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Chris Fox on March 28th, 2008
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Nokia’s Comes With Music model is gathering momentum; now Sony BMG is considering it.
Sony BMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz has told the press that the company is looking carefully at the model, which charges users a premium for a device in return for unlimited music for a specified period. The surcharge is then shared between Nokia and label. Nokia has already got Universal’s participation, and is close to securing EMI too. Our sources say that Nokia paid Universal a whopping $20 million for its catalogue. It is expected to spend vast sums marketing its music services towards the end of this year. Last week it confirmed former Comcast SVP Elizabeth Schimel will become its new head of global music. Schimel was formerly VP of biz dev for multimedia services at AT&T.
[VIA : ME Daily]
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Chris Fox on March 25th, 2008
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Consumers will buy more video-enabled smartphones than TVs this year, says Research and Markets.
The firm predicts that 300 million such handsets will be sold in 2008. Its new report, “Mobile Media 2008: The Third Screen for Entertainment,” also found that half the world’s population, or 3.3 billion people, now have a mobile subscription.
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Chris Fox on March 18th, 2008
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[via: Spreadtrum Communications]
The “Kangxi Live Show — 2008 Thankful Heart in Loving House — Shanghai Concert” was held at Shanghai Stadium on Mar. 15, 2008. The concert was hosted by Taiwan’s popular TV hosts Dee Hsu (aka “Little S”) and Kevin Tsai, and features performances by up-and- coming young artists, such as Jolin Tsai, Alan Luo and Rainie Yang. Sponsored by Spreadtrum Communications, Amoi Electronics, and Kuro, the concert attracted numerous fans not only for the hot program “Kangxi Live Show” and the performing artists from Taiwan, but also for the new experience of “Mobile Music Everywhere.”Commemorative cards were presented at the “Kangxi Live Show” event and were special gifts that Kuro prepared for the Concert, which give people free membership to Kuro’s website and allow them to download 250 copyrighted songs from its huge database. People may then download these copyrighted songs to Amoi’s mobile phones, equipped with Spreadtrum’s chips, and enjoy them “anywhere, anytime.”
Dr. Ping Wu, President and CEO of Spreadtrum said, “This concert is another promotion focused on our theme of enabling ‘Mobile Music Everywhere’ and follows the joint launch in January by Spreadtrum, Amoi and Kuro of China’s first solution for music phones offering copyrighted music downloaded to the handset. By leveraging our advanced technology and innovation thinking in wireless communication, multi-media mobile chips, and customized software Spreadtrum was able to build a stable hardware platform for digital mobile music service in China and pioneer the concept of ‘Mobile Music Everywhere’.”
As a major manufacturer of mobile phones in China, Amoi is committed to bringing consumers a richer product experience. For many years, its music phones, GPS phones, and smart phone series have taken consumer requirements into account, with an added focus on differentiated experience and interactive marketing. Consequently, Amoi has succeeded in several segments of the market and gained much praise for its innovations. Now, Amoi continues that differentiated product roadmap by joining with Spreadtrum and Kuro, to integrate the whole food chain of chipsets, terminals and service, into 2008’s first key mobile terminal product — the karaoke music phone series. Besides the new music experience, Amoi will reinforce this interactive music experience with consumers through participating in more entertainment activities such as live show.
“Mobile Music Everywhere” is an integrated music service concept created by Spreadtrum and is designed for the growing number of music mobile phones used by consumers in China. Different from the other current modes of music service in China, “Mobile Music Everywhere” utilizes the convergence of the ‘4Cs’ — Communication, Chip, Content and Copyright to promote China’s music phones and copyright protected music. In January of this year, Amoi unveiled its new portable karaoke music phones, the A616 and A636, as China’s first solution for music phones offering copyrighted music, with Spreadtrum chips enabling both models. The concert highlights a new music service mode for handsets, which are based on Spreadtrum’s chips, carried by Amoi’s portable karaoke music handsets and embedded with Kuro’s service. In this service mode, the powerful chip developed by Spreadtrum enables decoding digital music, displaying photographs of celebrities and synchronizing lyrics. We can say with proud that Spreadtrum’s chip is the key to “Mobile Music Everywhere.” And Amoi’s portable karaoke music phones equipped with Spreadtrum’s chip bestow unique musical experience on users.
Spreadtrum believes that people will be able to enjoy mobile music anytime, anywhere in the near future. Spreadtrum, Amoi and Kuro will commit themselves to this project to help bring handset consumers richer musical experiences in China.
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Chris Fox on March 17th, 2008
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[via: PhoneContent]
Twenty-three percent (58 million) of all U.S. mobile subscribers say they’ve been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days, according to a new report out today from The Nielsen Company. Half (51% or 28 million) of all data users who recall seeing mobile advertising in the previous 30 days say they responded to a mobile ad in some way.
The findings come from the bi-annual Mobile Advertising Report from Nielsen Mobile, a service of The Nielsen Company, and are based on a survey of more than 22,000 active mobile data users who used at least one non-voice mobile service in the fourth quarter. In the report, Nielsen examines consumer recall, responses and attitudes toward banner ads on mobile web pages, SMS text-message advertising, sponsored applications, video advertising and other types of advertising that reach consumers while using data applications on their mobile phones.
The study further reveals that — The number of data users who recalled seeing mobile advertising between the second and fourth quarters of 2007 increased 38% (from 42 to 58 million subscribers) — Teen data users (ages 13-17) were the most likely age segment to recall seeing mobile advertising (46% recalled seeing some type of mobile advertisement, compared to 29% of all data users) — Asian-Americans and African-Americans are more likely to recall mobile advertising (42% and 40%, respectively) than all data users — 26% of those who saw an ad responded at least once by sending an SMS text-message, the most popular ad response. 9% say they’ve used click-to-call to respond to a mobile ad, where users follow a link on their phone to call a specific number — 32% of data users said they are open to mobile advertising if it lowers their overall bill — 13% (18% of males) said they are open to mobile advertising if it improves the media and content currently available — 14% said they are already open to mobile advertising so long as it is relevant to their interests — 23% expect to see more mobile advertising in the future (up from just 15% in Q1 2007) While media companies and marketers explore the unique ways they can interact with consumers over the highly personal mobile platform, supporting mobile media content through advertising revenues, advertising researchers must examine the ways in which audiences are and are not willing to engage with mobile advertising.
“Increasing levels of consumer recall, interaction and receptivity to mobile advertising reinforce the validity of the mobile marketing medium,” said Jeff Herrmann, VP of Mobile Media at Nielsen Mobile. “Nielsen’s Mobile Advertising Report helps marketers and media companies better understand consumer interaction and the available response mechanisms to drive conversion.” Nielsen’s report provides specific insights on consumer perception of mobile advertising. While just 10% of data users said they think advertising on their mobile devices is acceptable, an increasing number of mobile users appear to understand the value proposition of ad-supported mobile content.
“We see an increasing trend of consumers willing to trade off and receive advertising to gain more — and better — mobile content,” said Herrmann.
“Successful mobile marketers will meet the challenge offered by consumers by engaging with them in a way that adds value to the mobile user content experience.” Nielsen’s Mobile Advertising Report is available from Nielsen today and is the first in a series of services from Nielsen Mobile to help marketers effectively leverage mobile advertising capabilities and closely track the return on their mobile investment.
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Chris Fox on March 12th, 2008
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Gameloft has just promised more than 15 mobile games for the hottest selling phone on the planet, the iPhone, all by the end of the year. Gameloft are pretty confident, considering the Apple iPhone SDK was only just recently released. Gameloft executives said that its development teams are already working on a game line-up for this year.
The justification for announcing this massive line-up was given because Gameloft believe the iPhone’s unique specifications make for a perfect gaming platform. Gameloft already makes games for Apple on the iPod, so this is simply a step-up from that!
Gameloft already produce some big-name games for other mobile platforms, including: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Rayman, Might and Magic, and Prince of Persia.
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Chris Fox on March 11th, 2008
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If you fancy yourself some sort of Guitar Hero rockstar, then you’ll be glad to hear that AT&T has launched the uber-popular game for mobile phones on their network. Guitar Hero Mobile went live on AT&T last week, so if you’ve got that Guitar Hero itch, head on over to AT&T’s website.
The AT&T version of Guitar Hero Mobile isn’t the same BREW-based software on Verizon Wireless, AT&T users can rock out to a Java version of Guitar Hero Mobile. That means larger, clearer graphics and and the ability to keep songs saved to your mobile phone.
Guitar Hero Mobile on AT&T will start off with a few songs, but you can expect more songs with future song-packs.
[Via :: IntoMobile]
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By
Administrator on March 11th, 2008
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Social Network for Gamers, UGAME, Enters Private Beta
The prospect of founding a successful generic social network these days might be bleak given the dominance of players like MySpace and Facebook. However, there’s still plenty of room for niche social networks to rise and generate lots of participation.
UGAME, which enters closed private beta this week, wants eventually to be the leading social network for gamers. The site will start off as a place where competitive PC gamers in particular can socialize, share their gaming feats, and organize themselves into teams and other associations. While UGAME will initially cater to the World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, and Quake obsessive, its motto points to a more ambitious future with “All Games. All Platforms. All People.”
A key to starting a successful niche social network probably lies in the creators’ ability to balance familiar features with ones that capitalize on the niche’s unique qualities. If this is true then the team behind UGAME is off to a good start. They’ve built in lots of functionality that will be immediately familiar: news feeds, profiles, friends, blogs, photo galleries, status updates, etc.
But they’ve also added gaming twists to these features and built out new features that don’t exist elsewhere. To name a few: members can post their gaming achievements from both tournament and non-tournament events; they can list their favorite games and computer hardware specs; and they can join teams that are allotted their own public-facing profiles.
UGAME grants users an unusual amount of control over privacy settings. While all sections of the site are accessible to non-registered users, only elements designated as “public” will show up to everyone. Privately designated elements such as photo galleries and profiles will remain accessible only to friends and other permitted users. Founder Sam Mathews describes UGAME in regards to privacy settings as a cross between Facebook and MySpace.
UGAME will open its private beta in a few weeks; you can email this address with a mention of your favorite game to put yourself down on a preferred TC readers list for when that happens.
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By
Chris Fox on March 10th, 2008
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Talk about suspect numbers: IDC has come out with some wild predictions: that worldwide wireless subscribers and customers to grow by a little more than a billion over the next four years, generating $800 billion in global wireless service revenue by 2011. Why did it stop there? While we are at it, why not a trillion?
Then, it expects mobile entertainment will account for 5.1 percent of this total revenue and 23 percent of all mobile data revenue. The vast majority of this mobile entertainment revenue will be derived from ringtones, ringback tones, and mobile TV and video services. According to IDC, ringback tones will overtake ringtones in 2010 and become the single largest revenue source for mobile entertainment due to a “variety of inherent advantages.” You mean annoyance factor?
That and the fact that you have to pay $4,500 for these numbers…they can certainly rack up $800 billion that way.
- Source
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