History is not repeating itself. Mobile data is not yet  a cash cow like voice and SMS. The big Internet search brands' investment in developing technology, running search services and the costs of incentives that must be offered to get onto operators’ decks are not providing a good enough return on investment. They are obliged to push models based on pay per click or use to generate revenue, which they also have to share with operators. Yet these charges put consumers off using the services.

This is the reason for the brands' deafening silence at the moment in the mobile search market: they are all trying to work out a viable business model.

Yahoo! was bullish back in January 07 with its launch at CES, but there are figures available about the uptake and use of its monolithic search services. Since then 3.0 and other changes show frustration also from Yahoo! trying to get the model right.

Over the same period (07), Microsoft’s profits have increased by 13% and Google’s by over 40%, but none of this growth is coming from the mobile market. The growing online advertising market is still their bread and butter.

AOL, a late comer to the market, has ramped up its branded search entrance, offering some impressive solutions, but only within AOL Europe and MVNO Deutschland. AOL is still very much for early adopters, playing catch-up in mobile search.

 
So where does this leave white label companies?

White label search is in a potentially strong position.

Operators are finally realising that they are weakening their standing with consumers by offering Google and Yahoo!’s services, and are now looking to rectify this with own-brand, white label services.

White label search providers cannot offer search services free of charge because of venture capital investment that force them to pay attention to their bottom lines in the short term – VC funding is all about fattening a company up for sale in fewer than five years.

This means that mobile operators are being forced into another round of spending on mobile data, which they endeavour to recoup from their consumers, which in turn inhibits take-up.

The Catch 22 situation escalates as the white label providers push advertising onto operators as a sweetener for their investment, with the promise of faster new revenue streams from data services.

Operators find themselves with search and advertising services promising to be the two-headed saviour of their data services despite a glaring lack of a concrete evidence.

 
Where does this leave consumers?

Consumers are faced with a larger choice of search and data options, on and off-portal.

They are confused about the cost of using the services due to poor communication and inconsistent approaches by operators.

Consumers start to download clients that are free and promise a straightforward interface without being fully aware of the cost. This leads to an initial surge in the take-up of new services followed by a sharp reduction after the bills hit home.

Consumer are served adverts within search results and, in the case of click to call, need to add the cost of a phone call to that of the search.

Mobile operators try to encourage users to enjoy search in a multitude of different ways (see the September issue's analysis of T-Mobile's user interface for its portal which deploys five different search engines), but what is free, what is included in portal use and what costs money to access is typically not made clear.

 
Conclusion
The cost of mobile search continues to dampen consumer demand. The fact that its costs are not easy to understand means that mobile search uptake, revenue and results are faring poorly. Google is a big brand on the Internet, but Vodafone and T-Mobile are big brands on the mobile web that also need to earn euros from hosting and managing services.
 
Mobile search will not become the hugely popular consumer service it should be until prices come down. This is not about the price of the device or the cost of the voice contract, so much as the charges for using mobile search and portal services. Transparency is needed, but attempts so far are not close to being good enough. There are many “unlimited” data bundles, but in fact they are all restricted. Data rates are capped at speeds that are risible in the fixed world, while fair use policies are fair to the operator, not the consumer, although they vary considerably.