Issue 16 • February 2011
TELEMEDIA TV
Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic, talks billing News
s Competitive MNO billing set to arrive as on-bill drives mobile revenues ahead of ad clicks mobile content owners, apps runners and developers are making more money through traditional billing tools – especially PRS and other on-billing billing channels – than ad clicks, and this could grow further as operators look set to offer more competitive rates, reveals Flirtomatic, speaking exclusively to Telemedia-news at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month. “Apple has established 70:30 as the price model, so offering anything better than that to developers is not just the icing on the cake, but the cake,” says Curtis, who believes that operators are poised now to start offering much more competitive rates on billing to try and corner this market. This backs up rumours circulating last year that two major operators in the UK were about to start offering much better pay out rates to leading retailers to becoming the billing partner of choice in the lucrative m-retailing sector. Until now many have thought of mobile ads as being the main chance for mobile content monetisation, but 2010 has failed to become the year of mobile advertising, says Curtis. In fact, he says, “supply is outstripping demand and will continue to do so for at least a couple of years”. “We have seen 50% revenue growth in 2010,” says Flirtomatic’s CEO, Mark Curtis, “and it has all come from in-app billing”. While Curtis is in no doubt that mobile advertising will be huge and will be the significant revenue generator for developers and anyone running content and apps, it won’t be so until 2013 at the earliest. With the shift to mobile advertising as a key revenue source some two years away, the mobile billing landscape is, however, continued page 2
THIS MONTH...
The latest news from the industry, along with analysis of what that news means, including: • Retailers see mobile as essential, but don’t know where to start 2 • ANALYSIS: PayWizard looks at the changing face of billing 3 • ANALYSIS: paythru adds to the billing and payment debate 4 • Intelligent SMS set to save hotels and restaurants £1000pcm 6 • Mobile internet now a daily habit for one in four in UK 7 • NameThatNumber identifies missed calls and creates revenue 8 • Liverpool FC creates first premiere league mobile shop 10 • Oxygen8 gives Manchester Airport a little affordable luxury using text 11 • Mobile music to reach $5.5bn by 2015 despite piracy, says Juniper 11 • Telcos damaging growth by failing enterprise customers 12 • Couch leaves Opal and sets up least cost mobile routing app 12
Analysis Editorial Banking on payments Mobile payments was the talk of the town at MWC11. But its not all good news for telemedia 13 NFC: Finger clicking good? Part of the payments revolution is everyone’s interest in NFC. But what does it really offer? 15 Marketing for m-commerce M-commerce changes how mobile marketing works and what it shoudl offer. Find out more 17 Mobile moves Chevy dealer Bobby Bentz looks at how a Virginian Chevy dealer is using mobile 18
Directory The leading industry directory of services 19
For more on the changing face of billing, see page 3 and 4 >>
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