Questions and Answers

Mobile query company  AQA (Any Question Answered) has revealed that it has answered over 5 million questions since its launch in April 2004. Of these, it says, one third were from people seeking personal advice. AQA promises to provide an answer to any question texted to the service on 63336 in the UK, or 57275 in the Republic of Ireland. Texts cost £1 and €2 respectively.
The release it has issued to celebrate the 5 million landmark contains several human interest stories, including the tale of “Sara”, who asked if she should leave her job to sail around the world,  and after receiving the answer - ‘AQA thinks you should do whatever your heart tells you to do. If you feel you could make a decent living and be happy with sailing, go for it’ – did just that.
Far more interesting, though, is the section of the AQA website where the company prints the top five questions from the previous day. Today's include: ‘Which Merseysider and England international scored a hat-trick for West Ham against three different goalkeepers in the same match?’ and ‘Drunken man fell asleep used Morse Code from church near Portsmouth using what?’ As anyone knows, it was, of course, Alvin Martin and a church bell, respectively. And we can't speak for anyone else, but we'll be checking back  every day for more weird questions and answers from here on in.

Anything You Can Do...

A couple of days ago it was AdMob. Today, mobile ad company ScreenTonic reports that it too has sold one billion mobile ad page impressions, all in Europe.
The company says that its advertiser brands include an increasing number of major brands, such as Coca-Cola, Reebok, Citroën, Jaguar, EMI, Peugeot, BMW and Paramount Pictures, that are investing in mobile Internet advertising campaigns to reach out to their consumers anytime, anyplace, anywhere. ScreenTonic markets and manages advertising space on the mobile Internet portals of the main mobile carriers in the UK and Belgium, as well as independent mobile portals.
ScreenTonic currently markets an inventory of 80 million page impressions every month. The company claims that its targeted market position, long-standing relations with European carriers, and the quality of its STAMP technology platform for managing and delivering ads on mobile phones have transformed ScreenTonic into the leading player in the European market.
"At a time when mobile advertising has become a hot industry topic, ScreenTonic has already been able to monetise one billion page impressions for top operators and publishers in France, the UK and Belgium," says ScreenTonic CEO Didier Kuhn.

AdMob Reports 1 billion Ads in 6 Months. Read.

Report Analyses Mobile Entertainment Prospects

Analyst Juniper Research has released its report, ‘Entertainment Markets: Opportunities & Forecasts 2006-2011’. The report provides a thorough evaluation, global analysis and summary of mobile entertainment developments, with consolidated revenue forecasts, broken down by region and by major entertainment category.
The report concludes that the mobile entertainment market is still dominated by ringtones, wallpapers, chat and information services, but that the balance is changing, as steadily increasing 3G penetration around the world drives take up of products utilising video, picture messaging and Mobile TV technologies.
The report examines the opportunities for the mobile entertainment sector, including the types of service available, the players involved, and drivers and constraints. It offers consolidated revenue forecasts presented in easily-understandable tables and graphs; broken down into 5 key regions (North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific & Rest of the World);  and by mobile entertainment category (games, TV, music, and sports, leisure & information content). It also covers current regulations, controls and billing issues associated with mobile entertainment.
The report costs £1,490 for a single-user license (hard copy or PDF), £1,990 for a multi-user network license for 2-5 users (PDF), or £2,490 for an enterprise-wide license (PDF).
There’s more information here. And a free white paper to download here.

Bango Handed Games Billing Brief

Bango has revealed that Gameloft, the publisher and developer of mobile games, is using Bango technology to power its direct-to-consumer mobile Internet site, featuring Gameloft's most popular titles, including ‘Mission Impossible 3’, ‘Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent’ and ‘2006 Real Football.’ Gameloft chose to use Bango as it builds the direct-to-consumer side of its business because it wanted to provide a mobile Internet solution with payment integrated into the WAP session.
The Bango service enables global billing, with the best payment method dynamically presented to the consumer depending on their country and network, using Bango's BillRank technology. The system chooses from the following payment methods: direct operator billing (including PayForIt in the UK); Premium SMS; credit/debit cards; and PayPal, and adapts according to the user's preference. So if a consumer in the UK prefers to pay with their credit card, the next time they come to pay for a game, this option is presented first.
"We are very happy to have signed this partnership with Bango" says gameloft B2C Development Manager, Houssain Elguertit. "We're witnessing a big evolution today in terms of WAP usag,e and Bango is a good partner to work with for WAP billing."
Gameloft's marketing programme is driving traffic to the direct-to-consumer site with visitors seen from across Europe and the US. Mobile users access the mobile site by entering www.gameloft.com into their phone browser or by clicking through from specific promotions. Once on the site, they can buy games in one seamless step.
Bango points out that by building sites on the mobile Internet model, brands ensure they provide a superior user experience, where users can browse for up-to-date information, and download digital content. Mobile Internet sites also tap into increasing use of search and advertising on mobile, as consumers looking for new mobile content and services browse into mobile sites from a search engine, or clickthrough from a mobile ad. Where brands are delivering ad-funded mobile sites, the mobile Internet is the only way to generate the necessary ad revenue to support this, the company says.
Bango’s customers include News Corporation, Discovery Mobile and MTV, together with smaller, niche content providers. Each Bango package is designed for the different needs of small and large businesses, from the Bango Focus package for smaller content providers, to the Bango Target and Bango Advantage packages for global brands.

Brits are Luddites Shock

Over half (53%) of Brits feel that modern technology has become too complicated, and could turn their back on technology, according to a report from PayPal, the online payments provider. PayPal says the figures are so worrying that it has launched a website dedicated to testing and improving the UK’s tech knowledge or ‘TQ’.
The report's findings demonstrate that technology is increasingly pervading our lives with 70% now regularly using a computer, almost three quarters (74%) a mobile phone, and 77% a DVD player or recorder. There has, however, been less widespread adoption of ‘newer’ technologies with a quarter (27%) regularly using an MP3 player and only 3% a BlackBerry. A representative sample of 1,010 British adults over the age of 16 was interviewed by telephone by PhoneBus in December 2006 in order to produce the report.
While the mobile phone is now ubiquitous, says PayPal, many consumers remain baffled by most of its features. 61% of users use only four features on their mobile - calls, text, alarm clock and camera - while 40% don’t know if their mobile phone has a camera function.
“It’s a worrying sign for Britain that so many of us are baffled and therefore turned off by technology” says Neil Edwards, PayPal’s 'Technology Expert'. (You mean they only have one – Ed.)  “There’s no hiding from technology, so burying your head in the sand won’t make it go away. We all must embrace technology or risk becoming the tech illiterates of the world.”

RAF Goes Mobile for Recruitment Drive

The Royal Air Force (RAF) has launches an integrated campaign to attract 16 - 24 year old recruits. As part of the campaign, mobile agency Incentivated was appointed by the COI (Central Office of Information) to develop a mobile campaign to support an 8-week national TV campaign.
The mobile service offers potential recruits easy access to additional information about RAF jobs. It includes a mobile Internet Site featuring information on a range of roles, along with salary details and necessary qualifications. The site was built using Incentivated’s proprietary WAPsite publisher tool. SMS response gives an overview of specific jobs people are interested in and the option to text an email address to receive more detailed information on the RAF.
The campaign uses feeds from the RAF’s new ‘Rise to the Challenge’ website, which informs potential recruits about the variety of careers in the RAF, and helps to prepare applicants for service life. The new, fully interactive website features blogs, videos, podcasts, interactive aptitude tests and fitness guides, plus an improved job search facility. Incentivated developed the campaign in conjunction with digital agencies LIDA and Binary Vision.
“The RAF is a modern, dynamic and exciting organisation in which to work, and we aim to reflect this in our advertising campaigns” says Richard Huthwaite, Head of RAF Marketing. “We appreciate that to reach our target audience, we must keep up with the latest online trends, such as SMS and the mobile Internet.”
Jamie Galloway, Director of Digital Media at COI, adds:
“This is the first step in mobile activity for the RAF. The addition of an SMS option on the TV ads gives an easy way for interested viewers to get more information when they want it. We’re also working with Incentivated and LIDA to develop a new SMS Fitness Programme for potential RAF recruits.”
For Incentivated, Commercial Director Robert Thurner comments:
“The RAF’s target audience for new recruits are highly proficient in using a broad range of mobile services. Adding mobile to this campaign allows recruits to respond instantly to the TV and print advertising they will see over the next two months. We will track responses and provide the COI with real-time reporting to prove the impact of the mobile channel”.
The mobile site can be seen here. 

Mobilera Selects Enpocket

Enpocket  has been chosen by Mobilera to power the delivery of mobile marketing programmes for brands and operators across Turkey, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. 
Mobilera's Mobile Marketing Division will use Enpocket's platform to deliver campaigns across a variety of mobile formats. Mobilera will also draw on Enpocket's award-winning professional and creative services teams who have delivered campaigns around the world integrating SMS, MMS, WAP and handset applications.
Mobilera is the fastest growing technology company in Turkey, and one of the fastest growing technology companies in EMEA, according to the Deloitte Fast 50 and Fast 500 reports.
"We chose Enpocket because their technology platform is referenceable with tier one operators and large media companies across the globe, and has powered sophisticated mobile campaigns for the world's largest brands," says Ferda Kertmelioglu, CEO of Mobilera. “Enpocket's turn-key solutions and deep experience designing cutting edge programmes enable us to deliver on the promise of mobile marketing."
For Enpocket, David Barker, Managing Director Europe adds:
“Mobilera's impressive growth is testament to its expertise and creativity in mobile marketing. We're excited to be enabling targeted mobile communications with Mobilera, in markets where mobile is by far the most used interactive medium.”
Enpocket technology powers the mobile marketing efforts of operators and media companies around the world. Network customers include Cingular, Sprint, Alltel, Vodafone and BT, while Ford, McDonalds, Samsung and GM are among the brands using Enpocket.

Horror Job for Saffron

Saffron Digital, the recently-launched digital services agency from Filmnight Digital, has been appointed the lead mobile agency for Zone Horror, a dedicated horror channel from Zonemedia.
The appointment will see Saffron managing the distribution of Zone Horror content across on- and off-portal mobile platforms. It involves content hosting, encoding and distribution to operators such as Orange, 3, Vodafone and T-Mobile, as well as Amp’d in the US. Saffron will also handle the ongoing management and distribution of Zone Horror’s back catalogue of content, as well as off-the-page and off-the-web retailing.
Saffron Digital’s first project for Zone Horror will be the made-for-mobile series, ‘When Evil Calls’, delivered across the T-Mobile, O2 and Orange networks. The first two episodes of the 20-part series, all of which range between 40 seconds and two minutes in length, are free to download. Episodes of the series will also be accessible on a custom-designed WAP site, managed by Saffron Digital, as well as via podcast on iTunes.
“Using Saffron Digital’s service to consolidate its mobile operations will enable Zone Horror to deliver content to its audience in a more efficient way,” says David McDonald, head of Saffron Digital.
Tanya Gugenheim, Chief Business Development and New Media Officer at Zonemedia adds:
“We have a diverse range of horror content, offering something for all fans of the genre. The partnership with Saffron Digital improves our distribution network by giving our customers a variety of channels through which to get their horror fix.”

Email Update Reminder

A quick reminder. If you like your mobile marketing fix but forget to check back into the site as often as you would like, sign up for our email updates by texting ‘MMM’ followed by your email address to 82222 (standard rate).
Then every couple of weeks or so, you’ll get an email pointing you to the top stories on the site and, if we can think that far ahead, you might even get some pointers to the interviews, guest columns and other features we’re planning to run in the near future.
This service is kindly provided to Mobile Marketing Magazine by Incentivated, on its Iris mobile marketing platform.

David  Murphy
Editor

GfK Unveils Mobile Content Tracking Service

Research company GfK has announced the formation of a new company, GfK M² to provide what it says will be the industry’s most comprehensive tracking service of mobile content sales. GfK M² is a joint venture between GfK, the world’s fourth largest research organisation, and Media-Control, which supplies entertainment sales data.
GfK M² says it will meet the need for reliable mobile content data by companies in the media, gaming industry, music industry, content and network providers, publishers, hardware and component manufacturers. Data will be provided weekly by network operators, including Virgin Mobile, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and content providers, such as Jamba.
GfK M² will initially cover the most important European markets, including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Benelux countries,  progressively expanding throughout Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea. The first GfK M² marketing service will be a European mobile game panel that will monitor the video games downloaded on mobile phones via network operators or content providers. GfK M² will gradually encompass all types of mobile content, including ringtones, full track music, videos and mobile TV.
“Mobile content is the next big revenue stream for the telecommunications industry and consequently mobile content market knowledge is vital for future strategic decision making” says Iris DeGersem, Managing Director, GfK Retail and Technology UK. “Quality of information is key, and GfK M² will benefit from our joint proven expertise in multimedia retail panel and entertainment sales data monitoring. Ultimately, anything downloaded onto a mobile phone will be tracked by GfK M², and for the first time clients will be able to see a truly global picture of the mobile content industry.”
Nick White, Head of Content at Virgin Mobile adds:
“The industry is in need of robust market data, and GfK has proven to be able to deliver it in hardware, so are our trusted provider in content.”

Mobile Web Use Up, Says MDA

The Mobile Data Association (MDA) reports that the number of mobile phone users accessing the Internet on their handsets continued to grow during the last quarter of 2006. According to figures released today by the MDA, an overall total of 45.6 million unique users were recorded as having used their phones for downloads and browsing the mobile Internet in the UK throughout October, November and December last year, an average of 15 million each month. These figures show a quarterly increase in the average unique users per month from 13 to 15 million. 
December 2006 boasts the highest user total to date, 15.9 million. This, the MDA believes, is due in part to new and improved phones being given as Christmas presents to increasingly adventurous mobile users keen to get the most from their handsets. It points out that companies are springing up to provide useful services for consumers via the mobile web. This, the MDA believes, along with the snowball effect achieved when users learn more about the capabilities of their phones and discover they can read news and sports stories on their phones while travelling, for example, are factors which should see these figures growing month on month throughout 2007.
The MDA website contains information on how to set up a phone to use the mobile Internet here, as well as a list of mobile websites to view here.

Change - or Die

Bruce Renny, Marketing Director of ROK, believes that mobile networks are fast becoming commmodities, with potentially serious consequences
Much as they pretend it's not really happening - like turkeys ignoring the onset of Christmas - most mobile networks are sliding slowly, but surely, into becoming mere commodity providers. Nothing more, in the eyes of the consumer, than those companies who compete to sell us our water, gas and electricity. An essential pipeline, of course, but a pipeline nonetheless.
For those of us able to remember a time when using a mobile phone was a daily miracle, and the companies that brought us our mobile services were seen as cool, it is apparent that the novelty has, to a very large extent, worn off. Particularly among the younger demographic who grew up with the technology and now take mobile telephony for granted. It seems almost a cause for nostalgia...
Of course, novelties, by their very nature, do wear off, but for the mobile industry as we know it, the ramifications of the inevitability of convergence and the resultant commoditisation of mobile communications as a whole represent a potentially fatal threat to the existing mobile industry revenue streams of voice, text and data, unless some radical action is taken now.

AdMob Reports 1 billion Ads in 6 Months

Mobile ad marketplace AdMob has revealed that it has served 1 billion mobile web ads in the past six months, compared to just 30 million in the previous six months.
Founded in early 2006, AdMob enables advertisers to reach their customers on the mobile web and allows publishers to monetise traffic on their mobile sites. Backed by real-time metrics and reporting, advertisers can reach out to users across a set of mobile content channels, including news, entertainment, mobile communities and mobile portals.
“The encouraging data point for the mobile web is not just the number of ads being served, but the pace at which things are growing,” says AdMob Founder and CEO, Omar Hamoui. “In our first six months, we only served about thirty million ads, and over the following six months we served one billion more.”
In early analysis of its mobile web page traffic, the company has picked out some  interesting and sometimes surprising trends. The US proved to be the network’s largest contributor of mobile web traffic, with South Africa, surprisingly, as the second largest source of mobile web users across AdMob’s publisher base. The UK came in fourth place, with a 12% share of the mobile web traffic on the AdMob network. Across the AdMob network the top five countries in terms of traffic are:
1. US: 20% (90m pageviews/month)
2. South Africa: 15% (66m pageviews/month)
3. India: 13% (57m pageviews/month)
4. UK:  12% (53m pageviews/month)
5. Romania:  5% (22m million pageviews/month)

The publishers in AdMob’s network have been categorised into five primary content channels.  Of the five channels, ‘Communities’ and ‘Downloads’ far outweigh ‘Portals’, ‘News and Information’, and ‘Entertainment’ in terms of traffic. The traffic breakdown by channel is:
1. Communities: 45 %
2. Downloads: 44%
3. Portals : 8%
4. Entertainment: 2%
5. News and Information: 1%

AdMob has also revealed a breakdown of the relative proportion of devices that access the mobile web. Nokia leads the pack with a commanding 4% share of devices accessing mobile sites on the AdMob network.
The top five manufacturers across the AdMob network are:
1. Nokia: 41%
2. Motorola: 14%
3. Sony-Ericsson: 13%
4. Samsung: 12%
5. LG: 3%

“The mobile advertising industry really needs more transparency, as well as accurate and actionable data” says Hamoui, “For the first time, we really feel that we have sufficient scale to develop some insight on the usage of the mobile web and we’re determined to invest more time sharing this knowledge to help spur the growth of the industry as a whole.”

ScreenTonic Nominated

Mobile advertising company ScreenTonic has been nominated by the GSM Association for its STAMP platform in the 'Most Innovative Mobile Application or Content' category at next month's 3GSM Awards. The Awards recognise the world's most pioneering and inventive companies in the mobile industry, and showcase their latest products, services, applications and technologies. The winner will be announced on February 12 in Barcelona, during the 3GSM World Congress.ScreenTonic claims that STAMP is the first platform to be designed specifically for managing and delivering ads on mobile phones. STAMP's Ad Manager and Ad Server enable management of the advertising inventory, online activation and validation of campaigns, streamlining of campaigns, and publication of reports and results.Access to STAMP is open to the different players involved in the mobile value chain, including mobile portals, media agencies and advertisers, who can directly access real-time information relating to current and future campaigns.Other nominees for the award include another mobile advertising company Admob; mobile search and advertising company Medio Systems; mobile applications company Microimage; voice-enabled mobile search company Promptu; and mobile photo and video sharing company Shozu.
More information on the Awards here.

Red Circle Launches in Oz

Mobile media content provider Red Circle has launched an Australian operation as part of a plan to increase its global footprint. The company is best known in Europe for a number of youth brands, including, TXT UK, Mobile Diva and Zing Club.
The company’s Australian offering, branded ‘Oztones’, includes ringtones, wallpapers, videos, animations and games, targeted at young mobile consumers in the 18-35 age group.
“Since the launch, we have found that Australian tastes are remarkably similar to the UK” says Red Circle Chief Operations Officer Cathal Fay. “However, our analytic approach to marketing will enable us to identify the subtle differences in Australian customer behaviour and cater for those niche requirements.”
Oztonez is available on Australian networks Optus, Telstra and Vodafone, all of which enable billing of content by premium SMS.

You can’t give it away – not like this anyway

Square Group (see story below) seems pleased with the results of a Bluetooth experiment it is running at the Noel Coward theatre, offering a free video download from the ‘Avenue Q’ puppet show playing at the theatre. In the first seven days of the exercise, 703 people accepted the offer, promoted via a Bluetooth message sent to their device.
But I wonder if the company should really be so happy with these results. Those 703 are out of a total of 9,595 theatregoers who had their Bluetooth-device enabled. So against the 703 who said “Thank you very much”, you have 8,892 who said “Thanks, but no thanks.” Or possibly something stronger.
Put another way, the campaign achieved a (positive) response rate of just over 7%. That, of course, is a response rate that any direct marketer would kill for, But that’s the point. Mobile marketing is not direct mail. It’s more personal than that, and brands that ignore this fact do so at their peril. And while Bluecasting may be legal, to my mind, if 93% of the people you offer a free download to decline the offer, that’s not really a success.
I do have some sympathy with Square Group. The company can argue that it was Bluecasting to a captive audience of consumers likely to be interested in what it was offering. They were there to see the show after all; it’s not as if the message was broadcast from a bus shelter or billboard site to anyone who happened to be passing. In making the results public, in fact, the company may actually have done the industry a great service. Because I think that response rate of 7% says a lot about the value of Bluecasting as a marketing tool. Because if 7% is as good as Bluecasting gets, with a timely, relevant offer, to an audience that should be receptive to it, then personally, I’d be tempted to do something else.

David Murphy
Editor

Bluetooth Campaign Targets Theatregoers

Square Group has revealed the results of an experiment it has been running with Bluecasting at the Noel Coward Theatre in London. The company installed a Bluetooth transmitter from Alterwave in the theatre. When someone with an active Bluetooth device walks past the transmitter, it sends out a message offering them a free video clip from the puppet show, 'Avenue Q', which is playing at the theatre.
In the first seven days of the experiment, says Square Group, 9,595 active Bluetooth devices were detected and sent messages. Of these, 703 people accepted the offer of the video download – an average of 87 people each day.
“This is a fun and exciting method of marketing for any provider of entertainment value products” says Nicholas Lock from Square Group. “We are the only reseller of this product in the UK, which looks set to take the theatre industry into the next generation.”

Mobile Pricing Under the Spotlight

Informa Telecoms & Media will hold its ‘Mobile Pricing & Bundling 2007’ conference on 21-23 May at the Regents Park Holiday Inn, London. The event is the 12th in Informa’s flagship Mobile Pricing series, and is designed  to address the key pricing and service bundling challenges that are pertinent to all mobile operators in 2007. 70% of the attendees at last year’s event represented mobile operators.
The event comes at a time of increased competition from discount MVNOs,  coupled with greater mobile number portability, and the effects of convergence starting to redefine market dynamics as customers are more empowered to churn than ever before. At the opposite end of the spectrum, emerging triple/quad play business models are enabling operators to offer bundled service propositions. Pricing such offerings at the optimum level to drive revenues, says Informa, is paramount.   
Confirmed speakers for the event include Abdulhaleem Badran, Senior Pricing Analyst at MTC Vodafone;  Bartolome Salas-Manzanedo, Director of Value Added Services at Orange Spain; Oliver Cronauer, Product Manager, Prepaid at Swisscom Mobile; and Uday Kansara, Senior Pricing Manager at T-Mobile UK.
The conference will address key questions such as:
How important is price as a major driver of consumer mobile data usage? What examples are there in the marketplace of successful data-pricing initiatives? How can operators use pricing to appeal to SMEs? What is the true cost of bundling services, and to what extent is this a sustainable strategy for mobile operators? How can operators build and leverage the value of their brands before embarking upon a bundling strategy? Simplicity versus flexibility and personalisation: how much freedom do customers want in terms of tariff selection? And how has mobile number portability affected the importance of price as a driver for customer acquisition and retention?
More information from Kate Lewis at Informa via email from kate.lewis@informa.com

Knight Takes European Role at deCarta

deCarta, which supplies software and services to the Location-Based Services (LBS) industry, has appointed Philip Knight to the role of European Sales Manager. Knight will be responsible for expanding business relationships with handset, personal navigation device (PND) OEMs and mobile operators throughout the region.   
Knight joins deCarta from Wayfinder Systems, where he held the position of UK Business Director. Prior to Wayfinder Systems, Knight held a number of senior positions at Motorola and elsewhere, including Regional Business Director EMEA (Applications and Services) for Motorola, where he oversaw the Global Solutions Group, providing mobile data services and content to network operators in EMEA.
"We’re delighted to welcome Phil aboard” says Chris Bowden, Commercial Director EMEA for deCarta. “His broad experience in navigation solutions for mobile phones underlines deCarta’s commitment to continued investment in working with developers and service providers to provide best-in-class navigation solutions and services in the rapidly expanding European mobile and PND market.”
deCarta’s Navigation SDK environment was launched internationally on December 4 last year. The development kit enables personal navigation device and smart phone manufacturers to quickly build and bring to market highly customised and differentiated on-board navigation applications. 

Taxis Top Mobile Search Queries

Europeans are turning to the search capabilities of their mobile phones when looking for new careers, according to a recent report from mobilePeople, the mobile search company.
The findings of mobilePeople’s ‘Mobile Search Trends 2006’ study show that just before Christmas 2006,  6% of all mobile searches were for jobs and recruitment consultants.  According to the study, the overall number of mobile searches conducted during 2006 grew ten fold on the previous year.
The report also reveals the top mobile search categories before and during the festive period. These were, in order of popularity, Taxis, Takeaways, Restaurants, Supermarkets, and Consumer Electronics.
The most popular brands searched on in the run up to Christmas were Ikea and Toys r Us. The searches peaked on Christmas Eve with the last minute rush for gifts, in particular consumer electronics. The next peak was on 27 December, with post Christmas exchanges and sales. This shows how mobile-based services increasingly play an integral role in shaping consumer behaviours and have become an essential part of today’s lifestyle, the company says.
The top 20 searches generated 80% of the entire search volume. Other search categories featuring in the top 20 included banks and financial institutions, hotels, garage services, car parts, hairdressers, medical services, shoe retailers, cinemas, furniture outlets, toy retailers, department stores, pubs and coffee shops.
“The combination of 3G networks and improved device capabilities means that mobile search is getting faster and easier” sasy Eden Zoller, Principal Analyst at Ovum’s Consumer Practice. “It is becoming something people want to try, and as the survey highlights, comes into its own when people are time constrained, on the move and need something quickly.”
For mobilePeople, CEO Jens Andersen adds:
“It is evident that consumers are warming up to the idea of searching on mobiles. Who would have thought a year ago about looking for a job on their mobile? Companies worldwide are now facing winning over the ‘I need it now’ generation that chooses a mobile phone as a means of searching for information. It’s the final call to get on the mobile web or miss out.”
The ‘Mobile Search Trends 2006’ study is the first of a series of reports planned by mobilePeople on mobile search. The findings were based on data obtained from mobilePeople’s European customer base during the period 23 – 27 December 2006.

Red Bend Claims 34% Share

Red Bend Software, which provides in mobile software management and Firmware Over-the-Air (FOTA) updating solutions for mobile phones, has revealed that its vCurrent Mobile FOTA client software is now embedded in 58 handset models used by 80 million consumers worldwide, giving the company a 34% market share of all FOTA-enabled phones shipping.
At the end of 2005, vCurrent Mobile was embedded in just six handset models and 10 million phones. Red Bend is forecasting that the software will be embedded in 100 million mobile phones by the end of Q1 2007. To date, Red Bend’s FOTA software has performed more than 1.25 million software improvements for mobile consumers in 97 countries.
“FOTA has become an essential asset for new mobile phones, and is projected to be embedded in 50% of all mobile devices by 2008” says Matt Lewis, Director of Research and Consulting at UK analyst ARCchart. “The ability to deliver software improvements directly to consumers’ mobile phones greatly enhances the mobile user experience. In 2006, Red Bend emerged as the leader in FOTA client software, and has proven to be a key player in shaping the Mobile Software Management market.”
Red Bend points out that today’s mobile phones have sophisticated software architectures, offering advanced features such as digital cameras, music players and web browsers. Phones can have 128MB of flash memory to support tens of applications and hundreds of software components. Red Bend’s patented vCurrent Mobile FOTA software, interoperable with standards-based Mobile Device Management (DM) servers, enables mobile phone manufacturers and wireless operators to efficiently and reliably deliver firmware version updates over-the-air to phones already in consumers’ hands, keeping handsets up-to-date with the latest features and software improvements.
“Consumers currently personalise their mobile phones with ringtones, games and wallpapers” says Red Bend CEO, Yoram Salinger. “Soon, they will want to personalise their handsets by selecting the software features, applications and services that fit their lifestyles. With our ongoing innovations in Mobile Software Management and new product introductions planned for 2007, Red Bend is empowering the mobile value chain to meet this consumer need through greater flexibility and control over managing a phone’s software assets. As a result, consumers will become more attached to their mobile phones and their service providers — benefiting the entire industry.”
You can download a free research paper on FOTA here.

Livingston Takes mBlox Marketing Role

Mobile transaction network mBlox has appointed Steve Livingston to the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Livingston will develop mBlox’s business in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, and enhance its visibility in meeting the growing needs of mobile businesses worldwide.
Livingston brings more than 25 years of marketing experience to the mBlox management team, including roles at IBM, AT&T Wireless and Bytemobile. He joins mBlox from Bytemobile, where as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Sales, Business Development and Customer Operations, he helped build the company into the world’s leading provider of data optimisation solutions for mobile networks. He was responsible for all marketing, sales and customer support, and oversaw international growth to include more than 60 mobile carrier customers in 36 countries.
Prior to Bytemobile, Livingston was Vice President of Business Marketing at AT&T Wireless, where he was responsible for all business-to-business marketing for the company. Livingston holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley and is a graduate of the Stanford Business School Executive Program.
“At mBlox, we have built a totally new kind of global network, focused on mobile transactions” says CEO Jeff Clark. “We serve thousands of industry customers, through partnerships with mobile carriers in dozens of countries.  Our marketing opportunity is to execute on the growing number of exciting possibilities in existing and new sectors, countries and technologies. Steve brings world-class skills to the role, and will help lead mBlox to the next level.”

70,000 Users for Mobile Back-up Service

ZYB, the online mobile backup service, has revealed that it has built a user base of 70,000 consumers since the launch of the service in June last year.
In 2007, ZYB plans to build on its strong foundation in mobile backup and what it calls “me” services, that have a value to the user regardless of other users. The company says it will also expand its offering to include a number of “us” services that: “leverage the value of collective data to create a full online life for users.”
“The realization of 70,000 users in six months marks an important milestone in our roadmap,” says ZYB CEO Tommy Ahlers. “ZYB is shaping the future of mobile data use by bringing mobile data into the online world and activating it in a social context. This is reversing the trend seen in the past few years, where mobile operators have been trying to launch online services to users’ mobile phones.”
To support its new feature offerings for mobile users, ZYB has also expanded to 25 employees, and has strengthened its management team with the addition of Hans Hurvig as CTO and Thomas Klausbo as Commercial Director.
Hurvig brings 20 years of experience in technology to ZYB, including 10 US patents on world products shipped with Cisco and Microsoft, where he worked as a software developer on Windows and Internet Explorer products. Klausbo is a specialist in digital strategy, business models and communication. He has been responsible for one of the biggest digital solutions budgets in Denmark and has led one of the most profitable business consulting departments in the Internet consulting industry.
ZYB is backed by Nordic Venture Partners which has invested €3 million (£2 million) in the company.

3 Opts For Rubberduck

Mobile technology company Rubberduck Media Lab has signed an agreement with the Scandinavian mobile operator 3 for delivery of both the technical solution and operations and hosting of 3’s Mobile TV initiative in Sweden and Denmark. The service, named 3Show, is currently being tested, and will form part of 3’s broadband services within the X-Series initiative from 1 February.
Rubberduck Media Lab delivers a streaming solution for Mobile TV that enable 3’s customers to watch Mobile TV by downloading a software client. The solution is built on a video standard that delivers high quality at lower bandwidths. Rubberduck says that the service is unique, as there is no other complete TV service offering the same picture quality for mobile phones in Scandinavia. The solution offers easy access to a number of channels, as well as a programme guide. Programmes that have already been sent to the device can be viewed on-demand. 
”This is a milestone for Rubberduck” says Ola Svartberg, manager of Rubberduck Media Lab. We are delivering a total solution for Mobile TV, together with our sub-contractors Beeweeb and Vidiator, to one of the world’s most demanding customers,. This agreement confirms our leading position within mobile multimedia."

ShoZu Signs First Operator Deal

ShoZu has reached an agreement to provide its mobile media services to customers of Austrian mobile network provider Hutchison 3G Austria, initially as a free download to the handset from the carrier’s mobile portal and tentatively as a pre-installed application on select phones. The agreement marks ShoZu’s first partnership with a mobile operator, and an important step in building a mass distribution channel for ShoZu’s services through carrier affiliations.
Effective immediately, 3Austria subscribers can use ShoZu’s one-click ‘Share-It’ service to upload photos and video clips from their cameraphones to the carrier’s 3FotoAlbum photo community, without transferring the files to a computer, dealing with the complex navigation of other uploading methods, or interrupting normal use of the phone. Image uploads to 3FotoAlbum are free of charge as part of the subscriber’s flat-rate data package.
Over the longer term, 3Austria plans to add ShoZu’s ‘ZuCast’ service for automated delivery of videos, photos, music and other user-selected content directly to the mobile phone. ShoZu’s proprietary data replication technology enables files to be downloaded invisibly in the background, without the need to open a mobile phone browser, perform complex multi-click navigation sequences, wait for pages to load, interrupt phone calls, start over in the event of a dropped connection, or sync to a PC.
“Mobile subscribers today are looking for an easy bridge between their camera phones and the online world” says 3Austria CEO, Berthold Thoma. “ShoZu offers a fast, user-friendly solution that will be especially attractive for members of our 3FotoAlbum community. We believe this will help us attract new subscribers, drive sales and upgrades of data bundles, and continue to build our market share.”
For ShoZu, Senior Vice President, Commercial, Dean Wood, adds:
“This agreement is part of a broader strategy to establish commercial relationships with mobile operators, and our success with 3Austria reflects the appeal of our service as a means of driving consumer adoption of value-added services and increased data usage. This is a strong case study to take to the wider Hutchison Telecommunications Group and other carriers around the world.”
ShoZu enables mobile operators to generate new revenue streams by offering a wide range of multimedia services through a single gateway and a single application on the phone. Additional benefits include ease of use, rapid rollout, nominal upfront investment, no interference with other revenue-generating services, and support for a wide variety of destinations ranging from photo communities and social networks to personal blogs and citizen-contributed photojournalism sites.
ShoZu also offers easy interaction with customers in the mobile channel for brands, media companies and content providers; increased web usage and stickiness for web communities through easy extension of community services to the mobile phone; and unlimited content support on one open application platform for handset manufacturers, eliminating the need to install different clients for each service or upgrade the client when a new service is added.
ShoZu currently supports 95 handsets, including Symbian and Java devices as well as Microsoft Windows Mobile phones such as the Motorola Q.

ShoZu Upgrades. Read.

AdMob Boosts Reporo User Numbers

Mobile advertising marketplace AdMob says it is helping mobile portal Reporo secure thousands of new users every week.
Reporo is a popular mobile portal catering to mobile life needs. It offers users across the world free access to text, IM, shopping, news and information services over mobile networks. Reporo has partnerships with leading retail brands such as eBay, CDWow!, Ministry of Sound and Domino’s Pizza. Reporo uses AdMob’s mobile advertising marketplace as its key acquisition channel for new users. To date, Reporo has amassed hundreds of thousands of users, primarily located in the UK, US and South Africa. 
AdMob says its marketplace delivers access to the world’s largest network of mobile web inventories, and a powerful set of targeting tools, backed by real-time metrics and reporting. AdMob enables advertisers to run targeted ads across a comprehensive set of mobile content channels, including communities, entertainment, news and portals.
Since its launch, the AdMob network has achieved around 700 million page views per month. With an average network growth rate of 150% per month, AdMob claims that it is, in terms of reach, the world’s largest and fastest-growing mobile advertising company.
“We chose AdMob as our key acquisition channel because the breadth and depth of AdMob’s network cannot be matched by any other company in the industry,” says Reporo Sales & Marketing Director Kieran O’Keeffe. “In addition AdMob’s capability to target specific handsets and countries means that we are accessing the potential users we need.”
For AdMob, European Managing Director Russell Buckley adds:
“I put the success of the AdMob and Reporo partnership down to the perfect synergy of our two companies’ products and services. Reporo’s consumers are the ever-growing community of mobile savvy individuals who want to get the most out of their mobile devices. AdMob's network is simply the best way to take this kind of product to market, consistently outperforming every other medium, including the PC Internet."

Report Analyses MVNOs

Juniper Research has released its report: ‘Consumer MVNOs: Current Status, Future Markets and Strategies 2006 – 2012'. The obscurity surrounding what constitutes a consumer MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) makes it a difficult and subjective market to evaluate’ says Juniper, reducing the reliability of any business cases that may be used for investment purposes. Juniper says the report cuts through the uncertainty, providing unambiguous definitions and clarity, while affording valuable insight for current and potential industry players.
The report discusses the current status of the MVNO market, providing a review of generic MVNO strategies, and impact assessments of MVNOs on the mobile market and end-users; followed up with case studies of MVNOs and MNOs, and an overview of MVNO activity in selected markets. It includes market forecasts to 2012, providing an insight and latest market predictions for subscribers and revenues across all regions of specific strategic importance; key market developments, assessing both technological factors and end-user demand trends, and focusing on the supply environment; and strategic options, considering the value proposition for MVNOs/MNOs, and behaviour and segmentation in consumer markets.
There’s also a detailed market status section, analysing mobile penetration, network operators and usage trends, and considering current MVNOs and relative positioning for 12 key nations including the US, the UK, France, The Netherlands and Australia.
The report costs £1,490 for a hardback copy or single-user PDF, £1,990 for a multi-user PDF, or £2,990 for an enterprise-wide PDF. You can get more details here. A brochure here. A free white paper here. Or order the report here.

3 Appoints Marketing Director

Mobile network 3 has appointed John Penberthy-Smith as Marketing Director to replace Graeme Oxby, who is leaving 3 at the end of March, after five years with the company.
Penberthy-Smith, 39, who joined 3 in October 2006 as Director of Customer Marketing, will report to Kevin Russell, Deputy CEO. As Marketing Director, Penberthy-Smith will be responsible for all marketing activity at 3, including products, customer propositions, channel and base marketing. He will also be responsible for marketing the X-Series, 3’s flat rate mobile broadband offer which launched in the UK in December.
Prior to joining 3, Penberthy-Smith was at Vodafone where he held a number of roles, including Head of Global Voice Propositions for Vodafone Group and Director of Consumer Marketing for Vodafone UK. 
“John is a great addition to the senior management team at 3” says 3UK CEO Bob Fuller. “He brings over 17 years of marketing experience, of which seven have been spent in mobile. 3 is a young brand and we’re clearly differentiated from our competitors in the market. I believe John will continue to build on what we’ve achieved with the brand and our services over the last four years.”

4th Screen in IAB First

4th Screen Advertising, the UK mobile advertising agency and sister company to Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), has become the first mobile agency to join the  Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the UK online advertising trade body.
As its first mobile agency member, the appointment represents the increased focus the IAB intends to place on mobile marketing over the coming year and beyond.   As members of the IAB, 4th Screen Advertising plan to collaborate on research-based projects to promote a greater knowledge and understanding of the mobile market for UK brands, media buyers, mobile media owners and operators.   
“Although there is no doubt that mobile advertising will be a significant advertising channel going forward, there still remains a significant challenge to educate brands to the opportunities in mobile” says 4th Screen Advertising Managing Director Mark Slade. “By working with the IAB, we hope to leverage their experience in helping to grow a new digital channel. Myself and my team are looking forward to working closely with the IAB over the coming year."
For the IAB, CEO Guy Phillipson adds:
“We are delighted to welcome 4th Screen on board as IAB members, and look forward to working with them in order to promote a greater understanding of mobile marketing as the medium continues to grow significantly. We are dedicated to keeping our members and UK advertisers up to date with all the latest industry research as well as insights into consumer behaviour and attitudes, so extending our remit into the mobile advertising arena would be the most logical step.”

Messaging to Prevail, says Jupiter

Analyst JupiterResearch says that messaging will still be the predominant data usage on mobile phones in 2011 despite a significant growth in mobile content and services usage over the next five years. According to a new JupiterResearch report, "European Mobile Forecast, 2006 to 2011", 72% of premium mobile services revenues will derive from messaging in 2011.
Total European mobile content, services and messaging revenues will grow from €21.9 billion (£14.4 billion) in 2006 to €27.7 billion in 2011. Content and services will grow strongly - from €2.2 billion at the end of 2006 to €7.9 billion by 2011, but messaging will remain the dominant source of non-voice revenue. Growth in MMS, email and Instant Messaging will more than offset the decline in SMS revenues, while infotainment (video/TV, games, music, etc.) will outperform maturing personalisation revenues by a factor of nearly three-to-one.
The paying audience for mobile services will reach critical mass, but not make the transition to mass market (i.e. more than 50% penetration rate) within five years. However some audiences, such as MMS and presence messaging, have the potential to break through into mainstream in the longer term if a number of structural issues are addressed.
“Mobile operators and new entrants in the mobile space must leverage the peer-to-peer nature of a personal communications platform to create a new form of content creation and consumption” says Thomas Husson, Mobile Analyst at JupiterResearch. “Entertainment will strongly differ on the third screen and remains to be invented, bearing in mind that consumers’ demand is still skewed toward younger demographics”.
The complete findings of the report are immediately available to JupiterResearch clients online. There’s more information here too on JupiterResearch's European research services.

Asia gets Smartphone Show

Informa Telecoms & Media has released details of Smartphones Asia 2007, to be held at the Meritus Mandarin in Singapore on 18-19 April 2007. The event brings together the entire Smartphones value chain, including operators, content providers and handset vendors from across Asia providing unrivalled networking opportunities with those at the forefront of the industry.
In 2006, 40% of all Smartphones were shipped to the Asia Pacific reason, with sales fulled by the ever-increasing demand for mobile data in the region. Informa is predicting over 1.1 billion users in the Asia Pacific region by 2011, representing over 50% of the total market.
Delegates will learn how to define a profitable investment plan and implementation strategy to take advantage of the rapidly expanding Smartphones market in Asia; how to deploy innovative Smartphone solutions to push information and branded services to segmented groups of customers; and how to optimise operational costs and increase efficiency with advanced Operating Systems, including Symbian, Microsoft and open-source Linux); Application Development Platforms, including Java, BREW, Adobe Flash Lite and i-mode; and User Interfaces.
Speakers include Charles Henshaw, CEO of China Mobile People’s Company in Hong Kong; John Forsyth, Vice President, Strategy, Symbian in the UK; Larry Higdon, Head of Mobile and Broadband, Yahoo! Southeast Asia; and Jason Lim, Regional Director Asia Pacific and Japan, Mobile & Embedded Devices Division, Microsoft, Malaysia.
There is also a pre-conference workshop, ‘Developing with Symbian OS’ on the 17 April, and a post-conference seminar, ‘Smartphones in the Enterprise’ on 20 April.
The event costs S$4,041 (£1,325) for the conference, S$5,490 for the conference and workshop or seminar, S$6,460 for the conference, workshop and seminar, or S$2,094 for the Symbian workshop only. There is a 5% discount for all bookings made before 20 February.
There’s more information on the event here.

MEF Advisor to mobilePeople

Mobile search company mobilePeople has announced the appointment of Claudia Poepperl as its Chief Marketing Officer. In this role she will take responsibility for further developing mobilePeople’s position and business partnerships worldwide.
Prior to joining mobilePeople, Poepperl was behind the successful launch of Germany’s largest mobile youth community, uboot.com. She has also led business development efforts at mobile content delivery firm Ucp Morgen, and marketing activities at digital commerce software firm Qpass, which was recently acquired by Amdocs for $275 million (£139 million). During a stint at T-Mobile she was instrumental in preparing the launch of T-Motion, the predecessor of today’s t-zones. Poepperl also developed the first mobile premium content portfolio at T-Mobile Austria.
“Claudia boasts wealth of experience and successful track record in taking growing companies straight to the top says mobilePeople CEO, Jens Andersen. “She is a strategic thinker and will be an excellent addition to our management team. We are looking forward to working together.”
In addition to her role at mobilePeople, Poepperl acts as Special Advisor to the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), having served for three years as board member and Vice Chairman. She is also member of the advisory boards for Mobile Entertainment and Vanilla Plus magazine. Poepperl is a regular industry speaker and author of a number of articles on mobile and media space.

MIG Wins Irish Voting Task

Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) has been selected by the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) to provide the mobile voting platform for the 4th Annual Irish Film and Television Awards. The Awards, which take place in Dublin on Friday 9 February, honour and celebrate Irish creativity, talent and achievement within the Irish and international film industry.
MIG will enable mobile voting for four categories: TV Personality of the Year; AIB Best Irish Film; Best International Actor; and Pantene Best International Actress. Film enthusiasts are invited to vote via mobile by texting the word ‘WIN’ plus the name of their chosen winner to the shortcode 53345. Votes can also be cast online.  Anyone who votes for the Awards will automatically be entered into a competition, run by the IFTA, to win a prize, specific to each category. Prizes include trips away, a  Six Nations match in the UK, shopping trips, VIP tickets to the show, and more. Details about the nominations are available here.
MIG has previously powered the voting on many national TV shows including ‘The X Factor’, ‘I’m a Celebrity’, ‘Soap Star Super Star’ and ‘Dancing on Ice’.

Talk-by-text from OpenCloud

OpenCloud, which supplies next-generation application servers to the telecoms industry, has announced the launch of a real-time talk-by-text application for mobile devices. The company says the application, powered by OpenCloud Rhino, the JAIN SLEE standards-compliant service logic execution environment for carrier-grade implementations, will benefit organisations looking to offer revenue-generating real-time communication services to users. 
Unlike other text-based messaging functionality such as SMS, MSN or email, the new talk-by-text application works in real-time. Each letter appears on the recipient’s display screen as the sender types it so the recipient no longer has to wait for a complete message to be sent. The application can be loaded to a mobile device, enabling a lively and interactive form of communication while on the move. It will soon be available on PCs with Internet access, enabling users to hold a real-time text conversation with anyone, anywhere in the world. 
By exploiting real-time communications, service providers can offer richer services to a broader range of consumers and generate more revenue, says OpenCloud. Opening up the real-time communications opportunity will also encourage innovation among telecoms operators beyond telephony as they can leverage opportunities into other verticals.   
The real-time application powered by OpenCloud has been deployed at AnnieS, a charity for the deaf and hard of hearing named after Annie Sullivan, the private teacher to deaf and blind Helen Keller*.  TNO Information and Communication Technology developed the application, and KPN is the first operator to offer the service in Holland. 
The deaf and hard-of-hearing are often excluded from society because their disability makes communication and access to information difficult. AnnieS aims to provide a means of communication to the 100,000 deaf or hard-of-hearing in Holland. 
OpenCloud will work with AnnieS, along with more telecoms operators and service providers in the near future, to execute new service deployment strategies rapidly, cost effectively and independently from existing and future underlying networks, providing an evolutionary path for the delivery of revenue-generating services. For AnnieS, any profits will be invested back into the use of innovative technology to fulfil its mission of improving means of communication to the deaf community in Holland.
For the launch of the mobile talk-by-text service for the deaf in Holland, KPN is using BlackBerry handsets loaded with the real-time application. The BlackBerry device incorporates all the necessary features for the deaf to benefit fully from the mobile service, including a QWERTY keyboard, vibrating alert, long battery life, email, phone, SMS and internet access.
“By supporting the real-time application in Holland, we are initially helping a disadvantaged section of society, but the potential to positively impact business and end users worldwide is huge” says OpenCloud CEO Stephen Newton. “The revolutionary application highlights how real-time communication needs to be exploited to offer revenue-generating and innovative services to consumers."

Logica Speeds Up

LogicaCMG  has announced the launch of its SpeedBrowsing proposition for faster Internet browsing on mobile devices. SpeedBrowsing enables network operators to offer subscribers greatly increased access speeds for off-portal websites, and the automatic optimisation of all sites for the individual user’s handset.
Mobile Internet strategies are becoming increasingly important for operators looking to drive new revenues and unleash the full potential from 3G and HSDPA investments, says Logica. These new strategies are seeing operators turning away from legacy WAP platforms towards newer mobile Internet infrastructures which can deliver high quality, next-generation Web 2.0 Internet services. Blogs, photo and video sharing, mobile advertising and social networking sites have brought a new level of interactivity to the Internet experience, and often include rich multimedia, requiring a fast and reliable connection. 
The mobile form factor adds another complication to content delivery, requiring it to be individually manipulated for the mobile environment. High Speed Proxy, the product at the core of LogicaCMG’s SpeedBrowsing proposition, automatically reformats each web page, ensuring that everything on the user’s screen is optimised for the mobile environment. In addition, the image compression engine reduces the download size of graphics, while ensuring that they can be properly viewed on the recipient device.
“Consumer appetite for the mobile Internet and its related applications is predicted to rapidly increase in 2007, so it is essential that operators implement services that are high-speed and provide high-quality user experiences” says LogicaCMG Telecoms Marketing and Business Development Director Chris Lennartz. “The industry must strive to deliver services which are comparable in quality and experience to existing PC functionality, in order to ensure a positive experience of the mobile Internet. With our extensive knowledge and experience in the mobile Internet field globally, LogicaCMG is well equipped to help operators maximise the potential of this mass-market service.”

Timetable Service for Blackberry Addicts

BlackBerry users can now access detailed, up-to-date and accurate integrated timetable information for the UK direct from their device with the launch of PlanaJourney.
The service is being provided by JourneyPlan, which specialises in Passenger Transport Information (PTI) technologies.The Dunfermline-based company has worked with mAXBridge Solutions, a UK BlackBerry development partner, to create the comprehensive but easy-to-use service for the popular wireless device.
The information covers includes planes, trains, coaches, ferries, the Tube and Dockland Light Railway. It also integrates Northern Ireland, Irish air services, the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. 
Future JourneyPlan developments will include online ticketing and e-ticketing via mobile phones. Working in partnership with Map24, JourneyPlan will be able to supply journey planning services combining car, public transport and walking with interactive mapping. The use of Near Field Communications (NFC) technology could make journey planning and ticket purchase a seamless operation, leading to fewer queues and easier travel. The technology will also allow people to access transport information and timetables via their phones.
“This is an application that’s been missing on the BlackBerry and is the most useful time saver when planning to travel” says mAXBridge Solutions Managing Director
Craig Martin. “Whether using the train or flying to meetings it gives me the opportunity to change plans at the last minute with the confidence of being in the right place at the right time.”
Blackberry users can get a one month free trial of the service here.

MIG Smashes SMS Voting Record

Mobile Interactive Group (MIG)  says it has set a new record in UK SMS voting achieving a peak of over 2,000 SMS votes per second across its award-winning voting platform, VoteWinner, during the grand final of The X Factor, which was held on Saturday 16 December 2006. The figure tops the previous record of 1,600 SMS votes per second, achieved the previous year.
MIG was appointed by FremantleMedia Licensing Worldwide (FLW), the licensing division of FremantleMedia, the licensor of The X Factor, to manage the SMS voting for a second year running in 2006. MIG was also responsible for delivering the pin code facility that allowed voters to download the exclusive MP3 track for the winning song, “A Moment Like This”, sung by winner Leona Lewis, the first ever female winner of The X Factor. The single was downloaded in excess of 60,000 times on the night - recording an increase of over 50% on 2005. In addition, MIG produced live and specially recorded mobile video clips from the show for distribution via the 3 network and the ITV mobile portal.
“We have been very pleased with the performance of our technology throughout the series” says MIG Managing Director, Barry Houlihan. “We’re especially delighted with breaking the record, which we set last year, for peak performance of our voting system on the night of the final, and I am also delighted with the way our team managed the entire range of services.”

3 Hong Kong Opts for nWeb

Novarra, which provides next-generation mobile web platforms and services, has revealed that 3 Hong Kong has launched 3Xplorer, an innovative new service, using Novarra's nWeb platform. The 3Xplorer service is powered by nWeb version 6, which Novarra claims is the most advanced and comprehensive solution for high speed internet services on mobile phones. The service is available on 37 deployed and new handset models. 
3 Hong Kong's newly launched X-Series service includes 3Xplorer alongside Yahoo!, eBay, MSN, Orb and Sling Media, and provides consumers unparalleled choice of Internet activities and brands.
As a core X-Series component, 3Xplorer enables consumers to interact with the full Internet on their mobile to buy tickets, book flights, read and write email, monitor online auction bids, banking, search for content and more.  Novarra's nWeb platform includes high performance wireless web gateways and Java micro-browsers to provide a fast and intuitive mobile experience. Mobile users enjoy features like zoom, fast scroll, site navigation shortcuts and can perform all PC-like functions such as creating favourites, tracking history and accessing secure sites.
nWeb platform Version 6 builds upon five years of commercial deployments and consumer usage. New capabilities include a dynamic dashboard, an updated suite of automatic content identification and prioritisation, RSS personalisation, a 20% improvement in page rendering times, bandwidth efficiency and platform capacity, and new languages for Java including Asian, Dutch, Portuguese and Flemish.
"We partnered with Novarra to offer a proven technology that revolutionises the way people interact with the web while on the move” says 3 Hong Kong Commercial Director Amy Lung. “We believe that 3Xplorer provides the key to unprecedented user experience. Novarra demonstrated a clear understanding of our needs and enabled us to deploy on 37 handset models in under 10 weeks with full billing integration."

Get Rich Slow

The idea of paying people to receive ads on their mobile is not something I have a problem with in principle. It’s a fair and open exchange where everyone, in theory, wins. Advertisers get a pool of mobile users who have given them their permission to send them advertising. The users get money for receiving the ads. And the company brokering the ads sits in the middle and makes some money. So far so good. But when you look at the deal that UK company Textmedia is offering its subscribers, (see story below) it seems hard to imagine any of them getting too excited about it. 1p per ad received on the phone, with a cheque issued every time they have amassed £5 of credit. 500 ads for a fiver? I wouldn’t do it, and I can’t imagine who would.
Textmedia says it is planning to send 5-10 ads per day to each subscriber. So you put up with roughly two months of text ads on your phone, you get a fiver and then it starts all over again. At the end of 12 months, you’ve made roughly £30. I’d be more than happy for someone at Textmedia to tell me what I’m missing, but I'm sorry, I just can't see the appeal for the users, and I wonder also how interesting the demographic is to the advertisers. I'd be interested, too, to see how many of those 3 million subscribers are still subscribing in 12 months time.

David Murphy
Editor

Textmedia Launches Cash for Ads Offer

UK company Textmedia.biz has launched a service that pays UK mobile phone owners for receiving ads on their phone. The company says it has launched with 3 million subscribers.
TextMedia enables advertisers to deliver an SMS, MMS or WAP Push ad to its subscribers’ handsets. It’s free to subscribe, and subscribers earn a commission of 1p for each text ad they receive. The money is credited to their online account and once 500 text promotions have been received, a £5 cheque is issued to them. TextMedia says it is aiming to send 5-10 different ads per day to each subscriber.
TextMedia points out that it is the only advertising company that rewards the receiver of the text message with a cash commission, rather than vouchers or some other form of payment.
More information here.

Peugeot 207 - Using Mobile to Drive Test Drives

When Peugeot launched the 207 in the summer of 2006, it was the company’s biggest launch in 10 years, so the pressure was on to get it right. The company had used mobile for the first time for the launch of the 1007 and the 107 in 2005, and subsequently for the launch of the 407, the 407 Coupe and the 307. But for the 207 launch, it decided to take things further.
The company was looking for close engagement with the consumer, and deep integration with other channels. In order to encourage consumers to interact with the brand, Peugeot launched a TV, print, outdoor and online ad campaign encouraging readers to text ‘24’ to 60222 in order to get a 24-hour test drive.
Peugeot’s retained mobile agency, Marvellous Mobile, created a 207 WAP site that was designed to deliver on the creative expectations of the above-the-line and outdoor advertising. There were two versions of the sites, one graphics-heavy, the other graphics-light for users wanting a faster experience. And while the TV campaign was designed to sell the style of the 207, the WAP site was charged with the substance. Finance options demonstrated exactly how much the monthly payments would come to, and a car configurator, similar to those found on Internet sites, enabled consumers to configure the engine, interior and exterior colour of their car and download their design to share with friends and family.
“It can take three months from a consumer seeing a TV ad to deciding what car they want to buy” says Peugeot Marketing Manager, Kristian Cholmondeley. “With mobile, you can do it in 20 minutes. It’s a fantastic opportunity to catch consumers while they are caught up in the emotion of the TV ad.”
In addition to the WAP site, Marvellous also developed a Java brochure that reinforced the TV imagery, and that consumers could download and store on their phone to read at their convenience, and even forward to friends.
The campaign generated a considerable amount of data, including hard data on the number of visitors interactions with the campaign (visit to the WAP site, time spent, pages viewed); a soft poll on 50 of the visitors to the site to ask what they thought of it; sales data, providing a link with other marketing channels to compare where the people who bought a 207 came into the customer journey; and brand data, which enabled Peugeot to understand how mobile compares to other channels.
The results of the campaign were impressive. One in two people who interacted with the campaign ordered a test drive. One in five visited the WAP site, and one in eight ordered a brochure. The average dwell time on the WAP site was 20 pages. Interestingly, the conversion of a prospect from visiting the WAP site to downloading the JAVA brochure or booking a test drive was around 30% higher than for the Internet. Not surprisingly, Peugeot plans to use mobile as a key element in future launches.

Hingi Debuts 2-click Music Download Solution

Hingi, the mobile impulse commerce solutions and services provider, has announced the launch of Hear It N’ Get It, which it says is the first service that allows mobile operators to provide users with mobile content in just two clicks, irrespective of the type of the handset they use, or the broadcast source of the music they hear. The service requires no handset software, no portal and no search engine.
Already provided in Israel by leading mobile operators, Hear It N’ Get It identifies the music played across all major broadcast sources simply via an SMS request, and in one more click allows mobile users to purchase all song-related materials, such as a full MP3 download, ringtones, truetones, or a video clip.
Hingi says that Hear It N’ Get It is a milestone in bringing impulse purchasing to mobile content and reducing major barriers in the proliferation of mobile music downloads. It operates on any network and is over 99% accurate. Hear It N’ Get It works irrespective of the sound quality, and grants the user the freedom to wait until the next few songs are over before reacting on a desired song.
The system allows any user to send an SMS with the name, or a short-code of the broadcast station, e.g. MTV or VH1, and within a few seconds receive the names of the last three songs that were played, with the links to buy the related content in one more click. Hingi’s system monitors all relevant radio and TV broadcast, and identifies within few seconds the currently-playing song through associative search and automatic music recognition technologies.
Hear It N’ Get It does not require any downloaded applications or pre-integrated software and works with any 2G, 2.5 G, 3G or 3.5G handset. Its music selection is virtually unlimited, says Hingi, through partnerships with content providers. The service enables operators to boost revenues from mobile music content downloads, by making the impulse purchasing process easier and more accessible to users. Hingi provides Hear It N’ Get It  as a white-label solution, allowing partners that already sell mobile content to add the service.
“This is the first time mobile users can truly purchase a wide selection of music content without the pains associated with mobile search and downloads,” says Hingi CEO Eyal Katz. “And it’s fun! Simply send the station name via SMS and get the name of the song and the performer and the content you want in just two clicks.”

Everyone’s Talking About 3

3’s ‘3 Like Home’ service, which effectively extends its network to other 3 networks worldwide, charging customers as though they are at home when they are roaming on 3 networks abroad, seems to be generating quite a bit of interest among industry commentators. Two have been in touch with us to share their thoughts, so we are happy to give them a platform here.
Pure Pricing, which offers independent analysis of UK and European mobile pricing, believes that 3 Like Home s one of the most competitive roaming offers in the UK. Analysis by the company shows 3 saving customers up to £6.50 on two short calls compared to the other UK networks.
“We are seeing an increasing number of roaming propositions in the market, such as 3 Like Home, O2’s Chosen Country – Spain, O2 My Europe and Vodafone’s Passport, which are reducing the uncertainty and the overall costs associated with roaming” says Pure Pricing Director, Jo Lynch. “However, there still tends to be restrictions applied to such offers, for example the country and/or networks where the offers are available, which may continue to cause some confusion for customers.”
Pure Pricing also notes some disadvantages with the 3 offer - the limited 3 footprint means that customers roaming to other key holiday destinations such as Spain and France will find 3’s standard pricing one of the more expensive options available.  And, like the Vodafone Passport offer, customers must remain on the preferred network for the discounted pricing to apply.
Stefan Zehle, a consultant at Coleago Consulting, describes the move as: “a small revolution.”  He points out that 3’s Austrian operation already had on offer a no additional fee roaming tariff for its data service, promoted as ‘3 like home’.“Laptop wireless data users pay as little as 0.8 Euro cents (0.5 pence) per Mbyte” says Zehle. “By comparison, Vodafone UK charges customers who roam on Vodafone preferred networks abroad between £2 and £4.11 per Mbyte i.e. between 400 and 800 times as much as an Austrian Three customer pays.  One does not often see price differences on this enormous scale!”
The price pressure exerted by Three becomes even stronger when one takes into account that Three already offers Skype on some of its handsets, says Zehle.
“Skype traffic, if not free (as with 3’s X-Series), is simply charged as data traffic and not by the minute” he points out. “While some operators may currently restrict the use of Skype on their cheapest data tariffs, it is only a matter of time before these restrictions will crumble away.”
And Zehle says 3’s move will be welcomed by EU commissioner Viviane Reding, who is trying to regulate down the cost of international mobile roaming. 
“The defence of European operators citing high costs looks shaky in the light of 3’s no-roaming fee move” says Zehle. “Costs are of course only high because wholesale prices, which the operators charge to each other, are hugely inflated and well above the lowest retail prices. The days of paying more than 50 pence a minute when roaming in Europe are numbered. Soon paying for mobile usage will be more like paying for broadband, i.e. a simple monthly charge, regardless of where and when the phone is used.”

Mobile Marketing the DIY Way

US company Mobile Visions has announced the launch of Mobivity, which it says is the first fully automated, do-it-yourself mobile marketing system in the US, enabling businesses of any size to set up two-way interactive mobile marketing campaigns online, in minutes. Marketers can create a keyword on a 5-digit shortcode, and configure their campaigns through a simple web-based dashboard.
The company points out that Mobivity is not a bulk text message sending service. The spam-free service ensures that the mobile phone owner has opted-in. To be put on a list, the mobile phone must send a text message with the business's keyword to the shortcode. Customers are encouraged to opt-in through the use of txt2win contests, voting, coupons, and specials, or by providing information via text message.
For example, says Mobile Visions, a restaurant can easily set up a contest to give away a free entrée in just a few minutes. They can then send a text message to their list when they are having a slow night, offering a coupon or special offer for that evening only.
"The possibilities are endless," says CEO, Greg Harris. "Mobivity provides a public access cable TV. show with the same text message voting abilities that American Idol has. We give a local restaurant the same ability to reach the consumer as Starbucks at a fraction of the cost."
Currently, says Mobile Visions, the barrier to entry for the small to mid-sized business is too high to provide a good return on investment. The business has to work with mobile marketing agencies, or deal with the wireless carriers and aggregators to do simple interactive campaigns. The cost in terms of setup is thousands of dollars, and weeks of time, it says.
Harris says he recently read about a tanning salon that ran a campaign that cost over $10,000 (£5,000).  "The same campaign using Mobivity would cost only $79, and could have been set up in minutes" says Harris. 
Using the open API, businesses and content providers can send any content to a mobile phone. Mobivity can be easily integrated in to existing systems, for dynamic real time content delivery. There are no contracts, and the service is billed on a month to month basis. A free trial is available on the Mobivity website.   

Texting Hits New Heights

The UK text messaging total broke through the 4 billion barrier for the first time during December 2006, according to figures released today by the Mobile Data Association (MDA). December’s total of 4.3 billion takes the overall figure for 2006 to 41.8 billion, surpassing the MDA’s prediction of 40 billion, and giving a daily average for the year of 114 million. The previous highest monthly total was 3.8 billion, recorded in October 2006.
Person-to-person texts sent across the UK GSM network operators throughout the last month of the year show a growth of 38% on the December 2005 figure of 3.1 billion, and represent an average of 138 million messages per day. On Christmas Day, this leapt to 205 million texts, an average of 8 million per hour, with the figure for New Year’s Day 2007 even higher, reaching a record breaking 214 million, the highest daily total ever recorded by the MDA.
When compared to the mere 42 million messages sent per day five years ago throughout December 2001, it’s clear just how far the nation has come in embracing text messaging technology. The MDA is forecasting that figures will continue to rise this year to deliver an annual total of 45 billion text messages for 2007, with an average of 3.75 billion messages being sent per month and 123 million messages per day.
You can get more detailed text messaging stats here.

Research Finds Mobile Operators Lack Customer Focus

Fixed-line providers have emerged as the second least customer-centric industry in a report from international marketing consultancy dunnhumby, investigating consumer attitudes towards customer service. Mobile operators fare slightly better, but are still seen to be more customer-distant than customer-focused.
The research investigates eight sectors – mobile phone operators, fixed line telecom providers, electricity suppliers, airlines, supermarkets, car insurers, credit card providers, and high street banks – and ranks specific brands according to how customer-centric consumers believe each to be.
Every organisation surveyed was given a positive or negative score, based on five key factors considered by consumers when determining what constitutes good customer service. The five factors are: good staff; good customer service; accessibility; relevant marketing; and “they understand and value me”. Companies scoring zero or above are defined as customer centric, while companies scoring negatively are customer-distant. A sample of 1,300 consumers contributed their views on 58 major companies.
The mobile sector came fifth out of the eight sectors. Interestingly, operators occupy positions at both extremes of the customer-centric/customer-distant spectrum. Virgin Mobile was found to be the second most customer-focused company of all the organisations surveyed, achieving a rating of 0.17, behind Nationwide’s score of 0.26. After a large gap, O2 came next with a rating of 0 (joint 26th). Orange achieved an average rating of -0.02 (joint 28th), followed by T Mobile with -0.03 (joint 30th) and Vodafone at -0.04 (38th). Languishing at the bottom of the pile was 3 with a score of -0.26 and a ranking of 58th, just above NTL, which finished bottom of the rankings.
“In order to improve their customer centricity, fixed line telecoms providers need to ensure that their customer propositions remain relevant over time and find news ways to engage and interact with their customers” says dunnhmby Director of Consumer Strategies and Futures, Martin Hayward. “In general, they need to make better use of customer data to put customers at the centre of their business strategy. Mobile providers have on the whole got this nailed. Where they need to concentrate is on balancing product innovation with delivering high levels of customer service – particularly ensuring that their marketing campaigns help to de-mystify technology for customers.”

Wattpad Brings Stories to Mobiles

User-generated mobile content company Wattpad has announced the public beta release of its Wattpad service that enables mobile users worldwide to discover, read, share and request user-generated stories on mobile phones
One of the greatest challenges facing the mobile industry today is getting users to find the relevant content, says Wattpad. Most content is consumed because it is a recognisable brand included in a ‘What's New’ or ‘Top 10’ list provided on a mobile operator's site. With Wattpad, mobile users can discover targeted and community recommended stories through Wattpad's mobile application which, the company says, provides a highly optimised and rich user experience on a wide range of mobile phones.
Community members can upload anecdotes, jokes, fiction or anything they want to share. Once uploaded, the stories become instantly available worldwide through the web browser on a PC, or through Wattpad's Java-based application on mobile phones. Tagging enables the stories to be easily discovered by community members. Members looking for a specific story or type of story can also request the community to locate and upload it. Wattpad is a whole new kind of volunteerism for social networking.
Figures from analyst Informa Telecoms and Media and the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) suggest the market for mobile user-generated content will be worth $13.2 billion (£6.7 billion) by 2011.
"With the release of Wattpad's new service, mobile users worldwide can now discover, read, share and request stories on their mobile phones with a highly optimised user experience” says Wattpad CEO, Ivan Yuen. “During our one-month private beta-testing phase, thousands of stories, from science fiction to funny quotes from famous people were uploaded and read by community members. The traffic exceeded our most optimistic expectations and was generated entirely by word-of-mouth. Today we are making this experience widely available to over 2 billion mobile users worldwide."
To download Wattpad's mobile application, mobile users need to go to get.wattpad.com on their phone's browser, and follow the link to download. Wattpad works with most mobile phones from major manufacturers including Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic and RIM Blackberry.
More information via the Wattpad website.

NMS Claims Ringback Leadership

NMS Communications claims that with the recent addition of mobile operators in India, Latin America and the Middle East, the company now has the largest global operator footprint for ringback tone services. NMS provides applications and platforms for innovative value-added voice, video and data services.
25 operators have now launched a ringback service using the company's MyCaller Ringback solution, increasing ARPU and subscriber retention. During 2006, MyCaller Ringback subscriber penetration more than tripled, accounting for nearly 40% of the world's total ringback subscribers.
With the MyCaller Ringback solution, operators around the world are offering consumers the ability to send a unique personalised message to everyone who calls them, by replacing the traditional ‘ring’ sound that callers hear with music clips, movie lines, sound effects or other audio. NMS says that industry analysts are projecting mobile operator revenues for ringback tones will exceed $2.5 billion (£1.3 billion) in the next two years. Much of the growth will come from developing mobile telecoms markets like India, where the industry analyst firm Yankee Group saw the number of mobile subscribers grow at a rate of close to 40% from 2005 to 2006. Similarly, Yankee pegged Latin American mobile subscriber growth at 50 million in 2006, up 21% from 2005.
"The uptake in global ringback deployments indicates an increasing interest in differentiated, personalised mobile services that reflect an individual's personality and style and foster a sense of community" says Yankee Group Program Manager Linda Barrabee. "Operators continue to seek value-added services that drive revenue and are finding that subscribers are eager to embrace these new applications.  We expect to see continued momentum for the ringback space and accelerated deployment of other mobile services that provide opportunities for personalised expression and create a sense of community."
For NMS, Vice president of Marketing John Orlando adds:
"Based on our customers' success introducing ringback services, it is clear that value-added services, delivered through a robust and easy-to-use interface like MyCaller, will continue to drive service revenues for mobile operators over the coming five-to-ten years. We can also expect a new wave of applications that leverage combinations of voice, video, data and the mobile Internet to deliver even more value to subscribers - and, of course, revenues to mobile operators."

Letter From Paris

Just heading back from Paris, having spent an informative couple of days at Informa’s Mobile Advertising and Marketing Conference. Lots to take in, lots to think about, and a chance to meet in person some of the people and companies you hear mentioned so often in mobile circles. Like AdMob’s Russell Buckley, who we’ll interviewing in a couple of weeks about his passion for mobile and his new venture. And the people from Blyk, the Finnish company that hopes to sign up customers to its virtual mobile network in the UK by giving them free talk time and texts in return for their agreement to look at ads. We’ll be interviewing them too. And Abaxia’s Cedric Mangaud, who I managed to stop in his tracks by talking to him in French for all of 10 seconds before my vocabulary dried up.
ROK’s Bruce Renny was there too, and he’s promised us a 750-word piece on the commoditisation of the mobile network operators. As were the usual suspects. Alex Meisl from Sponge, Robert Thurner from Incentivated, Jon Carney from Marvellous Mobile (complete with client Kristian Cholmondeley from Peugeot) and Paul Burney from Response Mobile. Sure, these guys get to pitch their services to the delegates to some extent, but having covered a few of these events, I can see too how hard they are working to push mobile as a viable marketing channel and they deserve credit for this.
Away from the conference, it was just tremendous to be back in Paris, where I spent some time in my youth. A couple of things struck me. One was that all big cities are starting to look the same in some respects. I had this thought as I collected my free 'Metro' newspaper on entering the tube station, just after finishing my skinny latte in Starbucks. The only difference was that the Starbucks had no wi-fi, though several other bars which I visited in the interests of research did, and often it was free.
Secondly, to completely contradict myself, Paris is, and hopefully always will be, unmistakably Paris. The beautiful Metro signs, the old tube trains that let you open the doors to get off a few seconds before the train stops moving, and the unwritten rule that says that if you’re French, female, in your 20s and in a bar, you will smoke, you will probably smoke roll-ups, but you will still manage to look sexy and demure as you do so, even when you’re blowing smoke out of your nose. I imagine the French must have plans to ban smoking in public places like everyone else, but I’d like to see them try.
When I lived in Paris as a student for a year, I used to go to a fantastic restaurant called Chartier because the food was OK (and cheap), and the atmosphere was brilliant. On my first night here on Monday, I had to eat there. 20 years on, it hadn’t changed a bit. “Si ca marche, laisse passer” or whatever the French is for: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s on Rue du Faubourg Montmartre if you find yourself in Paris of an evening and want to try it. I recommend the snails. And everything else.
But now, it’s back to reality. A story on ringback tones demands my attention. The mobile marketing bandwagon rolls on. Thank goodness.

David Murphy
Editor

TV Talent Show in Mobisode Move

In a first for a cable network reality show production, USA Network has teamed up with JuiceCaster,  the unified mobile and web social media network, to provide the 10 finalists of Nashville Star’s fifth season, which began last week, with the ability to create their own ‘Contestant Mobisodes’, enabling maximum exposure to fans worldwide.
Nashville Star is the original grassroots talent search to find America's next great country music star, and the nation's top-rated country music programme. With JuiceCaster, photos and video content recorded by contestants with Motorola KRZR handsets provided by Cricket Mobile can be automatically posted to the Nashville Star Mobisode MediaBox in real-time. The MediaBox, accessible via the official Nashville Star website, and on each contestant's personal MySpace Profile Pages will give visitors an exclusive view into the everyday lives of the Nashville Star contestants as they compete for the chance to win a major music recording contract.
Visitors to the Nashville Star Mobisode MediaBoxes can subscribe to a contestant's MediaBox 'channel' on their own MediaBox, available for free via the Juicecaster website. Fans who subscribe to a Nashville Star’s contestant's channel can choose to be notified via text message when a contestant posts a new photo or video. Fans can then view that contestant's content on their phone, or by visiting their own Mediaboxes online. Individuals can easily post their MediaBox to any web site, placing links to Nashville Star contestants' content anywhere on the web.
"This technology is a testament to how usanetwork.com and Nashville Star are working to stay on the cutting edge of entertainment and delivering another great web component to the series," says Chris McCumber, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Brand Strategy for USA Network.
JuiceCaster will enable handset-to-handset, handset-to-PC, and PC-to-handset content distribution for Nashville Star contestants. The finalists will be able to upload an unlimited number of their favourite behind-the-scenes moments to the Nashville Star website in real-time with their Motorola KRZR handsets. Pictures and videos created by Nashville Star finalists can be viewed and shared via the JuiceCaster application on any data-capable Cricket handset.
"With JuiceCaster, Nashville Star contestants can upload pictures and videos directly from their mobile phones for immediate and massive broadcast exposure to fans," says Juice Wireless Chairman Nick Desai. "We're giving each musician's content ultimate portability by delivering it freely to anyone, anytime, through MediaBox channels, instead of waiting for the fans to seek out the newest, hottest content.”