M U S I C G A M E S V I D E O C O M M U N I T Y A D U LT
NOVEMBER 2008 ISSUE 45
MOBILE CONTENT:
IT’S KOSHER! MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT
Small country, big influence. The Israeli mobile powerhouse in focus on page13...
FOR EVERYONE IN THE MOBILE CONTENT INDUSTRY
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Second Japanese wave breaks over Europe You wait ages for Japanese publishers to make the trip, then two do it at the same time CAPCOM and Namco are leading a fresh charge by Japanese mobile games publishers into Europe. Both companies have re-organised internally and committed fresh resources to the continent, each believing they can achieve a five per cent share of a market that’s
dominated by Glu Mobile, Gameloft, EA Mobile and THQ Wireless. The Japanese firms concede their European market shares are negligible at present, but with uncertainty surrounding the likes of VG Mobile, opportunities certainly exist to grab some ground. Capcom has unified its European and North American mobile
Capcom’s Midori Yuasa believes doing the basics right can deliver results
operations into one management team, with a single consumer-facing brand: Capcom Mobile. Midori Yuasa, president of Capcom Interactive, will lead the team. She is confident that success will come in Europe as it has in the US. She told ME: “We
held back from re-entering the US until 2006 and we were 62nd in the market then. Now we’re around fifth or sixth. We’ve achieved this by doing the basics right – balanced portfolio, good relationships with operators, good distribution. I’m sure we can do the same in Europe.” Namco Mobile is in the middle of a similar transformation, and is set to double its Euro workforce from 25 to 50. The company’s newly-appointed European president Barry O’Neill said: “To date we haven’t been
configured for Europe. Now we’re going to be more proactive in marketing, make sure our handset coverage is at least 85 per cent and work closely with all partners, whether they’re operators, handset companies or D2Cs.” The moves confirm Capcom and Namco as the only major Japanese games publishers with autonomous mobile operations in Europe; Sega and Konami licence their product to Glu, while Taito goes with EA. Nintendo, of course, has yet to do any mobile business at all beyond a few Mario wallpapers in Japan. Although Capcom and Namco will continue to exploit their arcade heritage via franchises such as Pacman, Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Coach (both Namco), Resident Evil and Street Fighter (both Capcom), they are mindful of a need for local IP. Namco clinched the rights to XFactor last month. Meanwhile, Yuasa says 50 per cent of Capcom’s US sales come from titles such as Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
REGULARS: PRODUCTS • JOBS • GAMES RELEASES • CHARTS • SHOWS • MARKETPLACE
NEWS ISSUE 45 November 08
News 1-6 Features 8 Language difficulties
Apple: We’re third biggest vendor
Why mobile ads need their own vocab
11 Shalom mobile! The white hot Israeli market in focus
15 Backs to front Progress in the ringbacks sector
19 Hip-hop on top The rise and rise of Urban World Wireless
21 Out and out management The drift towards managed services
24 One to watch Player One on competing with the big boys
37 Know it all-you-can-eat Comparing data bundles across Europe
29 Happy clients? Nick Lane talks on-device portals
Reference Section 35 Product focus 36 Games spotlight 38 Shows 39 Databox 40 Charts 42 Network subs 53 Discontent
Mobile Entertainment magazine – your direct link to the content biz No other B2B mobile content news source hits more eyeballs. Here's why: Monthly direct-to-desk print circ: 8,012 Monthly digital downloads: 2,236 Online uniques: 37,518 (Google Analytics) Email news digest subscribers: 12,129 Need to get your message across? Work with Mobile Entertainment magazine to maximise your exposure and reach all sectors of the industry, using print, online and events. Contact Tom.Roberts@intentmedia.co.uk for more details or call +44 (0) 1992 535 647
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Jobs heralds ‘remarkable’ success of iPhone and claims Apple is world’s number three handset maker by revenue APPLE’s lifetime iPhone sales reached 13 million after a hugely successful quarter. The electronics giant sold 6.89 million handsets during its fourth quarter ending September 30th. This was substantially above analyst expectations of 4.5 million units, and pushed total sales past 13 million. It’s quite a result – when iPhone was launched in June 2007, Apple targeted ten million sales by the end of 2008. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the performance of iPhone 3G in particular has been “remarkable”, and insisted Apple is now the third-largest handset maker in terms of revenue after Nokia and Samsung. This is primarily due to the relatively high rev shares Apple enjoys on tariffs and content. It generated $4.6 billion from mobile, which represents 39 per cent of the firm’s total revenues. Apple App Store downloads passed the 200 million mark as ME went to press. In quick time iPhone has apparently turned Apple into a mobile company. The 6.89 million units sold represent over half of all its hardware business; Apple sold 2.61 million Mac computers and 11.05 million
Why does Steve Jobs look so pensive? He’s sold 13 million phones in less than 18 months
iPods during Q4. It will be interesting to see what effect the launch of HTC's Google-powered G1 will have when the next quarter’s numbers are released. G1 has now been launched in the US by TMobile for $180 with a twoyear contract and $400 without. It was a predictable pre-release sell-out. In a bid to gather vendor support, Google and its partners in the Open Handset Alliance made the Android source code available to any third party. www.apple.com
Celsius to heat up UK PORTING specialist Mobile Distillery will start a drive into the UK market with two events planned for later this month. The French company will put the focus on its Celsius automated porting suite and its Alembic device database at a dedicated business event and a free developer tutorial. The first will serve as an introduction to the two technologies, with a market overview, demos and partner testimonials. Then, Java
developers will get a chance to see how Celsius can tame handset fragmentation at a free training day. This is part of a global developer roadshow that follows similar sessions in India, Singapore and the US. The fifth version of Celsius will launch shortly. It uses ‘parametric profiling’ to create a single source code to automatically port applications to over 1,000 devices, including Java, BlackBerry, Brew, Windows Mobile and Android.
Meanwhile, Alembic holds device characteristics for over 1,000 handsets too. Date and venue details for the two events will be posted on the Mobile Distillery web site at the URL below. www.mobile-distillery.com.
November 2008 3
NEWS
Tears of a gamer AS he gets older fewer and fewer things make my nine year-old son cry – Spurs losing at football (get used to it, son), a sharp blow on the head, terrifying nightmares. But recently I discovered a new addition to the list: mobile games. Last month I was sent a memory card by PNY Technologies with a link to a free EA Game. FIFA Street Soccer duly downloaded, I sent the boy on his way with my N95. Minutes later he was sobbing his little eyes out. Although a dedicated FIFA fan on PlayStation, he didn’t have a clue which buttons to press and kept clicking on the red button that reverts to the home screen. After helping him three or four “After navigating times to back to the game back through the phone navigate to ‘menu’ then menu three or four ‘applications’ I times I was close to was close to tears myself. tears myself.” Now, in mitigation, it should be stated that my son doesn’t have his own phone so he’s unused to the mobile UI. And I know there are plenty of older gamers who love FIFA on the mobile. But I think the incident does reveal how much mobile nous the industry expects of its consumers. This is a mistake if we want to encourage kids, OAPs and other non-core users into the space. Happily the message does appear to be getting through. I was amused to read a throwaway sentence on an EA press release about making the control system easier in its forthcoming games – this within days of the Green family weeping crisis. And it’s also telling that both Namco and Capcom (each plotting a fresh assault on Europe – see cover story) are now focusing as much on TV-based quiz games as they are on their ‘hardcore’ arcade brands. Maybe next I’ll get the boy a copy of Capcom’s Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old?. But if he beats me, it’ll be his dad and not his phone that’ll give him something to cry about. Tim.Green@intentmedia.co.uk
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Nokia and RIM pointing the finger Two device giants reveal their touchsceen plans WAGS said 2008 would be the year of the ‘crap touchscreen’; could 2009 be the year of the good one? It’s taken Apple’s two giant rivals in the consumer and business sectors – Nokia and BlackBerry respectively – a while to unveil their touchscreen ripostes to the iPhone. But now they have, and it’s making 2009 look like an interesting year. Last month Nokia finally unveiled its great touchscreen hope; the 5800 XpressMusic. A little narrower than the iPhone, it has 8GB of memory, 3.5mm headphone jack and a 3.2 inch display. It will also be available in a Comes With Music edition. The two big claims for the device are a UI based around people/contacts, and a price point of E279, which makes it the cheapest
touchscreen in the world. Days later Blackberry confirmed the Storm – the result of a long-term strategic alliance with Vodafone, which will launch the device exclusively in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand later this month. The BlackBerry Storm offers a tactile 3.25 inch screen, the choice of
using QWERTY, SureType or multi-tap keyboard, portrait/landscape switching when the handset is rotated, plus a 3.2 megapixel camera. The Storm’s big innovation is its ability to permit cut and paste of documents – something not possible on touchscreen phones before. www.rim.com
A Forum free for all Nokia aims to keep developer community sweet with reduced costs and open access to support FORUM Nokia has celebrated ten years of developer support by making its top tier programmes free to join. Membership of invitationonly Forum Nokia Pro used to cost E4,000 a year, but is now free of charge. So is Nokia Pro Accelerator, a new programme set up by Nokia to assist the most elite hand-chosen developers in the market. Other changes include reduction from E800 to E300 in the annual membership fee for the wider Forum Nokia Launchpad programme. The action signals an acceleration in Nokia’s commitment to developer support after buying Symbian in the summer and promptly moving to make the platform free and open
source. Tom Libretto (pictured), VP of Forum Nokia, said: “Forum Nokia continues to honour its commitment to provide world-class developer support, through the new programme, and through broader access and increased
benefits in Forum Nokia Pro and Launchpad.” The handset giant confirmed that the Forum Nokia community now exceeds 3.7 million members (it was two million in 2005). They’re drawn from all corners of the market and increasingly include specialists in web technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. The geographical complexion is changing too. Although EMEA developers still comprise the majority (51 per cent), Asia Pac now contributes 35 per cent, of which India and China supply five per cent each. Collectively, members have created 9,000 commercial S60 apps, 45,000 Java apps, and 6,000 widgets. www.forum.nokia.com
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New client win
Wapple in Renderland
Has the time come for a new kind of ODP? Two companies think so
Wapple reckons it's got 50,000 handsets and software combinations covered within its new rendering service. The firm has combined its Canvas mobile publishing platform with its Exhibit device profiler to create what it says is the most robust mobile web rendering solution in the market.
UIEVOLUTION and Movidilo are preparing the market for ‘on-device portal 2.0’. The two companies believe the ODP is set for a new lease of life after a bad few months; the tech’s reputation suffered when ODP pioneer Action Engine made redundancies and was bought by start-up MobUI. UIE recently launched Blender, a web-based platform through which brands can mobilise existing assets. It’s effectively transferred its publishing expertise from the client to the cloud. But UIE still offers ODPs – and sees potential in apps for companies offering triple play services in PC, mobile and TV. UIE’s CEO Chris Ruff (pictured) said: “We always believed the industry would go towards the network, so we made our apps light. That was a good decision. So was working with brands, when the operators’ waiting rooms were very full.” Meanwhile, Spanish firm Movidilo is weighing up the
content market. It is a subsidiary of Ydilo, which automates call centre enquiries with speech recognition. Movidilo believes this expertise can translate to mobile rich media. Martin Gossling, VP of business development at Movidilo, said: “Our core technlogy makes it easy for people to interact with databases, so I believe we can also develop clients that make it quicker for users to search and browse for content using speech and other forms of UI.” Elsewhere, MobUI will use Action Engine’s technology and contacts to move it into the Java space. It claims to have deals with three brands. www.uievolution.com
Mobile navigation is going places Handset giants keep the accelerator down on mobile SatNav services MOBILE is already eating the digital camera and MP3 player. Will SatNav be next? Yes, if Nokia and Sony Ericsson have anything to do with it. Nokia is expanding the number of devices pre-installed with GPS and is ploughing huge resources into its downloadable Maps navigation products. The firm has concluded a deal with Phones 4U, which will see the UK retailer offering ‘over-thecounter’ Maps licences for £6.99 or a 12-month option for £54.99. Before now, Maps licenses in the UK had to be bought from the device itself. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson expanded its deal with Wayfinder to put SatNav apps into its handsets. Now, phones www.mobile-ent.biz
including the W760 Walkman, C702 and C905 will feature the Wayfinder Navigator app, which enables consumers to download Tele Atlas-based maps for 70 countries. www.sonyericsson.com
MoMac in the picture MoMac is to aggregate and manage downloads of wallpapers and animations on the O2 Active portal. The service will enable customers to personalise graphics and animations, gift image content for others and create customised greetings. As part of the deal MoMac is aggregating all third party content from O2’s existing content partners, including Fonestarz, Disney, Sharp Cards and Mobile Streams.
PlayPhone’s Italy Splash US-based PlayPhone has launched its Splash portal in Italy, following up its June European debut in the UK. The Splash content portal has now gone live with Vodafone and TIM. Users of the web and WAP-based offering will have to pay €5 a week for three items plus one bonus item when joining.
MIA’s Quick release MIA has launched QuickSites, a mobile internet toolkit to help users develop sites inhouse. It features a WYSIWYG interface with drag and drop functionality, compatibility with over 5,000 handsets, the ability to offer videos, ringtones, wallpapers and games from the mobile site, plus full reporting and analysis tools.
Lyrically Gracenote MetroLyrics and Gracenote are to make song lyrics available to mobile web users. The firms agreed to extend authorised lyrics licensing services through MetroLyrics' WAP site. The Gracenote database contains lyrics for more than 500,000 tracks.
Foxy Jamba All change at News Corp New Fox Mobile unit in charge of B2B FIRST News Corp bought all of Jamba and now it’s reorganising it, creating new entity Fox Mobile Group to manage B2B relationships. The media giant snapped up the 49 per cent of the mobile content provider it didn't already own from VeriSign for $200 million. It paid $187 million for a controlling stake in 2007. After a turbulent 18 months in which the senior management all left, News Corp is ushering in a fresh start. Within the new structure, Fox Mobile Group will manage three distinct business units: Fox Mobile Distribution will handle content distribution through various consumer brands. Fox Mobile Entertainment will manage licensing of Fox products to third parties for mobile. Fox Mobile Studios unit will develop original mobile content. The Jamba/Jamster names will continue, but only in a consumer-facing setting. In addition, Fox Mobile also opened an office in
Montanaro: Preparing Fox and Jamba for the new D2C era
Singapore to address Asian markets and develop original made-for-mobile IP. Fox Mobile Group will be led by Jamba CEO Mauro Montanaro. He told ME: “There’s still mileage in the subscription model in developing markets, but we want to build a broader content business based on new demographics and partnerships with brands.” Montanaro also confirmed that Fox Mobile will launch a new consumer-facing brand in the US next year. www.fox.com
Crazy Frog no longer revving THE new Fox in town appears to have killed off a Crazy Frog. Yes, Mauro Montanaro, CEO of newly formed Fox Mobile, has confirmed to ME that the Crazy Frog is no more. “He’s dead. Well, we’re not marketing him any more,” he said. The industry will have mixed feelings about the demise of Jamba’s legendary mobile content amphibian. In 2006, he became a global sensation, and even a chart topping pop star. People hated him, but he did bring recognition to the content market with his revving sounds and his tiny penis. www.jamba.de
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NEWS
Jump ready to pounce Acquisitions and organic growth to put Jump up there with EA, Glu and Gameloft INDIAN games powerhouse Jump believes it can join the top tier of global publishers in 2009 with a mixture of rapid organic growth and acquisitions. The company, which announced itself to the world with the big money purchase of the Manchester United mobile IP earlier this year, has just set up a London office to co-ordinate its European assault, appointing former Infospace and Medio exec Roger Davies as VP for Europe. Jump also plans to set up operations in Asia Pacific (Singapore) by early next quarter, and will continue recruiting in the US,
Reliance ADA group, one of India’s top private business groups, with a market capitalisation of $47 billion. Salil Bhargava, CEO, Jump Games, said: “With our new business channels we will now have a presence locally in key international markets. We are committed to scaling our global operations as well as aggressively bidding for local game licenses.” Without doubt, the immediate focus of the expanded operation will be the Manchester United brand, with WORD IT! the first title to emerge from the agreement.
where it has already established a presence in Chicago headed by Amit Khanduja. The firm is also in the market for acquisitions – especially given the financial uncertainty in Western markets. It certainly has the cash. Jump is a division of
Jump CEO Salil Bhargava is prepping Euro assault
www.jumpgames.co.in
Buongiorno’s Thumb a lift in Europe African Orange BUONGIORNO has deepened its commitment to emerging markets in a comprehensive agreement with Orange Africa. The Italian firm will fully manage the Orange World
content portals in the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Senegal and RCA. It will provide technological, operational and marketing expertise, as well as applications and content. The portals will offer local African music, news, sport and graphics, from both Buongiorno’s own catalogue and third-party providers. Buongiorno CEO Andrea Casalinin said: “As we are witnessing a time of consolidation in the African Telecom sector, business partners such as Buongiorno that can offer economies of scale due to their size, are very well positioned to capture the opportunity of this emerging market.” With this move, Buongiorno consolidates its position as a B2B outsourcing partner in addition to operating familiar D2C services like Blinko and the Bing social network.
UK distributor Thumbstar Games is targeting North American and Asia-Pac publishers that want to get a foothold in Europe. The Liverpool-based start-up, which was launched in August, already has a reach comprising 25
operators and portals. It believes the consolidating games market, and recent upheaval in the aggregator sector, make now a good time to launch into distribution. Martin Kitney, COO of Thumbstar, said: “We feel
there’s strong demand for an open and honest distributor that can give partners the focus they need in terms of marketing, reviews and reporting. We can provide that, and that’s why we launched.”
www.thumbstargames.com
iPlayer protection The BBC has tightened up security on iPlayer, as the hugely popular PC service goes mobile. It’s signed with CoreMedia, CLMA and Intertrust to protect mobile programme downloads. The
move means that the app can use OMA DRM 2.0 compliant measures to protect content downloaded to handsets. The BBC is already bundling iPlayer with Nokia N96 handsets shipping in the
UK, but has rubber-stamped relationships with the DRM specialists for a wider roll out of the service. iPlayer TV programmes are available for download to the N96 for seven days after broadcast. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
www.buongiorno.com
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IPHONE ADS
Uniquely mobile Every new media channel borrows ad formats from others before finding its own voice. Now, thanks to iPhone, mobile is learning to speak for itself, says Admob’s Russell Buckley... t the Mobile Web Europe conference, I attempted a re-enactment of the very first TV advertisement ever shown, to the ‘intentional’ boredom of the audience, I’m sure. Here’s why. The first TV ad was for the Bulova watch company, which paid $9 for a slot before a baseball game in 1941. It went like this: The audience is shown a static picture for 10 seconds. A deep voice boomed really slowly: “America… runs… on… Bulova… time.” The picture is shown again in silence for five more painful seconds. Fade back to the game. Riveting. It didn’t tax my acting skills very much, but you should have heard my American accent. When a new media channel emerges, it tends to borrow from media that came before it. Only later does it develop into a style and format that is recognisably unique. The Bulova ad borrowed from radio, and singularly failed to exploit TV’s potential. And yet, within a decade or so, TV ads had become a virtual art form. So it will be with mobile. Until now, ads on mobile have been borrowed from PC banners and shrunk to a smaller screen. Nothing wrong with that per se; the technique has proved hugely successful. But we need to develop our own formats. As someone with a vested interest in the evolution of the mobile ad medium, I’ve been waiting for this moment to come along. Well, I think it’s arrived – thanks to the iPhone. The superb UI of the device, combined with fixed rate data and plain good timing has driven vast amounts of traffic. Not just to our network, though. The search company JumpTap recently said that while the iPhone accounted for two per cent of all handsets, it drove 50 per cent of all mobile searches. Such results explain why we launched a series of ad formats just for iPhone a
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few weeks ago. These are uniquely mobile, allowing users to touch a banner to watch a movie trailer, or go to the Apple App Store, or click to call. Early results show phenomenal promise in terms of interaction with the consumer too, who are voting with their fingers. Some brands are already creating imaginative ad-funded mobile apps that really exploit mobile’s uniqueness across all handsets. Golden Gekko’s Lynx deodorant mobile app (part of BBH’s award winning campaign), gave its young male users a bunch of sound effects they could use to amuse women. Later, the brand launched a mobile app replicating the farting chipmunk – and an amazing 500,000 people downloaded it. See, downloads can be measured too. Golden Gekko also found that many consumers were happy to sideload these apps to their phones. This isn’t just a result of the App Store, although I suspect this factor will popularise the method even more. Having said that, I still believe it’s preferable to run ads on the mobile web: apps only have a place when you really can’t achieve the same effect from browsing. It’s still too early to say if the iPhone will be a long-term winner, or just a very important influencer of the market. But it’s certainly a major milestone in the fields of mobile advertising and search.
Apple’s iPhone picks up where midinnings wristwatch ads left off...
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ISRAEL PROFILE
Cradle of
mobilisation 7.3 million people, 9.2 million mobile subs and a base of companies that helped to mould the industry we know today. What’s so special about Israel? Tim Green endeavours to find out... UROPEAN football fans don’t think twice about seeing Israel compete in the Euro Championship qualifiers. It always has. Yet Syria doesn’t. Neither does Lebanon – and they’re both closer. But then Israel is different. Politically, economically and culturally it behaves more like a European country than its close neighbours. And in mobile, it’s a genuine global powerhouse, home to some of the industry’s most innovative and influential companies. Israel has produced game changing companies in Amdocs (billing), Comverse (networks), M-Systems (memory cards), Infogin (transcoding), Celltick (idle screen)
E
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and many more (see box). According to Invest In Israel, the country had 70 companies listed on the Nasdaq in 2006 – more than any other country apart from the US. This from a 60 year-old country of
Israel’s Chief Scientist’s Office ploughs $400 million into R&D annually.
7.3 million people. So what is it about Israel that makes it such a force in mobile. The military is one factor. Israel’s brightest all get fasttracked into the military’s technology operation when they do national service. And this support is complemented by government initiatives such as the $400 million provided annually by the Chief Scientist’s Office. Indeed, in 2007, it’s estimated that 462 Israeli high-tech companies raised $1.76 billion from local and foreign VCs. Such factors act as a cradle for a entrepreneurial spirit that is abundant in a population of immigrant Jewish Europeans, Americans and Russians.
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ISRAEL PROFILE
And, of course, success breeds success, so many of the people employed by Amdocs, Comverse and the rest go on to create their own start-ups. Meanwhile, the relatively small size of the domestic opportunity forces a global outlook on these nascent businesses. Eyal Reshef, CEO of the Israel Mobile Association, certainly believes this. He says: “I recently met a German start-up and everything it did was focused on the German market. Israeli companies can’t do this, so they think big and global from the beginning.” Having said that, the Israeli mobile market can be a fine test bed for interesting content ideas. It’s home to three evenly matched operators in Cellcom, Orange and Pelephone, each running different network types (TDMA, GSM and CDMA2000 respectively). However, 35 per cent of subscribers use 3G and 70 per cent are post-paid, which points to a population that’s affluent and open to rich mobile services. This consumer advancement is
The local mobile market is a fine test bed for interesting content ideas.
Media Layers’ marketing VP Assaf Katan (left) and Israel Mobile Association CEO Eyal Reshef (right) say a global outlook is essential for local companies
why Cellcom is now embarking on a major initiative to prepare itself for a converged communications era. It’s working on various ideas to maximise its ‘three screen’ offer across web, mobile and TV, such as its video-ondemand joint venture with Blockbuster Digital. Adi Cohen, VP of marketing at Cellcom, says: “We’re fortunate to have a population that’s very advanced while being locally oriented.” Mobile advertising is a particular focus for Cellcom, which launched a service called ‘Time Is Money’ in September that
gives free minutes to consumers that watch ads on a PC. It also signed a deal with local specialist Media Layers to use the latter’s SMART system to power ‘Time Is Money’ and to insert ads in real time into all its rich media content channels. SMART is a fine example of Israeli
innovation, using predictive modelling tools to deliver ads in real time. This gives brands and operators the kind of targeting possibilities that are the holy grail of mobile advertising. It’s already being used by German content distributor Arvato Mobile. Assaf Katan, VP of marketing and business development at Media Layers, says: “SMART can use hundreds of parameters to target ads according to user profile, usage history, content and live parameters. It can also use learning algorithms to fine tune the targeting of a campaign in real-time. This is what advertisers want, and the fact that it’s done in real time reduces the costs involved. In one project we used an operator’s existing database with our technology and increased reponse rates by three and a half times.” The innovative spirit of the Israeli operators is unsurprising in a market with relatively small off-portal sector. Although the D2C space is promising enough for one of its protagonists Unicell to
Facts and operator stats THERE are 7.3 people in Israel, but over nine million subscribers. And there are four operators covering every possible network standard from iDEN to UMTS. It’s a dynamic and competitive market alright. Here are the basics: The subscriber base in Israel will increase from 9.18 million in 2008 to 9.70 million in 2010. In 2010, the average ARPU in Israel will be $40.52 per month, with Partner’s $45.83 ARPU the highest in the Middle East. As of September 2006, there were 70 Israeli companies on the US Nasdaq. In 2007, 462 Israeli high-tech companies raised $1.76 billion from local and foreign VCs. Operator Pelephone Cellcom Orange (Partner) MIRS Source: Invest In Israel
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Network type CDMA2000 (UMTS from 2009) TDMA, GSM and UMTS GSM and UMTS iDEN ESMR
Subs (millions) 2.5 3.1 2.86 0.41
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ISRAEL PROFILE
acquire rival TippCom for around $2 million last year, most observers give the on-portal market 98 per cent of all content revenues in Israel. This at least makes the territory easy to manage for mobile entertainment publishers. In games, for example, Glu and Gameloft go direct into the carriers, while most of the rest work with local aggregator RayFusion, which says Israelis buy around 350,000 game downloads a month. RayFusion was acquired in September by Connect2Media, the
without being presented with pages that don’t work on the small screen. The transcoding approach has captured the imagination of operators, many of which have used it as the basis of ad campaigns alerting their subscribers to the possibility of visiting sites such as YouTube from the handset. In September, Infogin closed a huge deal with Telefonica and now claims over 20 million people are served web pages from its platform globally on a daily basis.
Israelis buy around 350,000 mobile game downloads from operator and off-deck portals each month. recently formed content publisher. Can the deal help RayFusion to forge operator deals beyond the Middle East and into EMEA, Asian and Latin America? Well, it wouldn’t be the first Israeli firm to do so. Take InfoGin for example. The company has almost singlehandedly changed the way operators approach the mobile internet by offering a transcoding solution called the Intelligent Mobile Platform. Quite simply, the solution performs real time ‘web to mobile’ content adaptation, so that users can surf the regular web
Infogin is now firmly in the front ranks of Israeli companies on the world stage. Maybe, like memory specialist M-Systems (bought for $1.6 billion by SanDisk in 2006) it will become a target for acquisition. Maybe it will flourish independently. Either way, the innovation will continue because the entrepreneurial spirit is apparently hardwired into the Israeli DNA. M-Systems itself is a case in point. Shortly after its purchase, founder Dov Moran launched a new company called Modu to develop the idea of a tiny mobile handset which slots inside other consumer devices to give them connectivity. Crazy idea. But then so was USB when Moran invented that; Modu was the undoubted hit of last year’s Mobile World Congress.
Israeli content specialists Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Core business Adamind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inter-operability solutions Amdocs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Billing Amobee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile ad platform BeeContent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content aggregation/D2C CellAdmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UGC Celltick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ticker-based information Clip in Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rich media messaging Chooz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Original made-for-mobile IP Comverse . . . . . . . Network services (messaging, ringbacks, avatars) eBiz.mobility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Billing Emblaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Handsets Emoze. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Push-email Hingi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrated broadcast/music downloads Infogin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Web to mobile transcoding Inner-Active . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Embedded content ads Logia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content management Media Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile advertising Mobilitec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content delivery platform Mobixell Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content delivery systems Modu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Devices M-Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SIMs and storage Nareos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P2P content services Olista . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data services efficiency management Pontis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile personalisation platform Pudding Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ad-funded content services Radvision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Video services Siano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile TV chips Spin3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gambling Targetise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile search and discovery Tippcom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content aggregation/D2C Unicell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content aggregation/D2C Unipier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content management systems Vollee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile game developer Vringo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Video ringbacks Zlango . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Messaging/graphics 777 mobile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gambling
Innovation nation: three to watch eBiz This transactions specialist set out to create an m-billing solution that would make trusted small payments available to the millions of subscribers unwilling or unable to use credit cards. Its OneTouch platform works across mobile and web, and offers participating vendors a 77 per cent revenue share compared with around 45 to 55 per cent for PSMS. eBiz is now looking to establish OneTouch as a
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global brand. It has already been deployed by numerous third parties and is available from all stores affiliated to France’s MediaPlazza.
Logia Mobile Logia Mobile is well-known in the Israeli market for being the official manager the Cellcom content portal, but it also has deals outside its home country, with Vodafone and Airtel. Logia is part
of a group that comprises fellow mobile units such as Volas (video managed services) Streetunes (D2C content), TheCellFreak (adfunded content portal), 8hands (social networking client) and more. The company is currently on a new business drive across international markets.
Vringo Vringo has been trying to make video ringbacks work since it
launched in 2006. It recently tweaked its business model to base the service less around licensed content than a community ethos in which users share video, images and content – with friends when they call. Vringo is fuelling the community with licensed IP from TV, video and music, which it turns into ‘vringos’. Early to say whether it will work, but it’s making a lot of noise all over the world.
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RINGBACK TONES
Answering back? That ringbacks don’t sell in Europe is one of the great clichés of the content business. Is it true? And can moving the market off-portal change things? Tim Green delved further… very astute man (actually it was Suds Sarronwala from Soundbuzz) once told me that all this talk of mobile personalisation products is a bit ill-conceived. Personalisation is what we do when we decide what shortcuts to put on our home screens. What we’re really doing when we buy a ringtone or a wallpaper is not personalisation, but self-expression. ‘This is who I am,’ our phones cry out. ‘Please identify with me’. He’s right, of course. And the ultimate in self-expression has to be the ringback tone. Here’s a product that you, the consumer, never even consume yourself. Only your friends and acquaintances get to enjoy it. Although, if your chosen tune is Ronan Keating or Dido, I hesitate to use the word ‘enjoy’. Ringbacks have been around since 2002 when the Korean carrier SK Telecom rolled out the world’s first service. Within nine months it had six million customers. Today, ringbacks have been launched all over the world and a thriving ‘new’ market segment has been established. According to IDC, the inherent advantages of the ringback tone will take its market value past the ringtone in 2010. So what are these inherent advantages? Here are the four big ones:
A
No storage issues A ringback is network-centric so the user doesn’t have to worry about the storage capacity of a phone. No piracy For the same reasons of networkcentricity, operators don’t have to worry about users making their own tones or nicking them. No handset de-fragmentation Unlike so many other mobile content products, ringbacks can be offered by and heard on any device. Personalisation options Customers can change their tones for different times of day and even tweak them for individual callers. What an opportunity. But, as with most mobile services, it’s not that simple. A ringback requires a service provider to hijack the network, intercept a call, inject the tone and cut it as soon as the call is connected. That said, providers like Comverse, WiderThan and others should have the process nailed by now. Trickier, perhaps, are business models. A simple subscription can work, but viable alternatives include paying for a minimum number of tracks and so on. Then there’s the hairy old marketing issue. After all these years, many endusers still
After all these years, many endusers still don’t know what a ringback is.
don’t know what a ringback is, and the industry doesn’t help by calling them callertunes, color rings, answertones and so on. So how do you explain what the offer is? IMI Mobile, which supplies ringbacks for Indian operator BSNL among others, says it has had great success with simple outbound SMS marketing. It also promotes from within the service itself, providing users with the option to acquire the ringback they’re listening to by pressing ‘*’. Vish Alluri, CEO of IMI Mobile, says: “It’s a very good way of marketing the service and generating new subscribers, but you do have to be careful. We’ve found that some users get confused and press star anyway, then
Alicia Keys’ song No One sold 500,000 ringbacks in the US alone
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November 2008 17
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RINGBACK TONES
Ringback tone pioneers (left to right): OnMobile’s Arvind Rao, Muzicall’s Richard Jackson and IMI Mobile’s Vish Alluri
are shocked to find that they’ve paid for something. So not every operator wants this option.” Of course, ringbacks are no longer just about entertainment. The captive audience element has also alerted advertisers to the space. Also in India, local provider OnMobile recently launched Ad RingBack (AdRBT) Tones. They present callers with audio ads, personalised to their profile. Intriguingly, the platform allows users to respond to the ad with a key press, although one wonders who would interrupt a call to do so. Arvind Rao, CEO of OnMobile, says: “AdRBT is a disruptive evolution in
Euro penetration is two per cent, against up to 45 per cent in Korea. Why? Richard Jackson, business development director of Muzicall, has some ideas. “It’s not cultural, for a start” he says, dismissing a commonly held belief that Europeans and Americans have some anthropological resistance. “It’s more to do with our fragmented market – lots of networks, lots of languages, operators that switch between building local then global services then back again.” Jackson believes the market will never flourish while operators and service providers remain in charge of
Ringbacks will never flourish while operators and service providers remain in charge of the store. mobile advertising which so far has been limited to SMS or WAP banners. With users receiving an average of ten calls per day, advertisers can reach a large and diverse audience”. Although the market’s powerhouse remains in Asia, there have been some successes in the West too. Virgin Mobile USA recently confirmed that its service, powered by LiveWire Mobile, quickly gathered over 100,000 subscribers paying $1.49 a month for access. Critically, the service was made flexible so users can designate individual tracks for friends. In August, LiveWire added the ability to purchase ringback bundles that play in rotation, charging $3.50 per month on top of the monthly fee. Despite these isolated successes, the anecdotal evidence suggests that ringbacks are yet to take off fully in the West. Observers suggest average
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the store. What’s needed, he contends, is an intermediary that can take different cross-network offerings to expert consumer-facing brands, be they D2C firms like Zed and Buongiorno or even enterprises. Jackson adds: “Operators are good at tariffs; they’re not so good at services. Despite their efforts, 70 per cent of content sold in Europe is offdeck. Operators need to start working with off-portal specialists.” Muzicall plans to help them. It already works with Vodafone, and claims to have more deals imminent. Its strategy appears to be part of a shift that already has momentum. Earlier this year, Jamba launched a service called Fun Broker, powered by ringback powerhouse Comverse, and offered via T-Mobile Germany. Just a few years ago it seemed counter-intuitive that D2C companies could ever offering ringbacks. Now, it looks inevitable.
Everyone and No One - a US success story THE biggest selling ringback in Western markets is Alicia Keys’ No One, which sold 500,000 in the US alone. Much of its success was due to the imaginative retailing of Verizon, which uniquely bundles music services. When users buy a ringtone they’re offered the ringback tone too. Service provider RealNetworks/WiderThan says this kind of bundling can boost sales by a third.
Ringback volume going up AS EVER, the analysts disagree on the detail, but the story is broadly the same: ringbacks are getting louder. While ringtones continue to be squeezed and the full-track mobile market struggles to establish itself, ringbacks remain the significant growth area in mobile music. Consumer behaviour monitor M:Metrics has reported that the number of users purchasing a ringback increased 69 per cent in the year to February 2008, while ringtones and wallpapers remained flat. This enthusiasm has no doubt informed the prediction of MultiMedia Intelligence, which believes the market will triple to $4.7 billion by 2012.
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Global leaders in mobile entertainment
URBAN CONTENT
Rap portal
The hip-hop ‘community’ loves mobile content – something Urban World Wireless spotted first. Tim Green spoke to its founder Mike Johns... the line.’ That went triple platinum for us.
n the highly corporate world of mobile content, what a rare delight it is to hear a successful CEO ascribing his considerable success to pimps, bitches and hos. No, Andrew Bud hasn’t had a personality-changing bump on the head. This is Mike Johns, founder of Urban World Wireless. Johns almost single-handedly created the market in ‘urban’, predominantly AfricanAmerican targeted, mobile entertainment when he launched the firm in 2001. Today, Urban World Wireless remains a potent force in the US and beyond. It even has a spin-off digital label, Udubmusic….
I
How did it all start? I’d been working for a hip hop magazine called Rap Page, and it seemed obvious to me that the best way to get news to fans was via the phone. Kids in urban areas couldn’t afford PCs and only had access to email if they were in college. At the time, lots of rappers were keen on getting blinged up with mobile – we had front covers where they’d be using pagers and so on, so we started to send out alerts to those Motorola two-way pagers that everyone was using back then. It just grew real fast, and we ended up with a big database – 50,000 by 2003. What was your business plan? There was no business plan! We never gave a thought to monetising the service. We just wanted to get the news out.
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Have you noticed a squeeze on ringtone sales? Oh yeah, the ringtone and voicetone market has definitely been damaged. No doubt about that. But it’s just moved us in new directions. We launched a digital music label called Udubmusic because we know so many artists who want to move in this direction. They trust us to help them. We’ll offer ringtones, fulltracks, videos… and we already have 60 artists signed up. The way the market is changing has also led us to re-invent what we did at the start, with the news service. We’re now live on the Apple App store with Udub news, but it’s ad-funded and features richer content like video clips. Top: Udubmusic act 40glocc. Bottom: Urban World CEO Mike Johns (left) with DJ Juice
How did you recruit subscribers? Mostly word of mouth. We signed up members in person. We’d even sign up their whole contacts list at the same time. Meanwhile, radio stations were catching on to what we were doing and they’d read out our news and plug what we were doing. How did this turn into a commercial service? Well, the record companies saw that we had valuable community and they started adding text tags to our news round-ups. Soon we had live events advertising too, and the thing just started to grow. By 2001, the ringtone
market was taking off and we began to record our own voicetones. We got lots of distribution, but the big deal for us was when T-Mobile replaced the Motorola pager with the Sidekick, which became a seriously popular phone with our community. Although everything we did was created in-house, soon the labels started using us to distribute their content too. What were the highlights of that phase? We sold this ‘Pimptone’ product by the comedian Katt Williams where he would shout: ‘You have a ho on
So you’ve kind of come full circle. I have big ambitions for Urban World in the news space. During Hurricane Katrina it was clear AfricanAmericans don’t have a news service that speaks to them. I want to take our news all over the world, using entertainment as the candy. Tell us about ‘Google me, bitch’. That was just a phrase we started using, so we had some t-shirts printed and took them to CTIA. Our attorneys weren’t sure about it, but everyone wanted one – even Google people. I was in the UK recently and sent one to the Queen. I never found out whether she wore it.
November 2008 21
MANAGED SERVICES
Platform too Selling entertainment seemed like a great idea in 2002, when operator portals were born. But it was so hard. Tim Green investigates how and why the carriers are handing over the keys to their storefronts… here’s one theory of the universe which proposes that the big bang is followed by a big crunch, when all matter comes back together, only to be followed by another big bang and so on for perpetuity. Makes your head spin, doesn’t it? Well, you can argue a similar pattern is being produced by that other great cosmic force – the mobile operator. First it swells its own operation by trying to build teams around content services, then it realises how unwieldy and wasteful it all is, so it trims down and outsources. Later it re-considers surrendering all that power to partners and brings everything inhouse again. This pattern has been pursued to varying levels by the networks since the first WAP portals appeared in 2002. Back then, content was perceived as the next big growth area after voice and text topped out. It was a nice idea. But, as we all know, data services can be horribly difficult to build and sustain when your expertise is in network infrastructure, billing and High Street retail. All sorts of new challenges present themselves, such as: how to respond to failed downloads; how to give refunds; how to bill for ‘events’ rather than purchases; subscriptions; refunds; customer care; marketing. On and on it goes. It’s not easy when your expertise is in selling minutes. So on came the outsourcing lightbulb. Let someone else do the heavy lifting for a fee or, even better, a revenue share. This first wave of contracting out was largely based on technical needs, with companies like Ericsson stepping in to run networks for companies like Hutchison 3G. But in 2006 a landmark was reached when T-Mobile International outsourced its entire premium content business to Qpass (since bought by Amdocs). Qpass had already built T-Mobile’s content delivery platform, but this deal added
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November 2008
Clockwise from top: Mobile Interactive Group’s Anthony Nelson, James Patmore of Amdocs and Graham Rivers of WIN
its ‘Digital Commerce Solution’ to the mix, effectively ceding day-to-day control of content aggregation, delivery and merchandising for the tzones portal. A flurry of similar deals soon followed, such as when Virgin UK appointed Infospace to provide media downloads and power all mobile data services and transactions. These
providers began launching branded platform ‘products’ to capitalise on the new thinking. Germany’s Materna, for example, developed MACS as a management tool for handling all manner of entertainment services. It is still being used by O2, Sunrise and others. In parallel with this infrastructural shift, operators were also appointing
third parties to handle some content aggregation too. Thus companies such as Player X, AMS and Selatra became the intermediaries for all non-direct games accounts, just as Buongiorno and Jamba handled ringtones and Fonestarz did wallpapers. Inevitably the role of these partners grew over time to encompass more technical issues. A good example of this comes from Filmnight, which was launched to supply movie-related content into operators. In 2006 it launched a spinoff agency, Saffron, to provide a managed platform not just to carriers but to all brands looking at mobile. It quickly picked up contracts such the management of VoD for T-Mobile. And Saffron proved its worth when it deepened the service to allow, for example, the pausing of video on mobile and its resumption on a PC. It can be argued that this kind of innovation happens faster and more frequently when a specialist is in charge than when such things are left to operators. Sven Halling, VP of marketing at End2End Content Services, which works with Vodafone, Orange and others on gaming services, sees this happening more and more. He says: “It’s interesting that many of our existing customers that previously only wanted the platform are asking us to take on more responsibility for the complete service, including sourcing, retailing and even marketing.” This kind of thinking led O2 to hand the keys to its gaming store to Player X, which built the 100% Mobile service and filled it with all kinds of retail flourish, like flexible pricing and try before you buy. But while the move towards outsourcing vertical content offerings may drive sales in these individual ‘silos’, it’s not the perfect answer. Why? Because consumers don’t always shop by product type. If you like Coldplay, chances are you’d prefer all your Chris Martin content
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Opera to keys to rs are hand in t with in heir conten g over the t king creasin do g freq uency m’s
in one place. Having a different provider managing videos, ringtones, screensavers can preclude this. James Patmore, VP of the ACE Division (EMEA) at Amdocs, says: “The vertical model organised around content silos creates two major problems. Firstly it leads to a disjointed customer experience, requiring the customer to visit multiple storefronts in search of content. These storefronts do not necessarily share the same look and feel, resulting in customer confusion and frustration. Secondly, it prevents operators from employing powerful tools like cross-media bundling and recommendations. And yet these methods are used by the same online retailers that the operators often compete with.” The desire to address these issues can lead to a second layer of outsourcing. This occurred recently when MoMac was recruited by O2 and Sony BMG to build mobile micro-sites around artists such as The Ting Tings and The Script. Sham Careem, MD of MoMac UK, says: “O2 already uses Napster for music, Mobix for video and Buongiorno for ringtones, so we had to build a platform to sit on top of theirs in order to offer bundles around artists from one storefront.” The decision by Sony BMG to go ahead with its own mini portals indicates the next big growth area in outsourcing: consumer brands. With data prices falling and handset screens becoming brighter, media companies are looking hard at mobile sites. And the last thing they want is to manage them. Meanwhile, operators grow more attuned to the idea of forwarding traffic to these services from their portals. Michael Tomlins, commercial director of Infomedia, which works with Tesco, NME, Man Utd and more, says: “We run microsites on O2 and Orange. The operators just link to them and know that we’ll keep the content refreshed, merchandised and proactively retailed to ensure the revenues are maximised. As a result we can upload content and publish it real time on the brand owner’s D2C site as well as on Orange and O2.” For all the progress made with outsourcing, there’s always the risk that operators will panic, do a ‘big
crunch’ and bring content in-house again. However, most specialists believe the chances are slim. WIN works with TMobile Germany, AOL, Sony Ericsson Play Now and others. Its CEO Graham Rivers says: “It could happen, but it’s unlikely. T-Mobile blew a huge sum on t-zones, which it will never get back. I think operators recognise they can’t be as dynamic and responsive as specialists. And with voice revenues falling, they have to look at cost reduction.” And so we come back to that eternal question: is the operator a
dumb pipe? Most people interviewed for this feature seemed to agree with the emerging consensus that, as long as they have a CRM and billing relationship with customers they will never be ‘dumb’, even if they do have to forget about being entertainment companies. Anthony Nelson, business development director at MIG, whose MIDAS platform manages the portals of O2, ITV and Five, summed up the general feeling: “The internet does not have barriers and soon the mobile operator won’t either. But the thing to remember is that mobile operators will always have strong micro-billing relationships with their customers, which means they can easily launch services with a billing wrap around it.”
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PLAYER ONE Q&A
Wow what a player Games publisher Player One is gunning for the US and iPhone, with serious backup in the form of THQ Wireless. ME sat down with MD Pete Russell… Paint us a picture of Player One as 2008 draws to a close… During the last two years we’ve been working hard to establish the franchises that deliver for us, and that’s been doubly difficult considering we operate in the sports vertical. But I believe we’ve got ourselves to the point where we know what our winning line-up is. And, as a publisher, we’re very lucky to have a long-term development agreement in place with Shadowlight Games, which is an incredibly accomplished studio. Our investment in them is now bearing fruit.
music in terms of pushing it into the mass market. But the meritocracy of the App Store and Apple’s own quality controls mean that content has to be top notch. We started our iPhone roadmap back in March and we’ve got a launch schedule of eight games over the next three or four months, including Ernie Els, Bass Fishing Mania, Table Tennis, Pokermillion, Ronnie O’Sullivan Snooker and PDC Darts. The other part of where we think the market’s going is Wii Ware, Xbox Live Arcade and other digital
We are in control of our roadmap... we know our core competencies and we have nailed our colours to the mast. How can a company like Player One flourish alongside huge multinational rivals? For starters we’re in control of our roadmap and committed to launching 20 games in 2009, having published 13 so far this year. The industry is not the Wild West it once was. The top publishers are all about market share. Below that there a group of companies that I think are involved in too many areas by trying to combine publishing with distribution and aggregation. Then you have companies like Player One. We know our core competencies and we’ve nailed our colours to the mast. The opportunity is not just flogging a £5 game on an operator portal. If you have a successful franchise, you have to ask what else can you do with it. What are these opportunities? iPhone is clearly one possible destination and by luck or by judgement I think that store is going to do for games what it did for digital 24
November 2008
distribution channels. For a smaller publisher like us it’s a big opportunity. The creative processes for an iPhone and Xbox game are not dissimilar. Xbox is certainly no more arduous, again as long as the quality is there for the game to rise above the rest. Put simply, mobile will always be our main focus, but we’ll head off into different areas when we have franchises that we think will work. Tell us about your distribution agreement with THQ Wireless… That arrangement takes Player One from being a predominantly UKfocused publisher to sending our products out around the world. It makes our pitch to licensors even more compelling. Suddenly we can promise much wider geographical reach. We’ve launched three games already with THQ in the US and by the middle of next year we’ll have launched another eight. That’s eight more US releases than we’ve ever had before without increasing our cost base.
Do you think more publishers will be entering similar partnerships? I think publishers outside of the top tier will have to follow a similar route. The challenge to everyone is how to squeeze all kinds of genres into a portfolio without becoming an aggregator – it’s really difficult to do without losing identity. The flipside
for us is trying to sell prducts we specialise in – sports – to operators who sometimes don’t understand them. THQ Wireless is great as it knows our own products as well as it knows its own. In fact I’d like to think it’s absolutely a complementary relationship. I think 2009 is going to be a big year for both of us. www.mobile-ent.biz
DATA TARIFFS
Tariffying news Consumers all over Europe are being cured of billshock thanks to flat rate data packages. But, says a new Netsize report, the cost of browsing depends very much on where you live… he approach of operators to mobile data charging may well be the most debated and vexatious of all industry subjects. Happily, the barrier that onerous data pricing erected in front of both consumers and the content business is finally coming down. In the last 18 months, most European operators have launched all-you-can-eat plans that reduce prices for users and remove the fear
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encouraging to see that virtually all networks have addressed the issue. Against this, wild differences between countries still exist – even between operators in the same country. The Italians get hit hardest. Most of the operators still don’t offer flatrate packages, choosing instead to charge by time. At TIM the most expensive monthly tariff costs €44, while at Vodafone an hour’s data use can cost €6. Meanwhile, prices for a
The charts below show how much it costs (in euros) to download 1MB of data in small, medium and big packages. Cheapest and most expensive shown for each country
Small packages
It’s encouraging to see that nearly all networks are addressing the issue of mobile data pricing and tariffs. of billshock (unless ‘fair usage’ is exceeded). They have also experimented with maximum daily rates to entice pre-pay users into pain-free downloading. It can’t be easy for the content providers to keep up with who’s charging what. But it’s a hugely important issue, and it prompted Netsize to conduct and publish a 45page study of operator strategies in 20 countries. It makes for interesting reading. On the plus side it’s
flat rate data bundle vary considerably across the rest of the continent. A 100MB data subscription costs €8 in Hungary and €33 in Denmark, for example. And when there’s no limit on megabytes used, the fees spiral upwards. All three Norwegian operators (Tele 2, Netcom and Telenor) charge around € 60 for all you can eat – three times the rate paid by their Swedish neighbours. Here are some selected findings...
Medium packages
Selected data tariff comparisons Country Finland Norway Sweden Denmark UK
Price €10 to €35 €60 €21 €8 to €53 €9.4
Portugal Germany Spain France
€7.5 €5 to €35 €15 to €39 €25 to €79
Conditions Depends on download speed Unlimited Unlimited (three operators of four) for 15MB to 1GB respectively Between 120MB and 1GB depending on network 100MB 20MB to unlimited 200MB to 1GB 60GB to unlimited
Big packages
The Netsize report covers 500 package variations, for postpaid and prepaid payment models. It’s available to Netsize clients but can also be purchased directly at http://www.netsize.com for €995 ex. VAT.
26
November 2008
www.mobile-ent.biz
ON-DEVICE PORTALS
The future is idle Can ‘on-device portal 2.0’ nudge mobile internet adoption past a tipping point and into the mass market? Nick Lane, of Direct2 Mobile, opines…. he on-device portal was once seen as the key to unlocking the vast potential of mobile entertainment revenues. This was because of the direct link it provided between consumer and content. But as operators shifted away from one-off downloads to bundled services, the on-device portal had to evolve too. Surfkitchen refers to this new breed as ODP 2.0. Whereas the original ODP concept directed consumers to downloadable content, this updated widget-based framework provides direct access to content on the mobile internet. It’s a kind of uberbookmark. But even if the ODP has changed, discoverability remains an issue. Surfkitchen claims that up to 80 per cent of subscribers will use the ODP if it’s on the idle screen, compared with 50 per cent via the softkey and 30 per cent on the device menu. Clearly, placement is key to bringing in the mass market and thereby helping consumers discover the mobile internet. So it’s not surprising that mobile internet adoption dominated Surfkitchen’s recent roundtable event in London. It says that all markets – excluding Japan and Korea – fall short of the magic 20 per cent adoption figure. So the main question
T
addressed was whether the medium is fundamentally flawed or if adoption will merely take time as hurdles tumble one by one. The consensus was that the pricing barrier is definitely falling, thanks to flat-rate and daily billing. Apple is also making a difference, not just for its own users, but also for the wider
No sooner have walled gardens collapsed, than OEMs raised new ones. consumer base. Jag Minhas, head of group technology (products and devices) for Telefonica O2, said the iPhone is driving footfall into O2’s retail outlets, even if this does not always translate into an iPhone sale. While there is no direct correlation between the iPhone and the increase in internet traffic, research by Direct2 Mobile reveals that in key iPhone markets, such as the US and UK, there has been phenomenal traffic growth over the last 12 months. The iPhone appears to be
the catalyst in pushing mobile internet consumption beyond that elusive tipping point. But this in itself is raising new concerns. No sooner have mobile operator walled gardens collapsed, than OEMs raise new ones. As Dave Evans, CTO at Surfkitchen, noted during the event, the iPhone and Nokia’s Ovi are themselves creating fresh walled gardens. This begs the question of whether OEMs can adopt a standard way of developing apps or bookmarks to reach the mass market. The iPhone has proved successful
because its user interface is intuitive and its ‘widgetisation’ of the mobile internet is a simple concept to grasp. While not all companies can deliver a similar UI, the ability to widgetise is a given. Nick Allott, chief technical officer of the Open Mobile Terminal Platform, said at the roundtable that widgets integrated into the core user interface have the potential to augment sites, such as Facebook, to deliver rich apps to the consumer. That’s exciting. But it will only happen with proper discoverability; ODP 2.0 must now be thinking idle.
ME Research: Now open for business ARE you looking for targeted research into a specific area of mobile? Got a business plan to prepare? Maybe a speech? These are the kinds of projects that ME Research can help with. Mobile Entertainment has teamed up with Direct2Mobile to deliver targeted intelligence into the content space. Projects are carried out by Nick Lane and his
team. Interested? Send a mail to: meresearch@intentmedia.co.uk
The Surfkitchen roundtable saw lively debate on the future role of ODP in the market...
www.mobile-ent.biz
November 2008 29
RECRUITMENT
Sponsored by
Davies hops to Jump India’s Jump Games hires Roger Davies to plot Euro charge... As if it wasn’t growing fast enough, Mobile Interactive Group has hired RACHEL PRICE as biz dev manager. She arrives from Rhythm New Media, where she handled mobile video campaigns for Coca Cola, Nivea and others. Elsewhere in the MIG empire, 4th Screen Advertising added MARK ANGELL and ANDY BEAMES as director of strategic sales and account manager respectively, while digital agency Jigsaw hired CHRISTINE MOESSNER and LINA HALLEN, both as account managers.
Movidilo has appointed MARTIN JAMES GOSSLING as VP of business development in Europe. He will drive international expansion for Movidilo, a US startup that provides numerous mobile media services like ads, search and m-commerce.
SCOTT KELLIHER has joined AOLowned ad agency Platform-A as category sales director for telecom from Virgin USA, where he was director of mobile media services. Platform-A is the new entity for services supplied by Third Screen Media.
JOSE ZAVALA has moved from Vivendi Games Mobile to Fox/Jamster where he will become director of global communications.
30
November 2008
Recruitment Specialists www.aspire-mobile.com +44(0)207 297 2060
ALEX CHAPMAN has joined entertainment focused law firm Sheridans. He’s a computer games industry expert, having worked at Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive, Blitz and others.
UK-based apps developer Masabi has recruited FRED METZGEN to be its new CEO.
Jump Games has set up a Euro office in London and appointed ROGER DAVIES to run it. The new VP of Europe is a well-known face in mobile, having worked for RealNetworks, Riot E, Infospace and Medio. Reliance-owned Jump made waves last year when it picked up mobile rights to Manchester Utd.
www.mobile-ent.biz
RECRUITMENT
digital marketing creative services technical development mobile i-Gaming support services
Mobile Marketing Manager, Online Gaming, London £Neg + excellent bonus (JT14079) A leading provider of entertainment-branded online games is currently expanding their mobile proposition. You will be tasked with maximising strategic opportunities within the entertainment space, as well as devising and implementing a mobile marketing plan. Gaming experience preferable.
Agency Sales Manager, Mobile Agency, London £30k Basic + great bonus (JT13391) One of the longest established mobile marketing agencies now requires an agency sales manager to join their team. You will build a new base of accounts, manage existing clients and account execs, and with your strong client services skills you will have the ability to build lasting business relationships.
Head of Sales, EMEA Mobile Agency, London £50k + Bonus (JT13785)
Capcom’s Midori Yuasa (left) and Zed’s Rafael Gomez-Gayoso
Capcom Mobile has unified its European and North American operations under a single management team led by its current president MIDORI YUASA. Meanwhile, MATT GILLIS (executive VP of publishing) will lead commercial activities, and MANABU SEKO (head of studios) will lead R&D functions.
Zed has a new country manager for its home turf of Spain and neighbour Portugal. He’s RAFAEL GÓMEZ-GAYOSO, who will be based at Zed´s headquarters in Madrid and will report to Iñaki Martín Velasco, the regional director of Western Europe. Before joining Zed, Gómez-Gayoso worked with Spanish cable operator ONO.
One of the leading mobile marketing agencies based in London is looking for a Head of Sales. You will speak directly to brands to offer the delivery of highly-sophisticated multi-channel services that optimise response across SMS, mobile internet and voice channels. You have to be a forward-thinking mobile specialist with a strong passion for the industry.
Apply via email with CV and reference number to: mobile@propellondon.com
Recruiters from digital, recruiting for digital +44 (0)20 7440 1000 hello@propellondon.com www.propellondon.com
Great Mobile Gambling Opportunities Gamesys Group is a multi-award winning developer and operator of online bingo, casino and slots games based in central London. We have recently expanded into Mobile Gaming and are now looking for new talent to join our team. For anybody wishing to make the move over to mobile gaming (gambling)? We have three great opportunities available:
Mobile Marketing Manager The Challenge: get our new range of products into the hands of everyone in the UK with a compatible mobile. Can you get our products distributed via the major Mobile Networks and High Street Stores, advertise in all the right places and work with our offline team on stimulating and fun promotions? Prior Mobile experience most definitely required. Gambling sector experience an advantage.
Mobile Games Assistant Work with our Mobile Product Owner and gaming specialists to help develop and promote the very best new games on the market. Interest in mobile and gadgets, common sense, willingness to learn and work hard essential. Mobile and Gambling sector experience is NOT a pre-requisite.
Mobile QA Got an eye for detail and a mind to ensure quality? Test the latest and greatest in mobile gambling games. Product development technical experience required, including SQL, familiarity with bug tracking systems, rigorous testing and QA processes, and testing tools. Gambling sector experience is NOT a pre-requisite. Prior mobile experience a real advantage. Competitive salaries + exciting benefits
Please email CV and covering letter to HR@gamesys.co.uk No agencies 3rd Floor, 54 - 62 Regent Street, London, W1B 5RE www.mobile-ent.biz www.mobile-ent.biz
November 2008 31
RECRUITMENT
Mobile Entertainment & Digital Content New Business Development Manager Mobile Content & Applications, New Media London £Market Rate – Base + OTE + Benefits Hardware Engineers/Product Managers/ Project Managers Mobile Handset Manufacturer UK & International £Market Rate R & D Engineers Mobile Handset Manufacturer UK & International £Market Rate Advertising Account Executive Mobile Marketing London £30,000 – £40,000 + Bonus + Benefits Product Marketing Manager – Music Mobile Handset Manufacturer London £Market Rate
Propel London on fast forward A commitment to knowledge sharing and a pure focus on new media employers and applicants has made Propel London a recruitment force...
Moco Connect Limited are the true specialists within the Mobile Entertainment Industry.
Call us now on
+44 (0)1273 221 080 or e-mail us on info@mococonnect.com
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November 2008
Propel claims to be the UK’s leading independent player in digital recruitment and works across the entire spectrum from mobile to online. The agency was established in 2001, and has helped place the people that are now shaping the digital industry. The firm’s motto is ‘knowledge and delivery’ – an ethos it has tried to weave into its corporate dealing since its inception and instil in its team. Indeed, Propel has a firm belief in the quality of its staff, employing consultants that are bright, ambitious and fun – just like the industry they serve. It divides its consultants into specialist divisions that cover design, search and affiliate marketing, technical development and sales. The team is therefore able to offer advice about prospective employers, career development, salary expectations and overseas relocation. Because Propel believes so fervently in sharing knowledge, it maintains a number of blogs on its website that are designed to help prospective applicants keep up to date with industry events and thereby optimise their CVs for the best possible results. In terms of client relationships, Propel is committed to supporting firms from across the value chain, of all sizes. It therefore works with super brands, media firms and design agencies as well as pureplays and startups. These firms include Agency Republic, AutoTrader, eBay, Glue and Outrider among others.
With job opportunities ranging from graduate-level to board-level management positions, Propel can genuinely serve clients and applicants of all ranges. It can also offer bespoke recruitment solutions to job seekers and prospective employers. The firm’s independence allows for maximum flexibility regarding payment structure, its established relationships with key advertisers help it quickly spread the word, while its team of trained head-hunters ensures that the right person fits the right position.
Major brands have already employed Propel for new media recruitment
www.mobile-ent.biz
SOURCE Stuck for a stat or just looking to expand your mind? Find everything you need right here...
N
umbers. We love them. You love them. And they’re all here in Mobile Entertainment magazine’s reference section. It’s a one-stop shop for all the contentbased numerological and statological information you can possibly imagine. Our run-down of key operator subscriber numbers is here again. As usual, our Games Spotlight pages focus on the hot new titles coming out soon. We also have a round-up of all the latest industry research, a comprehensive show and conference guide, and a run down of best seller charts from across the mobile content market.
There’s also the Product Focus, which picks out a selection of the content, hardware and services either just launched or coming to market. What’s more, every month Mobile Entertainment magazine publishes the Mobile Marketplace, a invaluable directory of key product and service providers in the space. Put simply, there’s something here to satisfy every number cruncher and any Powerpoint presentation. If you have any queries about the data, or would like to submit information for any of the pages in this section, just send an email to: tim.green@intentmedia.co.uk.
INDEX PRODUCT FOCUS
P35
Best of this month’s content, hardware and services
GAMES SPOTLIGHT
P36
Hot new titles coming out soon
EVENTS
P38
Conferences, exhibitions, seminars and networking
DATABOX
P39
We love stats, you love stats
CHARTS
P40
All the movers and shakers
NETWORK SUBS
P42
Key numbers from key operators
MARKETPLACE
P45
Mobile content product and service providers
Making Mobiles come alive! Peak Development is the pioneering Memory Card distributor at the forefront of the Content Revolution. Peak offer a range of exciting Music, Film, Game and Software titles pre-loaded onto Memory Cards and ready for use in the latest multi function Mobile Phones. We can do as little or as much as you require, from supplying the raw cards and fully licensed content to duplication, labelling and packaging.
MEMORY CARDS CONTENT PROVISION DUPLICATION LABELLING PACKAGING tel: 01489 796979 email: sales@peak-uk.com
www.peak-uk.com
RET 22.10.08 - ME
34
November 2008
www.mobile-ent.biz
SOURCE: PRODUCT FOCUS
NEW STUFF A selection of new content, hardware and services...
Mobile Marketing 2.0 (Inmobia) Available: Out Now INMOBIA’s Mobile Marketing 2.0 gives users the opportunity to develop and distribute their own advertising. It offers the tools required to run a mobile campaign and provides businesses of any size an easy and inexpensive marketing solution. The suite centres on Inmobia’s Media Portal Manager 3.0 platform and includes an array of associated services such as technical assistance and training, statistical evaluation and unique user IDs. With the Media Portal Manager 3.0, Inmobia claims it has taken mobile content management to the ‘next level’, with a product suite
that will track and target customer needs through data mined messages and CRM-based communication. Users can create banner ads, text link ads, portal hosted video content and SMS/WAP push marketing based on data mined information. In short, Mobile Marketing 2.0 provides a method of creating ad campaigns across multiple territories, offers access to a large library of content and comes with rich targeting designed to help raise brand awareness and customer loyalty.
IN A NUTSHELL: Mobile marketing solution with significant reach in to European, African, Middle Eastern and American markets.
www.inmobia.com
IN A NUTSHELL: The original mobile web community reckons it just got a bit better.
Peperoni.com Available: Out Now PEPERONI has been a pioneer of the user-generated content sector and can claim to have invented mobile site building back in 2001. Its WAP service, Peperonity.com, allows end-users to create and host their own personalised websites. After redesigning its homepage in September this year (refreshing the Peperonity service with large virtual buttons, self-explanatory symbols, a more intuitive menu and updated handset compatibility) Peperoni says it boasts the world’s largest mobile social networking service. With over eight million usergenerated pages created so far, Peperoni is now welcoming advertisers to its site, which it claims generates ten million unique
visitors every month. As one of the largest players in the European mobile industry, Peperoni supports CPM, CPC and CPA business models and can offer advertisers targeting capabilities, sponsorships, and external links. Peperoni has long-term experience in white labelling communities and their components to network operators, portals and content owners. Mobile sites can be created, edited and viewed in any regular Internet browser as well as on WAP-enabled mobile phones, the iPhone and on PDAs. Among the range of available components are personal sites, blogs, chatrooms, quizzes, forum pages, profiles and guest books. www.peperoni.com
November 2008 35
SOURCE: GAMES SPOTLIGHT
New Gamelion title has all its bases covered Developer expands its ‘Global’ brand with US franchise The Finnish games developer Gamelion has achieved success and international recognition through its Global Sports franchise, mostly thanks to the Global Cricket and Global Race titles. Now it’s made a deliberate tilt at the US market with Global Baseball. The game features full 3D graphics, a robust achievement system and a tutorial walkthrough of all major game mechanics. Players of the game can take part as one of the top ten national teams in a ladder tournament for world championship. Gamelion always approaches its games with the same easy to play, difficult to master ethic. So although the game’s control
TITLE: Global Baseball GENRE: Casual Sports RELEASED: Out now PUBLISHER: Gamelion FORMAT: Nokia S60, BREW, Windows Mobile, iPhone scheme is set up for quick play by any baseball enthusiast, hitting those home runs and perfect shots is not easy. Players can also make strategic decisions during the match, choosing whether to attack the next base or not. One of the additional features of the game is support for the ‘try & buy’ model. It can be downloaded straight from Gamelion’s website for a choice of license fees that fit different budgets. The game is out now, and Gamelion is currently looking for a publishing partner across all the usual platforms.
A little feud for thought from Glu Well-loved US TV show franchise gets the mobile gaming treatment Glu Mobile is the most acquisitive of all games specialists when it comes to IP. It has deals in place with partners such as Sega, Sony and others – but its latest release Family Feud marks the first fruit of its partnership with TV production house FremantleMedia Enterprises. It’s a mobile version of one of the US’s’ best known and longest running game shows. Family Feud enjoys over 1.5 million daily viewers and has spawned local formats across the world, including the UK’s Family Fortunes. The game itself is a faithful reproduction of the TV format and includes familiar features such as the ‘Fast Money Round’ (or the ‘Big Money Round’ as UK fans would know it) as well as cheesy music from the show. Additionally players will be able to create their 36
November 2008
TITLE: Global Baseball GENRE: Casual Sports RELEASED: Out now PUBLISHER: Gamelion FORMAT: Nokia S60, BREW, Windows Mobile, iPhone own family look and name to customise the gaming experience. The answers in the game are drawn from genuine surveys conducted across the phone network ensuring that, as questions and content are being continually updated, players will never answer the same survey question twice. It’s up to mobile players to try to avoid some of the most idiotic answers given by genuine contestants. Glu’s Family Feud is now available on all major carriers in North America. www.mobile-ent.biz
WWW.MOBILE-ENT.BIZ
MOBILE INTELLIGENCE FOR ALL Need industry research? Need it fast? You’re in luck. Mobile Entertainment and Direct2 Mobile have teamed up to create a new service, ME Research, to provide bespoke intelligence on industry topics with turnaround times from 48 hours. ME Research can help with anything from key data to support an urgent market report to editorial content for a speech or case study. It can also produce long-term research with detailed industry forecasts. Each project is handled by Direct2 Mobile’s team, which is led by former Informa analyst Nick Lane.
Email: meresearch@intentmedia.co.uk now!
SOURCE: EVENTS
THIS MONTH’S HIGHLIGHTS November 5th-7th Mobile Internet Services and Web 2.0
November 12th Licensing Asia 2008
November 15th Austin Game Developer Conference
November 17th-19th Mobile Multimedia Advertising and Marketing Forum
2008-2009 CALENDAR November 2008
January 2009
March 2009
November 5th-7th Mobile Internet Services and Web 2.0 Barcelona, Spain www.metelecoms.com
January 8th-11th CES Las Vegas, USA www.cesweb.org
March 23rd GDC 2009 San Francisco, USA www.gdconf.com
With voice revenue in decline, this event will address the options available to the mobile biz from the mobile web and connected services. November 6th Meet-Up London, UK www.mobile-ent.biz/meet-up
Kick off 2009 with a show that covers every kind of gadget and dongle you can think of. January 21st-22nd Mobile Games Forum London, UK www.osneymedia.co.uk The original mobile games conference returns for its sixth year in London.
A night of networking with ME magazine and WIN Plc.
February 2009
November 12th Licensing Asia 2008 Tokyo, Japan www.licensing-asia.co.jp
February 16th-19th Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Spain www.mobileworldcongress.com
November 15th Austin Game Developer Conference Austin, USA www.austingdc.net
More than 55,000 attended the GSM Association’s showpiece event in 2008. We’ll be back there in 2009 as an official media partner.
November 17th-19th Mobile Multimedia Advertising and Marketing Forum London, UK www.metelecoms.com
The biggest developer event in the world returns for yet another stab at bringing together the game development community. March 24th Game Connection America 2009 San Francisco, USA www.game-connection.com Game Connection returns again to provide game developers and service providers the chance to exhibit their wares March 30th-April 3rd MipTV ft. Milia Cannes, France www.miptv.com The global content market for creating, co-producing, buying, selling, financing and distributing entertainment across all platforms.
The GSMA Mobile World Congress (Feb 16th-19th 2008) has a designated conference stream and exhibition for Mobile Media and Entertainment. It will allow you to meet with leading executives and experience the technologies that will drive mobile media and entertainment into the next decade. April 2009 April 1st-3rd CTIA Wireless 2009 Las Vegas, USA www.ctiawireless.com Mobile Entertainment magazine will once again be a media partner for the foremost trade event in North America.
An exploration of the opportunities for brands and telcos in mobile advertising.
June 2009 November 18th-20th Mobile Asia Congress Macau www.mobileasiacongress.com
June 2nd-4th Licensing International 2009 Las vegas, USA www.licensingexpo.com
November 18th-21st Mobile Content London, UK www.iir-events.com Case studies and panel sessions on the tools needed to boost revenues from the mobile content industry.
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November 2008
CTIA Wireless 2009 – The big US event brings key audiences such as enterprise users, solution providers, content owners and mobile distribution channels together to form strategic partnerships, service industry needs and create new innovations in wireless data. Takes place in Vegas, April 1st-3rd.
Sun Microsystems’ annual Java developer conference always places mobile high on the agenda. June 3rd-5th Brew 2009 San Diego, USA brew.qualcomm.com Qualcomm’s annual developer and partner conference. The 2008 event covered everything from Brew game development through to mobile TV and content discovery.
More than 525 exhibitors with 6,000 brands and properties all in just three days – but this time it's in Las Vegas.
June 23rd-24th Mobile Entertainment Markets London, UK www.m-e-f.org
June 2nd-5th Java One 2009 San Diego, USA java.sun.com/javaone
MeM is the Mobile Entertainment Forum’s official annual event, produced in partnership with Informa.
www.mobile-ent.biz
SOURCE: DATABOX
databox A selection of stats from across the mobile industry...
UGC worth $7 billion in 2013
In-game ads fuel brand awareness
User-generated mobile content will generate $7.3 billion in 2013, according to Juniper. The research also predicts that social networking will overtake dating as the largest revenue generator by 2009. Advertising, which is forecast to account for nearly a third of UGC revenues will gross more than half of mobile social networking earnings.
MIG is UK’s fastest growing tech firm
Mobile TV to sweep Latin America
Mobile Interactive Group has taken top spot in The Sunday Times' Tech Track 100 list, which profiles the UK's fastest growing technology companies. With just under 100 staff, the London-based mobile billing, apps, ads and service company is said to have grown 422.3 per cent in terms of annual sales growth and recorded £35.9 million in 2007/8 sales.
Latin America will have 21.3 million digital TV handsets in use in 2013, says TVTelco Latam. The research predicts that there will be 1.56 million mobile digital pay TV subscribers in addition to those customers using 3G or WiMax networks. Related advertising revenues for the region could reach $96 million.
Mobile subs to hit 4 billion this year There will be four billion mobile subscriptions globally at the end of 2008, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. However, the pace of the rise is set to slow, with Informa suggesting the five billionth subscription won’t be signed up until 4Q11. At this point, worldwide penetration will exceed 70 per cent. Only in Africa will penetration at the end of 2011 be below 50 per cent.
www.mobile-ent.biz www.mobile-ent.biz
US subs hit 262.7m The number of mobile phone users in the US has reached 262.7 million, equivalent to a penetration rate of 86.4 per cent. It’s impressive, but it is still below the 100 per cent seen in many Western European countries. Wireless data service revenues in the US during 1H08 increased by 40 per cent year-on-year to $14.8 billion, and data now accounts for 20 per cent of all revenues.
US electronics giant RadioShack says brand awareness rose from 15.8 per cent to 24.2 per cent among consumers who used a Greystripe-powered mobile ingame ad campaign it ran earlier this year. The campaign outperformed norms for unaided brand awareness by 2.2 per cent.
US consumers switching for iPhone Thirty per cent of people who purchased iPhone between June and August switched from other networks to join AT&T. NPD said the figure was seven per cent above the average switchover rate during the period. Of those customers who switched, 47 per cent came from Verizon Wireless, while 24 per cent switched from TMobile.
November 2008 39
SOURCE: CHARTS
charts Check here every month for the best selling games, ringtones and mobile apps from across the market...
Tagging
Ringtones
Ringtones & games
Ringtones.com top Euro music tones, 15 Sep-15 Oct
Artist
Jamster UK games, 15 August - 15 Sept
Sex On Fire
Kings Of Leon
Game
Publisher
2
So What?
Pink
1
Monopoly
EA Mobile
1
3
I Kissed A Girl
Katy Perry
2
The Game of Life
EA Mobile
2
All I Ever Wanted
Basshunter
4
All Summer Long
Kid Rock
3
Disney Solitaire Master
Living Mobile
3
Closer
Ne-Yo
5
Angel In The Night
Bass Hunter
4
FF Streets 3D
I-play
4
Disturbia
Rihanna
6
Disturbia
Rihanna
5
Beijing 2008
Glu Mobile
5
Mountains
Biffy Clyro
7
Miss Independent
Ne-Yo
6
Spore Origins
EA Mobile
6
Give It 2 Me
Madonna
8
Girls
Sugababes
7
South Park Imagination Land Mr. Goodliving
7
Crazy World
J. Majik & Wickaman
9
Paper Planes
M.I.A.
8
Pictoplay Plus
Digital Chocolate 8
Pjanoo
Eric Prydz
10
So What?
Pink
9
Bubble Popper Deluxe
Digital Chocolate 9
I Love You So
Schnuffel Bunny
10
Space Invaders Anniversary Edition EA
No Air
Jordin Sparks
Source: Mobilestreams 1
Who The Hell's Ringing? Peter Kay
2
Full-Length Spider Pig
Simpsons
3
Baby Laughing
Sound FX
4
Fools And Horses
OST
5
Drink Feck Arse
Father Ted
6
Lovely Jubbly
Fools And Horses
7
Drink Feck Arse (edit)
Father Ted
8
I Don’t Believe It
Victor Meldrew
9
Gummi Bears
OST
10
Am I Bovvered?
Kathrine Tate
Mobile
10
Ringtones Zed top truetones, 15 Sep - 15 Oct 1
All Summer Long
Kid Rock
2
The Pretender
Foo Fighters
3
Hyper Speed
SMS tone
4
Knob Jockey
5
We Made It
SMS tone Busta Rhymes
6
Goodbye Mr. A
The Hoosiers
7
Teenagers
My Chemical Romance
8
Minger Alert
Warning tone
9
Borat
Nice
10
She’s So Lovely
Scouting For Girls
Source: Zed Zed games, 15 Sep - 15 Oct Game
Publisher
1
Life is a Fiesta
Zed
2
Brain Coach
Zed
3
Island Quest
Zed
4
Bubble Boom 2
Zed
5
Street Basketball Challenge
Zed
6
Allied Heroes
Zed
7
Snowboard Fury
Zed
Katy Perry
USA realtone soundalikes, Sept
South Africa realtone soundalikes, Sept
Artist
Artist
I Kissed A Girl
Music
Source: Mobilestreams
Song
Song
Source: Jamster
Source: Jamster
Ringtones.com top Euro voicetones,15 Sep-15 Oct
Shazam Tagging Oct 08 1 Infinity 2008 Guru Josh Project 2 Spotlight Jennifer Hudson 3 Beggin’ Madcon 4 Paper Planes M.I.A. 5 In This City Iglu & Hartly 6 Miss Independent Ne-Yo 7 Sex On Fire Kings Of Leon 8 Love Shy Platinum 9 So What Pink 10 Live Your Life T.I. ft Rihanna Source: Shazam
1
When I Grow Up
Pussycat Dolls
1
So What
Pink
2
Sweet About Me
Gabriella Cilmi
2
Can’t Believe It
T Pain Ft Lil Wayne
3
Black And Gold
Sam Sparro
3
Whatever You Like
TI
4
7 Things
Miley Cyrus
4
American Boy
Estelle Ft Kayne west
5
All Summer Long
Kid Rock
5
Hot N Cold
Katy Perry
6
Viva La Vida
Coldplay
6
I’m Yours
Jason Mraz
7
All For One
High School Musical 2 7
Paper Planes
MIA
8
Shake It
Metro Station
8
Swagga Like Us
Jay Z
9
Shes Like A Star
Taio Cruz
9
I’m Yours
Jason Mraz
10
Mercury
Bloc Party
10
Viva La Vida
Coldplay
Melodi Media
Melodi Media
Video & wallpaper Fonestarz top videos, Oct
Fonestarz top wallpapers, Oct
1
Wii Fit Girlfriend
1
2
Laughing Baby
2
Disco Bones Raver
3
Brand News Sexy Cam
3
Neons At Night Bikini Body
4
Kiss Me Kwik
4
Animated Liverpool Crest – Anfield
5
Violent Veg – Banana v Blender
5
Googly Eyed Pets – Chimp
6
Ice Cream Girls
6
Funny faces I Love You
7
Glamour Girl Greeting from Natalie
7
Cheryl Cole
Mobbett Love Messages
8
3D Spinning Man Utd Logo
I Love You Balloon
8
Block Twist Drop
Zed
8
9
Bubble Boom Challenge
Zed
9
Mr. Patel’s Sexy Summer
9
I Heart You
10
Dr. Sex & U
Zed
10
Scooby Doo – Scooby The Strong
10
Snuffle Bear – I Love You So Much
Source: FoneStarz
Source: FoneStarz
Source: Zed
40
Jamster UK realtones, 15 August - 15 Sept
Song 1
November 2008
www.mobile-ent.biz
U.S. CHARTS Tones
Games
Wallpapers
Titles
Publisher
Titles
Artist
Titles
Category
1
Collapse! Chaos
Real Networks
1
I Kissed A Girl
Katy Perry
1
James Bond
Sony Pictures
2
Wheel of Fortune Deluxe
Sony Pictures
2
Sexy Can I
Ray-J ft. Yung Berg
2
Bloo Screen
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
3
3D Pool Urban Hustle
I-play
3
Hit The Dance Floor
Unk ft. Baby D
3
Keep Hatin
Pink Frosty
4
Snoop Dogg Cruisin'
Sony Pictures
4
I'm So Hood
DJ Khaled feat. T Pain
4
Stoneteller
Baeg Tobar
5
Bounce Out
Real Networks
5
And I
Ciara
5
Queen
Pink Frosty
6
God of War - Betrayal
Sony Pictures
6
Talkin Out Da Side Of Ya Neck Dem Franchize Boyz
6
Blessed not Stressed
Christian
7
Fast & Furious: Fugitive
I-play
7
Suffocate
J. Holiday
7
Dolphins True Love
Romance
8
Call of Duty 4
Glu
8
Marco Polo
Bow Wow ft. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em
8
White Tiger
Fun
9
Q*Bert
Sony Pictures
9
Kiss Kiss
Chris Brown ft. T-Pain
9
Naughty But Nice
Pink Frosty
10
Win At Texas Hold'em
I-play
10
Cyclone
Baby Bash
10
Haters Make Us Famous Pink Frosty
11
Diner Dash 2
Glu
11
Bleeding Love
Leona Lewis
11
Riley Mugshot
The Boondocks
12
Jeopardy! Deluxe
Sony Pictures
12
Take You Down
Chris Brown
12
Jesus Cross
Christian
13
Jewel Quest速 II
I-play
13
Love In This Club Part II
Usher feat. Beyonc & Lil Wayne
13
Skull Pattern
Pink Frosty
14
Hoyle Solitaire
Glu
14
No Air duet with Chris Brown
Jordin Sparks ft. Chris Brown
14
Dark Rain
Spider-Man 3
15
2008 Weakest Link
I-play
15
I'm N Luv
T-Pain
15
Dragon Glow
Artwork
16
Spider-Man 3
Sony Pictures
16
Need U Bad
Jazmine Sullivan
16
Butterfly Abstract
Cool Designs tokidoki
17
Garfield Bowling
Vivendi
17
Pocketful of Sunshine
Natasha Bedingfield
17
Bulletto
18
Super Breakout
Glu
18
I Won't Tell
Fat Joe ft. J. Holiday
18
I Got It From My Momma Pink Frosty
19
1942 Air Combat
LemonQuest
19
When You Look Me In The Eyes Jonas Brothers
19
Dolphin Fantasy
Mobliss
20
Single Again
20 ATHF Action Now!
20 Family Feud Deluxe
Trina
Artwork Aqua Teen Hunger Force
The PlayPhone featured content listing is created and compiled utilizing download data results from strong sellers, fast movers and top-rated mobile content available across PlayPhone Web and WAP mobile destinations. (c) PlayPhone, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other phone images, trademarks, logos and copyrights are property of their respective owners.
SOURCE: OPERATORS
NETWORK SUBS Key operator subscriber numbers from around the world Country
Operator
Subscribers
Country
Western Europe UK
Spain
Italy
France
Greece
Israel Netherlands
Ireland
Sweden
Norway
Germany
Denmark
Belguim
Poland
42
Portugal
Operator
Subscribers
T-Mobile (PTC)
12,800,000
Vodafone
5,267,000
16,800,000
TMN
6,004,000
3
4,445,000
Optimus
2,280,000
Virgin
4,115,100
Orange
13,900,000
O2
18,878,000
Switzerland
Orange
1,510,000
Orange
15,642,000
Eastern Europe
BT-Mobile
360,000
Czech Republic
T-Mobile
5,300,000
Movistar
23,008,000
O2
5,186,000
Vodafone
2,751,000
Vodafone
18,510,000
T-Mobile
Orange
11,091,000
Vodafone
16,210,000
Orange
15,700,000
Russia
Vodafone
23,056,000
3
8,184,000
Wind
15,600,000
TIM
35,000,000
Asia Pacific
Orange
24,315,000
Australia
SFR
18,800,000
Bouygues
9,256,000
Ukraine
Megafon
36,970,000
Mobile TeleSystems
77,970,000
VimplelCom
41,800,000
Kyivstar GSM
23,711,000
Ukrainian Mobile (MTS)
19,811,000
3
1,500,000
Optus
7,100,000
Telstra
2,400,000
Vodafone
3,573,000
China Mobile
332,000,000
Vodafone
5,438,000
Cosmote
6,280,000
Wind (Previously-Qtelecom)
4,500,000
China Unicom
162,491,000
Orange
10,354,000
Tibet Telecom
957,000
Movistar
22,800,000
3
2,515,000
Cellcom Israel
3,073,000
Pelephone
2,400,000
China
Hong Kong India
Smart tone
1,108,000
Bharti Airtel
64,268,049
Vodafone
4,360,000
BSNL
40,790,000
T-Mobile
4,889,000
Idea Cellular
24,002,000
KPN
8,800,000
Tata Indicom
24,330,000
Vodafone
2,247,000
Japan
NTT DoCoMo
53,400,000
O2
1,688,000
Philippines
Globe Telecom
22,700,000
3 (includes UK)
4,445,000
Meteor
962,000
3 (includes Denmark) Telenor Tele 2
3,118,000
Djuice (Pannon) Telenor Netcom
1,577,000
Tele2 Vodafone T-Mobile
38,400,000
North America
O2
13,576,000
Canada
E-Plus
13,600,000
Rogers
6,200,000
Debitel
13,200,000
Telus
5,656,000
Victorvox (Drillisch)
2,236,000
Sprint
51,900,000
3 (includes Sweden)
945,000
T- Mobile USA
31,500,000
TDC
3,000,000
Verizon Wireless
67,178,000
Sonofon
1,680,000
Alltel
13,170,134
Mobistar (Orange)
3,590,000
US Cellular
6,200,000
BASE
2,600,000
AT&T
72,900,000
Belgacom Mobile
4,620,000
Smart
30,000,000
AIS
21,089,000
945,000
Dtac
12,000,000
2,856,000
True Move
11,200,000
Singtel
2,570,000
3,401,000
StarHub
1,750,000
2,856,000
MobileOne
1,554,000
Celcom
6,404,000
441,000
Digi
6,409,000
35,295,000
Maxis
8,500,000
Bell
6,260,000
Vodafone
2,642,000
Orange
13,900,000
November 2008
Thailand
Singapore
Malaysia
USA
Source: Mediacells was established in 2004 to assist clients in making more money out of mobile. The company provides accurate and actionable intelligence to the mobile, media, retail, research and information sectors. www.mediacells.com
www.mobile-ent.biz
FEATURES
Feature
The definitive guide to ME’s main editorial preoccupations in 2009. Should keep us busy...
Planner2009 JANUARY2009
APRIL2009
JULY2009
OCTOBER2009
Game development: overview How games codeshops are coping in a post-consolidation world Animated screensavers Are screensavers the future of image personalisation? Will Flash help? The next-gen ringtone They started it all. But how can they evolve to stay relevant?
CTIA special issue We’ll be in Las Vegas as an official event partner. So will our mags DVB-H mobile TV progress The hype’s gone quiet. What about the signals? Off-portal adult video focus Tracking the drift away from nervous operators Music ID services The spontaneous key to driving mobile full track sales?
Eastern Europe market focus Casual mobile games focus Mobile web site transcoding
Editorial deadline: Dec 4th Advertising deadline: Dec 8th
FEBRUARY2009 Mobile World Congress special issue ME is an official media partner, so we’ll take thousands of copies to Barcelona. Pure-play mobile communities The start-ups outmaneouvreing MySpace et al Tickers and idle screen The new info and ad channel intriguing big brands all over the world The coming of mobile Flash Browser based, fragmentation solving… but is it widespread enough? Video ringbacks Piracy proof, rich and sexy – but only if users embrace video calling Editorial deadline: Jan 12th Advertising deadline: Jan 14th
Editorial deadline: March 9th Advertising deadline: March 9th
MAY2009 BREW and Java focus A focus to co-incide with the Brew2009 and JavaOne shows Original made-for-mobile video production Who’s putting money and craft into original content for the smallest screen? Mobile traffic analytics services Mobile is uniquely personal. But if you can’t mine the data, so what?
India market focus Recruitment special Massively multi-player gaming Editorial deadline: July 13th Advertising deadline: July 15th
SEPTEMBER2009
NOVEMBER2009 Age certification systems Embedded mobile content ads Mobile comics and animation Editorial deadline: Oct 12th Advertising deadline: Oct 14th
DECEMBER2009
ME Awards preview Mobile internet site building Enhanced messaging
Top 50 content execs Pureplay mobile search City guides, travel aids…
Editorial deadline: August 10th Advertising deadline: August 12th
Editorial deadline: Nov 9th Advertising deadline: Nov 11th
For more information about advertising opportunities around these features, please call Tom Roberts on +44 (0) 1992 535647 or email tom.roberts@intentmedia.co.uk For all editorial queries contact Tim Green at tim.green@intentmedia.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1992 535 646
JUNE2009
Location-based search The great monetisation hope in an era of mobile GPS Barcodes and QR Coming of age now that technical issues are being solved Brazil market focus Putting the B into BRIC, and growing to a samba beat Editorial deadline: Feb 9th Advertising deadline: Feb 10th
Editorial deadline: May 11th Advertising deadline: May 13th
www.mobile-ent.biz www.mobile-ent.biz
AUGUST2009
Editorial deadline: Sep 14th Advertising deadline: Sep 16th
Editorial deadline: April 13th Advertising deadline: April 15th
MEM show preview The MEF’s big showcase returns to London Porting, testing & certification Handset fragmentation endures. We examine the testers and the porting specialists Memory card content The role of the SD card in driving content sales One year of the Apple App store Examining the impact of the iPhone retail centre after 12 months
MARCH2009
Editorial deadline: June 15th Advertising deadline: June 17th
CTIA special issue US market focus Top 30 US content execs Google Android – one year on
November 2008 43
Robert Dotson, President and Chief Executive Officer, T-Mobile USA
9 #;.1>@ ;@?;: 85B1 - ;.581 521 What does “mobile life” mean to you?
;.581 8521 5? @41 ?;8A@5;: @; - 9;01>: >1-85@E ;.581 8521 -/7:;C81031? @4-@ A:8571 E1->? -3; 2>51:0? -:0 2-95851? ->1 A:85718E @; 85B1 5: @41 ?-91 @;C: %45? ?1<->-@5;: 4-? />1-@10 - />-B5:3 2;> -88 ;2 A? @; .1 9;>1 /;::1/@10 C5@4 @4;?1 C4; 9-@@1> 011<8E %41 ?<1/@-/A8-> 5::;B-@5;:? ;2 >1/1:@ E1->? 5: @41 9;.581 C;>80 4-? 9-01 ?4->5:3 8521 ? 1B1:@? 9;>1 <1>?;:-8 >5/4 -:0 599105-@1 %4-@ 9-71? -88 ;2 ;A> 85B1? 9;>1 >1C->05:3 What is your primary business goal for 2009?
%; /;:@5:A1 ;A> =A1?@ @; .1/;91 91>5/- ? 81-05:3 ?1>B5/1 /;9<-:E .E 19.>-/5:3 @41 :1D@ C-B1 ;2 5::;B-@5;: 5: 0-@- ?1>B5/1? %4-@ >1=A5>1? A? @; ;<1: A< ;A> .A?5:1?? 9;018 @; .>1-7@4>;A34 @45:75:3 -:0 :1C >18-@5;:?45<? (1 ->1 8;;75:3 @; 19.>-/1 @41 9-35/ @4-@ /-: /;91 2>;9 4534 @1/4 ?@->@ A<? ;> @41 /;88131 0>;< ;A@ @5:71>5:3 5: 45? 3->-31 88 ->1 C18/;91 How does attending CTIA WIRELESS 2009 help you meet that goal?
&:/;B1>5:3 5::;B-@5;: ;2@1: .135:? C5@4 2>11 C41185:3 05-8;3A1 -:0 - 41-8@4E -:0 -/@5B1 1D/4-:31 ;2 501-? %41 % ( # $$ ?4;C 5? @41 3-@41>5:3 <8-/1 @4-@ .>5:3? @;31@41> @41 >534@ <1;<81 C5@4 2>1?4 501-? -:0 /-<-.585@51? @; <;C1> @41 5::;B-@5;: 1:35:1? ;2 @;9;>>;C
Mobile Life! Lif
h
ı
Â
†
March 31, 2009 April 1-3, 2009
h Partner Seminars
† Exhibit Floor, Keynotes, Sessions & Partner Conferences
Las Vegas Convention Center www.ctiashow.com
Las Vegas, NV, USA
MOBILE MARKETPLACE
MOBILE
PUBLISHING PLATFORM
MARKETPLACE
MARKETPLACE INDEX 26 CONTENT............................................+49 9547 870 120 www.26content.com ABSOLUTE QUALITY ...............................+44 141 220 5600 www.absolutequality.com BANGO...................................................+44 08700 340 365 www.bango.com DIALOGUE COMMUNICATIONS ..............08700 790 300 www.dialogue.net DYNAMO...............................................+44 (0)1382 348635 www.dynamogames.com ELITE ........................................................+44 01543 268826 www.elite-systems.co.uk END2END.......................................................+45 7222 7222 www.end2endmobile.com FLUID PIXEL STUDIOS ...........................+44 01642 384336 www.fpstudios.com FROGGIE ...................................................+34 954 98 08 48 www.froggie-mm.com GAMELION ................................................+48 606 101 500 www.game-lion.com INLOGIC...................................................+421 904 628 889 www.inlogic.eu MOBIVENTION.....................................+49 2203 906 0210 www.mobivention.com NETBISCUITS GMBH .............................+49 631 303 1400 www.netbiscuits.com
MOBILE ANALYTICS
PARTNERTRANS..................................+49 (0)2104 172660 info@partnertrans.com SELATRA .......................................................+353 21 483270 www.selatra.com SPLASH .......................................................+1 310 8212 666 www.splashnews.com SPIEL STUDIOS .......................................info@spiel-s.com www.spielstudios.com TAG GAMES ..............................................+44 1382 220 925 www.tag-games.com UNIVERSALLY SPEAKING....................+44 (0)1480 210621 www.usspeaking.com WAPPLE..................................................+44 (0)1527 558247 www.wapple.net XIAM ............................................................+353 1 483 2000 www.xiam.com
The Mobile Marketplace offers a complete marketing package of print, online and editorial visibility, allowing companies to maintain contact with readers each month without the cost of full display advertising. The Mobile Marketplace and its associated online version has also been designed to offer readers a directory of all products and services in the content industry. A presence in this section ensures that your company's details are easily found, keeping you one step ahead of your competitors. The standard package includes: 1/4 page advert in each issue Regular editorial coverage in the dedicated column Company details listed in the online directory with web link and marketplace index
To get your company featured here contact tom.roberts@intentmedia.co.uk t: +44 (0) 1992 535647 www.mobile-ent.biz
November 2008 45
MOBILE MARKETPLACE GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO
DEVELOPER
INTERACTIVE MOBILE SOLUTIONS
CONTENT SERVICES
On one side
Need a mobile site? Dialogue’s Mobile Site Builder offers you the full end-to-end solution to publish your mobile site - all you need is the content. Mobile site builder allows you to: • • • • • • •
Promote & expose your business Sell content through a trusted payment service Run viral marketing campaigns Include marketing subscriptions Drive traffic to sites with text-to-browse campaigns Generate Revenue Monitor user behaviour
Visit: www.dialogue.net/mobilesitebuilder.pdf Email: info@dialogue.net Tel: 08700 790 300
46
November 2008
you can go through all the hassle and dazzle of content sourcing and deployment, hosting, retailmanagement, billing and settlements yourself...
On the other you can choose to let us run the content retailing on your portal, and you will benefit from our vast experience, superior technology and efficient service. We have the tools to deliver effective retailing and a great user experience, let us grow your content revenues while you save on total cost! Contact End2End today and work smarter tomorrow!
www.end2endmobile.com
www.mobile-ent.biz
MOBILE MARKETPLACE PUBLISHER
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT
CREATIVE STUDIO
SPIEL STUDIOS India’s Spiel is a global game development, publishing and outsourcing studio that has developed mobile titles including Roadster, Top Dartz, Evil Sudoku and Ten Pin Bowling. It has also created a number of products aimed at the Indian market such as India World Cup 2007. In 2006, the company signed a deal with Bollywood action star Arshad Warsi to create and distribute games using his name. The first release was Arshad’s Fight Club, which was nominated for ‘Best Mobile Game’ at the FICCI BAF Awards and was a finalist in Motorola’s ‘Motodev’ Game Developer Challenge. The accolades continued when Spiel was approved by Sony Europe to develop games for the Playstation and PSP, and earlier this year it became one of the only Indian companies to be endorsed as an authorised iPhone app developer. With offices in the US, UK and India, Spiel Studios has the resources and technology to develop and deploy to almost any device. These resources include a www.mobile-ent.biz
multi-disciplinary cross-skilled team comprising of game designers, concept artists, 2D and 3D graphic artists, modelers, programmers, project managers, game testers, and creative writers at its Mumbai production studio. This makes Spiel set up to port games as well as develop them. It has particular experience with the Apple iPhone, T-Mobile Sidekick, Android and J2ME, and is adept at using web formats like Flash, Flex, Shockwave and Silverlight. Spiel can also handle game testing and quality assurance for all platforms. Spiel Studios is now established among India’s premiere game development and publishing companies, providing all gaming services at an affordable price without sacrificing quality and delivery timeframes. It says that as a result of its customer feedback and satisfaction, Spiel is fast becoming the first point of call for international developers and publishers wishing to get their mobile game development requirements fulfilled. November 2008 47
MOBILE MARKETPLACE TESTING AND LOCALISTION
GAMES AGGREGATOR
LOCALISATION
VIDEO/PICTURE AGGREGATION
Splash News TV - the Paparazziâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own TV Channel. Unique ready-for- mobile Snack TV shows from the streets of Hollywood voiced in any language. Our short form clips are already streamed over a million times daily. Available for easy download or push. Raw video, images and text feeds also available. We have a global network team of over 1000 photographers shooting pictures of A-List stars Whatever your mobile needs entertainment Programming, wallpaper, text alerts and mobile video - the largest paparazzi archive with more than 20,000 videos, over 2 million images and a comprehensive daily text feed is at your disposal.
To discuss licensing our content or partnering with us on portals contact us: Phone: Jessica Townsend on +448709342666 Email: jtownsend@splashnews.com or mobile@splashnews.com Blog: www.splashnewsonline.com Web: www.splashnews.com Video: www.splash-video.com
48
November 2008
www.mobile-ent.biz
MOBILE MARKETPLACE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT
ABSOLUTE QUALITY
ADULT CONTENT
www.mobile-ent.biz
Glasgow based Absolute Quality claims to be one of the world’s leading providers of testing, technical support and content localisation services to the interactive entertainment industry. Incorporated in 1996 by five members of Microprose Software who recognised the industry’s need for sophisticated outsourcing options in multimedia software testing, the company quickly expanded its services to include technical support, leveraging the product knowledge that its team had acquired through its rigorous testing processes. As a result, Absolute Quality became the preferred outsourcing option for the major games developers and publishers at the time: Hasbro Interactive, Virgin Interactive and Broderbund among others. In August 1999, the firm opened its European headquarters in Glasgow – the call centre capital of Europe – allowing it to serve the continental markets from the heart of call centre technology. This was followed in May 2004 by the launch of a localisation division in Munich, which allowed the integration of translation, content localisation and voice-over in to a comprehensive range of support services for games developers and publishers. Since then Absolute Quality has committed substantial investment to high-tech infrastructure, evident in its state-of-the-art call centre that offers technical support via multiple live and self-help
interaction channels. The company has also developed the Bug City Diagnostic Application, a software programme that it uses internally to find, track and report problems in the software products that it tests. This programme is also available for download from the company’s website. Absolute Quality’s lab performs tests on a broad variety of platforms: for desktops and consoles, the company provides functionality testing, compatibility testing, console pre-cert testing and testing for massivelymultiplayer games. It provides games testing for the mobile segment as well as submission management and provides crossplatform content localisation, translations and voice-overs for games and software. Today, Absolute Quality employs over 400 highly trained employees worldwide, based in Glasgow, Baltimore, Bangalore and Munich, many of them fluent or native speakers of at least two European languages, providing software testing, localisation and technical support solutions to companies around the world in ten languages. The company is capable of ramping up capacity very quickly to take on high volumes of test work. With sophisticated systems, back up facilities, networked and physical security systems that supporting high-end technology and platforms, Absolute Quality can provide state-of-the-art global services to the games, multimedia and software industries. November 2008 49
MOBILE MARKETPLACE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
GAMES DEVELOPER
BAFTA award winners DYNAMO GAMES are celebrating their FIFTH BIRTHDAY in style with their latest games excelling in the market: CRYSTAL MAZE: Retro Classic - Best selling mobile game in June, Mobile Game FAQ's - 82% - Gold Award CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER MOBILE SERIES: Winner of a prestigous BAFTA award. Five versions and counting. 98% - MobileGameFAQ's, 9/10 PocketGamer Gold Award If you are looking for high-quality mobile game development by an experienced player, look no further: G J2ME development G BREW G iPhone Development - Approved Developer G Handheld Console development for DS and PSP YOUR AD HERE
Check out our new company website:
www.dynamogames.com
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and get in touch.
LOCALISATION
MOBILE MARKETING & ADVERTISING
Specialist Games Services Localisation • Global network of games specialised linguists • Translators to cover all genres of games • All languages covered • In game, scripts, paper parts and marketing translations
Quality Assurance • All platforms (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, PC and Mobile) • Localisation QA • Compliance checks for TRC, TCR and LOT approval • Functionality QA
Audio • Voice overs across all languages • Full casting service • Pre and post production including lip synching • Highly experienced voice directors and engineers
BRINGING INDIVIDUAL CHOICE TO YOUR USERS PROVEN DISCOVERY & RECOMMENDATIONS SOLUTIONS FOR MOBILE
DISCOVERING CHOICETM Universally Speaking Priory Chambers, Priory Lane, St Neots, Cambs, PE19 2BH, UK Tel: +44 (0)1480 210621 info@usspeaking.com www.usspeaking.com
50
November 2008
WWW.XIAM.COM
www.mobile-ent.biz
MOBILE MARKETPLACE CONTENT PROVIDER
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT
DYNAMO GAMES
SALES AND MARKETING
www.mobile-ent.biz
Scots firm Dynamo Games, which celebrated its fifth birthday this year, is a specialist mobile games developer that’s probably best known for mobile Championship Manager series. The original title was a genuine landmark in PC gaming that was beloved (still is) of millions for footy fans. Dynamo’s mobile version was closely scrutinised, but ended up highly praised and very successful. The company is particularly proud of the ‘Best Interactive’ Scottish BAFTA that Championship Manager 2007 won last year. Each successive title for Dynamo has been an award-winner and has scored at least 90 per cent in enduser reviews across the board. Other games to draw particularly high praise include the mobile version of hit game shows Countdown and The Crystal Maze, to which Dynamo acquired the rights this year. The latter
performed extremely well this summer, claiming the number one spot on T-Mobile, Orange, O2 and 3 in the UK. In August, Dynamo became recognised as an approved iPhone games developer and the firm is confident that its first app will be out before Christmas. However, Dynamo is not just a games developer. It has created mobile utilities such as the MobiMedic guide for emergency situations (which can be viewed at Mobi-Family.com). It contains a number of standard first aid procedures and utilises user input to advise which action to take. A similar programme, MobiMechanic, deals with standard maintenance and recovery procedures after a breakdown. Dynamo’s team of designers shares a passion for sports games and for mobile development in general, and this drive explains why it continues to win awards for its products. The studio has experience with project management and the legal issues that can surround game development, while maintaining the skills to get the job done. Small wonder that O2UK named Dynamo as one of the 50 ‘Ones to Watch’ in 2007.
November 2008 51
CASUAL MARKET, SERIOUS SALES AID Casualgaming.biz serves a targeted database of 18,000 retail and industry professionals sourced from MCV, Develop & Mobile Entertainment.
WWW.CASUALGAMING.BIZ Editorial enquiries: tim.ingham@intentmedia.co.uk or michael.french@intentmedia.co.uk Advertising enquiries: jaspreet.kandola@intentmedia.co.uk
FUN STUFF We take content extremely seriously in Mobile Entertainment. But not here...
(Dis)content Make friends and introduce favourites Sissel-Henriette Larsen, Director of Content, Telenor people… at Meet-Up IF YOU’RE reading this, you work in the content biz. And if you work in the content biz you need to come to a Meet-Up networking event. Meet-Up brings together hundreds of industry professionals from across the value chain: your colleagues, partners and customers. The events are a chance to cement business relationships and start new ones. And drink beer. Meanwhile, Meet-Up sponsors derive tremendous value for a
modest outlay. This is an effective tool for promoting your company, product or service. Benefits include: Extensive promotion before and after event in the magazine Multiple email alerts to our 12,000 strong list Full on-going coverage on the ME website Branding at the event But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what James Kaye, director of marketing, Hands-On Mobile, said about his special
Guitar Hero Meet Up: “It was a fantastic success in every respect. The value of the coverage we received from Mobile Entertainment was superb and the editorial team could not have been more supportive. The event itself was fantastically well attended due to all the prepromotion. I think sponsoring the Meet-Up should be a fixture in any marketing plan.” If you would like to know more about sponsorship, email: tim.green@intentmedia.co.uk
Which phone do you currently own? N95 8GB What phone would you like next? The same, but smaller Current ringtone? Kate Perry: I Kissed A Girl Wallpaper? A photo of my friends on summer vacation Favourite mobile game? Tetris and, lately, Lumines. It’s very basic but addictive. I was popular auntie this summer when my phone was hijacked by a six year-old to play FIFA08 Favourite mobile Internet sites? Telenor's 'Entry', some local news sites, Facebook, Djuic Musikk, plus I have also bookmarked the ME site! Anything you’d gladly pay for on a mobile that you can’t currently get? The ability to buy tickets for the tube and bus using small cash amounts. What's the worst idea you've seen in mobile? Any application that needs ten clicks to post something on a WAP site. Telenor is a Nordic mobile operator
– November 6th MeetNext Meet-Up event t e is delighted to present its nex Mobile Entertainment magazin . The ar Reef bar in central London Up party at the very trendy Sug mobile and ent agem man tent con sponsor for the evening is the transactions specialist WIN. ll Street,
where: Sugar Reef, 42-44 Great Windmi London W1D 7NB, UK
6th when: from 6pm on Thursday, November
rsvp: meetup@intentmedia.co.uk www.mobile-ent.biz www.mobile-ent.biz
FUN STUFF MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT
O’Brien
Green
Online Editor: Stuart O’Brien Stuart.Obrien@intentmedia.co.uk
Executive Editor: Tim Green Tim.Green@intentmedia.co.uk
Mother ‘n’ Daws
Content is rich, but not kosher
Massive news! Player One’s Gordon Dawson’s mother in law is the mega-celeb Judith Chalmers. She’s an institution in the UK, with her homely niceness and perma-tan, and now Daws is set to join her on a special edition of Celebrity Family Fortunes. The show asks contestants to guess the public’s answers to easy questions. Let’s hope Daws can do better than this genuine answer from a previous show: “Something that flies without an engine?, A bicycle with wings...”
This month’s ME has a focus on Israel, which is arguably the most influential content market – pound for pound – in the world. But not all Israelis are so enamoured. Its ultra-Orthodox community has started using ‘kosher cellphones’, which cannot send or receive text messages, browse the internet or take photos – all of which could lead to ‘immodest’ results. All the operators are now offering these chaste handsets. Not much of a business opportunity there for Cherrymedia, we think.
Managing Editor: Lisa Foster Lisa.Foster@intentmedia.co.uk
Staff writer: Matt Grainger Matt.Grainger@intentmedia.co.uk
Advertising Sales Executive: Tom Roberts Tom.Roberts@intentmedia.co.uk
Design: Rebecca Almond Rebecca.Almond@intentmedia.co.uk
Production Manager: Abigail Fanger Abigail.Fanger@intentmedia.co.uk
Subscriptions Manager: Hannah Short Hannah.Short@intentmedia.co.uk
Publisher/Managing Director: Stuart Dinsey Stuart.Dinsey@intentmedia.co.uk
Mobile Entertainment is published 12 times a year by Intent Media ~ Saxon House, 6A St. Andrew Street, Hertford, Herts SG14 1JA, England
CONTACTS Will: I Am off message
One hundred and Ogilvy!
Nokia’s Comes With Music has now launched. ME has tried it and the good news is it works, it didn’t crash our PCs and only took a few minutes to set up. The ad campaign is building nicely too (great to see the perimeter at a recent England football match rotating Comes With Music and Pukka Pies). As ever, Nokia laid on a superb launch party. Star speaker Black Eyed Peas’ Will I Am was very eloquent on the subject of digital music. But he did go a little off-message when he talked with equal passion about iTunes and how great it is. Oops!
ME was pleased to visit the mobile innovation lab set up by ad agency OgilvyOne’s new mobile chief Scott Seaborn. What a happy chap he is, as he wrote to Ogilvy in 2002 explaining his mobile vision. It only took them six years to offer him a job! Anyhow, one of the attractions in the lab is a dartboard that you take aim at, then take a photo of, and finally forward your pic to a shortcode. There’s a free beer if you get the bull. It’s spot the ball for the mobile generation. We got a creditable 20. Close, but we’re still thirsty.
what was that about? Everyone knows the iPhone marked Apple’s entry into mobile, right? Wrong. It actually dipped its toe in 2005 via Motorola’s ROKR E1. What a horrible experience for all. The handset was fat and hideous. So was
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November 2008
the user interface. But, what the heck when the phone would integrate seamlessly with iTunes. Well, er, yes, as long as you were happy with a maximum of 100 songs. Critics were also aghast as the inability to download over the
air, even though that remains the case today with iPhone. Needless to say, the E1 was a disaster. When the next Motorola ROKR emerged, Apple was nowhere to be seen.
EDITORIAL: +44 (0)1992 535646 ADVERTISING: +44 (0)1992 535647 FAX: +44 (0)1992 535648
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Intent Media is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association.
Total average monthly net circulation per issue for January 1st 2007 to December 31st 2007 was 8,012. © Intent Media 2007. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owners. Printed by Pensord Press, NP12 2YA
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