Exclusive Deals Hurt Mobile Entertainment Growth

Three articles in the last three days discuss exclusive mobile entertainment dealers. Comedy Central signs an exclusive to serve up a series on Amp'd, Yahoo! signs with Nokia to offer mobile messaging and mobile mail, and just after signing an exclusive with YouTube, Verizon signs an exclusive with a YouTube competitor Revvr.

Mobile entertainment is extremely nascent and the U.S. is far behind other nations in adopting SMS, MMS, mobile TV and its other forms, per emarketer:

Now, in this fledgling industry, less than 30% of consumers is able to partake in any one of these given partnerships based on individual carrier market share. So much for sharing that cool YouTube video on your Verizon phone with your friend who's on Cingular's network.

Additionally, exclusives don't just hurt consumers, they hurt the content partners as well. MSN recently signed an agreement which allows Sprint to be the exclusive platform on which its mobile ads will be delivered. If you're MSN, very much in third place behind Yahoo! and Google in search marketing, and third among the major portals, why would you relegate yourself to the carrier which is third in market share?

Mobile marketing is growing faster than almost any other channel - despite attempts by myopic marketers to stunt it.