A Question of Common PixSense

David Murphy talks to Paul Singh, CEO of mobile photo-sharing company PixSense

DM: So Paul, tell us all about PixSense

PS: We started out two years ago. We have raised $7million (£3.5 million) from ATA Ventures, Innovacom and Qualcomm Ventures. We provide a software platform for preserving, sharing, publishing and monetising mobile user-generated content (UGC). It’s a big market with lots of players, companies like ShoZu, Juice Wireless. We are all in the same space, but the space itself is very large and we think we have some unique points of difference.
Clearly, there is a lot of UGC on the Internet with sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. But it’s still hard for me as a user to take a digital camera, connect it to the PC, upload my content, you really have to think about it from the point of view of a content creator, as well as a consumer.
So then you look at the mobile world. Data plans are expensive but coming down. You have phones with a good quality camera that also do video, high speed networks, so the user could be creating content from anywhere, any time but the issue we have found is this one of uploading, and there are lots of different solutions proposed by different companies. 
In our opinion, the best solution is to put the application on the handset, and we believe there will be many more businesses created in this space. We think the potential for this is three times what it is on the web, because there are 3 billion handsets compared to 1 billion PCs, and it’s any place, any time, anywhere.

DM: So you said you have some points of difference. What are these?

PS: Firstly, we pride ourselves on our handset support. We support around 300 handsets in total, across BREW, Java, Windows Mobile and Symbian. We also think our interface is the easiest to use. When you take a picture, it is automatically uploaded to the operator’s website and preserved there, and the consumer gets the same experience on the web as they get on the phone. Some companies treat the web and mobile differently, but when we talk to customers, many people depend on the mobile as their only device, and often they don’t want to fire their PC up to go on the web, so the key difference in our thinking is to make sure that users have the same experience on the mobile as they would on the web.
But the unique thing about our platform is our compression technology which kicks in before a user sends an image from the handset, because the data transfer between the handset and the website, the uplink, as opposed to the downlink, is where there is the biggest cost to the user, and to the service provider.
We can compress the image by up to 90% and we do this on the handset. I could show you photos before and after compression and I do not believe you would be able to tell the difference, and we have patents in this area. So this helps reduce the data costs for the user, and for the operator. This is important, because let’s say the average cameraphone has a 3 megapixel camera, some are 5 mega, so a good quality image is around 2MB, and to transmit that will take a few minutes, so if you can reduce that by a factor of 10...

DM: Does it work on video too?

PS: It does, but you don’t get the same level of compression. We are working on other technology for video, but for now, images are where we bring the most value.

DM: So how does it work? Surely if the image is compressed, the recipient needs software on their phone to unpack it?

PS: When you send a photo, it’s a compressed MMS. If someone sends a photo to someone who does not have our software on their phone, we send them a link from where they can retrieve the image. When they click on the link, we can identify their device, and send them the image in the appropriate resolution that their phone can cope with.

DM: So where have you deployed so far?

PS: We’ve launched with Telenor in Asia, and also with one of the largest mobile operators in the world in Europe, and we are going with a couple of other operators right now. Some are doing limited trials, others it’s a full deployment. We’re also launching on-deck in China too, but this is really the start of our launch into the European market.

DM: So it’s all on-deck?

PS: Yes. ShoZu chose to go direct, we chose to work with the operators. We believe, if you think about where the mobile market is today, there are still enough barriers, so working with the operators, you can get started quickly. We believe our platform gives the operators a great opportunity to establish a relationship with the consumer beyond voice and the monthly bill.

DM: And are these deployments branded as PixSense, or done on a white-label basis?

PS: The current customers are a white-label service. The one we are in the process of doing will be co-branded with operator and this is how most of our future deployments will work.

DM: And how do you charge for the service. Is it a monthly subscription?

PS: It depends on the operator. Some charge a monthly subscription. Some have made it part of a data plan. For others, they have it on a per-day plan.

DM: How much is consumers’ nervousness over the cost of data an issue for you.

PS: Well flat-rate plans are coming now, but more importantly, if you’re using ShoZu and sending 10 images a day, then for the same amount of money, with us, you may be able to send 50 or 60 images a day. This is a huge difference.

DM: Do you have any plans to extend this into mobile social networking?

PS: Everyone has different definitions of what social networking is, but there are elements of it in what we offer. With PixSense, you can create your own social environment for you and your friends. You can also publish your photos to social networking sites with one click. You can also add tags and comments from the handset or from the web and these will be reflected back on the handset, so the experience is synchronized. In fact, there’s total synchronization of media and contacts from the mobile or the web. You may have media on a website uploaded from your PC that you want to show to your friends on a trip, so you can sync this back down to the handset. It doesn’t bring the whole file, just thumbnails, but if you like a thumbnail, you can click on it to see the full picture.
You can also synch your contacts. A lot of people offer this, but it’s not usually built into a photo application. Also, most people take the contacts off the handset and use the website as the storage mechanism for the data. We allow users to enter the contact details on the website on a PC, which is obviously easier, and then sync it back to the handset. It’s like the Blackberry experience, but we’re bringing it to other handsets.

DM: So you said this is the start of your launch into Europe. Where do you hope to be by the end of the year?

PS: I mentioned earlier that we are currently in deployment with two European operators. By the end of the year, I would hope that will have increased by a factor of 10.