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01 & 16 ME Awards 2010_Final
AWARDS
The Finalists
Thursday November 18th 2010 The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
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CONTENTS THE ME AWARDS 2010 Thursday, November 18th 2010 Royal Garden Hotel, London, W8 4PT Tickets: £295 +VAT per seat, £2,750 +VAT per table For sponsorship opportunities contact: Katy.Grant@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647 For table sales and ticket enquiries contact: Kathryn.Humphrey@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647
THE CATEGORIES DEVELOPMENT & PUBLISHING Best Gambling Company Best Adult Company Best Mobile Book Company Best D2C Company Best Games Company Best Social Media Company Best Location Company
05 05 05 06 06 08 08
SERVICES Best Video Service Provider Best Games Service Provider Best Music Service Provider Best Transactions Provider Best Mobile Web Publishing Platform Best B2B Content Provider Best App Developer Best Advertising Company Best App Store
09 09 09 11 11 11 12 12 14
OPERATORS & HANDSETS Best Handset Company Best Operator
14 15
SPECIAL AWARD Outstanding Contribution to Mobile Content
Gold Sponsor
Exclusive Best Gambling Company Award Sponsor
15
Nothing makes me, the veteran mobile content journalist, happier than a headline like ‘6.5m iPhone app downloads’ or ‘Doodle Jump sells 5m’. It’s wonderful to see our industry enter the mainstream after years of toil. The evidence is all around us: newspaper adverts for Shazam, AdMob profiles in the Financial Times, people checking Facebook on the bus. How gratifying, after years of trying (unsuccessfully) to explain to your mates in the pub what you do. Come on, you’ve all been there. Now, it really feels like the ‘most exciting industry in the world’ is more than just a label we use to make ourselves feel good. When tech thinkers talk about the brave new economic model of free, it’s Tapulous they use to make their argument. And when others examine the exciting interaction of the virtual and the physical, they inevitably mention Layar. Smile, everyone. They’re actually looking at us. So I’m delighted to report the effervescent health of our market, and to reveal the ME Awards finalists doing their bit to keep it so. We had hundreds of entries. Whittling them down was a bloody nightmare. But here they are, an admirable bunch. Best of luck to them, and to the 400 judges choosing the winners. And see you all on Thursday November 18th.
Tim Green Executive Editor Mobile Entertainment
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GAMBLING COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
ADULT COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
CELLECTIVITY
CHERRY MEDIA
2010
05 ME Awards 2010_Final
AWARDS
Thursday, November 18th 2010
The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLISHING
GAMBLING COMPANY
Exclusive Best Gambling Company Award Sponsor
ADULT COMPANY Twistbox
betNOW Ex Voda exec Rob Urwin has enjoyed astonishing success in a short space of time with his text-based betNOW service. It’s based on the simple idea that you can text a single word to trigger a range of simple betting options. For each wager, the size of the possible payout is displayed. No traditional odds – it’s all done with the casual player in mind. And it’s working brilliantly. Its compound growth is 20 per cent a month and 2010 full-year revenues will be £14m.
Twistbox specialises in licensed adult content from film, TV and lifestyle media companies. It has developed a mobile publishing portfolio that manages billing integrations, real-time online reporting, intelligent retailing and CRM, handset porting, age-verified programming and more. As a result it has direct distribution agreements with Vodafone, Telefonica, France Telecom and over 100 more operators in 45 countries. Its YouPorn service accounts for over 500m page impressions per month on mobile devices.
Katina Leisure Rank Interactive Rank brands its games as Mecca Bingo, Blue Square and G Casino. Its product range includes a mobile sportsbook,17 mobile casino games and nine jackpot slots games. It was also the first company to produce an iPad rendered sportsbook web app. Customers visiting any of its websites from mobile devices are re-directed to mobile-optimised destinations. As a result, Rank has seen a traffic increase of over 150 per cent in 2010 against 2009.
Katina has been in the D2C space for five years, but is now also a fully-fledged B2B player thanks to its ‘International Mobile Affiliate Program’. It’s had a busy 12 months, doubling turnover thanks to the release of own-branded apps on iPhone and Android, and a new non-adult mobile content product line featuring US ‘on-bill’ payments with a number of US carriers. It’s also released over 40 new mobile content services since January, signed distribution deals with 20+ new affiliate partners and delivered over a million videos.
Spin3
Private
Spin3 is a veteran of previous ME Awards and a twotime winner. The firm offers a portfolio of games and back-office solutions to help others get going with a mobile gambling service. In the year to May 2010, its client saw a 211 per cent growth in player numbers. Meanwhile its direct operator billing service with Vodafone remains the industry’s only one that lets consumers buy credits via their phone bill. Spin3 has also launched into the app space, offering play-forfun games for the Apple App Store, and play-for-real on Android market. Finally, in July, the firm launched its first mobile lottery platform, LottoSpin.
One of the giants of the ‘old school’ adult industry has been one of its most agressive mobile adherents. Private has been busy mobilising its vast library as well as aggregating the output of other studios. Its proprietary mobile solution GameLink can instantly stream over 15,000 movies. A white label version is being marketed to studios and affiliates worldwide. In August 2010, Private launched into the gay market with a mobile VOD platform based on the Gamelink mobile platform for its Maleflixxx network.
Paddy Power This summer Paddy Power revealed that mobile accounts for ten per cent of all its betting. Amazing really. And mostly due to a commitment to the iPhone platform that’s seen Apple owners make 50 per cent of all these wagers. Paddy Power’s free fixed odds iPhone app allows punters to open a new account, place bets across all Paddy Power markets, deposit cash and withdraw cash. It made it into the top five Sports app downloads chart on the App Store.
Betfair Apple doesn’t allow gambling apps on iPhone, right? Wrong. The Betfair app launched in the UK and Ireland only this year, and lets Betfair customers bet on sporting events and even the general election. It uses GPS to make sure that users are in the UK or Ireland before allowing them to place a bet – a move designed to ensure it doesn’t flout remote gambling laws in other countries like the US. Betfair’s mobile revenues are 50 per cent up in 2010. It has also launched an Android app.
A3 Media (formerly Brickhouse Mobile) US-based A3 Media Network (formerly Brickhouse Mobile) works with adult entertainment companies to license, develop, and distribute content worldwide. Clients include Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and 80 others. Product development includes chat, wallpapers, MMS, themes, video ringtones, video clips, streaming TV, applications and WAP sites. A3 also helps with support services like age verification, content aggregation, and storefront management to 115 carriers and app portals in 80 countries.
Cherry Media As long at there are breasts and mobile phones, there will always be Cherry Media. The firm grew its turnover 20 per cent in 2009, and remains 100 per cent solely privately owned and operated. Cherry’s main play is its Digital Erotic Retailing platform, which powers the adult offering for third party portals. However, the firm also produces games, VOD and Mobile TV. Its current focus is expanding its distribution network to ‘sexy sensitive’ territories such as India, South Africa and the US.
MOBILE BOOK COMPANY Andrews UK Andrews UK moved into digital and mobile book content in Q4 2009, and in that short time it has created over 2,000 e-books for the iPad and iPhone alone. It has signed contracts with a range of content providers in fiction, non-fiction, children’s picture books, erotic and religious content. Kindle and Android are also covered, and the retail channel includes WHSmith, Tesco, ebooks.com and hundreds more. AUK does a straight revenue share model with its author and publishing partners, making no deductions for its services at all. Currently AUK has around five per cent of all the apps on the Apple iPad and iPhone.
Mobcast Mobcast has arguably the highest profile of all mobile book firms, largely because of its authorfounder Andy McNab. But there’s substance there too. The firm has deals with all the major book publishing houses in the UK, US and Europe, and powers digital book shops for WHSmith, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, BlackBerry, TMN Portugal and Verizon US. When Mobcast ran a promotion with Vodafone UK in March, it generated 20,000 e-book downloads in one day. The firm also runs the popular D2C store, gospoken.com. More recently it has begun offering its titles through the key app stores.
Ether Mobile The big idea behind Ether Mobile is the ‘15 minute reads’ – short stories that work well with the snacking behaviour of mobile users. It fits well too with the authors, who often write short material that has no channel to market in the traditional publishing industry. Ether has quickly acquired quality material from Booker prize winner Hilary Mantel, Alexander McCall Smith, Maggie O’Farrell, and many other top authors. The Ether reader is free to download from the iPhone app store, and uses app billing to generate revenue. It will soon be moving to other smartphone platforms.
Movellas Danish company Movellas is a European based community site built specifically for reading, publishing and sharing mobile novels. It claims to be the first in Europe to replicate the Japanese phenomenon – keitai shosetsu – the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age. It started when a 15-year-old teenager nicknamed ‘Bunny’ wrote a book called Wolf Boy x Natural Girl, which was so popular it sold 110,000 copies in paperback. In fact, as early as 2007, five out of ten books in Japan’s top seller list was born as a mobile novel. Movellas is gambling on Europeans mimicking this. It invites writers to sign up and submit their work for rating by the rest of the community.
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06 ME Awards 2010_Final
D2C COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
GAMES PUBLISHER LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
PLAYPHONE
EA MOBILE
AWARDS
Thursday, November 18th 2010
The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLISHING
D2C COMPANY
GAMES COMPANY
Neomobile The Italian company has negotiated the turbulence in the D2C space to emerge as a genuine Euro giant. It is now active in 14 markets via brands like Dindo, growing through organic expansion and acquisition. In 2009 the company bought Arena Mobile to extend its footprint into Latin markets. It consolidated in 2010 with a swoop for Zero9 to Brasil. All this has helped to put Neomobile on target to generate more than 100m euros in 2010. The next targets are Mexico and India, both hungry markets for Neomobile’s roster of wallpapers, games, horoscopes and chat.
Binbit The Mexican D2C specialist has stealthily expanded its footprint into 30 countries thanks to organic expansion and the judicious purchases of Singapore’s Acme, which took it into Asia Pac, and Atinco, which opened up Africa. The firm runs selftitled D2C stores across multiple territories, offering major-label personalisation content. More recently it moved into the app space, creating Rednews, which aggregates celebrity gossip into a service pitched at iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Ovi users.
TIM w.e. This Portuguese company probably doesn’t get the recognition it deserves in English speaking countries. That’s because it’s too busy rolling out its Natta D2C store in Latin America and other emerging regions. The firm also owns the successful dating service Solemio. TIM w.e. ended 2009 with revenues growing a third to 166m euros, fuelled by expansion in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. And earlier this year it launched the open app store – App Republic, accessible by SMS or WAP.
Playphone Playphone is one of the longest-established of all the D2C firms, operating its own services and powering offerings for brands and operators too. At the end of 2009, it revealed a new delivery platform, ‘Alexander’, to power all of its downloads worldwide. The platform allows off-deck delivery of apps, music, video and games to multiple devices and platforms – and can power customised suggestions based on user profile and behaviour. It is connected to more than 80 carriers in Europe, Brazil, China and more.
Mobile Streams When Mobile Streams’ founder Simon Buckingham paid a few quid to secure the ringtones.com URL around a decade ago, he bagged the launchpad for a business that today spans four continents. Today, the firm distributes 270,000 items of content from major publishers as well as its own brands. Titles include Dilbert, Hellboy and Mr Bean. Ringtones.com alone offers over 35,000 tones from 500 suppliers. This year, the firm has completed multiple deals with Muzicall, Shenzhen, Plus and more.
06 ME AWARDS 2010
EA MOBILE EA was the biggest mobile games publisher in the Java/BREW world, and has followed that through onto iPhone’s App Store. The company made $52m in mobile revenues in Q2 this year, and has brought big brands like Madden, FIFA and The Sims to the App Store to great success. It is now setting its sights on iPad and Android.
Gameloft Gameloft is a true veteran of mobile gaming, celebrating its tenth birthday this year and revealing 330m games downloads over that decade. The company’s first-half profits were up 140 per cent year-on-year, and its early investment in iPhone has paid dividends with a stream of branded and own-IP hits on Apple’s App Store. It’s now also pushing into Facebook social games.
Connect2Media Connect2Media was launched out of the ashes of Hands-On Mobile’s European division, with the aim of prospering from innovative own-IP games. Games like Tumblebugs, String ʻEm In and Go! Go! Rescue Squad have been critically acclaimed, but it also retains an interest in branded games, such as the recent Lumines: In The House Ibiza ʻ10 title.
Digital Chocolate Having specialised in playable, original own-IP games at a time when it wasn’t fashionable, DChoc has continued in this vein on the App Store, generating millions of downloads from its iPhone games. However, it’s also done well elsewhere, announcing more than four million downloads on Nokia’s Ovi Store earlier this year, and releasing a string of popular Facebook games.
Chillingo The UK publisher Chillingo has been one of the most reliable firms in terms of iPhone hits, regularly hitting the App Store Top Ten, most famously as the publisher for Rovio’s Angry Birds – seven million sales and counting – plus titles including Minigore, Predators and Zombie Escape. The company has also launched its own social platform, Crystal, for connected mobile gaming.
ngmoco There’s a real buzz around ‘freemium’ gaming on smartphones at the moment, and ngmoco is one of the reasons why. The US publisher has been bold in its efforts to release games like We Rule, GodFinger and We Farm for free, and then make money from a mixture of advertising and in-app payments. Its Plus+ connected platform has also picked up plenty of customers.
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SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
LOCATION COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
FLIRTOMATIC
YAHOO
AWARDS
AWARDS
Thursday, November 18th 2010
The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLISHING
SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANY
LOCATION COMPANY
Rummble
We all know about Facebook’s meteoric rise, about it being one of the biggest ‘countries’ in the world, about the movie. But its mobile boom can match any of the hype around the firm. Facebook has around 200m wireless users, with 102.2m monthly active users of the iPhone app and another 57m on BlackBerry and 12m on Android. And it’s keeping feature phone users in the loop with 0.facebook.com, a mobile site that doesn’t incur data charges. Most intriguingly, the firm has deemed 2010 as the right time to launch into the social location space with Facebook Places.
It’s easy to think that social location is a West Coast US thing, thanks to the buzz around Foursquare, Booyah and the rest. Yet UK startup Rummble has been doing it for years, helping people to figure out where to go next via social local recommendations. This year, it secured new funding, integrated rival services, and launched a clever World Cup promotion.
Flirtomatic The serial award winner’s trophy cabinet must be bursting. But it’s no surprise that it recently confirmed three million users globally, with a third coming from the US. In fact, it now claims to account for 65 per cent of the US mobile dating market. Flirtomatic’s users engage in 53m mobile flirtations a month, and its intriguing business model revolves around ‘flirt points’, which members redeem to spend on messages, virtual gifts, search terms and more.
Twitter It says it’s not a social network, but perception is all, right? Either way, Twitter has become a wireless sensation, with mobile users up 250 per cent between January and September – and one in six of the average 370,000 new users a day signing up from a phone. Twitter took control of its mobile experience, acquiring Tweetie and turning it into a Twitter app for smartphones. Meanwhile it continues to be integrated with apparently every new app released. In fact, the registered third party app base is now at almost 300,000.
Mocospace The one-to-watch status of US-based MocoSpace was confirmed in September when it emerged that SoftBank had sunk $3.5m into the firm. Yes, the same Softbank that invested $150m in social gaming giant Zynga. Mocospace has been around for a long time and has more than 14m users generating three billion page views a month. It's also moved into gaming, with 1m games played on its site a month, and with plans to open its platform to third parties.
Orange ON This intriguing app was launched in February 2010 by Orange Vallée on the web and on Android. Its aim is to provide a simple interface through which users can interact with their friends and acquaintances. ON merges SMS, calls, social network messages and instant messages into threaded conversations in a user-friendly way – and even lets the user set the parameters of their location. Ultimately, the app is about recognising that there are multiple versions of ‘you’ depending on who wants to know. It won a MEX award in May 2010.
08 ME AWARDS 2010
CloudMade CloudMade is one of the companies working feverishly under the hood of innovative locationbased services. It sources maps from OpenStreetMap and then makes them available via tools and APIs to mobile developers, with the aim of democratising geodata. It raised $12.3m of funding in July, and has evolved its platform to support new services like Facebook Places.
Foursquare Foursquare is the poster company for social location, having pioneered the idea of check-ins, and generated miles of column inches. It has more than three million users now, and is forging relationships with brands like Starbucks and McDonald’s. It fended off potential acquisitors earlier this year in favour of remaining independent, and is one of the partners for Facebook Places.
Booyah Many of Booyah’s execs have a background in massively multiplayer gaming, but now they’re helping define the future for mobile social location. The company’s MyTown game for iPhone passed three million users this year, as the company raised funding to continue its efforts to wrap rich Monopoly-style gaming mechanics around its players’ social lives.
Skyhook Skyhook Wireless is another company whose technology has been under the surface of some of the most innovative location apps of recent times. Its Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) and XPS Hybrid Positioning System have been used for everything from navigation apps to augmented reality browsers. The company even went up against Google, filing patent infringement and business interference lawsuits in September against the internet giant.
Layar Augmented reality – or AR – is one of the buzziest areas of mobile location technology, with Holland’s Layar one of the key startups helping to push the area forward. The company launched its new AR Stream feature this summer, and revealed in June that it had more than 700,000 active users, and 4,000 active developers creating layers for its Reality Browser application.
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VIDEO & TV PROVIDER LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
GAMES SERVICE PROVIDER LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
MUSIC SERVICE PROVIDER LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
SAFFRON DIGITAL
METAFLOW
SHAZAM
2010
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AWARDS
Thursday, November 18th 2010
The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
SERVICES
VIDEO SERVICE PROVIDER
GAMES SERVICE PROVIDER
MUSIC SERVICE PROVIDER
Saffron Digital
Selatra
Shazam
Since winning this award last year, Saffron has pushed on, clinching a bunch of eye-catching VOD deals with Samsung, LG, Paramount, NBC Universal, LG and others. In April 2010, it built a free film service for T-Mobile customers with an HTC Desire Android handset. The service was based on Saffron’s VOD+ tech, which lets users watch, pause and resume playback between their PC and mobile handset. Another important deal saw Saffron working with Samsung to enable Avatar to be bundled with the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant phone.
The Java games business may increasingly have a ‘last-man-standing’ feel, but that shouldn’t detract from Selatra’s achievement in remaining one of the key aggregators in the space. It’s also diversified into apps and custom-built app stores, and has customers in more than 55 countries around the world, including operators and off-deck portals.
Shazam is a veteran of the mobile entertainment industry whose business has gone into overdrive in the App Store era. It now has more than 75 million users, and claims to be adding one million new people a week for its music recognition service. This year it also diversified into TV show tagging, partnered with the (RED) charity, and signed a series of advertising deals.
On Demand Group Earlier this year, ODP made history with 3UK, when the latter’s 3TV on Demand became Europe’s first mobile subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service; and the first European service that allows subscribers to enjoy long-form premium TV content from major studios as part of a subscription package. It’s all powered by ODP’s Adrenalin platform, which re-purposes content to accommodate the different resolution and streaming capabilities of playback devices. The launch saw TV-on-demand grow 400 per cent in three months.
Bitbop/FMG Fox Mobile Group’s wireless subscription service is accessible via 3G or wi-fi and features unlimited streaming or temporary downloading of selected shows. Its interface lets customers browse content from a searchable menu of free content from Fox, NBC, Bravo, MTV, Lifetime, Discovery and more. It launched in June in the US exclusively for a limited time on BlackBerry, but is now in beta for Android. Bitbop will also be available in Europe later this year.
SPB Software SPB’s flagship solution is SPB TV, a streaming mobile TV app featuring a UI that includes elements like the ability to watch one show while seeing previews for another in the corner of the screen. It offers more than 150 subscription-free channels from more than 20 countries. With the recent launch of its WAP version, it can genuinely claim to be a mobile TV solution that covers all possible mobile devices with 3G support. SPB therefore gives operators the opportunity to pre-install online TV, and integrate the software with their billing system.
Metaflow Metaflow made waves this year with its concept for a B2B app store – a central repository capable of delivering games and apps to operators whether they are Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android or Symbian titles. Metaflow has more than 400 channels using its service, and has been courting developers to simplify the process of getting their games to market.
Ideaworks Labs After separating from its game studio last year, Ideaworks Labs has spent 2010 singing the merits of its Airplay SDK, which helps developers create cross-platform games aimed at iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, Windows Phone and BREW. It’s also forged new partnerships, such as its deal with social gaming firm Scoreloop, to integrate the latter’s platform into Airplay.
Accumulate 2010 has heard plenty of talk about new ways to monetise mobile games, and Accumulate has been one of the leading voices in the debate. Its Flexion platform gives full flexibility over pricing and access rights, helping mobile games retailers to generate more revenues. This year saw several deals for its ‘wrapper’ technology, and satisfied customers around the world.
Unity Technologies More than 200,000 developers are using the Unity game engine, with an increasingly big chunk of those working on iOS or Android games. On any day, ten to 20 per cent of the top-selling games in Apple’s App Store are based on Unity, and the company and its developers recently cheered as Apple announced a u-turn on a rule barring third-party middleware from iOS games.
QuickPlay Media
Scoreloop
Previous winner QuickPlay had a busy 2010 World Cup, working with Rogers Wireless to provide mobile access to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of all 64 matches. The service was powered by QuickPlay’s OpenVideo Platform, which lets users of iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices watch via an app, while others can tune in via the Rogers WAP portal. The coverage also offered highlights, recaps, interviews and more.
Scoreloop started life providing social features for iPhone games, but has expanded rapidly in 2010, both in terms of platforms – it’s now signing up 100,000 new users a day on Android – and features. The company has launched social discovery applications to help players find new games, and is working with PayPal to provide in-app payments to Android game developers.
Aspiro There’s more than one hotshot Scandinavian company in the streaming music game. Aspiro – which started life as a mobile content aggregator – is now focusing more on music and TV. Its WiMP service launched in Norway and Denmark this year through telco partnerships, and has been hailed for its slick performance and editorial recommendations. Sixty-eight per cent of its users say they now listen to more music.
Thumbplay 2010 has been a year of reinvention for traditional mobile content companies – see also Aspiro. Thumbplay has been making waves in the second half of the year with its cloud music service, which offers streaming music to BlackBerry, Android and iPhone users. The company signed up all four major labels for its launch – a feat in itself – and boasts a catalogue of eight million tracks.
we7 UK streaming music service we7 was web-only until this year, offering ad-supported music to a growing base of users both on its own site, and on those of media partners. However, it launched an impressive iPhone app this year, at the same time as launching its premium service. The app offers on-demand streaming music, playlisting features and an offline mode.
Hungama When it comes to Bollywood and South Asian entertainment on mobile, Hungama is the undisputed giant. In fact, it claims to power nearly 70 per cent of all mobile content in India, while also having deals with 145 partners in 33 countries across the world. This year, Hungama deepened its commitment to the Indian music scene with ArtistAloud, which provides a digital outlets for indie bands.
Spotify Spotify has certainly come a long way since its launch – in September, it signed up its ten millionth user in Europe, with more than 500,000 of those paying for the premium version of the streaming music service. Its iPhone, Android and Symbian apps have been a big part of the latter success – not only was it the first company to offer offline cacheing – it managed to get Apple’s approval.
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WEBSITE G APPS (IPHONE & NOKIA) G EMAIL ALERTS G ME TV VIDEO CHANNEL NETWORKING EVENTS G ME AWARDS G MONETISING MOBILE CONFERENCES Mobile Entertainment is the world’s premier media channel for the mobile content industry. Every day we report the latest news, views and analysis from this dynamic sector. Quite simply, we’ve got the attention of every mobile content exec on the planet. ME brings this diverse audience together through its market-leading website, email service, mobile apps, mobile internet site, awards evening, conferences and networking events. Why not make this unparalleled reach and readership work for you too?
WWW.MOBILE-ENT.BIZ FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ADVERTISING AND SPONSORSHIP CONTACT KATY GRANT: TEL: +44 (0) 1992 535647 EMAIL: KATY.GRANT@INTENTMEDIA.CO.UK
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TRANSACTIONS PROVIDER LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
MOBILE PUBLISHING PLATFORM LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
ERICSSON IPX
NETBISCUITS
2010
11 ME Awards 2010_Final
AWARDS
Thursday, November 18th 2010
The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
SERVICES
TRANSACTIONS PROVIDER Netsize Netsize built its business in reverse billed SMS. But it has adapted to new forms of payment too. Earlier this year, it launched Netsize Direct Billing, which charges payment to the phone bill and skips intermediate WAP pages. It also has a billing API that helps third parties launch m-commerce services, ticketing and money transfer in 29 countries.
MACH Mobile MACH launched from the ashes of End2End Mobile to develop an operator billing solution for app store vendors. Most systems touting operator billing actually use premium SMS. But MACH, with 600 operator partners, says it can harmonise legacy systems and add features like flexible fees, refunds and the ability to name the vendor on the phone bill.
TxtNation The UK firm sealed a huge number of deals in 2010 with partners such as Tesco Mobile, while expanding its reach into Asia and Brazil. But more significant was the launch of a widget based on its mENABLE platform that gives partners easy access to micropayment features for small set-up costs.
PayPal After many false starts in mobile, the app store era rescued PayPal. Its iPhone app has been downloaded over 1m times, and was even embedded with the ‘bump’ function for moving money. Of course, the real prize is getting merchants to build PayPal into their apps. Hence PayPal X, which claims to have 100,000 members.
Bango Bango's offer has evolved much since the days of reverse billed SMS. In March 2010, it launched a cross platform in-app billing API that gives developers the chance to collect payment using operator billing or credit cards. It removes the need for users to open a browser too. And it works on w-fi.
OpenMarket The mobile billing arm of Amdocs currently handles around 400m messages a month. In March it bought UK-based MX Telecom to extend its footprint further. UK activity got off to a flyer when OpenMarket and Coca Cola teamed up to offer mobile phone credit with a soft drink purchase. It was the first ever crossnetwork mobile crediting solution in the UK.
mBlox One of the market’s pioneers is still at the heart of the biz. Today, mBlox connects 1,000 partners with over 600 operators. This scale saw it deliver 3.5bn payments in 2009 – 1bn more than in 2008 – while posting a revenue of $110m. mBlox's US drive worked too, with payments up 127 per cent last year.
MOBILE WEB PUBLISHING PLATFORM Kilrush It was inevitable that MIG would open its own mobile site and app publishing arm. Kilrush arrived in 2009 but its platform already delivers mobile experiences to over 80 clients in over 60 countries. Bauer Media uses the platform to power mobile activity for Heat, FHM and Zoo. Then there’s the iPhone app for Britainʼs Got Talent, downloaded 200,000 times in four days.
Mkodo mkodo’s Intelligent Mobile Platform is being used by clients such as BSkyB, BBC and Turner across Europe and the US. In recent months mkodo has seen good results in the gambling space, powering a site for 'mobile sportsbook' for Sky Bet that presents context sensitive live odds on different pages. It has also created an iPhone app for the the same client.
Mobile IQ Two of the most high profile of all news-related mobile projects in recent times were powered by Mobile IQ. First was The Guardianʼs site, which achieves 7.6m UK impressions a month. Then came the BBC News app, which did one million downloads in its first month. Other customers to benefit from the platform Fabric include Playboy and the BMJ.
Netbiscuits Last year's winner has attracted many major brands to its 'cross-platform cloud service'. Today, it delivers over 3.9 bn mobile page impressions a month for customers including eBay and Yellowpages (US). This year, the firm introduced the hybrid app concept, which integrates mobile web content into a platform specific client. It offers all the benefits of the cloud but can be distributed efficiently like apps.
Wapple Wapple’s Canvas tool automates the creation of web sites that work on every mobile browser, globally. What's more, these sites also deliver functions such as billing, data capture, LBS, quizzes, advertising, deep analytics and more. The list of customers is vast. Wapple works with Adidas, Unilever, Coke, Comic Relief and many others. It was also part of the 1Goal campaign around the World Cup.
MoMac The MoMac platform, GoMedia, currently powers over 1,000 mobile sites and portals. However, a new aggressive technology roadmap has seen the engine extended to support Flashlite, AJAX and HTML5. It also integrates social media like Facebook, email and Twitter in a single sign-in, enabling desktop levels of interaction for brands more used to WAP. In the last 12 months customers from Samsung to the Evening Standard have bought in to the platform.
B2B CONTENT PROVIDER Buongiorno Buongiorno's roots may be in D2C but the firm has reinvented itself so successfully that it now derives half its revenues from B2B activities. In addition to supplying oldschool content products to operators and brands, Buongiorno is at the cutting edge of newer ideas like O2 Top Up Surprises, which use rewards to manage churn. The firm is also looking to white-label its own consumer-facing products like the social network aggregation tool HelloTxt.
Fonestarz It started out as a wallpaper company, but now Fonestarz has so transformed itself into a multipurpose B2B specialist that it recently won the contract to power a DRM-free full-track music service for Vodafone NZ. Other notable wins include deals with 3 Austria, LG, Vodafone Egypt and more. FoneStarz uses its retailing and publishing platform Daius to manage these services, and it populates them with some juicy licensed product from F1, Turner, Disney, PlayBoy and others.
Zed Zed is another company that's taken expertise in consumer VAS and applied it to B2B. The Spanish firm uses its Master Service Content Provider (MSCP) solution to manage content operations for third parties and currently holds over 30 MSCP agreements addressing 626m end-users. Recent wins included US Cellular and GAME. Zed can offer its partners content products in addition to delivery infrastructure. It distributes 45 games publishers and 100 record labels, and recently added to its catalogue with exclusive Monty Python product.
IMImobile IMImobile is a well-established B2B specialist, but won a landmark contract in 2010 by completing a multi-territory deployment with MTN across 21 countries. The main focus of the project was the World Cup – an immovable deadline allowing no room for error. IMI used its DaVinci content management service to deliver World Cup photos, videos, wallpapers, games and trivia over web, WAP, voice, USSD, SMS and STK channels. It had to replace a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of legacy systems and ingest content from its London office, but the end result was a big success for MTN.
Versaly Entertainment Versaly has been delivering wallpapers, animations and video to US carriers and European resellers for over eight years. It’s very proactive about content, creating brands such as Chill, Club Brazil and Hollywood Insider that it markets by email on behalf of its D2C partners. The firm estimates that over 500,000 pieces of Versaly content are distributed worldwide each month.
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MARKETING & ADVERTISING COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
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Thursday, November 18th 2010
The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
SERVICES
APP DEVELOPER
ADVERTISING COMPANY
Grapple
InMobi
UK agency Grapple uses patented technology that lets clients write an app using a single code base and publish across iPhone, Blackberry, Ovi and more. It claims this cuts budgets by 25 per cent. Once the app has gone live clients get full analytics looking at downloads and UE. Grapple has forged close links with the agency world, and counts MediaCom, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy, BBH, VCCP, LBi and Ansible among its clients.
In two years, InMobi has undergone an amazing transformation from Indian start-up to global superpower. The performance network was serving 500m ads a month in 2008; now it’s doing 20bn across 150 countries. At the heart of this is the AdROIt platform, which is ‘self-learning’ and thereby helps advertisers achieve better campaign results.
Handmark This veteran of the content space has adapted slickly to the app era, adapting its own platform to deliver branded mobile apps for partners in weeks. The platform ingests existing content and optimises it for all major mobile platforms. Handmark has now launched apps for nearly 100 news brands including Wall Street Journal, Evening Standard and Newsweek.
ustwo This edgy London company has launched 15 apps from games to utility, and says that total sales are in the millions. It is best known for MouthOff, which gives users a second ‘mouth’ on screen that moves in time to their real one. This has now been licensed to Cartoon Network to promote Ben 10. ustwo has also targeted the B2B space with PositionApp, which tracks the performance of any iPhone app at any time.
Appy Five former games developers formed Appy to explore the opportunity presented by the app revolution. Its biggest hit has been FaceFighter, which lets the user fight a boxer with the face of a friend. It's topped 3.8m downloads and generated nearly 33m individual sessions. However, the firm has also diversified away from games, making Appy Newz, which gives user the tools to create comedy fake news stories about their friends.
Yuza With over 25 apps to its name, Yuza has quickly acquired a fine reputation among major brands. Its clients include EMI, Future and Which?. But Yuza has also become the go-to agency for the UK record biz, and even formed a spin-off firm 3ME to launch social games for music industry clients. It’s also been an AR innovator, embedding the tech in its Hedonistʼs Guide city guide iPhone book app.
Golden Gekko Golden Gekko’s client base is a who’s who of global superbrands including Coca-Cola, Disney, Unilever and others. A recent deal saw Golden Gekko offer site and app building for O2 Media clients. Its GG Mobile Media Engine serves over 1,000 handsets alongside the big smartphone families. Now, Golden Gekko is moving into the DIY app space with a platform that lets clients make their own products in hours.
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BuzzCity The Singapore-based superpower comprises 2,500 publishers and delivers 4.5bn ads a month. What sets Buzz City apart is its creation of its own mobile media content – services like social network MyGamma and free games portal Djuzz – that give ‘unwired’ consumers access to rich media content, while giving advertisers in-app options and high levels of consumer targeting.
AdMob AdMob has had an interesting year. The network, with 23,000 mobile sites and apps, was bought by Google for $750m and came close to losing access to iPhone developers. Despite the distractions, the firm innovated with formats that enable click-to Amazon, click-to call, click-to download and click-to map plus video interstitials and scrolling banners.
Mojiva Mojiva notched up a 177 per cent increase in impressions in 1H2010, and doubled its campaign count. Unlike other networks, it has a subsidiary company mOcean Mobile that supplies its ad serving and analytics platform, and is licensed to third parties. It currently manages over 6bn ad requests a month.
Adfonic Adfonic launched just over a year ago, and already generates 2bn ads a month across 2,000 publishers. The firm’s platform enables targeting by gender, age, country, geographic location, mobile device and OS. Adfonic also offers contextual keyword tagging to ensure greater relevancy.
Out There Media In the permission-based, operator-centric ad space, there is no one to touch Out There. The firm runs targeted SMS and MMS-based campaigns for operators like Maxis and Vimpelcom. Its Mobucks platform handles all creative, reporting and invoicing. Campaign count is up x10 this year already.
4th Screen The UK-based premium ad specialist uses its Mpression ‘engagement platform’ to help brands deliver campaigns that go beyond cost-per-click banners. Instead, they can deploy advanced mobile ad formats such as the iSlide, video, location and AR – with real-time campaign planning and segmentation.
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Thursday, November 18th 2010
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APP STORE LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
HANDSET COMPANY LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
APPLE APP STORE
APPLE
AWARDS OPERATORS AND HANDSETS
APP STORE
HANDSET COMPANY
BlackBerry App World
HTC
RIM’s focus on apps became ultra-serious in 2010 as the company sought to consolidate its position as a mass market consumer device maker. BlackBerry App World passed 10,000 apps in September this year. Meanwhile, RIM also began previewing its App World 2.0 beta, with support for carrier billing, QR codes, a new themes category and more. RIM has also run numerous developer events and contests, with the objective of popularising its ‘super app’ concept.
In two years, the Taiwanese firm has gone from a Windows OEM to the go-to device maker for top-end Android phones. Success with the Hero, Incredible, Nexus One, Legend and Desire helped HTC generate $1.88bn in Q2 alone. It’s on target to ship 24m units for 2010. In September the firm revealed a small push into services for the first time, with a back-up service that allows for text and email storage, remote wipe, find your phone and more. And there are two more Desire phones to come too.
GetJar Another incredible year for the company that was an obscure developer resource just two years ago. It hit one billion downloads in June, making it the world’s second largest app store – behind only the Apple App Store itself. GetJar offers app makers a portal through which to distribute demo and full products. It provides more than 65,000 mobile apps to consumers in more than 200 countries. Intriguingly, the company has also moved into B2B, powering options for Belgacom, Virgin India, Sony Ericsson, BitStream and others.
Android Market The bitching between Apple and Google this year (mostly over activations) has certainly been highly entertaining, and their rivalry can only be good for the industry in general. Certainly, the numbers support the argument that Android is the up-andcoming OS. Shipments were up 886 per cent yearon-year, fueling demand for an app store with 85,000 products to choose from. And lifetime downloads passed one billion in September. If there’s been any criticism it’s been on the payments side, but rumours of a PayPal deal could allay that.
Nokia Ovi Store The geographical footprint and sheer installed base of Ovi make this platform’s potential eye-watering. It currently does well over two million downloads a day, of which 90 per cent are transacted over a local version of the service. But Nokia really upped the stakes when it shifted its revenue share to a guaranteed 60:40 on carrier billing. Brave, given how variable these rates can be, but Nokia deserves credit for the initiative. Feature phones, emerging markets, carrier billing – it’s all to play for.
Apple App Store After two and bit years, Apple’s App Store remains the one to catch. It’s now generated more than 6.5 billion downloads, and has 250,000 apps available – 25,000 of which are native iPad apps. Over the years, the sheer usability of the store and innovations like in-app billing have engendered some amazing success stories. How about Angry Birds selling 6.5 million, and 11 million more on the free ‘lite’ version. With Game Center and other innovations, Apple seems determined to stay in front.
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RIM Having transformed its brand away from email and the enterprise into consumer markets, RIM is now pushing headlong into apps. Its BlackBerry App World service already supports 10,000 apps, but the firm recently embarked on a major developer outreach via competitions and events. It’s especially keen on the concept of Super Apps, which work with phone functions to deliver premium applications. And it’s also got BlackBerry 6 on the way, promising an improved UI, souped up photo and video functions, album art, podcasting and more.
Samsung The world’s second biggest phone maker consolidated its position in 2010, and also scored a couple of big hits at the top end of the market. First, its Wave device successfully showcased its new smartphone OS, Bada, then the Galaxy S became one of the most critically acclaimed Android devices to date. It took 19 days to sell a million. There was also good progress in apps, with the launch of a store that will link Samsung mobile and TV devices. And don’t forget the Galaxy Tab, Samsung’s foray into the tablet space.
Nokia Big changes at the top of Nokia in September suggest the possibility of a brave new dawn at the world’s biggest handset maker. What an interesting next six months it will be. The N8 has just launched, putting Symbian 3 right out there, and then there’s Meego, promising a unique confluence between the phone and the netbook, set top box, tablet and so on. Meanwhile, the vast potential of the Ovi Store remains – and with two million downloads a day, Nokia is already making serious progress.
Apple Apple is now the second biggest company in the world in market cap terms – behind only Exxon. It seems as if iOS is closing in on oil and the world’s most valuable commodity. Total sales across all devices are now past 120m and there have been 6.5bn app downloads. Even Antenna-gate couldn’t stop the juggernaut, with Steve Jobs confirming in September that the firm is activating 230,000 new iOS devices every day. And with new services like Ping and others launched, Apple influence is simply everywhere.
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OPERATOR LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
VODAFONE
NEERAJ ROY
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The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London W8
OPERATORS AND HANDSETS
OPERATOR Vodafone Group The biggest network in the world has always had lofty ambitions in the services space, hence the ‘Global’ division, Live!, and 360. Fair to say the latter has had its issues, but still Voda keeps on supporting the content community. Witness the Mobile Clicks prize in which start-ups battled it out for a 150,000 euro prize. Voda is also the main driver of the JIL developer lab project. And it’s even made the LBS code around its Wayfinder service open source to encourage partners to build compatible apps.
Orange Group In September, Orange unveiled its cheapest Android smartphone yet, the San Francisco, for just £99 on pay-as-you-go. Tellingly, the device came preloaded with Orange Maps and the Orange App Shop. Indeed, at roughly the same time, Orange confirmed a deal with Nokia to offer Ovi Store content alongside App Shop on selected devices and teamed up with Deezer to offer French customers all-you-can-eat bundled music. Throw in services like Orange Monkey and you see how serious Orange is about content.
3UK 3 won the first two ME operator awards, such was its commitment to content at a time when the others were still ambivalent about data and services. There’s no doubt it’s been caught up with since, but still 3 comes out with eye-catching deals. When Spotify was bewitching the trade, it was 3UK that was first to bundle the service ‘free’ with a handset. Then there were the deals with Warner and Disney to offer full episode TV shows.
Telefonica O2 It’s fair to say O2 is an innovator. During the WAP years, O2 Active was generally perceived to be among the best operator portals, and when the app store model came along, well, who had the iPhone exclusive? This summer, O2 stuck its neck out again, becoming the first UK network to axe its unlimited data tariffs. Throughout it all the operator has supported developers through its Litmus programme, which encourages start-ups with good ideas, and promotes the use of APIs.
SPECIAL AWARD
OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO MOBILE CONTENT Every year, the climax of the prize ceremony for the ME awards is the giving out of the Outstanding Contribution award to an individual who’s gone beyond the call of duty to promote our lovely business. In the five years since we’ve been running the event, this prize has become a pretty big deal for the recipient, for the industry and for the attendees on the night itself. It’s why the gong has prompted some of the most memorable moments in the history of the awards. Who could forget Ralph Simon’s impassioned acceptance speech in 2007 and the long and moving ovation that followed it? Or Neeraj Roy demonstrating the charm that helped win him the award last year when he climbed on to a chair to hug the six foot seven inch host Greg Davies? Indeed, it’s worth noting the lengths to which these two recipients went to collect their awards in person. Ralph broke off an engagement with the US government in Capitol Hill to be with us, while Neeraj flew straight back to India after the event to be home for his father’s 70th birthday. I’m not afraid to say that recalling all this makes me blush with pride. It’s a pleasure to know guys like Ralph and Neeraj – and humbling to think that they hold ME in such high regard. So on to 2010. It won’t be easy picking a winner. Never is. But what a pleasure it will be to choose him or her, and hand over the statuette. I might even get a hug. Tim Green Executive Editor Mobile Entertainment
T-Mobile International From T-Zones to Web n Walk and even the old Jukebox service, T-Mobile has a history of prescience in mobile content. It still has the capacity to surprise, even though most of the discussion this year has been more about the merger with Orange than with services. But don’t overlook the movies-on-demand service for HTC Desire launched with Saffron Digital. Then there’s the amazing stuff coming out of T-Mobile USA, like a joint gaming portal with EA and the decision to ditch its traditional deck and launch a cross-platform app store in one place, with developer rev shares based on how much the app uses the network.
About those judges… The question of who wins the ME Awards is not decided by the ME team but by over 400 execs from across the industry. Their votes decide it. So don’t blame us if you don’t win. The judges are drawn from all corners of the business – from hardware to publishing, operators to consumer brands – and we’re extremely grateful for their time.
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