Automatic for the People

DM: So Anne, give us the 2-minute guide to Wapple if you would please?

AT: Sure. We started out in late 2002, Rich (Holdsworth, CEO) and myself. It was an opportune moment. Rich had a contact in the games industry who had started doing some mobile content stuff with Bango and we thought this could be fun, so we decided to create some content ourselves, ringtones and wallpapers, and see if we could sell it to this niche market of very early mobile web adopters.

So off we went and we were one of Bango’s first 10 customers. We made some fairly crude wallpapers and ringtones and charged £1 a time for them, and the first night we made £50, then £80 the next night, then £150 the night after, so we decided to build multiple sites, including adult sites, and cross-promote them. At the same time, Bango improved its services, which meant we could do more dynamic stuff, and our revenues went from £3k a month to £20k a month, so it was happy days.

By 2004, we were confident we had the makings of a proper business, so we formed Wapple and incorporated the company. One of the reasons we were so successful was because we could deliver to all these different handsets and consumers. We had created our own databases and were becoming much more low level and flexible, to the point where we could say that any given site was optimised for any given device.

We knew what technologies to use to make sure that images rendered perfectly to the screen size, and this meant that we exposed the network to early mobile  marketing stuff. We used to build a lot of MIG’s (Mobile Interactive Group) mobile marketing campaigns, because we had a platform that could deliver mobile experiences. We were doing d2c (direct-to-consumer), but we could easily adapt it to mobile marketing, so when Motorola launched the Razr for example, we powered a campaign where the phone was promoted during ITV Movies, and viewers were invited to text in to get a link back to a mobile site with more information and photos.

So we’re now up to 2005, and we were seeing a lot more activity in the ringtones and wallpapers space, with big brands like Disney getting involved and we could see it would become flooded, so we decided to move out of that space. We had a platform so we decided to license it to people who wanted to use it for mobile marketing, or to sell their ringtones and wallpapers, so we created a simple licensing model.

DM: That sounds like a brave decision.

AT: I guess it was, and we did see a massive dip in revenues when we moved away from the d2c stuff, so we sought investment and took some Angel money and started our marketing around that time, and we grew steadily but not rapidly.

The iPhone came out in 2007, but it was around 2009 that things took off for us. By then, we had become a Master Vendor to Microsoft, and we also took on Skype as a customer, and we gained a  great reputation as a company providing the best technology. Because when a mobile site is presented with a device arriving at it, our system seeks out the device, listens to the one coming in and does auto-adaptation to that device and that version of the device. The moment the iPad came out, our system could cope with it, because of our underlying technology.

DM: So when did you develop the device-identifying tech?

AT: It was late 2005, early 2006 that we developed it, and early in 2007, we patented the ability to do this dynamically and ensure that we are always delivering the right version of the functionality to every device coming in. Because people build a mobile page and they think it will work on every phone, but there are thousands of different devices out there, and you need different versions of the site for each one.

DM: And you have just received a UK patent for the technology, can you explain what the patent covers?

AT: When a device goes to a mobile URL, that device has unique capabilities. So we don’t deliver a page; we deliver a number of functions that generate a page, and that is what we have patented. You cannot deliver static content to a mobile device. You can on the web but not on the mobile web, because a new iPhone will have different capabilities to an older one. Devices differ in terms of the screen size and resolution, support for click-to-call functionality, and all sorts of other stuff.

DM: And what does it mean to have been awarded this patent?

AT: It strengthens the value of our IP, not so much for our sake, but for a potential acquirer. We genuinely have this IP. A lot of people have smoke and mirrors technology, and then you find that under the bonnet, there are 20 programmers programming each mobile experience, but we have something scalable and which can be licensed. It’s one of the reasons why our headcount is relatively low at 23.

DM: So are you looking to sell?

AT: We are not in a rush to exit, but this could go one of two ways. Either our licensing model takes off and we carry on independently, or we pass it over to someone who can immediately input this into the thousands of users of whatever technology they have already.

DM: And your mobile site-building tools, you used to have a free entry-level version, is that still how it works?

AT: We have always had the free entry point but we realised the sort of people who were using it, and was people who were trying out the mobile web, so we have created a developer programme to replace that. There’s a free trial if you want it, but if you use the developer program, you get resources, you get training on the platform, you get tutorials. The only restriction we place on it is that once you build a site, we end the free trial once the site has had 200 page views, which is obviously minimal. But the idea is that by that point, you have learnt how to use the platform, you can now implement it in your business, so then you start paying a licence fee.

Anne Thomas is COO at Wapple