ME Awards Supplement - 2011 by Intent Media (now Newbay Media Europe)

The Finalists Wednesday, November 23rd 2011 The Royal Garden Hotel, London W8 4PT

An ME Event

CONTENTS | 3

Wednesday, November 23rd 2011 Royal Garden Hotel London W8 4PT A single place at the awards costs £295 +VAT and tables of ten are priced at £2,750 +VAT. For details of table sales and sponsorship enquiries contact katy.phillips@intentmedia.co.uk or mobileawards@intentmedia.co.uk Or call +44 (0) 1992 535647

THE CATEGORIES DEVELOPMENT & PUBLISHING Best Gambling Company Best Adult Company Best Games Company Best Location Company Best Social Media Company

10 10 12 13 13

SERVICES Best Games Service Provider Best Music Service Provider Best Video Service Provider Best Transactions Provider Best Mobile Web Publishing Platform Best App Developer Best Advertising Network Best Marketing Company Best B2B Content Provider Best App Store

14 14 15 15 16 16 18 18 19 19

OPERATORS & HANDSETS Best Handset Company Best Operator

20 20

Does your mother have a smartphone? Does she like GetGlue? Or is she more of a Foursquare kind of gal? I’m only half joking. After all, this is the year that more than half of us (in the West at least) got a smartphone. The mobile content revolution that ME began writing about six years ago, when it was all ringtones and Tetris, is no longer a revolution. It’s the norm. Isn’t it great? All those years trying to explain to mum what you did, and now she wants to find out when the firmware for Ice Cream Sandwich is coming out. It’s hard to keep up with the speed of change in this industry of ours, with new ideas, business models and start-ups rising and falling like RIM’s share price. Who this time last year was talking about Groupon or Instagram? Who would have believed that Amazon would provide Apple with its sternest test in the tablet market? Or that Nokia would throw in its lot with Microsoft? We’ve reflected on these questions in the main feature inside this ME Awards special. But elsewhere, we shortlist and profile the companies making the running in what is still the world’s most exciting industry. Yeah, I’m biased but it’s bloody true. There were hundreds of entries, so it wasn’t easy identifying the finalists. But here they are. Best of luck to them, and see you all on Thursday November 23rd.

SPECIAL AWARD Outstanding Contribution to Mobile Content

Tim Green Executive Editor Mobile Entertainment

Best Social Media Company Award Partner After Party Partner

Event Partner

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Don’t miss out on ME’s famous awards night This years ME Awards take place on Wednesday, November 23rd at The Royal Garden Hotel, High St Kensington, London Get your tickets now by calling or emailing Katy Phillips katy.phillips@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647 Tickets are priced at £295 + VAT per person or £2,750 + VAT per table of ten If you are interested in sponsoring this years awards then please contact katy.phillips@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647

After Party Partner

Best Social Media Company Award Partner

Event Partner Event Partner

YEAR IN REVIEW | 5

Amazon Kindle: The stalking horse for iPad?

OMFG It’s been another remarkable year in the crazy world of mobile. So, in the spirit of the SMS-style acronym, we present the top 20 eye-popping developments – in descending order of OMFG-ness… 20. NFC – whether you want it or not The history of mobile can be carved up into three eras: voice, messaging and data. And after data, well who knows? But if the combined will of Google, Mastercard, Visa and the world’s operators has any bearing on it, it could be contactless payments. This year has seen a series of remarkable announcements in the field of NFC-based mobile wallets. In the US, the big three operators unveiled their own project, called Isis. In the UK, after Barclaycard and Orange rolled out a service, the big three networks unveiled a cross-operator collaboration. And then, in September, Google actually went live with its own Google Wallet service. Remarkable, given that NFC is present in just a single mainstream Western handset – the Nexus S. To be fair, the emphasis isn’t entirely on payments – Google and the UK opcos are more interested in coupons and advertising – but it’s still bold future-gazing stuff given that one

survey in 2011 showed that 91 per cent of consumers have never heard of NFC.

19. The Cloud – whether you want it or not When did server farms in remote Nordic locations become the cloud? And, er, what is the cloud anyway? This year saw two huge announcements bring the cloud into the mainstream. Well, the B2B mainstream anyway. Because it’s pretty obvious the punters haven’t got a clue. Apple confirmed its plan to press ahead with a system that lets users keep all their music in cyberspace (the stuff they’ve purchased anyway) and have a copy locally too. Then Google did the same, but let users upload their collections. Then there’s the DNLA consortium, which is trying to give OEMs one standard through which to offer ‘access anywhere’ media on TVs, in-car etc etc. Then there’s Spotify. All are slightly different, and all have distinct business models. Yet they’re all the cloud. It was so much easier when we had external hard drives.

18. Look into my eyes: 3D is coming to mobile In the interests of disclosure, your correspondent should reveal that he is monocular, after a childhood accident with a hammer, a rock and some shrapnel. But even his bi-focal friends are unsure about mobile 3D. The technology is a little gimmicky on the big screen and only occasionally successful on the TV. But ever since the development of 3D displays that don’t require glasses, there’s been an unstoppable drive towards its implementation on mobile. Thus, at MWC, LG unveiled the Optimus 3D series of devices. Some like it. Others became immediately nauseous. But it hasn’t stopped more devices being announced, the most recent being a Sharp phone that converts 2D to 3D in real time.

17. The world’s most interesting hardware manufacturer is… Amazon Amazon used to sell books. Paper ones. Then it was music, then clothes,

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6 | YEAR IN REVIEW

electricals and lawn mowers. Then it started selling digital content. Then cloud services for other businesses. Was there anything left? Oh yes, an e-reader. Step forward the Kindle, which everyone loved because it was a singlepurpose device, just for reading. Black and white. Battery lasted forever. And buying books on it was so so easy. The Kindle worked because it wasn’t trying to be the iPad. Then came the Kindle Fire. Which was – well, almost. Kindle Fire is small and cheap and, unlike its predecessor, it has a touchscreen colour display for running movies and other video content. If the Kindle process is anything to go by, Amazon will make content downloading/streaming easy. And in so doing it may make Amazon a bigger threat to Apple than Samsung, Motorola, HTC, LG…

16. If you've got one, I want one too: social gaming There’s money in coins. Well, of course there’s money in coins. That’s the whole point. This year it was the virtual coinage offered by various social gaming platforms that lit up the M&A columns. As micro-payments surged (app analytics firm Distimo found 49 per cent of the revenue on iPhone apps in 2010 came from in-app purchases), these firms suddenly looked very

tempting. After DeNa bought ngmoco in 2010, RIM swooped for Scoreloop and Gree bought OpenFeint.

15. There are other tablets beside iPad. It's just that no one buys them When Apple launched the iPad in 2010, people said: “Oh tablets, that’s been tried before. No one will buy them.” They were right. No one would buy tablets. They’d just buy iPads. It’s an exaggeration of course, but the truth is that rivals have tried smaller tablets, cheaper tablets, tablets with 3D – and still Apple rules. IDC gave its 68.3 per cent of the market during Q2, with 9.3 million sales against the 200,000 for PlayBook.

14. Never mind fake iPhones, let's fake an entire Apple Store China, eh? It’s like a foreign country or something. They certainly do things differently there, as one US blogger discovered when she felt there was something weird about the Apple Store in Kunming. There was. It wasn’t one. Your heart bled for the cheery staff who thought Steve Jobs was their boss, not some bloke who could also make you dodgy D&G belts. A month later the BBC unveiled 22 more fake stores. It’s not funny.

13. Barcodes may not be shit Designers hate the way they look on adverts. Most consumers don’t know what they are. Barcodes are rubbish, aren’t they? Not so fast. In June, 14m Americans scanned mobile barcodes (says Scanbuy), and overall global scans grew 88 per cent in the quarter to May (says I-nigma). Barcodes are everywhere and they are converging around a single (QR) standard. The public is catching on. And when the first codes hit the peachy backsides of Olympic Beach Volleyball players, the mainstream may beckon.

12. Daddy, what’s a dotcom bubble? The markets celebrated the tenth anniversary of the dotcom bubble by having another one. Google’s $6bn

For table sales and ticket enquiries contact Katy.Phillips@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535647

8 | YEAR IN REVIEW offer for Groupon was declined, leaving the latter to concentrate on building its market valuation to, well, $30bn according to some estimates. Not bad for a company with huge staff costs, no proprietary technology and a business model anyone can copy. $30bn is a lot of half-price spa treatments.

11. Lawyers reluctantly fight multiple mobile IP wars The world’s beleaguered IP attorneys were given a lift by mobile handset makers this year when they all decided, in legal parlance, to sue the arses off each other. Infographics spread across the web showing the spaghetti soup of lawsuits, most of which revolved around who invented icons, touch interface, tablet form factor and more very basic stuff. They involve Microsoft, HTC, Motorola, Qualcomm and many more. But the bitterest battle of the lot is between Samsung and Apple, which temporarily saw the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in Europe, and (at time of writing) threatens to see iPhone removed from shelves in Korea.

10. Galaxy II – someone took on iPhone It’s always a little unfair to compare Android sales with those of iPhone. It’s like saying the football teams in the Championship, and Divs 1 and 2 have more supporters than Liverpool. Not like for like. But this year something interesting happened. One device – the Samsung Galaxy S – seemed to establish itself as a genuine iPhone alternative rather than just an acceptable ‘second best’. The S II sold 10m in five months while its predecessor, the Galaxy S took seven months to reach the same milestone.

9. Everywhere you look people are using BlackBerrys. So why is RIM in the toilet? Even the most die-hard Nokian would concede that you just don’t see many people using their phones any more. Not in Europe and the US anyway. But BlackBerrys are everywhere. So why has the (financial) world got it in for RIM? Well, the devil is in the detail. BlackBerrys fly off the shelves, but mostly the cheap ones that teenagers like. The far more profitable enterprise users are looking elsewhere. So the company shipped around 10.6 million phones in its Q2, but revenues of $4.2 billion were down 15

Blackberrys are everywhere (top) but still RIM’s share price is in the doldrums; Angry Birds went from digital to cuddly (bottom left); and the Android robot powered on towards global domination (bottom right) per cent year-on-year. Problems were confounded by the inability to get new devices out with a new OS better configured for apps, browsing and touchscreen. And then there was PlayBook. Just 200,000 shipped.

8. Did we all dream the Nokia N9 MeeGo phone? In the first series of Happy Days, Richie Cunningham had an older brother called Chuck. The makers soon realised that Chuck wasn’t interesting, and that Fonzie was ‘the one’. So one day Chuck went to his room and was never seen again. In the mobile world, the Nokia N9 is Chuck Cunningham. It’s the lonely MeeGo device deemed surplus to requirements. A handset with no narrative purpose when set against the Arthur Fonzerelli that is WinPho 7. Get an N9 now. Keep it in the box. And save it for Antiques Roadshow.

7. How the avian flew: 350m Angry Birds downloads Angry Birds should be the app that’s encouraging other creative developers into the space. In reality, it’s probably ruining their chances: users don’t have

time for their products – they’re too busy on Angry Birds. In September Rovio’s game passed 350m downloads and was generating 300m gameplay minutes a day. Rovio was also selling one million plush toys and t-shirts every month.

6. Android – It can’t be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop Without doubt, 2011 has been the year of Android. We’re a long way from the rather ugly HTC Dream that kicked things off in 2008. Today, there are hundreds of devices in the market and, every week, new research is published that testifies to the dominance of the platform. By September Nielsen was reporting that two in five UK smartphone owners use Android. Millennial looked at its metrics and revealed 54 per cent of its ad impressions are on Android devices. What’s interesting is that, while much of this is due to hi-spec mid-range handsets like the HTC Wildfire, Android is also taking it to iPhone at the top

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YEAR IN REVIEW | 9 end, through the HTC Sensation and Galaxy S.

5. Here, InMobi. Have $200m. Over the years, we’ve become accustomed to large VC rounds in mobile. And why not? If you’re going to invest in tech firms, then damn right you should be looking at mobile media players. But the $200m thrown at ad network InMobi by Softbank and others in September took the breath away. $200m! Easily the biggest ever in our space (although others have chalked up huge sums in increments – MobiTV’s $115m for example). But it was only the biggest of a series of investments in mobile ad players, including £4.7m for Adfonic.

4. Google buys Motorola, terrifies its partners Who would buy the ailing Motorola Mobility? Surely not Google. Why worry its many Android OEMs with the idea that it might slip all its platform secrets first to its new hardware division. Too bad, because in August Moto became a Google company for (gulp) £12.5 billion. Google says this is all about 17,000 patents. Samsung, HTC, LG et al say they’re cool with that. Let’s see what Motorola’s Jellybean devices are like before rushing to judgement.

How will the world cope without any more Steve Jobs keynotes?

3. No more ‘One More Thing’: Steve Jobs steps down Love him or loathe him, Steve Jobs is without doubt the man of the century so far. So when he decided to resign as CEO of Apple his legacy was discussed endlessly on mainstream media the world over. This man could seriously keynote – as anyone unfortunate enough to witness Mark Zuckerberg’s weird address at F8 will know to their cost.

2. HP murders its own child You can accuse HP of lots of things, but indecisiveness is not one of them. On August 18th, it announced it was to kill its webOS-based TouchPad tablet – just 49 days after it went on sale. Stunning. That beat the previous record for brevity set by Microsoft’s disastrous Kin (55 days). HP had paid $1.2 billion for Palm in 2010. That’s $1.2 billion for a software platform with apparently limited appeal to OEMs and the developer community.

1. Nokia aligns with the underdog – Microsoft The clear winner in the OMFG chart is Nokia’s decision to jettison decades of selfdetermination and become an OEM for Microsoft. It’s not just the magnitude of the decision, it’s what it says about the speed of change in mobile. Nokia was a firm that utterly ruled the space (with 40 per cent plus market share, and a million phones sold a day) just three years ago. Now mobile lives in Silicon Valley, kept in the handbags of Apple and Google. So Nokia had three choices – Android, Microsoft or death. It chose the plucky outsider. In 2012 we’ll see whether it can help make Microsoft the evil overlord in mobile it so wants to be.

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10 | DEVELOPMENT & PUBLISHING GAMBLING COMPANY

ADULT COMPANY

Rank Interactive

MiKandi

Rank’s major breakthrough this year was launching real money native iPhone and Android Apps for the Mecca Bingo and Blue Square brands. Overall, Rank had over 100,000 app downloads. The firm has also been busy in the mobile web, where stakes have increased by 150 per cent year-on-year. On top of this, Rank bought the dev firm Rapid Mobile in order to create more products in-house.

This adult-only app store has enjoyed an excellent year of rising traffic and free publicity thanks to the war of words between Apple and Android over their respective policies on adult content. The Android-based store offers developers a one-stop shop for distributing and monetising their apps via a mobile client or a mobile web portal. MiKandi is reportedly seeing over 500,000 monthly app downloads.

International Mobile Sportsbook Company

Adultmoda

IMSC has used SMS and a simple pay-out system to gather 1m users in emerging markets around its Bettymovil service. IMSC pays out ten minutes after the event has finished in the form of a code redeemed in over 10,000 points of sale. The firm increased the average bet amount by over 600 per cent versus 2010. The average revenue per user is at an average of €5 per month.

Adultmoda is the UK-based ad network for adult publishers and advertisers, and the sister company of non-adult network Admoda. In January it served its 100 billionth ad. By July it was serving 7bn a month. The self-serve network claims a 90 per cent rebook rate from advertisers, and payouts for site/app owners of between 65 and 85 per cent. All this has been achieved with no venture capital backing, and a small team.

Mfuse

Private Media

This longstanding UK firm has seen its backend white-label services come of age in the app era. Mfuse currently powers mobile operations for most major UK bookmakers including Ladbrokes and William Hill. Its finest hour in 2011 was arguably the creation of EasyBet, a web app built for Ladbrokes purely for the Grand National. It generated 250,000 sessions in a day.

As one of the world’s longest established and most successful adult brands, it’s quickly evolved from magazine publishing into online, cable, satellite, digital TV and IPTV on 194 platforms in 42 countries. Its proprietary mobile solution GameLink can instantly stream over 15,000 movies. A white label version of it is made available to partners.

Katina Leisure Betfair The Betfair app was among the first ever to be made available on the UK and Ireland Apple app stores in 2010, and it’s been reaping the benefits since. In the three months to July 31st, mobile revenues were up 94 per cent to £4.2m. That’s nearly double the 2010 quarter thanks to 7.4m mobile bets in place. In June, the firm said it had transacted over £1bn in bets through its mobile apps and sites in the company’s last financial year.

Katina is a well-established D2C player and also powers the mobile activities of thirdparties such as New Zealand Telecom. This has led to the firm being appointed to create portals for adult stars themselves – including Lucy Pinder. Other innovative activities include the launch of an icon-driven mobile site and a move to monetise the unsold inventories of partner ad networks, with up to 90 per cent paid back.

Cherry Media Cellectivity This firm won the award in 2009 and is still making progress with Bet2Go. This allows punters to compare prices and place a bet across a range of online bookies. Cellectivity recently extended multiple and accumulator betting to its web platform. It has also added more sports in time for the new English Premier League season. Bet2Go now offers over 250,000 different odds that can be accessed via mobile web, Java or native app.

Still here. Still saucy. Cherry Media has been a fixture of the mobile adult scene since 2003, and remains wholly privately owned with no external investment and in profit. The firm makes its own content, which is licensed to over 40 countries worldwide, and powers portals for partners using its ‘Digital Erotic Retailing’ platform. It says some partners have increased sales by 300 per cent using this platform and that one operator grossed an additional €10,000 per month.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: BET NOW

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LAST YEAR’S WINNER: A3 MEDIA

12 | DEVELOPMENT & PUBLISHING GAMES EA Mobile What is there to say about EA Mobile, which seems to have wholly transferred its success in video games to mobile? Stats might help. EA Mobile’s revenue in FY11 was $230m, up 8.5 per cent. In May 2011, it was the No.1 Apple App Store paid publisher with 1.9m daily active users. But it’s not resting there. EA bought Chillingo, Firemint and PopCap to secure its future at the top. The catalogue now comprises monsters such as Tetris, FIFA, Need for Speed and Plants vs Zombies. It’s even passed 1m downloads on the Kindle platform.

HandyGames This German studio has a claim to being the longest-established mobile games developer of them all. It was established in 2000 and has navigated through every change in the business. That equates to over 150 games, of which titles like Super Dynamite Fishing, Shark or Die and Happy Vikings have become sizeable hits. Handy has been a pioneer of adfunding since 2006 and is currently in the process of releasing free ad-funded versions of all of its J2ME titles. It’s currently closing in on 1bn ads served and expects to shift 100m free Java downloads this year.

Backflip Studios This US developer has been one of the titans of the app store era casual gaming revolution. Its maddeningly addictive titles – including Paper Toss, NinJump and Backflip Solitaire – have been downloaded nearly 150 million times on iOS and Android. But the daily usage figures are even more impressive at 3m a day and 27m a month. Backflip revenues are split equally between premium game sales, ads and in-app purchases, with its games generating 1m ad impressions and $500,000 a month.

Gameloft Like EA and the poor, Gameloft has always been with us. Why? Because it’s found the formula for combining old school gaming heritage with a willingness to embrace new media ideas. Its recent H1 revs were €76.8 million thanks to evergreen franchises like Asphalt and Let’s Golf, but also due to commitment to paid, freemium and subscription based models. Gameloft even launched a 99p UK subscription deal for one Android game every week this summer, while also confirming 200m games sold on the Apple App Store.

Neon Play Was it a stroke of luck when a purchase of Neon Play’s Paper Glider was celebrated as the ten billionth App Store download? Possibly. But there would have been no chance of it had UK-based Neon Play not released 32 apps and accumulated over 20 million sales over the years. The studio has now notched up 1m downloads on the App Store, with titles such as Golf Putt Pro flying thanks to a FreeAppADay promotion that generated 250,000 downloads in a single day. Not too shabby for a firm launched in June 2010.

Glu After some iffy years, Glu began to look like a force again in 2011. Its Q2 revenue was $17.7 million, up 11 per cent year-on-year, as the push into native games and freemium began to pay off. Glu confirmed over 100m total cumulative installs across smartphone platforms and social networks, and acquired Blammo Games and Griptonite Games to secure the talent to diversify its output. The firm now hopes to augment male-orientated products such as Contract Killer and Gun Bros with the massmarket friendly Boo Town and Toy Village.

Rovio Angry Birds has been liberally compared to Crazy Frog. But they’re very different, really. While the Frog was thrust on the public and briefly valued for its irritation factor, Angry Birds is deeply loved. It’s the mobile phenomenon of the moment, generating 350m downloads and 300m gameplay minutes a day (by September 2011). Under Rovio’s skilled guidance, it’s also become a soft toy range, a recipe book, possibly a movie, and has been the subject of numerous promotions including becoming the world’s first NFC-enabled game.

Mindshapes UK-based Mindshapes stands out a little from the others on the shortlist by virtue of its sole focus on educational games for toddlers. Conceived by one of the co-founders of Playfish, Shukri Shammas, the company is banking on the growth of smartphone and tablet gaming among pre-schoolers – and it seems to be paying off. First title Jellytoons Toddler Skills: Bobo’s Birthday Challenge comprises six mini-games with virtual stickers to unlock as a reward for using the app. It’s currently available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and costs 59p. The initial reaction has been rapturous.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: CHILLINGO

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DEVELOPMENT & PUBLISHING | 13 Best Social Media Company Award Partner

LOCATION COMPANY Layar Netherlands-based Layar is the company most closely associated with location-based augmented reality. Its browser overlays what a user sees on the screen with clickable graphics containing relevant information around them. It's been used to show house prices, shopping offers and more. So far 1,000 developers have already created around 2,600 ‘layars’. And Layar was even pre-loaded by Samsung on the Galaxy S II phone. This year, it has added a 'visual' AR solution so that its browser can recognise not just views but also objects, and then overlay display digital content on top of them.

Poynt This Canadian company offers white label local search services alongside its own location app. It connects users with nearby businesses, retailers and events using the adfunded GPS-enabled app, which provides contextual advertising to users when they're making local searches on their phone. A breakthrough year saw the firm increase Q2 revenues by 167 per cent to over $500,000 and gather over 10 million users worldwide. Since July, the average number of new daily users added has exceeded 25,000.

Foursquare Last year's winner Foursquare is the company that took the concept of gamification and turned it into reality through its check-in. Some thought it might suffer as giants like Facebook and Google emulated the idea with services of their own. Instead, Foursquare grew. In September, it confirmed its billionth check -in and continues to run campaigns with brands from Starbucks to McDonald’s. It's currently exploring ideas like NFC to turn the check-in into the tap-in.

SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANY Flirtomatic It wouldn't be the ME Awards without Flirtomatic, one of the true pioneers of the mobile social networking space. The firm’s business model revolves around ‘flirt points’, which members redeem to spend on messages, virtual gifts, search terms and more. Now live in Germany, UK, US, Spain and Australia, Flirtomatic has 3.5 million users engaging in an average six log ins a day.

Facebook The winner in 2010 has enjoyed an interesting intervening year. There has been a controversial re-design, some privacy scares and – oh – a movie. But through it all the service has continued to grow, not least in mobile where the number of users has passed the 350m mark. The firm recently conceded it will shortly be a mobile entity. In preparation, perhaps, the firm has rolled out a cut down mobile site and purchased the feature-phone friendly user interface firm Snaptu.

Mocospace The US mobile social network has weathered the storm brewed by Facebook et al and thrived as a result. Much of this is due to its decision to diversify into social gaming, and develop a series of connected HTML5 titles. It started a $2m fund to entice developers to make games for the MocoSpace Games Platform, and studios like New Game Town, Upgraded Studios and Celander US took full advantage. The subscriber base hit 20m as a result. More recently, Mocospace acquired Geocade to add a location dynamic to its roster.

Palringo

Navmii This UK navigation specialist hit two million users in 2011, six months after its free and paid navigation apps were released. 15,000 more are joining every day. The firm has pledged itself to undercutting the expensive dedicated SatNav makers with a fully functioning GPS app available for only €3.99 per country from the iTunes store. A second app, NavFree, loads maps offline and can therefore be used without a connection. This is free. Either way, users can search for an address by city, street, house or postcode and get voiced directions.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: FOURSQUARE

This UK company has carved a big reputation for itself in the group messaging space by enabling the creation of themed groups that anyone can join. Its 11 million users in 20 countries now send over 46 billion messages a month across 300,000 groups covering areas from gaming to sports, technology to politics. The firm’s tech has also been adopted by some enterprises who use its service to improve communication among remote employees. This year Palringo added a geotagging feature that lets users find groups based on proximity and location.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: FACEBOOK

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14 | SERVICES GAMES SERVICE PROVIDER

MUSIC SERVICE PROVIDER

Metaflow

Shazam

This UK firm offers content management software for the delivery and distribution of games to retailers worldwide. Customers include Zed, EA, Glu, Connect2Media, Fox Mobile and more. Its submissions software has delivered over 100 million SKUs over five years. Now it's offering a freemium, simplified user interface version of the platform for free submissions into leading App Stores and unlimited access to others for a fee per title.

Multi ME Award winner Shazam may be the best known mobile content brand of all. It's gathered over 150m users to its 'hold your phone in the air to identify music' solution. Shazamers identify over one billion songs a year and go on to purchase over $100 million in digital music. The firm has tweaked its business model to allow unlimited tags from its free app.

Marmalade Marmalade (formerly Ideaworks3D) makes software that lets developers quickly build and distribute cross-platform applications. They can write in standard C++ and deploy from this code base as native applications to platforms such as iOS, Android, Symbian, QNX, webOS and bada. It's used by publishers including Konami and Square Enix; OEMs such as Samsung and RIM; operators like Korea Telecom; and to support LG's new SmartTV 3D platform.

TeePee Games Tony Pearce's start-up built a portal through which to find and play games across social networks, smart phones and the web. Its unique discovery engine – a cross between Amazon’s recommendation engine and Apple Genius – learns with the user, building a profile of what he or she has played across different gaming platforms to recommend new content. In under four weeks it suggested over 700,000 games to its users.

Flexion With the automated Flexion wrapping solution, developers can avoid creating a cut-down version of their title, instead taking the complete version and 'wrapping' it with Flexion software. This enables services such as in-app billing, DRM, and content discovery. Customers include Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Orange, 3G, EA, Glu and Digital Chocolate. Consumers have spent £28m via the Flexion platform in the last three years.

PapayaMobile PapayaMobile has over 25m Android users playing over 300 different social games. It offers developers tools for features like chat rooms, leaderboards, notifications and status updates. It encourages developers to use a freemium model and monetise games through advertising and its own virtual currency called Papayas. Successes include XCity, which had over 280,000 downloads after only one month.

Flowd Superficially, Flowd is the company trying to 'do a Foursquare' but for music. Its Frequent Fan service lets artists create coupons and offers. Half of the Top 10 DJs in the world are signed up to the service, as well as groups and solo artists. At one show, fans were invited to check-in to win a chance to hang out with the band. Close to ten per cent of the audience checked in.

SoundHound SoundHound’s app permits users to not just record music, but to sing, hum and even speak a lyric fragment, artist or song title into the mic. The latter feature, Hound, has been launched as an app for iOS and Android in May. A landmark deal means Spotify Premium in Europe will be given the option to Play Now in Spotify after identifying a song via SoundHound.

Mobile Roadie This US firm has become synonymous with the DIY music app idea, which enables artists and labels to create bespoke apps quickly without any technical knowledge. It powers thousands, including official artist apps for Madonna, The Beatles and Take That. The apps also let artists sell music, tickets and merchandise.

Spotify Slowly, surely, Spotify is winning over the doubters to its streaming music ideal. It's now firmly in the mainstream, with two million paying customers – adding 500,000 between June and September. Spotify went live in the US in mid-July and partnered with Facebook to make what people are listening part of their status, promoting sharing and purchases.

Omnifone This award-winning UK firm powered back into the headlines again this year with landmark deals to power Sony’s new music service and RIM’s RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger music concept. This charges $4.99 a month service allows users to access 50 tracks of their choice with the option of changing 25 tracks a month.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER:UNITY

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LAST YEAR’S WINNER: SPOTIFY

SERVICES | 15 VIDEO SERVICE PROVIDER

TRANSACTIONS PROVIDER

Saffron

Ericsson IPX

This double ME award winner upped its game in 2011, not least by being bought by handset giant HTC. Inevitably, the firm is now helping to power the new HTC video service, Watch. But it remains a UK-based independent entity and has forged many new partnerships in the last year, with NBC Universal, Microsoft, and Blockbuster, among others. Arguably most successful of all is Media Hub, created for Samsung US. It’s now installed on over ten million devices in total already, including connected TVs, tablets and smartphones.

IPX connects to 150 opcos in 25 countries, serving over 2bn subs. Customers include social network Badoo,, whose members can purchase features for their profile such as ‘Super Powers’ and ‘Rise Up’ with transactions charged to their bill or prepay balance. Other services IPX is working on include SMS vending machines and NFC payments.

SPB SPB’s TV 3.0 has gathered a worldwide audience to its app, which supports streaming mobile TV and video-on-demand on a phone. The app itself is designed to be as much like a TV EPG as possible, with a screenshot of the running TV programme, TV guide information and a picture-in-picture mode.Today SPB TV has more than ten million users worldwide. In B2B terms it markets itself like an app platform, offering broadcasters the opportunity to distribute ad-funded content on mobile devices worldwide.

OpenMarket Last year’s winner made a splash in 2011 with OpenMarket Direct Billing – the only product that let merchants authorise a purchase and reserve funds before delivering content. It identifies bad leads before a transaction occurs. Meanwhile, OpenMarket powered on with big deals, powering billing for Spotify users on 3UK, and supporting top up TV payments for Virgin Media’s TV player app.

Bango Bango clients range from huge pan-national corporates to edgy start-ups. In the former camp is BlackBerry App World, for which Bango provides operator billing in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Then there’s Psonar, a music service enabling users to listen to music tracks for one penny.

QuickPlay

TxtNation

This previous winner powers mobile video offerings from majors such as AT&T, Rogers, Bell Mobility, Sony Pictures, RIM and many others. It now manages more than one million content assets. For AT&T, QuickPlay built the first app allowing consumers to download and watch TV episodes from anywhere. Mobile viewing grew 41 per cent over the last year as a result. Meanwhile the company’s U-verse Mobile offering is now available on more than 20 devices with a library of more than 700 TV shows. This year, QuickPlay snapped up assets from FLO TV to build on its live events offering.

txtNation’s JunglePay enables mobile payments by SMS, phone billing, and credit card via one billing ‘widget’. This can be embedded in a site or app in minutes using a web-based CMS. This year, it launched Transactional SMS, which uses text to pay for physical goods.Overall, the platform boasts over 25 languages and has 7,000 clients.

On Demand Group On Demand Group has a long history in mobile video, having first acquired Mobix Interactive, and then being absorbed into the Seachange organisation. Its Adrenalin platform powers services for operators, OEMs and brands that increasingly converge TV, PC and mobile. The platform now reaches 120m mobile subscribers, delivering over 40,000 hours of viewing a month. Customers include Virgin Media, 3 Italia and more. LAST YEAR’S WINNER: SAFFRON

Text2Pay Text2Pay’s Tap2Pay solution offers Android developers a payment widget with a simple API and library that lets them support micropayments for virtual credits. It reaches 70 countries, and 60 currencies. Tap2Pay does not require credit cards, login or third-party registration – it’s all done via the phone bill.

Onebip Using the phone to pay for online goods is more secure and quicker than credit cards – and opens the market to those who don't have Visa. This year, D2C giant Neomobile entered the space with Onebip, whose service has 2m users in 70 countries and serves partners like Gameforge and Playfish. LAST YEAR’S WINNER: OPENMARKET

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16 | SERVICES WEB PUBLISHING COMPANY MoMac Momac’s Mvolve is a self-service platform enabling partners to build and manage assets. It integrates with existing CRM systems to give operators the chance to personalise services. Content feeds are managed from one place so that the number of service providers has gone from 15 to one, slashing costs.

Antenna A year ago Antenna’s AMP platform was the basis for apps delivered to brands such as Xerox, Coca-Cola, and Hallmark. In February, it acquired Volantis and its mobile web server technology. This allows sites to be built to render optimally across more than 100 mobile browsers. Next up is AMP: Volt, which enables businesses to deploy web apps directly to employees’ devices.

Wapple Wapple offers a number of platforms – Canvas, Architect and Exhibit – that give brands, web agencies, marketing firms and developers the ability to deliver optimised mobile campaigns. Recent projects include microsites for Pantene and Ford Fiesta. Wapple has more than 25,000 global licensed users of its software products. It has also launched a Mobile Developer Program.

Netbiscuits Netbiscuits has a publishing platform that automates the building of mobile sites configured for thousands of devices. It’s adding an HTML5 extension framework to enable autolocation via GPS, animated tickers, and advanced image/ video galleries. It’s also ensuring its sites can handle multi-touch navigation.

Usablenet This US firm’s ‘write once run anywhere’ platform speeds up site development and slashes costs for more than 300 clients worldwide. HTML5 supports dynamic scrolling promotions on the homepage and sub categories that help brands to target users with new offers. Clients include Marks & Spencer and ASOS.

MIG The web publishing division of the giant UK content specialist continues to work wonders for clients. It confirmed that the HTML5 site it built for New Look increased mobile sales by 500 per cent in its last financial quarter. It also managed to land major deals like the one to create Skype's global mobile website.

APP DEVELOPER Golden Gekko Golden Gekko has created more than 600 apps, resulting in over 40 million downloads for its brands such as Coca-Cola, Absolut Vodka, Disney, Perfetti, Universal Pictures, Unilever/Lynx, Vodafone and more. O2Priority Moments, a permission-based geo-targed marketing service, had one million registered users and 40 million vouchers displayed within one month of launch. Golden Gekko employs over 130 people and deploys apps across all major platforms.

Grapple Grapple’s $9m proprietary platform enables the rapid development of native apps across all major OSs. Grapple has created over 200 bespoke apps for more than 60 clients, such as McDonalds, Adidas, Hertz and Jagermeister. Its Premier Inn Mobile app received over 250,000 downloads, and now generates over £2m a month. Grapple also created the first charity donation app – Collection Tin, for Marie Curie Cancer Care – to be accepted by Apple.

Masabi Masabi’s mTicketing software allows travellers to securely purchase and display rail tickets on most mass-market handsets, not just smartphones. The tickets are available for pick up at the station, or displayed in the app as a barcode which can be checked visually or using handheld scanners or at station gates. The firm is working with both thetrainline.com and Atos, and has launched services with UK rail operators including Virgin Trains and Chiltern Railways.

Always On Message This Bristol-based mobile marketing agency claims to have built more apps than any other UK firm. Clients include The Economist, Glenfiddick, Jamie Oliver and Universal, for which it created an app based on the movie Bruno that was downloaded 400,000 times. Services cover research and analysis, concept architecture, user experience, design, development, marketing and measurement.

Yuza Mobile London-based Yuza began as a specialist in music apps, but lately it has gone on to create titles across all genres. It claims its official Kylie app is the first to marry music with social gaming and other gamification elements. It also makes its own products, winning lots of attention for a social movie making app, CineCam, which lets users overlay their own lenses and did 100,000 downloads in a week.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: MIG

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18 | SERVICES ADVERTISING NETWORK Admoda In April, Admoda sent out a spoof release to say it was not raising $25m of VC money. It was a little dig at rivals, and a plug for its organic approach to growth. That approach has worked for the UK firm so far. Admoda serves over 11 billion a month, and does so despite rejecting around 70 per cent of all publisher registrations in order to maintain a high quality of sites and apps. Admoda expanded into the US and India this year.

Adfonic In 2010, Adfonic expanded from UK to Europe; in 2011 it began to target the world. The firm, which launched in 2009, saw revenues grow ten-fold in the last 12 months as its network of publisher sites and apps grew to more than 8,000 and monthly ad requests hit 15 billion. It runs thousands of campaigns for leading brands including Peugeot, Yell, Tesco, Groupon, Google and more. Now, the target is to move outside its European heartland from new offices in New York, San Francisco and Asia Pacific.

KissMyAds It’s only nine months old, but already this Anglo-German ad network has made its mark with some innovative ideas. These include an affiliate ad programme that offers affiliates lifelong payments for all subscriptions generated. KissMyAds offers advertisers revenue models including cost per action and cost per sale using a platform that learns from past performance to increase output for its advertising customers.

InMobi What a year for InMobi. The ad network with roots in India had begun looking beyond its home country in 2009 and saw real progress in 2010. But in 2011 it moved squarely into the front rank of global mobile ad networks, doubling its global network from 7.5 billion to 47.3 billion impressions a month. Next year should be interesting: InMobi raised an eyepopping $200m war chest in September.

Millennial Media Millennial Media was named one of the top 75 fastest growing private companies in America this year. But it’s working hard to break out of its home country and expand elsewhere. Its monthly ad requests now exceed 23 billion, with over 10,000 mobile ad campaigns to date running on 12,000 apps and sites in over 250 territories.

MARKETING COMPANY Somo This London firm was founded in 2009 but already has around 100 employees. It started as a demand-sided ad agency but has grown into a multi-purpose marketing outfit capable of delivering apps, sites, media planning and all-round mobile strategy to brands.

Upstream This Anglo-Greek firm has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the last year, pressing ahead with the international expansion of its Upstreams Marketing Communications Suite (MCS), which powers opt-in loyalty programmes for brands and operators. These campaigns are mostly designed to increase ARPU and reduce churn, and have been pretty successful in both.

Velti Velti offers every kind of mobile marketing support, from messaging to sites to apps to location. Among recent highlights was the National Geographic campaign to promote the film The Last Lions. A mobile site enabled users to watch the trailer, find a movie theatre, enter sweepstakes, download content and post to social networks.

Fetch Media London-based Fetch works with brands including Hotels.com, Sony Music and Paddypower. Its core service is planning and buying mobile ad campaigns for clients across over 70 markets. It was the first UK firm to run iAds, geo targeted display ads and a dynamic music campaign with Shazam.

Out There Media Out There Media has enjoyed remarkable success with its permission-based approach to mobile marketing. At the heart of the firm's activities is its MoBucks platform, which lets brands and operators run opt-in campaigns across multiple mobile channels. It currently has agreements with 40 carriers in Europe and Asia.

Buongiorno Among its many diversifications, Buongiorno’s move into mobile marketing has been one of its most successful. The firm made the most of its direct connections into 130 operators to develop its ‘Recharge & Win’ loyalty programme. This rewards pre-pay customers who receive a code when they buy credit. This enters them into a prize draw. It’s bringing gamification to the top up process.

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: ADMOB

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SERVICES | 19 B2B CONTENT PROVIDER

APP STORE

Mobcast

Appitalism

This London-based firm, co-founded by author Andy McNab, has really cornered the market for mobile books in the B2B space. Mobcast developed its own ‘Any book, Anywhere’ software platform and now enables operators and brands to offer digital books alongside traditional content. It also makes iOS, Android and Java apps to enhance the browse and buy experience, and enable the product to be distributed via third-party app stores.

Which is the biggest app store in the world? Well, by products offered, it’s Appitalism by a mile. According to Netsize, Mobile Stream’s store had 719,715 apps in June – nearly double that of iTunes. But what’s different about Appitalism is its adoption of social and loyalty features. Users earn points when they spend or share on free and paid apps, music, eBooks, games, wallpapers, ringtones and video content.

24MAS

GetJar

This Swedish company went from nowhere to everywhere in 2011, buying up firms in advertising, apps and games. Its aim is to give operators and brands in five continents the ability to offer ad-funded, premium and freemium content from a single platform. It’s especially strong in gaming, having bought THQ Wireless' carrier business and the Irish aggregator Selatra this year. These deals and others have enabled 24Mas to gather customers such as Vodafone, Orange, Tmobile, Virgin, O2, 3, MTV, McDonalds, Adidas, Samsung, Blackberry and Procter & Gamble.

Last year’s winner enjoyed another stellar year, consolidating its position as the go-to store for publishers with an app to promote. GetJar offers app makers a portal through which to distribute demo and full products to users in 200 countries. The innovations come thick and fast from this firm, not least the move to sell the GetJar Gold programme that offers for free premium apps that users would typically pay up to $10 for on other sites.

Livewire Mobile When FoneStarz merged with Livewire Mobile in December last year, the result was a formidable B2B provider with a serious footprint in the US and EMEA. The new entity offers everything from ringbacks to games, video to apps, personalisation to adult across all billing models including a-la-carte, all you can eat, bundled and recurring subscriptions. Livewire saw more than 32m paid downloads and more than 300m page impressions last year. Customers include Vodafone, Vodacom, Orange, Telstra, Cricket, MTN and dozens of other B2B businesses. A significant win this year was the deal to run the 3UK Games Store.

Zed Zed has successfully evolved into a global B2B specialist, having established itself as a giant of the D2C scene in the early noughties. The firm operates in 62 countries with products available to more than 380m potential consumers through agreements with 130 operators and media companies. It’s acquired licences such as Monty Python to bolster its content catalogue while also launching into operator loyalty programmes with its Mobile Intelligence Solutions unit. Zed launched 29 of these promos in 18 countries in 2010. The next project would appear to be US expansion. LAST YEAR’S WINNER: BUONGIORNO

Apple App Store The original and still the one to beat. By July the Apple store had topped 15bn downloads and paid out $2.5bn to iOS app developers since its launch in July 2008. At that point it had a catalogue of more than 425,000 apps – including 100,000 native iPad apps – with an addressable base of 200 million iOS devices. The portal has changed the distribution dynamic of the business and enabled some developers to earn fortunes.

Ovi Never mind the name change and coming platform shifts, Ovi still serves a vast user base and had an excellent 12 months. In August the store passed 9m daily downloads, up from 5m in April. Estimates put the total downloads since the Ovi Store's launch in 2009 to be around 2.1 billion. What’s more, further research found that in Q2 2011, the average app in Nokia’s Ovi Store generated 160 per cent more daily downloads than the average iOS app.

Amazon Appstore Amazon’s move into the Android app market was regarded as a natural supplement to its existing business. But it soon became apparent it was so much more. The store has 10,000 apps and Amazon promotes it heavily. But it’s the popularity of Kindle and the combo of hardware and store that makes Amazon the main challenger to Apple. LAST YEAR’S WINNER: GETJAR

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20 | OPERATORS & HANDSETS HANDSET COMPANY

OPERATOR

HTC

Qtel Group

HTC has enjoyed a meteoric rise since its switch from Windows OEM, creating iconic devices such as the Desire, Sensation and EVO 3D. HTC sold 12.1m smartphones in Q2, up 123.7 per cent on 2010's figure. And still to come, that giant WinPho device, the Titan. Look out too for HTC’s movement in the content space through its Watch, Listen and Read stores.

In the last 18 months, the Qatar-based operator has been on a mission to establish itself as a driving force of mobile innovation in its region. Part of this has been in B2B, where it’s worked with the MEF trade body to establish a Middle Eastern mobile chapter, launched the Group Innovation Exchange 2011 summit during MWC and sponsored consumer attitude research. It’s backed this up with B2C activities such as the unlimited music service Backstage with Universal, Melody, Mazzika and Hungama.

Samsung Samsung has enjoyed a memorable year. It became the biggest handset maker in Europe and its Galaxy S became a genuine challenger to iPhone. Galaxy S II took five months to sell 10m. Meanwhile Samsung pushed ahead with its Samsung Apps store, selling premium Android apps modified for its devices.

Apple In a quiet year for Apple in phones (until October), headlines were made by iPad2. With its second-gen tablet, Apple could sell 40m this year to grab 73 per cent of the market. Android wanabees can’t cope, and they’re being left behind in apps too, with iPad passing the 100,000 mark in September. Apple passed 15bn iOS app downloads and 200m iOS devices sold this summer.

Sony Ericsson The firm added many new devices to its topend Android family, of which the most eyecatching was the Xperia Play – effectively the PlayStation phone. This prompted aggressive moves in gaming, including the signing of exclusives such as Tomb Raider, Lode Runner, FIFA among others. It also re-booted its Walkman brand with Live with Walkman.

RIM For all the corporate shenanigans, RIM’s products remain vastly popular. In Q2 its subs base rose 40 per cent to more than 70m, and it made more than $1bn in revenues from services in Q1. RIM also updated its OS, saw BlackBerry App World pass the 1bn download milestone and launched a BBM music service.

Nokia Interesting times for the Finnish company. It would be foolish to deny its travails, but there’s immense excitement around that bold switch to WinPho, a brave new OS for feature phones, a strident campaign around the imaging capabilities of N8 and a commitment to NFC in marketing and games. LAST YEAR’S WINNER: HTC

Orange Group Orange has a distinguished record in content and this year it has kept the momentum up. In Spring came the trial with Barclaycard of full NFC mobile payments, then a promotion to give WinPho users a free app a day. Later it brought its Deezer deal to the UK. But the big move was arguably the decision to complement the Orange Wednesday cinema promo with a free iTunes movie download every week. Orange Wednesday was also launched in France.

O2 UK O2 has been successful with its opt-in offers programme O2 More, which added four million users in six months to take its September 2011 total to six million. It says 93 per cent of users open messages in under five minutes. The firm also launched O2 Priority Moments, which pushes location-based offers to consumers that download the app.

Vodafone This year Vodafone launched a branded channel in Android Market for its users. The channel showcases news, sport, information and gaming, with regular exclusives and price discounts. Outside of this, Vodafone’s preoccupation seemed to be emerging markets, releasing ultra-cheap handsets and working with Opera to provide speedy browsing.

3UK 3UK won the first two ME operator awards. It’s been caught up, but still pulls out the odd showstopper such as the deal that bundled Spotify ‘free’. In 2011, the headline deals were the ‘Facebook for Every Phone’ app, tweaking Facebook for Java phones. Then there was the collaboration with agency ubinow to develop a 'crowdsourced' app for the Mums on The Go campaign. And 3UK flew against the tide to commit to genuine all-you-can-eat tariffs. LAST YEAR’S WINNER: 02 TELEFONICA

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SPECIAL AWARD | 21 SPECIAL AWARD: OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT ME has been around for nearly seven years. Frightening isn’t it? We’ve seen many big ideas rise and fall and many senior execs emerge and disappear with them. But there are some mobile insiders who endure through all the radical changes in the space, whose commitment to mobile goes above their own personal enrichment. These are the very individuals we aim to recognise in the Outstanding Contribution to Mobile Entertainment award. Every year, this gong brings a fitting climax to the ME Awards. It’s always warmly received, and has prompted some of the most memorable moments in the history of the awards. The first recipient was Bango’s Ray Anderson, recognised for his foresight in creating a cross network billing platform for the first generation of off-deck mobile content providers. Then there was the old mociologist himself Ralph Simon, who bagged the 2007 award. Ralph’s indefatigable commitment to mobile made him an extremely popular winner of the award. He was one of the pioneers of the ringtone boom, helped launch the mobile element of the Live8 concert series and still charges around the world evangelising mobile content on behalf of the MEF. Ralph even broke off an engagement with the US government in Capitol Hill to collect his award in person. In 2008, Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki was recognised with the Outstanding Contribution gong. He’s no longer with Nokia, and things have changed drastically for the Finnish company in the intervening three years. But let’s not forget that Anssi’s Nseries family kickstarted the smartphone revolution that has powered so much of the growth of the last two years. The N95 alone sold over 10 million units. 2009’s winner was Neeraj Roy, who runs India’s largest mobile content company, Hungama. But like the other winners, Neeraj’s marries his commitment to his own organisation with a passion for spreading the word about mobile and furthering a positive agenda for the social benefits of the technology. He demonstrated his immense personal charm on the night when he climbed on to a chair to hug the six foot, seven inch host Greg Davies. Which brings us to last year’s winner, AdMob’s Omar Hamoui. He recorded a video message for the ME Awards crowd as he was stuck in the US working on his new gnome-based project (you know how it is). So Omar sent his erstwhile number two, Russell Buckley, to receive his award. The duo had launched a firm in 2006 that was serving two billion ads a day within five years. And all they had to show for it was $750m. So to 2011. This is not an easy award to choose, although we’re never short of suggestions – usually along the lines of ‘what about my boss?’ Tim Green Executive Editor Mobile Entertainment

2006: Ray Anderson

2007: Ralph Simon

2008: Anssi Vanjoki

2009: Neeraj Roy

2010: Omar Hamoui

“Every year the Outstanding Contribution award brings a fitting climax to the evening, and is always warmly received.”

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: OMAR HAMOUI

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22 | THE JUDGING PROCESS

A word about those judges… Is there anything more contentious than how you decide who wins an award? Here’s how it usually works: you pay to enter and a small team of ‘experts’ eat doughnuts and pore over the submissions for a day. It’s not perfect. And it’s not how we do it. Instead, we make the awards completely free to enter and ask only for a short document detailing successes and innovations. Then the ME team decides internally who makes the shortlists. We then write the supplement you’re holding in your hands, and send it as a PDF to

hundreds of industry execs (see below). They peruse it and then send back their votes. The nominees with the most win. Simples, as they say. We won’t pretend it’s a perfect system. Again, perfect doesn’t exist. But it is pretty democratic and minimises accusations of bias and skulduggery. 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.

Judging forms were sent to execs working at: GFK, 24Mas, Livewire, Cellcom, Sponger, Binbit, T-Mobile, Orange, O2, Vodafone, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, HTC, Google, Facebook, Shazam, Gameloft, UStwo, Zed, Ring Ring, Somo, Microsoft, Mediacells, Metaflow, Fox, Universal, Popcap, EA, Com2Us, GetJar, Camerjam, Skywrite, Arvato, Buongiorno, Flirtomatic, Fjord, MIG, OpenMarket, Txtnation, mBlox, MEF, Minick, Mobile Streams, InMobi, Admoda, Eagle Eye, Blippar, GSMA, Millennial, Adfonic, Twistbox, Cherry Media, Private, Incentivated, Disney, Turner, ESPN, Spotify, 24/7, PayPal, Square, Cellectivity, StrikeAd, Taptu, Ribot, Masabi, Ideaworks, Muzicall, Sofialys, Poynt, Mocospace, 3UK, Grapple, Fetch, BBH, Yuza, GoFresh, Ogilvy, Mobcast, Picsel, Glu, Jesta, Upstream, RIM, Comscore, Nielsen, Vringo, Samsung, Musically, Blyk, Out There, Amdocs, SoundHound, Mach, Qualcomm, Netbiscuits, Wapple, Marvellous, Saffron, Golden Gekko, Palringo, Screen Digest, MMN, Snaptu, Monitise and hundreds more.

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