Orange UK: Mobile Broadband Roars!

Orange UK, one of the large carriers in the country with 15.8m mobile subscribers, has released its "Fifth Digital Media Index", containing a set of interesting numbers on the data uptake on their network, and it makes for intriguing reading!

The carrier recorded a whopping 4,125% (!) increase in data use over dongles using their mobile network in the last 12 months with dongle subscriptions growing by 504%. Data use from handset increased by 108% and that, I might add, without the help of the iPhone (which is exclusive to O2 in the UK). The increase from dongles will be connected to a big push this offering has seen in the UK (as in other countries) over the past period. Carriers have been and are promoting these aggressively, helping uptake of mobile broadband significantly.

Here are some highlights from the report:

• Music and video downloads increased both by 38%.
• Games only grew by 8% (but at least they grew; anecdotally, some other carriers recorded sometimes dramatic drops in take-up) to a total of 770,000 downloaded games, which equates to a market share of 23% of all UK games downloads (the total UK games market would hence be 3.35m downloads for the year with Orange claiming top spot). From the top 10 downloaded games in 2008, 8 were part of the carrier's embed programme, which shows - again - that users appear more comfortable if they can try it out before (embedded games normally are trial versions).
• Social network use over mobile increased by 129% in page impressions per month and 48% in unique users. The monthly average number of pages per user was 397. In terms of popularity of social networks, Orange's Mark Watt-Jones (@MWJ) fed us additional bits via the Twittersphere: Facebook dominates, Bebo is significant, MySpace less so and Twitter grows very quickly (what was the Oprah moment in the UK?)
• An average of 386,000 GB of data have been transferred via dongles and handsets per month.
• Mobile search grew by 120% with 45% of the results being "off-portal", i.e. outside Orange's domains.
• Good old SMS still looking good, too: 19% growth with 1.7bn sent every month.

Another key point Mark brought us via Twitter: 99% of access to social network sites came from non-smartphones. This is quite noteworthy indeed as it arguably shows that mobile data usage now transcends beyond the power users on sophisticated handsets and also that content leads the uptake: give people compelling content, and they'll use it. Mobile data for the masses seems to have arrived!

Twistbox on the money

Twistbox has announced it has raised a healthy $19.5m from ValueAct Capital (rather secretive firm: you require a user name and password even for accessing the "overview" section of their site) and "other strategic investors". It also announced that former Vodafone Global content supremo Graeme Ferguson has joined its board of directors.

Twistbox was the result of the acquisition of German developer Charismatix (authors of e.g. Anno 1701, Taito's Arkanoid, etc) by (predominantly) mobile adult (which they call "late night") content provider Waat Media from LA (who work with the likes of Private and Vivid)After a lot of buzz around them a while ago (and every year again at 3GSM when everyone gets gibberish over their licensees' parties - no, no scantily-clad girls there worth mentioning, ever...), it had gone a bit quiet. The last we heard was a deal they signed with Fashion TV.

Presumably, the new money and director will get them out into the public eye a bit more again. According to the release, they plan to use the funds to launch web-to-mobile storefronts and play-for-prices games. They also want to push into advertising (but then, who doesn't?).

We all suspect there's money in this "late night" content but little has been seen to quantify the opportunity. Juniper said in 2005 it was $1bn. Forbes didn't quantify in 2006. I have seen analysts who put the share of erotic games to 12% of the total mobile gaming sector, ranking them above racing and arcade games (7% and 5% respectively) but that's somewhat unconfirmed. Moreover, video and pics will presumably be even hotter sellers - if and when they get through the varying publishing thresholds in the different countries (from PG13 in the US all the way to "behind-the-curtain" adult content in some European countries. An overview on various attempts to put a number to that market can be found here (courtesy of adult mobile pioneers, Cherrysauce).

As it will in general still be arguably safe to say that sex probably still sells, we might expect Twistbox to go on to further strengths. Just get your parties up a notch, guys... ;-)

Finally, a note to all you dear readers: this post contains links to adult sites. Do NOT click if you are offended by adult content.

Crazy numbers: mobile marketing worth $19bn by 2011?

According to ABI Research, mobile marketing will be worth a staggering $11bn by 2011. Apparently, by the end of this year, it will already be a rather honourable $3bn market.

Now, I don't have the means (or inclination) to buy the underlying report but at least they divulge that the amount is to include proceeds from mobile search and mobile video, and I suppose one could predict that, in 4 years time, there may well be more advanced devices that will actually make it fun and worthwhile to use them for more elaborate surfing and rich media consumption. Not very specific though. Other than some foggy reference to the wealth of data carriers sit on and "due in part to mobile broadcast networks' presence in all major markets" (doh!), all the rest is apparently, well, apparent...

To me, it's a whole lot crystal ball-type assumptions.