July 26, 2007

OPINION
Another One Bites the Dust
By Rhonda Wickham

Depending on who you talk to, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Amp'd Mobile has either shut its doors or has one foot out the door. Although the Los Angeles Business Journal said customers were alerted via text message that beginning Tuesday morning, business operations would cease, we still reached a CSR in the company's call center on Wednesday. Go figure.

As reported by Editor Monica Alleven last Friday, the company was hoping for an 11th hour reprieve by selling some or all of its assets. Verizon Wireless, its network provider, earlier had filed a motion seeking permission to immediately disconnect service and terminate its wholesale agreement with Amp'd. Apparently, the MVNO was running up its tab with Verizon at a rate of $370,000 a day, with little indication of paying up.

Well, we have another failed MVNO to Monday-morning quarterback, don't we? The first failed MVNO, Mobile ESPN, was a little more challenging to dissect. Much of that failure seemed to center on strategy – phone selection, launch time and customer targeting/messaging. Whereas the Amp'd Mobile failure seems a bit more straightforward, though completely disturbing.

Boiling it down to the basic common denominator, the company had lots of "unpaying" customers. Although its content lineup and delivery for its young and affluent customer base was impressive, it ended up being more of a cool storefront that looked the other way as its customers "shop-lifted" its services.

Perhaps I am being too harsh, but I lay this one squarely at the feet of management, which I believe became so enamored of their offering – connection with all things Internet, Hollywood and big business – it forgot the less sexy, yet requisite, things like billing and collections.

What do you make of the Amp'd Mobile story? Write me at rhonda.wickham@advantagemedia.com

OFF-PORTAL

Novarra Pursues the "Long Tail" of the Internet
By Rhonda Wickham

The Internet is defined as a "worldwide" experience. However, in mobile, the Internet experience has not been as all-inclusive. According to Jayanthi Rangarajan, president and CEO of Novarra, when the concept of the mobile Internet emerged, operators adopted a walled garden approach, using WAP and other mobile Website programming. What this has delivered has been a limited number of sites that the operator viewed as translating well to mobile. However, as the walled garden approach has started to erode, carriers, particularly those in Europe, have seen that they could earn more data revenue off-portal than on-portal. And customers have confirmed for those operators that they do not want to pay a premium for a subset of the "worldwide" Internet experience.

Rangarajan points to her own company data that reveals that 20% of mobile page views per day are from the top 50 content providers, the remaining 80% of page views are in the "long tail," or are personally relevant to the end user and critical to a satisfying mobile Internet experience. And that 80% of page views may not be available through the operator's own provision of news, weather, sports, etc.

Rangarajan likens it to the voice experience. Although everyone likely calls their mothers, they make other calls as well. The same applies to the Internet. There may be some commonalities in Web page views, but interests are far broader than the somewhat limited page views that are cherry-picked by operators.

Chicago-based Novarra looks to change that. It is broadening the Internet experience by enabling it through a server that can deliver the Internet to all of the carrier's devices –mass-market and high-end phones.

Novarra's Vision server is a content transformation platform that allows subscribers to access the Internet without requiring a change to their existing handsets. The Vision server auto-transforms the Web to fit handset-specific capabilities such as screen and memory and dramatically reduces mobile network bandwidth required to support rich Internet traffic. According to Novarra, this delivers optimal speed, presentation, usability and content quality across handsets with full HTML browsers.

Novarra has met with success particularly in Europe, having struck deals with 3 in Italy and Hong Kong and Vodafone, as well as US Cellular in the United States. Most recently, the company struck a deal with Yahoo!. The ISP has applied Novarra's technology to its oneSearch mobile service. It is currently available in the Asia Pacific with rollouts in the United States and Europe expected by mid-August.

Auto-Transcoding Not the Only Way
By Rhonda Wickham

Kevin McCloskey, MobileAware's CEO, thinks that carriers need to take a tiered approach to Internet offerings. Although he agrees that the carrier portal may limit Internet accessibility, he also thinks that auto-transcoding the Internet similar to the strategy put forth by Novarra (see story above) has limitations of its own. He suggests that auto-transcoding can't always maximize the user experience of the Internet for all types of devices, plus it may not be able to fully service security-driven sites.

He said he thinks carriers shouldn't use any approach "in isolation," but rather employ a multitiered approach composed of the carrier portal, auto-transcoding as well as the software similar to that of his company's, which optimizes the experience for the specific devices they are using.

MobileAware focuses on enterprises and provides a unified framework that works with a company's existing service infrastructure and resources to create flexible mobile solutions across all lines of business. It combines advanced client and server technologies and enriches the functionality to manage the entire lifecycle of a company's mobile strategy.

In related news, LogicaCMG has embedded MobileAware's ExpressQ technology in its Asset and Resource Management (ARM) product suite. The ARM suite delivers enterprise asset management, work management, real-time mobile workforce and scheduling solutions to the energy and utility sectors.

MobileAware's main office is in Dublin, Ireland, with support branches in Princeton, N.J. and Peking, China.

VIDEO

Alltel Launches mywaves Web Video Service
By Wireless Week Staff

Alltel Wireless has launched mywaves, a mobile video service that allows customers to browse thousands of videos from their phones. The service costs $3.99 per month.

Scott Moody

Customers can download the application to their phones via the Alltel Axcess Shop and customize the content by choosing favorite genres including comedy, sports, health, business, music and technology. The application, which provides access to professional programming, user-generated videos and personal videos, allows users to bookmark their favorite sites, so that they can quickly view new content as it is added. Alltel customers also can choose to have text message alerts sent to their phones when new clips are available in their channels of choice.

"Our customers now have more video viewing options than ever before," said Scott Moody, director of data services for Alltel Wireless, in a company statement.

"mywaves gives us the ability to deliver thousands of videos directly to our customers, allowing them to further customize their wireless experience."
mywaves runs on Qualcomm's BREW platform and is available on select Alltel phones including the LG AX8600, Motorola RAZR V3m and the Samsung u520.

CONTENT

Basement Stories: Movin' on up
By Rhonda Wickham

You don't hear about garage-based businesses too much any more. However, Nokia recent acquisition of Twango provides a refresher in that category.

First, let's talk about the details of the deal. Twango offers a media-sharing solution that allows users to organize and share photos, videos and other personal media. Think Google's YouTube or Yahoo!'s Flickr, but on a smaller scale. Nokia's acquisition of the company gives it another element to add to its growing portfolio of services that provide seamless access to information, entertainment and social networks. This acquisition is the latest in a string of purchases by Nokia. Last year, it acquired Seattle-based Loudeye, a digital audio company, for $60 million in cash, and navigation software maker gate5 AG, for an undisclosed sum..

Now, what about Twango? The company was started up in 2004 by a group of ex-Microsoft vets and is based, where else, but in Redmond, Wash. It wasn't started in a garage, but rather the co-founder's basement. The company has 10 employees including co-founder Serena Glover. Seeing that mobile devices were becoming more like mini-computers and that everyone likes to have all of their "stuff" with them and have access to pictures, videos and other content, the company quietly worked on solutions. Last October, it launched twango.com. The company was thinking of seeking outside capital to further grow the company when Nokia came knocking on its door.

Although financial details of the Twango deal were not disclosed, there is good news. The company is moving into real office space in Bellevue, leaving their humble beginnings behind.

MESSAGING

Dennis Kucinich

Kucinich Launches Text-Message Campaign
By Rhonda Wickham

This week's YouTube Presidential Debates may be over, but the reverberations continue. Aside from offering a seemingly more candid approach to the age-old debate, it also showcased wireless in a surprising way.

During the debates, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich encouraged Americans to use text messaging to voice their opposition to the war in Iraq. Wireless subscribers were encouraged to enter the word "peace" as a text message and then send it to the number 73223, or p-e-a-c-e.

And text they did. More than 10,000 text messages were sent within the first 12 hours. Ranging from succinct calls for peace to more personal pleas, the Kucinich Text for Peace campaign has quite a selection of messages to share with President Bush and the Pentagon.

GAMES

Digital Chocolate Publishes Games for N-Gage
By Wireless Week Staff

San Mateo, Calif.-based Digital Chocolate is on board with Nokia to publish a variety of titles for the N-Gage platform launching this fall. Digital Chocolate's newest game series, DChoc Café, will bring a range of games to the N-Gage platform. The cafe combines popular and accessible casual games with the next generation of social gaming on mobile.

A "virtual cafe" featuring casual card, board and puzzle games similar to those found at a cafe or other neighborhood meeting place, DChoc Cafe allows players to stay connected with friends through mobile gaming when they want. Players also can create customized characters, earn prizes and make game recommendations.

"N-Gage provides the tools we need to tap into the powerful device performance and promote social interaction between players through games, which is completely in line with Digital Chocolate's philosophy," said Gary Schofield, Digital Chocolate's president of networks.