Andrea Bauer

European Myspace competitor Netlog, which has over 33 million users, has released its native iPhone app. Users can get a feed of friends updates, see pictures, upload content and add pictures. Unusually, it is also GPS-enabled, something Facebook has so far steered clear of. It’s TechCrunch’s general view that if Facebook added true, location-based mobile social networking to its iPhone app, it would probably kill off a lot of the startups in that arena fairly swiftly. But it has yet to do so, leaving the way open for sites like Netlog.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

U.K.-based Taptu, which is developing a mobile search engine, has raised about $10 million (6.45 million pounds) in a second round of funding. Participating in the round were existing investors 3i and Sofinnova. In total, the company has now raised 11.45 million pounds. In addition, the company appointed Andreas Bernstrom to the position of COO. Bernstrom, who has been working part-time with the company for almost six months, said the funding will go towards increasing its userbase and figuring out how best to monetize the search engine. The company, which was founded in 2007, launched its first mobile search service in February, and now claims about 1 million searches on a daily basis on its Wap site worldwide. Bernstrom will be charged with growing the number of searches, and forming partnerships with carriers and other mobile sites.

Taptu Mobile Search with Steve Ives from Dutchcowboys on Vimeo.

The company, which has 40 employees, will face stiff competition from companies like Google and Yahoo, but also from fairly established startups like Jumptap and Medio Systems. How will Taptu differentiate itself? Bernstrom: “That was the first question I asked as well. The guys have spent a great deal of time looking at what people use their mobile phones for, and how they engage with mobile phones, and what search will be used for if it’s over the mobile phone. It’s markedly different than the desktop….For instance, 60 percent of the content people search for is entertainment related. The mobile phone is really social.” He said that means knowing that a search result will fit on the smaller screen, but also that the results should easily be shared via SMS or on a social network.

Prior to Taptu, Bernstrom was the COO at TradeDoubler, an Internet marketing company that had more than 550 employees. He was responsible for expanding TradeDoubler.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mogees is launching an SDK for Android that will allow developers to charge for applications on the Android Market using its mobile billing platform. In doing so, it’s beating Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to the punch by at least a few months. Currently, Google doesn’t have a system that allows developers to charge for applications, but it plans to fix that by early next year. The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup thinks it hit a unique window of opportunity that prompted it to launch its payments SDK on the Android platform. Handango and MobiHand also sell Android apps, but users must visit their sites to buy them.

CEO and co-founder David Li: “We believe there are many developers who would be interested in getting paid for their applications today, and not wait until next year sometime. Lots of Android phones have been purchased and lots more will be bought through the holiday season. We want to help developers to monetize now.” In response to questions via email, he also pointed out that Google’s Android team hasn’t provided much detail about their billing service other than the fact that developers will get to keep 70 percent and 30 percent will go to the carrier. In contrast, Mogees will charge 10 percent and a 30-cent fee per transaction. As incentive to use the platform, Mogees will give the first thousand developers that sign up free payment processing for the rest of the year, up to $1 million. The company expects to launch additional SDKs for BlackBerry and iPhone by the end of 2009.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When it comes to charging for mobile apps, payments usually have to go through either the carriers or one of the emerging mobile app platforms such as Apple or Google’s Android. The problem with charging for an iPhone app through iTunes is that Apple takes 30 percent.

A startup called Billing Revolution wants to charge about one tenth as much for a seamless, mobile one-click shopping experience. Already available on other phones, Billing Revolution is announcing availability today for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android apps.

Once a consumer signs up to pay for things through Billing Revolution, he is presented with an Amazon-like one-click payment option no matter what app is using it. (Didn’t Amazon patent that?). Billing Revolution charges a 3.5 percent transaction fee plus 50 cents per transaction.

That pretty much kills any app developer using it for micro-transactions. Nobody is going to sell a digital song for $1.00 if they need to pay Billing Revolution 53.5 cents. But it could become an option for larger purchases, and as a way to charge for premium subscriptions for apps that build adoption with a lighter-weight free version.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Searchme is starting to focus much of its time in the mobile space. Last week, it said it will launch an iPhone app and today it announced that it has launched a visual search engine for mobile devices that can be accessed by surfing to the company’s mobile page.

Searchme’s visual search engine delivers results as a browsable list of “pages,” which are actually images of websites that can be viewed before visiting them. To help users during the search process, Searchme’s search engine suggests categories that have some relevance to the query you’re inputting into the service if you want to drill-down into related topics, and provides shortcuts to the best results to try to cut down on search time.

Searchme’s mobile search engine is quite fast and generally does fine on returning the best search results. But if you’re looking to do extensive searching (who would on a mobile device?) and you judge the quality of a search engine by the number of indexed pages, you’ll be disappointed by Searchme — it only returned 103,000 results for “TechCrunch” compared to 6.9 million returned by Google.

On simple queries like “TechCrunch,” the mobile search performed well and the categories displayed above the results were highly useful. But on more complex queries like “how to have a dog meet a puppy,” it didn’t perform well at all and returned a visual list of useless pages. But Searchme’s main goal isn’t to supplant Google, it’s to offer an experience that’s different and simple to use for those who needs something relatively straightforward as quickly as possible.

Mobile Searchme is a fine solution if you’re looking for a new way to experience search on your mobile device. But if you’re already using Google or Yahoo search on your mobile device, I doubt Searchme’s tool will make you want to switch.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although buying products from your desktop at home has become just as customary as buying products at the store, few have found reason to buy products on their cell phones. In an attempt to buck that trend and make it easier for consumers to buy products from their cell phone, Billing Revolution announced today that it will offer a ’single-click’ billing and payment service that will streamline mobile purchases.

Once consumers are ready to buy something from the Web from a vendor that employs Billing Revolution’s service for payment, they are taken to Billing Revolution’s purchase page where they input credit card information from their phone. Once complete, Billing Revolution automatically sends an SMS receipt to their phone, which contains a link. After clicking that link, authentication is complete and with all future purchases, consumers will need only to click ‘buy’ for a transaction to be completed.

Billing Revolution is taking a risk with this platform that may or may not pay off. Right now, mobile purchases are just a small segment of online commerce and few consumers are willing to buy a product with their cell phones. But if Billing Revolution’s beliefs are right that all it takes is a simple process and the ability to buy products with a single click, it’s in a prime position to capitalize on what it believes is a booming market.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In China new methods of advertising have been turning up everywhere, and Bluetooth media company Pioco has made mobile devices the newest outlet. The Shanghai based company has set up “hotspots” in hotels, shopping malls, and other commercial areas around the city where people can receive advertisements through their mobile device’s Bluetooth connection. About a week ago news broke that Pioco would be partnering with Coca Cola to serve mobile ads for the Olympics, so we spoke with CEO Steve Chao about the details and potential of the service.

Whenever someone with a Bluetooth enabled device enters a hotspot they receive a message asking if they would like to download Pioco content. If they accept, they are shown a video from Coca Cola, or some other partner company, and then given access to things like free movie trailers, music, wallpaper, e-coupons, and premium content from companies like Disney or MTV. The incentive program is only run in these hotspots, so the conversion rates have been much higher than in regular Bluetooth ad campaigns.

Chao explained that Bluetooth is the best execution angle in China because 3G functionality has yet to penetrate the market. He stated that Pioco is prepared for market change, and will adjust their strategies to accommodate other wireless technologies when the timing is right. In the near future he sees Pioco offering location-based browsing, and creating a centralized network to manage content and track usage.

Pioco sees its primary competition from E-Xing and many other, but differentiates itself by bundling advertisements with desirable content. The company was founded in 2006, has about 50 employes, and has received very little funding. Advertising partners include Coca Cola, Best Buy, Sony, and Chevrolet.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Octegra has released a white paper claiming that direct-to-bill payments provide the best revenue results for both operators and content owners.

Octegra’s research found that premium SMS purchases primarily benefit the mobile operator, who receives 45% of the revenue, with the content owner getting only 14%. In credit card payments both groups lose out, with the operator getting a 25% cut, and content royalties only forming 12%. In this scenario the third party billing provider scoops 33% of the total revenue. The white paper identifies direct-to-bill payments as the fairest and most profitable method, giving the operator a 27% share, and content royalties forming 30% of revenues.

“The present mobile content business demonstrates zero sum game behaviour, in which revenues are restricted and the operators’ gain is perceived to be the content owners’ loss,” said John Moroney, author of the white paper from Octegra. “As a result, there is little cooperation between these two sides of the industry, with both operators and content owners creating their own mobile portals. Consequently operators building portal services have to pay inflated prices for content, and content owners building off-portal sites have to pay the operators up to 50% of their revenues.”
The report was commissioned by mobile payments service company Valista.

According to the white paper the five parts of the mobile content value chain are Taxes, 3rd party billing providers, portal promotion expenditure undertaken by the content owner, content royalties and operator charges.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Palo Alto based Obopay https://www.obopay.com/info/ is set to launch sometime Thursday (the site is currently password protected). This is the newest product in the very active mobile payments space (see PayPal Mobile and TextPayMe as well).

A few more details about Obopay have come out since Matt Marshall posted a teaser two weeks ago. Obopay will rely on a java client on the phone instead of sms or text message payments like PayPal Mobile and TextPayMe. While this provides for a richer and more secure interface, Obopay will be of use only to people who have phones that support java:

The first 25 phones that we are porting to cut across 2 of the major carriers (i.e. Cingular and T-Mobile) and one major MVNO that we are in trials with. Five different handset manufacturers are represented in this group (i.e. Nokia, Motorola, Kyocera, Samsung and Sony Ericsson) including the three largest manufacturers. In our porting effort we are targeting all of the handsets that are currently offered by the big 4 carriers that are targeted at our end-user group.

The service itself will allow for person to person payments between phones. Obopay says that “users can send money to almost any mobile handset”, which may imply a text message (or email?) for unsupported phones - I just don’t know how that will work yet. Users will also be issued a debit card attached to the account for real world payments, including ATM withdrawls.

As to fees, the information I have now is “The transaction costs just pennies”. I’ll update as I receive more information.

Source

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)