Nokia opens doors (if you read Finnish, that is)

Nokia launched its new Ovi platform to great fanfare. Ovi is apparently Finnish for "doors", which gives a hint on what they intend to do: lots of door-opening to "delivering experiences and services", which now is their business according to CEO Kallasvuo.

There is not too much on tangible details so far. Ovi is supposed to be the door (geddit?) to a bundle of services, namely their new music service, their revived N-Gage gaming brand (now a service and not a device anymore; good New York Times article here) and Nokia Maps. Then, it is said, it shall also "the entry point for other Web and mobile services". Which ones? Dunno...

Nokia is of course perfectly positioned to try and unify a content experience on the fragmented mobile space: its massive market share in most markets around the world allow it to push its platform onto a lot of existing devices. As an attempt of unifying the scattered environment, this is probably as good as it will get in the shorter term, so fingers crossed!

i-mode dropped by O2 UK & Telstra

Today's a busy day, and here comes the next piece: we read that O2 UK will stop selling i-mode handsets from the end of this month, so that the service it licensed from NTT DoCoMo will probably soon come to an end. Elsewhere was reported that Australia's Telstra will close the service in December of this year.

O2 UK spent £10m in marketing which yielded a mere 260,000 users over the past 2 years. Telstra is believed to have gathered less than 60,000 followers of the service. Not impressive and only the last examples of i-mode's failures outside of Japan (and some pockets in Europe, namely with Bouygues in France and O2 in Ireland).

The woes continue as some other markets either pulled the service already or did not even launch it: following the disappointment in the UK and presumably closely monitoring the struggle of E-Plus O2 did not launch it in Germany. MTS Russia generated a mere $150,000 per month from it. In India, the launch on Hutchison Essar was pulled "in part" because Vodafone invested in the company. Exact numbers are hard to come by but as one does not hear booming statements of its overwhelming success, conclusions can probably be drawn...

What is it then that made i-mode such a success in Japan and such a failure nearly elsewhere? Is it the change of the mobile landscape with more and more operators abolishing usage-driven data charges, the general increase in bandwidth on phones which allows users to access more rich content more easily (this used to be an advantage of i-mode), or the lack of support from handset vendors (often cited)? It probably is a bit of everything really but quite possibly the old and overcome model of making money by letting the meter run: users outside of Japan are neither used to this anymore nor do they welcome it. And rightly so: the value is not in the time I spend browsing. The value is in a specific application, service, game, etc. Being charged for this would appear to be eminently sensible: I buy a product and I pay for it. Paying to use the pavement to go to the shop is less convincing as a concept.

Update: The International Tribune has an i-mode article here. It basically confirms the above but offers some additional viewpoints and quotes and such...

Ubisoft sells Gameloft stake

Console game publisher Ubisoft sold its 18.89% stake in leading mobile game publisher Gameloft for € 81.27m (c. $111m) to Calyon, the investment banking unit of French bank Credit Agricole.

The deal is interestingly crafted and seems to have been driven by financial performance concerns for Ubisoft: it is an equity swap agreement that gives Calyon 24 months to sell the Gameloft shares on the market. Any changes in the Gameloft share price will then be recorded by Ubisoft, so the deal will only affect Ubisoft’s income statement when Calyon sells the Gameloft shares. "Ubisoft said the equity swap enables it to stagger the placement of the Gameloft shares so that Ubisoft can keep benefiting from the company’s development potential over the next two years."

No need to get all hyped up though: the Ubisoft brands will remain safely where they are: The two companies said (other sources said "hinted") that they will continue to collaborate, especially when it comes to utilizing Ubisoft’s brands on mobile phones.

The fact that the license ties and collaboration will remain, that it will still be the Guillemot brothers at the helm of both companies and, last but not least, the way the deal mechanics work would suggest that this was more a piece of corporate and financial housekeeping for Ubisoft rather than an aggressive new move for Gameloft. On the other hand, even mighty Gameloft may have felt the need to position itself slightly more independently in order to be able to move in a market that has seen continuous consolidation waves and aggressively pushing market players.

Cellcom's ad-funded game trial: the Results

It is probably because they read here my criticism of their somewhat cryptic information policy back in April (well they probably didn't) but - one way or another - Cellcom, the Israeli carrier that entered into a comprehensive ad-funded mobile game trial has provided insight in the results. Kudos!

So what do we learn? Here's some of the highlights:
* 44% click-through rate
* 19% acquisition rate
* 10x higher game downloads per user (compared to downloads prior to the trial)
* 24% of the participants had not downloaded a game in the preceding 6 months, and 54% had not done so in the preceding 3 months.
* Take-up appears to have been particularly high amongst the youngest (9-20 years). No surprise here. The sentence reporting that is a bit mumbled, so not sure if they want to tell us that 65% of the users in this segment downloaded at least one game during the trial...

A little aside I noticed was that they call advertisers - somewhat carefully - sponsors: does that mean they didn't get any return for their money? Anyway, they advertisers/sponsors included quite a few of the biggies, e.g. Nokia, McDonalds, Diadora, Samsung, Adidas and Walt Disney. All the agency powerhouses tinkered with it, too, with McCann, Saatchi & Saatchi and BBDO all involved.

I have praised above Cellcom's information policy but two crucial data points are (somewhat unsurprisingly) left out, namely CPM and pay-out to the game publishers. For a 1-month trial, everyone will be in for the ride, and be only to show that they are in the midst of the flavour of the month, mobile advertising. However, only if advertisers are that (and not sponsors), i.e. if CPM will be at levels comparable to other media (or better), will it work. The above click-through numbers suggest that this might well be the case, and the added value of extreme targeting (the mobile screen is a user's most personal one: it is not shared with others to the extent the TV or computer is) will improve that further.

The question will then remain if big mobile game publishers who regularly spend hundreds of thousands dollars on a game will provide for in-game ads in these games and if licensors for such games will allow advertising that will then factually be endorsed by their brands. Finally, operators must make sure that the consumer is not charged for the data transferred to feed the ads. This can make for an incredibly complex business model, and perhaps one that will not make it worthwhile for one or more of the parties in it to participate. Much easier of course if there is no third-party licensor involved. The result could then likely be a two-fold structure: high-powered branded premium games for a price and unbranded, ad-funded games for free.

Oberon plays iTV now, too: Pixelplay joins the family

Our recently very acquisitive friends from Oberon Media struck again to create one of the first truly focussed triple-play gaming houses. They now acquired Pixelplay, one of the giants on the interactive TV (iTV) sector. This together with their own online activities (Oberon powers e.g. MSN Games) and their recent acquisitions of Blaze and I-Play creates a rather explosive mix.

It will be interesting to see how they will manage to consolidate the whole thing with a view to the - at this time - still somewhat disparate portfolio: Pixelplay boasts the iTV licenses for the likes of Monopoly, Luxor, the World Poker Tour, etc, whilst I-Play excelled inter alia with "The Fast and the Furious". Oberon's ability to exploit titles now across three platforms may well give it some edge in the market, which - arguably - all the single parts urgently needed.

The move shows an impressively stringent move on the part of Oberon into building a casual-games-focussed powerhouse that extends its strengths across the three main consumer screens of today, i.e. the computer, the TV and the mobile phone.

Only Jamba does the Simpsons

Jamba struck a remarkable deal, we read: in the US, content for Fox's cult TV series "The Simpsons" will be exclusively available via Jamba (or Jamster as it is known there). This will mean that consumers will NOT be able to download it from carrier decks. A major push for the D2C business (and only a day after we mused the consolidation of the sector). They introduce a new subscription plan ("Yellow Plan") for $9.99 a month, which offers credit for six downloads from a selection of The Simpsons content, including the Simpsons' mobile game which is produced by EA. No word if EA is prohibited from selling the game elsewhere; I doubt it.

The really interesting point is however the way Jamba positions itself with this: the company had been struggling and was indeed hit by lawsuits (class actions and all; there are even dedicated hate websites for it) over what many people found questionable business conduct, namely by allegedly luring people into relatively costly subscriptions (e.g. in the UK £4.50 per week; for games even £6.00) by offering - at first sight - free content.

Whether or not a consumer feels ripped off depends on the perceived value they receive. When I want to purchase a ringtone and end up paying £22.00 in the first month because I did not realise that I was entering a subscription, then the perceived value does not add up. If, on the other hand, I enter into a $9.99 per month subscription to obtain free access to my favourite TV show, then that might well be a different story: perceived value adequate equals happy consumers equals return customers equals a very successful and - more importantly - sustainable business.

Despite the bumpy ride through the courts, Jamba has always been very innovative and also quick to react to successes and failures, so it is somewhat unsurprising that they should have come up with this concept now. That they did this with so prominent a license deserves respect. Given that Fox (the owner of the Simpsons brand) owner News Corp holds the majority of Jamba, the deal will not even have been very expensive but be more of an act of cross-leveraging company divisions. It would arguably have been a worthwhile strategic investment geared to driving consumers to off-deck propositions in any event: this is an area where the US somewhat limp behind. This could now well be about to change.

On a sideline, this will also likely benefit the likes of Buongiorno: besides yesterday's announcement of their acquisition of I-Touch, they had previously acquired US firm Rocket Mobile, giving them a substantial footing in this market.

The trophy for deal of the week goes to Jamba though! Hats off!

Closer to telecoms: Google acquires Grand Central

Google has just announced the acquisition of communications service GrandCentral. TechCrunch broke the news about the acquisition last week and now has the price tag at about $50 m.

According to Google's official blog, GrandCentral is "an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. We think GrandCentral's technology fits well into Google's efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users." It is bascially the evolution of the one-number concept which people like Accessline and others have been in for 10 years and more.

However, Google can possibly connect this somewhat more sensibly: Gmail and Google Talk fit smoothly and it will also ramp up the increasing interweave between the different media. In the voice area, Google was rather under-represented and Grand Central's very feature-rich product will be most welcome as it could give Google a bit of an edge here. Also, Google is arguably better suited than some others who tried to reach out directly to mainstream consumers (the likes of Accessline are mainly addressing the enterprise market) as it has a much better grip on alternative business models.

They of course have to quickly address capacity constraints: Grand Central has now moved to an "by invitation only" model because of shortages. Google will be able to help out there, I suppose.

Interesting move anyway...

D2C consolidates: Buongiorno buys I-Touch

eSo following LaNetroZed's acquisition of the majority of Monstermob earlier in the year, Buongiorno now played its part in consolidating the face of mobile D2C by acquiring I-Touch, the previously London-listed player (PDF press release here).

Of course, I-Touch had gone through an M&A spree of its own a couple of years back (it bought Spanish Movilisto and Finnish Jippii [meanwhile split up and perished]) before being gobbled up by Japanese giant For-side.com. Then of course all seemed to have gone a bit pair-shaped: when For-Side bought it, it cost a sweet £ 184m. Earlier this year, the management bought it out from its owner for allegedly $100m. Now, Buongiorno only had to pay about half that, namely €141m (incl. €12m in debt), which equals c. £ 95m or $190m. Someone did make money after all...

After the acquisition, the combined company apparently boasts more than 1,100 people in 20 countries and business in more than 40 countries.

What will this mean for the D2C sector? That with LaNetro and Buongiorno, there are now two more multi-national giants to compete with Jamba/Jamster? I wonder... All of these three had territories where they were/are strong and others where they weren't/aren't. The consolidation basically means that the offering will be less scattered and the players involved will stand a better chance to be recognised in the market, reducing volatility of their business.

Buongiorno is said to have been doing reasonably well in the more recent past: as per their last available quarterly report, revenues, EBITDA and profits were all up and rather healthily. But whilst they are amongst the big spenders in e.g. Italy or the US D2C markets, they were more or less absent from some other markets (the UK for instance). I-Touch and the markets it brings to the deal will help to strengthen their market position and they will be able to push their D2C model even harder now. The added footprint will allow them to get a better grip on pricing (which is something their board was sensitive about).

And here I was thinking that they were balancing it out with B2B, namely platform provision, master aggregation and, more recently marketing (Mitsui JV and acquisitions of Flytxt and HotSMS). But Buongiorno clearly has evolved with two equal columns to stand on. Congrats!

Update: Buongiorno CEO Andrea Casalini is certainly not shy: He said in the FT that they "had looked at other targets, including Jamba [...] and [...] LaNetro Zed, too.

EA times 4

Gaming behemoth Electronic Arts announced it would be splitting the company into 4, namely EA Games, EA Sports, EA Sims and EA Casual. The first two cater for the classic console and specific sports properties respectively and - rather remarkably - the 3rd creates a whole division for one single property, namely the ludicrously successful Sims. It would seem that this is a sign for more to come, that is after Sims packs some of which 3rd party-sponsored/endorsed/branded. So we are probably here to see the first moves towards an MMO, an online community, etc, etc.

EA Mobile will become part of EA Casual (this piece had been announced a few days earlier). Reuters interestingly speaks of casual games as "games, which are usually played online or on mobile phones, are a small but rapidly growing part of the industry." So now mobile games are already part of the "usual" - great news!

EA Mobile will surely continue to serve as the mobile extension for EA's other divisions' properties and licenses, such as Tiger Woods, FIFA, Need for Speed, Madden NFL etc. The division's new President, Kathy Vrabeck formerly of Activision, at least mentioned something along those lines, so no big news here.

R.I.P. Tao Group

Tao Group has apparently perished. According to reports, the group is in administration. Their IP portfolio was apparently sold off to Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, a VC that lists Tao Media Ltd as a portfolio company. No further news though...

This marks the demise of a remarkable company: their Intent platform presented an opportunity to run console-quality 3D games on existing chip sets that would blow you away (at 3GSM 2006, I saw a demo of an FPS on a Motorola V3x chipset that was simply awesome!). Besides whatever internal issues there might have been, their trouble might just have been the chicken-and-egg-thing: developers shied away from developing heavy native 3D games whilst the platform was not installed anywhere. Carriers hesitated to commit for similar reasons and the OEM waited until content was available and carriers in place to distribute it (which was important due to existing data thresholds for games.

My favourite piece of technology of theirs was, however, the BAFTA-winning, fantastic miniMIXA, which you can learn about a little here. The website for the product itself is down as of today but there is a good article here... Some rather cool videos showing samples of the software in real-life action can be seen here and here. They also ran the music for their party at 3GSM 2007 entirely through a miniMIXA-equipped Windows Mobile handheld. Awesome!

Make sure to also visit the blog of Tim Cole, miniMIXA's daddy and a very fine man indeed.

Mobile YouTube lukewarm

YouTube appears to have put its mobile site live: under http://m.youtube.com/ you now get a slimmed-down version of the YouTube service. However, that's about it. The site starts with a warning: "YouTube Mobile is a data intensive application. We highly recommend that you upgrade to an unlimited data plan with your mobile service provider to avoid additional charges." I see, OK, well, why didn't you adapt this more appropriately then? Isn't this somewhat scary???

What follows is clips varying in length (tonight, there were 2 with more than 4 minutes length in the top 10). A couple of categories (highest rated, newly added, etc - in short: the usual suspects) but absolutely nothing that would suggest a specifically mobile offering. I find this rather disappointing. Shouldn't we be able to expect more when "two kings have gotten together"?

So what is this? Don't they understand mobile? Didn't they have enough time to study this during their Verizon exclusive that now expired? Do they not have the resource to design their mobile service so as to provide more than a simple extension of their existing site into mobile (but without the functionalities the online version has)? The WAP offering lacks the very features and navigation, etc that arguably contributed so much to YouTube's success. They'll have to up the ante drastically to get going on the small screen, too. This doesn't cut it!

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone, iPhone, anything else?

Now, I wonder if this is damaging to the readership of this blog: this must be the 3rd time or so in the very young age of this that I have been drawn into the debate about the device that reinvents telecommunications, interaction on the go, human interaction and also orders you a coffee at Starbucks. Holy Jobs, what have you done? However: there have been a couple of interesting pieces written on this wonderous affair, so I'll have another crack:

The WSJ has a piece about the iPhone and its "answers", which are, alas, no answers. They compare the HTC Touch, the LG Prada (of which you could read here, too), the Samsung UpStage and the Nokia N95 (reported on here). It steers the debate to the probably most important aspect of the not so secret secret of Apple's success, namely the combination of smart technology with very smart marketing. It is not my words (or thoughts) but the ones of very, very smart Yankee analyst John Jackson who said "Any handset maker is more than capable of making clever devices. But it's really about business models. That's where Apple maintains its business advantage."

However, the hype has been less in Europe and Nokia's market position is stronger in Europe and because the N95 has everything the iPhone has (except for brand and the looks) and some more (namely 3G although that might well come in the iPhone's European iteration) AND because the N95 is out in the market and kicking some substantial rearsides, this might well work (remarks another smart analyst, namely Mr Greengart.

Anyway, Cellular News published some information on the average potential iPhone user (courtesy of Solutions Research Group), which is this:


If they can sell the 10m devices to this user base, then AT&T (I still prefer Cingular) and all other Apple partner will be happy chappies indeed.

And the beat goes on... but what would you say if the one, the only, the incredible Hummer phone would take all the glory? Doh!

Amp'd files for Chapter 11 - Revisiting MVNO's

One down... Amp'd files for Chapter 11, citing the need for more time to ramp up its systems for demand. I wonder: shouldn't $360m in VC monies be enough to build systems that can cater for 200,000 customers? Given that Verizon provides the network and Motorola the handsets, that would mean that they took $1,800 per customer on all the rest; a bit stiff. Verizon is the biggest creditor with some $33m in receivables. So their wonderful ARPU wasn't that great after all, huh?

It's a bit of a bleak outlook, and whilst the offloading of debt might work this time, it puts some serious question marks behind the model of MVNO Amp'd tried to implement, namely one that tries to build a full infrastructure other than the actual base stations. Now, the question is old: is this really necessary? It has failed often: they are not the first to stop. ESPN did it. Has anyone ever heard of Extreme Mobile again? To remind you: they had announced a Vodafone-powered MVNO in the UK... and the site still says "coming soon".

Might perhaps be the call for a network provider that possesses some smart backend infrastructure allowing printing of customised invoices, sending of customised messages and provision of customised content be the way out? It would arguably be dramatically cheaper to have a network that rides on the back of a) a brand, b) retail distribution through the likes of Carphone Warehouse, BestBuy, MediaMarkt, FNAC, El Corte Ingles (depending on where you live) and c) "soft" customisation (i.e. through packaging rather than retail channel, etc).

What would be in it for the Vodafones and Verizons of this world? Lower churn! It is hard to get to real numbers but lore has it that the cost of one Mannesmann D2 customer when Vodafone bought them was a whopping $7,800 and that with - allegedly - 30% or so churn p.a. Surely no customer can use their phones enough to make that money back, me thinks... If churn could be reduced by, say, half if customers would stick with the brand due to higher loyalty, then the supporting carriers would make a killing! Customers are way more loyal to the football club they support, their politicial party of choice, the National Trust, U2, their Almer Mater, their home town - you call it affinity marketing, a concept that has been a great success for years e.g. for credit cards. Wouldn't a combination of this make a lot of sense? The thing that killed the market so far is greed: everyone wanted to own the customer front to end - when all the customer really wanted was good service, etc and this fuzzy warm feeling.

Get onto it. I believe it would work. Anyone here to try?

Prince-ly Guitar on Verizon

One I've been waiting for for a long time: an opportunity to post something on one of my all-time heroes (strictly music-wise!) , the man who plays at least 167 instruments, the only one who can walk on 19'' stilettos, the artist with the infallible fashion sense, namely the incredible Prince. We read that Verizon and Prince entered into a collaboration which they claim is an industry-first "direct-to-mobile relationship". Prince will release new single "Guitar" exclusively via Verizon. This leads a promotional campaign up to the new album "Planet Earth" which will be released in July.

Verizon will promote artist, song and - incidentally - its V Cast service via print, TV, radio and cinema. This strikes me as rather traditional really... However, Verizon and the artist have tied up a rather need package featuring nearly every sexy must-have service around these days: V Cast customers can hold their handset up to the TV set to identify and download the song - IF their phone as Song ID, that is. They can also simply go to Verizon's website and download it there. Upon release, the video will also be available on "licensed sites" YouTube, MySpace, Revver and Veoh.

As Prince isn't signed to a label, this will be the main piece of promotion for the album, and that is certainly a rather revolutionary affair, at least one never tried by people who weren't signed because they couldn't find a label (as had happened to the Arctic Monkeys a while ago who, having started off on MySpace, have since grown to become an established acts signed to Domino). This together with a hole bouquet of recent activity of the artist (everything ranging from new website, concerts in Minneapolis [7/7/7] and London [21 Nights, selling 140,000 tickets in 20 minutes] to a new perfume and cosmetics range [not sure if I'll try that one]) suggests a serious assault on the classic set-up of the music industry and the labels' stranglehold onto it. This had been weakened by the arrival of digital media but never broken.

If it pans out? I sincerely hope so - less for revolutionary zeal, more for one of the greatest artists of recent decades. But in any event is this one of the more exciting music promotions of recent times. Well done!

Although, I don't want to hide the bad: the world there is again defined as being North of Mexico and between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean only... Or are we non-Americans not worthy of some Prince-ly mobile musical delights?

Oberon plays mobile with I-Play

Finally... I-Play and Oberon today announced that the former would be acquired by the latter, allegedly for $110-120m. A deal involving I-Play had been rumoured to happen for quite some time, so good for Gosen and his team that they found a suitor. And not a bad one either: Oberon is an online gaming powerhouse, so a move across to mobile makes sense (and they had probably realised that their acquisition of Blaze (which itself was the combination of Synergenix and Kayak Interactive) last year wasn't getting them anywhere close to where they need to be). I-Play with its CEO David Gosen certainly showed stamina. They published some pretty cool titles (including Gamevil's critically acclaimed "Skipping Stone" and hit series "The Fast & The Furious") and in spite of oft rumoured shortage of cash just hung in there.

Oberon also raised some fresh money from investors Goldman Sachs, Oak Investments and Lehman Brothers, so all looks good for them, I suppose.

UPDATE: Today (12 Sept 2007) I-Play announced 11 new games all drawn from Oberon's back catalogue. They are Hexic and Mozaki Blocks (apparently from the creator of Tetris), Flowerz, Slinky, Fish Tycoon, Spin & Win, Bricks of Egypt, Bricks of Atlantis, Magic Match, Bubble Town and Saints & Sinners Bingo. It will be interesting to see what will win in the current battle of big brands and casual games; both are frequently cited as two of the key components of breaking into the mass market.