On the changing face of Motricity

The shut-down of PalmGear.com hit a few good friends of mine hard as PalmGear sales have drooped to almost zero(customers have sent me loads of complaints about application purchases not working). A sign of the downfall of the Palm OS… Motricity sells eReader to Fictionwise. A sign that ebook services are dieing for good.

When one looks at the headlines coming out of Motricity recently, one could feel that the worst doomsday visions of mobile technology analysts have just become true. Apocalypse is here…hope you all paid your taxes and donations on time.

But is this really true? Are the markets really going down? Or is it just a big reorganization inside of Motricity?

Let’s take a time trip back to 2007 – April, to be precise. Alex Bloom(director of PalmGear et al) gives a very interesting interview; and states that:

We have three more business areas: content distribution for carriers(e.g. MediaMall….ringtones, wallpapers et al); ringtone/etc sales(aka Jamba…MTV ads for ringtones et al) and various SMS related services

…

we plan to emphasize subscription billing

Looking at the world(just turn on MTV for a second), one can immediately see where the money is at home. Cash isn’t made by selling shareware applications to power users…money is made with teenagers willing to pay 3€ a week for some kind of ringtone/wallpaper service(so much for subscription billing). OK – the shareware department definitely never worked at a loss(looking at their truly insane margins); but its ROI definitely cannot compete with ringtone peddling.

And this leads me to a different theory: I think that someone at Motricity’s is trying to increase the total ROI of the company as far as possible(probably the new stakeholder) by selling off or killing all departments that do not have as high profit margins.

I expect more doom-and-gloom messages to come, but will remain calm and unaffected – what do you think?

Related posts:

1. PocketGear sold off – adios, Motricity
2. Alex Bloom video interview
3. On ESD marketing/public relations
4. Developer Health Survey Q42008 – Radoslaw Nowak
5. Radoslaw Nowak on the PocketGear sell-off