WSJ has a story about something we already knew here, but this has some good information: the most-closeted of U.S. carriers Verizon’s efforts to open up the walled garden and invite other players in.
—Over the summer it has let Major League Baseball market its content directly to the carrier’s 57 million subscribers in exchange for a cut of the take.
—Also, it has done deal with select vendors, including Jamster (now owned partly by News Corp), Fox Mobile Entertainment’s Mobizzo and Yahoo, as well as smaller vendors like Thumbplay and Dada.net. These companies are authorized to market directly to Verizon cellphone users, with the purchases charged to customers’ monthly phone bills. Verizon won’t disclose its cut, but analysts estimate it’s about 30%.
Meanwhile, Cingular, the largest U.S. cellphone operator by subscribers, started allowing third-party providers to sell to its customers two years ago, a move that has helped increase its mobile-content market share to an industry-leading 46%, according to Yankee Group figures. T-Mobile USA allowed third-party content providers to sell to its customers starting in late 2004, and Sprint Nextel followed last year.