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Mobile Spam on the rise

Definition of Mobile Spam:

Mobile Spam is to a mobile handset what email spam is to an e-mailbox.
It is defined as unsolicited commercial messages, which

• try to sell something to the user or
• ask the user to call a phone number, which may be a premium-rate service or
• destroy or change handset settings or
• are simply messages of a commercial nature that are considered threatening, or intruding upon a user's privacy.

80% of mobile phone users surveyed by University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and bmw wireless said tey have received unsolicited text messages (mobile spam). The survey forms part of a report -- "Insights into Mobile Spam, World's First Collaborative Empirical Study" -- on the growing problem of mobile spam.  Click here for a look at the Table of Contents of the report.

Related:

: Techworthy on SMS Spam Filtering Solutions

: Trojan virus targets handsets with SMS spam

: Mobiletracker: "Mobile Spam spreads"

: CNN: "Spam invasion targets mobile phones"

: New measures launched by O2 Ireland to block m-spam

: Mobile operators in the UK apply content controls

Chikka launches voice-based mobile VAS

Chikka Asia launches Audio Content Delivery Platform which delivers voice content to mobile users.

Chikka pioneered a hard-hitting subscriptionbased celebrity texting service in 2003 that instantly became the country’s single biggest mobile VAS service. Launched by Smart Communications as "Startxt," the service has since been made available to subscribers in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong thru international carriers. MMS and picture messaging services have also since been added to the bigger "StarPortal."

Enter 2005, Chikka pioneers again by launching its voice-based mobile VAS platform branded by Smart Communications as "StarCaller."

"After only one month, StarCaller has met a very encouraging response from mobile users who are choosing to get real celebrity voice calls on a subscription basis. Now the equally exciting part is that one can actually forward these voice calls or audio content. Remember singing telegrams? Now think Birthdays, Anniversaries, Valentines, Christmas, New Year and all those great occasions. The various greetings we get on our phones will never be the same again," Garrovillo said.

Sony Seeks Content Provider For Wi-Fi-Enabled PSP

From TelecomWeb:

Sony is going to be looking for mobile content that moves outside of traditional gaming, so any mobile-content providers that can configure their wares to work well via occasional access on Wi-Fi hot spots instead of phone-based systems should be talking to Sony now. Early-in developers are likely to get favorable terms out of Sony, because the company already has shown a willingness to take a financial bath on the PSP hardware, which probably costs them $100 more per unit to produce than they are charging. The company appears to be in the PSP game for the long haul, expecting to follow the PS2 model of making money from licensing fees only several years into the product’s life cycle. Until then, the object will be to build a critical mass of content and connectivity, and for that they need partners.

Related:

: WiFi gaming the next big thing?

Series 60 Challenge 2005 Awards

The following are the winners of the Series 60 Challenge Award which was launched last year to identify compelling Series 60 innovations.  More

- Best operator service - Map@Handset from China Mobile Communications Corporation, China:  Map@Handset is a location-based service that uses a pre-installed electronic map client with which users can search business and location information. In this localized operator-offered service, users can define their own interest points and send the interest points' map information through MMS to their colleagues and friends. The features of the service are very well designed, including both cell identification and GPS, landmarks, and eagle eye features.

- Best enterprise application - Quick Office Premier from Mobile Digital Media, United States: Quick Office Premier is the first mobile office suite to allow people to open, read, create, edit and save Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on a Series 60-based device. While on the go, users can receive the MS files on their mobile via Bluetooth connection with compatible PC or handheld device, infrared beaming, SD/MMC memory card or via email attachment. Quick Office Premier is a very good, robust product and unique in the sense that everything is packaged in one package.

- Best media/music application - PhotoTwister from Scalado, Sweden: PhotoTwister creates twisted warp photos in a flash. PhotoTwister enables users to capture, save and send images that have been distorted by different warp or paint effects. PhotoTwister provides a new innovative way to warp photos in real time - before capturing.  The graphics and icons of the application are very clear and snappy.

- Best gaming application - Marble Revolution from bit-side, Germany: Marble Revolution brings the idea of a real tabelet game with a labyrinth back to a mobile phone using camera tracking. This great game makes good use of the phone's existing features, including an innovative and brilliant way to use the camera functionality in the Series 60-based device.

- Special prize - Mobile Cinema Booking from KeyTechnology, Italy: Mobile Cinema Booking is a client-server application that allows the user to book cinema tickets using a Series 60-based device. The application is customized for a multiplex cinema. Via a clear user interface, it enables e.g. searching movie information and choosing seats. The user receives an alphanumeric or barcode booking code to get the printed tickets at the theater.

Mobile Marketing News II

: Capital Radio Group has launched an initiative to offer advertisers mobile interactivity with radio advertisements via the Capital Radio SMS station shortcode - a five digit number used for all Capital's SMS interactivity.

: eSeminar on “Wireless! The Hottest New Marketing Channel”. Seminar conducted by eWEEK.com Mobile & Wireless Center Editor Carol Ellison, eSeminars host David Coursey, and guest experts Reagan Ramsey, executive vice president of media development at Telenor Mobile Interactive, and Ashok Narasimhan, co-founder and CEO of July Systems for a discussion on wireless technology in the marketing channel. The panel examined the following questions:

- How wireless technologies can be deployed as new channels of commerce

- How entertainment organizations, such as major league baseball, are putting them to work

- What opportunities these initiatives present to other industries

: Nokia introduces Local Marketing solution aimed at bringing localized and timed services to consumer’s smartphones via Bluetooth. With the solution, operators and services providers can advertise their own and partner services in relevant places, at relevant times. Here is a scenario:

…in the morning, the user receives the bus schedule into her smartphone as she approaches the bus station. On her way to lunch, she passes by a local pizzeria, and receives the lunch menu with the day's special offering. In the pizzeria, she can check the local news from her smartphone. On her way home, she receives a bookmark from a video rental store, and decides to go in and rent a movie. Again, when approaching the bus station, she can easily buy the bus ticket with just a few clicks.

The information, that the consumer receives, is filtered according to consumer's own pre-defined preferences. The content consists of service bookmarks and coupons, which are stored into separate bookmark folders in the phone, instead of message inbox. The consumer can then use these bookmarks whenever he/she wants. The bookmarks will contain relevant information of the services, like the description and the price of the service.

Click here for more use cases and here for a more in depth description of the solution.

: Outsourcing and mobile marketing:

We’re all familiar with companies using SMS as a marketing tool. Whether it’s to introduce a new album or to get voters to the polls, mobile marketing is a tool every company needs in its arsenal. Pushing a text message to a cell phone seems simple enough. But what happens when a human can help facilitate the customer response? That’s when mobile marketers turn to live assistance. That’s right, real human beings answering the phone!

Madonna promoted her most recent album to fans via an SMS blast to their cell phones. Consumers got the option of preordering her album by pushing “1” on their phones to connect to a live customer service representative who processed the order. In the past, such live assistance was cost-prohibitive. But by using an offshore call center, companies can add live operators to their mobile marketing campaign for less than half of what it cost before.

: Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to develop mobile marketing guidelines.

: Mobile Marketing firm Puca acquires Mobile-Factor. Puca has expertise in SMS based mobile marketing campaigns and intends to offers its services in China this year.

: La Caixa targets young users:

Spanish Bank "La Caixa" is targeting its young customers with a mobile marketing initiative. In order to strenghten the relationship with over 940.000 people among 18 and 25 years old, La Caixa has launched "LKXA" (it's the way mobile phone users will write La Caixa) a service which will deliver financial and banking information via SMS and email.

: Mike Masnick on Mobile Marketing in the Middle East – Some smoke, but where’s the fire?. A snippet on how operators and mobile marketing service providers should handle spam:

While the head of the company admits that he knows mobile marketers need to be careful of mobile spam, it appears that the only way the company is trying to do this is by making sure the communications are "ethical," and that the privacy of subscribers is respected.

Unfortunately, that's the wrong approach. It's the same approach of operators elsewhere who seem to think that if they hold back a little, and maybe don't overwhelm users, that their messages won't be considered spam. The problem is that not everyone will be able to hold back, and even if they do, there are so many companies that the "spam" factor will add up -- and people will start to judge any text message not relevant to what they're doing right then and there as spam. While there are debates over the definition of spam, the one that matters is how end users view it, and anything that annoys them and isn't relevant is spam. In the case of a mobile user, where messages are more likely to be intrusive, not only do the messages need to be generally relevant in terms of content, but they need to be relevant in a timely sense. They need to apply to what people are doing right at that moment.

Since no marketing firm is that smart or that capable yet, it still seems that the biggest real opportunity for mobile marketing is not in pushing advertisements that run a risk of upsetting users, but in mobile advertising that subscribers pull when appropriate. This may take a different mindset, but unless mobile marketers want to make the mobile phone as useless for marketing as email has become for computers, it's time that they stopped pretending that just a little spam is fine -- or even deluding themselves into believing that because some study says mobile advertisements will catch on, that they really will. That's not only true in markets like Asia, Europe and North America, but in emerging markets like the Middle East, as well.

Mobile Gaming news III

: Nikhil Hutheesing, Forbes Wireless Stock watch profiles Jamdat Mobile, one of the leading mobile gaming company.

Because it's all wireless, Jamdat doesn't have the typical distribution complexities and costs, such as physically producing games, packaging them, shipping them, handling returns and managing inventory. Jamdat's customers download the games to their mobile phones through their carrier. (If your would like to preview the games Jamdat offers for your cell phone, go to its Web site.) Verizon Wireless, for example, offers the Get It Now service, while Sprint PCS provides Vision and Vodafone offers the game through its service, Live!

Customers are charged a fee for the applications, (a game typically costs $4.00 to $7.50 to buy or $1.50 to $3 per month for a subscription) which appears on their mobile phone bills. The revenue is then shared, according to agreement, between the carrier and Jamdat.

Today, about 78% of Jamdat's revenue come from U.S. subscribers--mostly from Verizon Wireless, which accounts for 40% of revenue and Sprint, which accounts for about 18% of revenue. Others, such Cingular and T-Mobile, have not been aggressively marketing data applications, but are likely to do so this year, providing an opportunity for Jamdat.

: E-Plus adds In-Fusio’s i-mode games to its portal

: Are UK consumers are not interested in 3D and over-the-air multiplayer games? So what games are popular? More here.

…a year after the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (Elspa) began its monthly Java game chart - based on download data from major network portals, including Vodafone live! and the O2 Games Arcade - it is clear that consumers remain conservative and cautious about this new platform.

Brian Baglow, owner of mobile games PR firm Indoctrimat, studied the Elspa charts and presented his findings to the annual Osney Media Mobile Games Forum in London. "What they show is very interesting," he says. "Retro games are by far the most popular titles on the UK market to date, followed by sports titles. Movie-branded games are languishing ... The only game in this category to appear in the charts was 2 Fast 2 Furious from Morpheme. A couple of titles from major movie brands have been awful and so consumers seem to regard them all with suspicion."

So the focus has subtly shifted, with a renewed emphasis on producing simple, but highly polished, titles. Macrospace's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire quiz title has been a huge success, and there is an influx of card sims on the way, such as Gameloft's Midnight Poker, Blackjack Hustler and Player One's Pokermillion. Parlour-type games, such as Mforma's Monopoly Tycoon and Jamdat's Solitaire Deluxe, are also back in vogue.

: Overloaded and InsideGame survey 1000 hardcore gamers from the Netherlands and Belgium. Some of their findings:

20% of mobile phone gamers would be interested in a games subscription when offered by operators or portals. Next to that, mobile phone gamers are not frequent users of other mobile phone content; 58% indicated to never download ringtones and 79% indicated never to download wallpapers.

29% of hard-core gamers download games to their mobile phone on a regular basis

18% of mobile phone gamers are female

72% of mobile phone gamers are between 14 and 25 years old Mobile phone gamers prefer Nokia (41%) and SonyEricsson (17%) phones to play games

52% of mobile phone gamers uses a pre-paid phone

48% of hard-core mobile phone gamers indicated to download on average 1 game every month and 19% indicated to download on average 2 games per month

38% of hard-core mobile phone gamers indicate to download games based on reviews and recommendations from friends

: A look at the Mobile Gaming market in India

According to In-Stat/MDR, a US-based research agency, the wireless gaming market in India will grow to $26 million by 2005 and $336 million by 2009.  India constitutes only 5 per cent of the global wireless gaming industry. However, it is poised for growth with GSM and CDMA operators clocking an average of 220,000 downloads per month.

Bharti Tele-Ventures group CMO & director (mobility) Atul Bindal said, “We offer a variety of content through the AirTel Live multi-access entertainment portal. Among the more downloaded content of 2004 are games like Spiderman and Van Helsing.” AirTel crossed the 5-million-GPRS-download mark in July 2004, five months since its launch.  Reliance Infocomm, which offers a wide range of downloadable content on R-World, registers one million hits everyday for the 48 games on offer. Reliance had also set the ball rolling with its gaming contest in association with Microsoft.

India is expected to replicate the success of mobile gaming leaders Japan and Korea. The US is also a favoured destination for PC and console gaming. Additionally, with Samsung, Nokia and Sony Ericsson logging in to the gaming mode with game-specific handsets like the N-Gage, the industry is expected to gain momentum.

Jamdat, a US-based mobile gaming company, has recently started operations in Hyderabad. Jamdat Mobile (India) managing director Surya Pulagam said, “The market is still premature. However, with most carriers promoting gaming and a fast-growing cellular subscriber base, India could become a significant market for the global wireless gaming industry in the next five years.” Jamdat is already in the final stages of tying up with major carriers in India and plans to launch some of its games in the first quarter of 2005. “Around 90 games are currently on offer globally,” added Pulagam. “However, we want to enter the Indian market cautiously and slowly penetrate the game-user segment.” 

This market has boosted the growth of an entire cycle of game publishers, developers, animators, musicians and content providers. Paradox, Tinfomobile, Gametrix, Dhruva Interactive, India Games and Mobile2Win create content for home and abroad.

: July System launches mobile game tournament on UK mobile content portal Jippii.

: According to Morgan O’Rahilly, CEO of iFone, Console branded mobile games has less mass-market appeal for consumers.

: Airborne Entertainment announces exclusive partnership with Speed Channel to bring array of mobile content such as wall papers, videos, ringtones, games and applications to your phone. The company also has partnership with Maxim Magazine,

Activision Value, Cosmopolitain and CosmoGirl, Buzztime, Snapple, Family Guy, Fox Filmed Entertainment, TV Guide, The NHL and MTV Europe.

: TheFeature on Casual Gaming

Casual games are a much better match with mobile phones: typefied by long but shallow learning curves ("a minute to learn, a lifetime to master"), they use easily understood or familiar concepts, and can fit around the lives of their players rather than imposing on them. They're popular precisely because they're the opposite of "immersive" -- their familiarity and non-threatening nature provides an opportunity for games companies to extend their audience out beyond the traditional gamer demographic, and encourage those furthest from the profile of "early adopter" to do more with their mobile.

You'll already be familiar with some forms of casual games: crosswords and puzzles. These are of educational value (for instance, crosswords build on universal language skills, developing vocabulary and spelling), generate revenues through repeated play and appeal to a broad cross-section of society. In the UK, 25 percent of the population plays a puzzle every day, so for many people they are already a part of everyday life. And there's no reason why these formats shouldn't be improved as they're translated to mobile: co-operative or competitive play, or games which determine the skill level of an individual player and continually give them puzzles designed to stretch their abilities to the limit, are all possible.

: Screen Digest has a good analysis on the rise of the Mobile gaming market and why mobile games are so popular in Japan and Korea compared to Europe and the US. Recommended reading.

: From Adverblog: Nokia's N-Gage Snakes Outbreak is extremely entertaining with a viral effect, allowing users to text the link to friends.

Placing a bet on mobile

According to a report by Juniper, a third of mobile entertainment revenues by 2009 will come from mobile gambling services:

"Given the ubiquity of mobile handsets, and the desire of many [gambling] providers to exploit this, then potentially the resulting sales could be substantially higher," the report says.

Java-enabled graphics, colour-filled screens, technology that invoices on the monthly phone bill, and 3G networking combine to provide a service that rivals traditional gambling methods.

The report says: "More than 90% of the population in the UK and US have at some time played a lottery in its traditional paper form. Coupling this huge market with the immediacy and penetration of the mobile phone is a logical and lucrative proposition."

Sports betting, already popular, is set to surge on the mobile platform. "It may offer the opportunity not only to allow players to place a bet about the outcome of a particular event, but also to dynamically bet through their handset as to the outcome of particular events within the game."

Its success depends on the availability of GPRS or 3G for most mobile users, but at the rate this technology is advancing, this seems likely, the report says.

But stricter controls will come in play to stop minors from consuming mobile gambling services:

The gambling bill, which moves to the House of Lords at the end of the month, has divided industry experts. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) says reform is essential: "Almost all relevant British gambling legislation predates the internet. Nobody had such a powerful communications system in mind when that legislation was being enacted."

Most of the bill, the government says, regulates remote gambling - on mobile telephones, the Internet and interactive television - which specialists suggest 800,000 adults per month participate in. "Our controls on commercial gambling are being undermined by technology," a DCMS spokesperson says. Once the bill is made law, the Gambling Commission will award remote service providers with licences only after certain conditions are met.

These will include secure billing, and credit and age checks. "For the first time it will be a criminal offence to allow a child to play [remote gambling]," says the spokesperson.

Flytxt and Yahoo Mobile sign cross-sellign deal

From Revolution: Yahoo! Mobile Europe is using Flytxt's Direct CRM system to cross-sell its mobile content, with the two companies agreeing a contract following a trial period in the UK market.

The system allows Yahoo! Mobile to target customers who have just purchased content with a promotion for another piece of content within 30 seconds to three minutes of their purchase. It will not try to cross-sell a product that has been previously purchased. Lance Johnson, general manager at Yahoo! Mobile Europe, said: "Now that technology, handsets and usage are catching up, we're seeing significant revenue streams developing within the mobile content side of the business. Flytext's technology is intelligent and we're already seeing a significant commercial impact." Flytxt Direct is rule based and messages sent out respond to certain criteria including: the piece of content that was purchased; the recipient's demographics if stored on the database; time of day; and previous purchase history for that user. Pamir Gelenbe, co-founder of Flytxt, said: "Real-time cross-selling is a no brainer for any content provider. By using Flytxt Direct, mobile content providers can boost their mobile content revenues and achieve greater ROI on their content promotion."

Mobile banking reaches new level in Russia

Under a pilot project launched by Sberbank and Visa International, a few select Muscovites can use their mobile to buy train tickets or pay for cable tv.

A customer's information, usually stored on a bank card's chip, will be stored on the SIM card of a cellphone. Special software will allow users to follow instructions on their phone screens to make payments to participating merchants wherever their phones work. 

This year, mobile subscribers will only be able to pay merchants who are already part of Sberbank's network, like cable television channel NTV-Plus. In the future, however, the payment platform is planned to be accessible to all businesses that accept Visa.

The technology, called 3-domain secure, does not reveal a credit card number or pin code. Instead it uses a series of passwords and requires confirmations from Visa, the bank and the merchant.   "As far as we know, [this system] has not been broken yet," Naumovski said, adding that the same authentication process is widely used on the Internet.

Neither Visa nor Sberbank are disclosing the financial details of the deal, signed in December. But if the year-long pilot is successful in Moscow, Visa says it will aim for agreements with other banks in Russia and the CIS.  Mobile operators are also banking on the technology to help keep their customers. No. 3 MegaFon has already signed an agreement for technology use with Sberbank, Sobolev said. MTS and No. 2 VimpelCom are currently in negotiations, he added.

Other related articles about the Russian mobile industry:

: Gearing up for 3G in Russia

: Content strategies for Russian operators

: Good piece about the state of the Russian Telecom industry, achieving a phenomenal growth of 30-40% a year. However two things are capable of putting an end to the growth rate – economic decline and tougher regulation. More here.

Mr. Bean branded mobile games

Blue Sphere Games inks a two year world wide licensing agreement with Tiger Aspect, the producers of the Animated Mr. Bean series to create and distribute Mr. Bean branded mobile games. The games are based on the Java platform. Click here for the Mr. Bean mini racer game.