What's the problem with depth of catalogue?

It's like trying to sell ice creams to eskimos - do you go for depth and variety of your content catalogue or stick to the sickly seasonal or monthly favourites ... you can be damned either way.

What I'm thinking is that most mobile content sales via WAP are dominated by the operator portals, but you invariably find that top downloads page will have the Star Wars March, Axel F and something from Guns n Roses (AC/DC). It's a nightmare ... we focus on getting customers access to the best stuff, we focus on improving search and still all they want is Wham - Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart.

I think there is a way around this, the back catalogue is needed to give depth and presence (oh and to make us feel proud that we can select from a possible catalogue of 500,000+ FTMD or Realtones, Videotones, etc), but do we need the Top Download chart to be only 1 click away? Keep the top charts list (like all good record stores), keep the new entries list, but please kill the downloads chart.

But if you want to keep that top download page then you don’t need a deep catalogue, stop and focus on What’s Hot and What’s New. Let other content providers bring their catalogue to market (via your portal or offnet) … what’s it going to be ???

All Operators are looking at their off portal strategy - H3GUK tries to bring focus on one with their Mobile Sites and other operators are looking at how to enable micro payments (other than reverse / premium SMS).

Think about it … kill the download chart or keep the content?