a close eye on.

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