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  • Interview: MocoSpace CEO Justin Siegel: "We'll Generate Millions Of Dollars In Ad Revenue This Year"

    In 2013, more than 140 million subscribers will be part of a mobile social network, and that they will generate $410 million from subscriptions alone, which doesn't include revenues from mobile advertising, according to a report recently released by ABI Research . To get a sense of where things stand today in mobile social networks, I caught up with Justin Siegel, CEO and co-founder of MocoSpace , a free mobile social network. (The "moco" stands "mobile community," not "mobile content," as it does in our name). Siegel said since launching MocoSpace in the fall of 2005, the site has been on an upward trajectory, and now has 3.5 million registered users and receives more than 2 billion page views a month, mostly from the U.S. and some from Canada. To be sure, the company attracts the curious, looking for photos and profiles of strangers and friends while on the go. "If you work in retail or construction, and occupations like that, you do not work in front of a PC. A mobile social network will be much more integral to your needs," said Siegel, who points out that Facebook and MySpace make you register online first before you can view profile information on the phone. "It's not about starting over [with a new social network]. It's about starting." Headquartered in Boston, with development offices in Israel, MocoSpace has 25 employees and has raised $7 million in two rounds of venture capital. Here's highlights from my conversation with Siegel, who covered everything from the company's roots to the mobile advertising market: -- History: Siegel started the company with Jamie Halls, who he has been friends since childhood. Together they previously founded JSmart, a mobile game company that was bought by the SK Group for an undisclosed amount in 2004. The two worked at the company through Skyzone, the U.S. group, before leaving to start MocoSpace. -- The opportunity: Siegel said they started the company because...
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  • Mobile Content Bits: AOL iPhone Ads; Jewel Quest; MoMoney Widget; Xperia SDK; Virgin Gets buzzd

    -- AOL ( NYSE: TWX ) Launches iPhone Advertising platform: AOL unveiled an iPhone specific advertising platform today that allows advertisers to specifically target iPhone users. When an iPhone user is browsing a site within AOL's networks, including Third Screen Media or Advertising.com, an iPhone optimized ad. In addition, the network can redirect iPhone users to special versions of the advertisers' site that are optimized for the iPhone. -- Jewel Quest II on iTunes: I-play, which is part of Oberon Media, today released the popular puzzle game Jewel Quest II for iPhone and iPod touch. Jewel Quest II, based on iWin's Jewel Quest franchise, will cost $8.99 from the App store or on iTunes. -- FunMobility launches MoMoney app: FunMobility announced today MoMoney, a free widget that let's bloggers and Web publishers add audio, video and other media to their blog, site or profile. The widget can also be used to generate traffic by allowing the users to make money and generate revenue based on either a per click or per impression basis. The widget is available at at http://funmo.com/MoMoney . MoMoney works with iGoogle ( NSDQ: GOOG ), Netvibes, Pageflakes, MySpace, Facebook, TypePad, Blogger, Freewebs, Friendster, Webwag, and Windows Live. -- Sony ( NYSE: SNE ) Ericsson ( NSDQ: ERIC ) Releases SDK for Xperia: Sony Ericsson Developer World released the beta Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows Mobile 6.1, which will allow developers to build and test XPERIA Panels and applications for the phone. Panels are a bit like widgets for the homescreen. The SDK is free and available at www.sonyericsson.com/developer . -- Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) Partners with buzzd: Virgin Mobile USA said it has added buzzd , a location-based social network, to its WAP deck. The companies are working on a mobile-enabled location-sensitive city guide and social network. Called "buzzd on Virgin Mobile," the site will offer entertainment information that can be shared...
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  • Industry Moves: Virgin Mobile USA; Thumbplay; Motorola; Didmo

    -- Virgin Mobile ( NYSE: VM ) USA : Naval officer Daniel Acton is joining as Virgin Mobile's new chief information and technology officer. He will be responsible for the Virgin Mobile USA's current IT infrastructure and product development, but in addition, with the recent close of the Helio acquisition, he will lead the new postpaid engineering and financial systems. Throughout his career he has held a variety of executive roles in engineering and M&A at GE, Lockheed Martin and IBM, among others, while serving concurrently as an information operations officer in the Navy Reserve. Release . -- Thumbplay : The mobile entertainment provider has tapped Bradley Blanken to lead wireless carrier relationships as VP-carrier business development. Effective today, he will report to Ken Hayes, EVP-carrier relations. Blanken joins from iSkoot, where he served as VP-carrier sales, and had earlier led carrier relations at AOL-owned Third Screen Media. -- Motorola : Beefing up its marketing team with up to 15 new roles, Motorola ( NYSE: MOT ) has hired former BT ( NYSE: BT ) Vision sales director Simon Collinson as director of marketing strategy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Marketing News reports. Collison will report to Andrew Morley, VP of marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Last week, the company hired back James King from Samsung as its European marketing director. King had defected to Samsung about a month ago. -- Didmo : Roberto Chaves has been hired as the delivery platform's new CEO where he will grow Didmo's presence in North America and Europe. He began his career as a co-founder of Evolution 42, a software and hardware virtual reality system, and then later moved on to hold various positions at Cycore AB's Cult3D R&D team, Mental Images, and IPDrum. Release . Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .
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  • Virgin Mobile USA Closes Helio Acquisition

    Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) said today it received all regulatory approvals for its acquisition of Helio. With the deal completed, Virgin Mobile will be able to expand its services from only pre-paid to also postpaid and to offer higher-end data services. In all, Virgin Mobile is getting more out of the transaction than either of Helio's shareholders SK Telecom ( NYSE: SKM ) or Earthlink ( NSDQ: ELNK ), which will receive 13 million shares with a value of $38 million. Virgin will not only gain 170,000 Helio customers, but it also was able to renegotiate its deal with SprintNextel to lower the cost per minute by 8 percent in 2009. SK Telecom and Virgin Group are also both investing $25 million in the combined entity, which will lower the company's debt. Release. Dan Schulman, Virgin Mobile USA's CEO said: "Adding Helio's differentiated postpaid offer to Virgin Mobile USA's existing portfolio will expand both our market opportunity and our ability to deliver new products and services more rapidly...We look forward to revealing our roadmap for expanded, innovative offers in the near future." Related Virgin-Helio: Interview: VMUSA's CEO Dan Schulman: Merger A "Transformative Deal For The Company." Virgin-Helio: Execs Explain Tie-Up; Confirms Helio Store Closures And Other Reductions Virgin Mobile Acquiring MVNO Helio For A Paltry $39M In Equity; Gets $50M Cash Investment Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .
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  • VMUSA Call: Helio Cuts Expenses In Preperation Of Merger; Deal To Close In Next Few Weeks

    Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) reported its second-quarter earnings today saying its performance was affected by changes in consumer spending and a poor economy. During the quarter, profit fell 50 percent to $3.5 million and net service revenues fell 6 percent to $291.4 million, compared to the year ago period. However, the company performed better than expected. Here's highlights from the call ( transcript by Seeking Alpha ): -- Helio update : VMUSA's CEO Dan Schulman said as previously stated Helio was contractually required to cut their costs by about 70 percent before the deal closes and they are on track to do this by reducing its staff by more than two-thirds and have closed nearly all of their retail stores and kiosks. In addition, Helio is already getting the cost benefit of Virgin's network rates. Schulman hopes to close the deal in the next few weeks. "The Helio acquisition is transformative for us. The addition of a post-paid platform, outstanding data services, and compelling handsets will enable us to offer more value to our entire customer base; prepaid, hybrid and post-paid alike," he said. Watch out for new products and services, and plans and handset over the next several quarters. -- Customer Additions : The company lost about 111,000 customer during the quarter, which was an increase over the year-ago period, but better than expectations. The quarter can be the seasonally weakest period for net customer additions, however, was able to produce an improved result due to churn being better than expected for the quarter at 5.6 percent. Churn was better than expected because they were able to identify high-value customers at risk, and stronger sales of high-end handsets during the past few quarters is contributing improved churn. From the Q&A: How's the economy affecting the number of minutes used?: CFO John Feehan: "We have seen our prepaid usage be fairly stable throughout the first half of the year and right in line...
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  • Earnings: Virgin Mobile Says Economy Hurt Revenues And Profits In Q2

    Virgin Mobile ( NYSE: VM ), the prepaid wireless carrier which agreed to buy Helio from Earthlink ( NSDQ: ELNK ) and SK Telecom ( NYSE: SKM ), announced second-quarter results today, saying its weak performance was driven by changes in consumer spending and a poor economy. In the second quarter, it made a profit of $3.5 million on net service revenues of $291.4 million. Profits fell 50 percent and revenues fell 6 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Dan Schulman, Virgin Mobile's CEO, said in a release: "The operational improvements we have put into place are beginning to pay off. While net revenues declined year over year due to general economic conditions and their resultant impact on consumer budgets, the benefits of our low fixed-cost model are reflected in our strong profitability and record free cash flow of $29.2 million." Release. Call. Highlights from the results: -- Customer losses: The company said it lost 111,273 net customers during the period, recording a 5.6 percent churn (which was below company estimates). In the year ago period, the company only lost 53,424 net customers, but recorded a slightly higher churn at 5.7 percent. -- Total customers: Virgin Mobile had nearly 5 million customers at the end of the period, up 3.4 percent from 4.83 million in Q2 2007. -- ARPU: The company makes an average revenue per user of $19.32 a month, compared to the year ago period, when it was making $20.97 a month. -- New rate plans: The new plans, including a $79.99 unlimited calling plan, should lead to higher ARPU, Schulman said. Sales of the new unlimited plan are exceeding expectations and are among their most profitable offering. Beats most forecasts: The company reported earnings per share of 7 cents on total revenues of $317 million, which is better than analyst expectations of $314 million and 2 cents, reports Barron's . The company's net service revenues of $291.4 million was in line with its own forecast of $285 million to $295...
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  • Virgin Media Preps UK Mobile Broadband On T-Mobile Price Cut

    Virgin Media ( NSDQ: VMED ) will begin offering mobile broadband dongles in the UK in the final calendar quarter. Virgin is late to the UK's booming broadband dongle space but today's earnings reveal the offering comes after it struck an agreement with its MVNO backbone T-Mobile to reduce the wholesale rates it pays for voice and data, retroactive to January and April retrospectively. It will also lower mobile data tariffs accordingly. Virgin, which is also testing 100Mbps cable broadband in England, also committed today to introduce 50Mbps in the second half of the year. More earnings at PCUK … Related O2 UK Latest To Bring Out A Dongle Dongles Rack Up Big Broadband Data Hike For 3 UK Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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  • Virgin Mobile Bares Too Much In Lasest Quirky Stunt

    "Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) definitely walks to its own, very hip drumbeat," reports USA Today in a story today about how the pre-paid service provider "treads a quirky path to success." But oddly enough, the story doesn't mention its latest headline-catching stunt. The carrier is participating in an initiative to support organizations that will give brand new clothes to homeless kids. To generate more interest, Virgin launched Strip2Clothe , which asked people to post striptease videos of themselves online, and for every five times a video was viewed, Virgin would donate one piece of clothing. For the campaign, Virgin was working with the National Network For Youth (NN4Y), a D.C.-based group representing 150 homeless organizations, according to WirelessWeek . The striptease, however, got more than viewers aroused. Catholic Charities reportedly said that it was never consulted about the stunt and has called the campaign "distasteful," "inappropriate" and "exploitative." The organization's names have been taken off the site, and NN4Y has reportedly said the campaign has been "limited and it's being re-evaluated." The videos, however, can still be found at strip2clothe.com , where the tagline is: "You take off yours, we donate ours." So far, there has been 70,831 donations, according to the site's counter. But before you get too excited, yes, Virgin does have some standards: "to be clear – while the moniker of our effort is Strip2Clothe and we want you to have fun with it — keep it clean, too. Because youth homelessness is anything but a joke." Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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  • Industry Moves: Former Virgin And NBC Exec Turns VC To Search For Mobile Avertising Opportunities

    Valhalla Partners , a Vienna, Va.-based venture firm with $440 million under management, announced today that it has hired Saj Cherian, a former executive from Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) and NBC Universal ( NYSE: GE ), as Principal to expand its focus on mobile investments. To date, JumpTap, the mobile search and advertising company, is Valhalla's one mobile investment. I talked with Cherian today to get a sense of what he was looking for in his new role, and how he sees the mobile-content industry shaping up. At NBC Universal, he worked on business development and wireless strategy, where he focused on monetizing NBC's mobile properties through advertising, including banners, SMS, and some in-game advertising and video. At Virgin Mobile, he was director of new data services, where he worked on the prepaid carrier's mobile advertising strategy, which included launching its Sugar Mama campaign that allows people to watch ads in return for free voice minutes. Excerpts from the interview: The state of the mobile-content and advertising industry: "Consumers are tapped out on how much they are willing to spend in mobile, and then there are a lot of unlimited options that are capping their spend. The consumer wallet is tapped out, so you really have to dig into someone else's wallet and tap into the advertiser. That's an important area for the wireless industry to be focused on, but it's clearly not playing out as quickly as a lot of folks would like, and that's because there's too much friction in the marketplace. It's too hard to put advertising dollars to work." On Sugar Mama's roots: "We started with our customers, and we engaged them in a dialogue. Our customers are very opinionated, which is good, so we asked them, 'how do you want to engage in brands?' They were pretty clear. One message we got was that they've been shouted to by brands my whole life, so it's got to be opt-in. Another was that...
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  • Virgin-Helio: Interview: VMUSA's CEO Dan Schulman: Merger A "Transformative Deal For The Company."

    Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ) today announced that they will be acquiring Los Angeles-based Helio, a competitor backed by SK Telecom ( NYSE: SKM ) and EarthLink, for $39 million. The deal is complicated because it also includes cash and debt infusions by SK Telecom and the Virgin Group, and a favorable new network deal with Sprint ( NYSE: S ). Following the announcement, I interviewed CEO Dan Schulman, who called the merger "a transformative deal for the company." Here are some excerpts: Many MVNOs have not been successful in the U.S. Together, it seems like you will have a fighting chance. "It's a fantastic transaction for three reasons: I think it greatly enhances our growth potential with the new capabilities we are getting; it provides us with significantly more scale and a number of cost benefits, and finally it greatly improves our financial strength and financial structure. When you pull all of these things together, it was a transformative deal for the company. You say this deal wasn't to compete with mainstream carriers, why not? "This is much more about an evolution of our product strategy, we are staying focused on youth market. The youth market continues to evolve as mobile becomes more central in their lives and everything they are doing. When you think about about when we entered the market six years ago, we were offered basic prepaid service with two handsets, we've evolved as we've scaled and as our target market evolved. Two years ago, we introduced hybrid offers, which are monthly plans without a contract, and now over 30 percent of base is on monthly plans. This was the next logical extension for us. We are finding in conversations with our retailers, we are beginning to see more movement up market to more advanced handsets, and with those advanced handsets, come more data services capabilities, and we wanted to make sure we could offer a choice to service our customers through the entire life cycle. That was the...
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  • Virgin-Helio: Execs Explain Tie-Up; Confirms Helio Store Closures And Other Reductions

    Virgin Mobile ( NYSE: VM ) hosted a conference call this morning to explain the acquisition of Helio, which will cost them $39 million, and will gain them a fresh $50 million of investments from Virgin Group and SK Telecom ( NYSE: SKM ) at a price of $8.50 per share. Release. Virgin's CEO Dan Schulman thoughts: "This accelerates our ability to offer a full suite of products to our existing base of 5 million customers...We worked hard to put together a transaction that benefits all those involved, and we are delighted to gain an important strategic partner in SK Telecom, one of the premier telecom companies in the world. The acquisition of Helio rapidly advances the products we can offer and adds a migration path to our most valuable customers, and let's us enter the post-paid business...This is a natural evolution of our product strategy and builds upon our expansion of hybrid and prepaid services. We intend to integrate Helio's functionality into our new handsets, support prepaid, postpaid and hybrid services, and we'll have a greatly improved capital structure and substantially more liquidity." Quick close: Expected in the third quarter, in the meantime Helio and SK Telecom will conduct cost-saving measures. The deal: Acquiring 170,000 customers, who are generating $80 of ARPU, an inventory of 80,000 handsets, and Helio's state of the art customer technology platform that would cost $25 million and 12 months to build on their own. Concurrent with the acquisition, they are getting $25 million from both Virgin and SK Telecom, which will let them pay down debt. "It significantly improves our capital structure." The company will now have $135 million in revolving debt, up from $75 million before. This has allowed us to obtain more favorable network rates from Sprint ( NYSE: S ). We've restructured them so they aren't tied to Sprint's costs, but tied to how much volume we have, which will represent a 8 percent discount...
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  • SK Telecom-Helio-Virgin Mobile Deal Done; Helio To Be Injected Into VMUSA: Report

    So reports FT this evening , citing sources. We first broke the news on the deal talks last month, and after hiccups in valuation and other issues, the deal has been signed in principle and that an announcement could be made as early as this week. The deal will include Helio, now majority owned by SK Telecom ( NYSE: SKM ), injected into Virgin Mobile USA ( NYSE: VM ), and better-recognised Virgin brand will be retained. VMUS, which did its IPO on NYSE last October, will issue new shares, leaving SK Telecom holding close to 20 per cent of the equity of the enlarged business, which will be worth about $50 million, the story says. SKT will also invest a nominal amount of cash in VMUSA. Virgin has about 5.1 million mobile customers, all of whom are on pay-as-you-go deals...Helio has about 200K, all post-paid. Will this deal make any material difference to VMUSA's chances of surviving in the long term? It will certainly give it some cash, and the Korean expertise in handset and advanced mobile service, for whatever that is worth. It will also give VM an entry into higher end handsets, higher ARPU customers, and better UI that comes with Helio, if they decide to use that. Distribution and still-relatively smaller scale remains an issue… Possibly the best analysis and rationale of a merger comes from one of our commenters, who posted this in response to a previous post on Helio store closures: "1. Savings in operations by merging overlapping areas such as IT. This can reduce Helio's current operating costs by as much as 40%. 2. By pooling the minutes, Helio saves on Virgin Mobile's current lower wholesale rates. This could result in savings for cost of goods sold by nearly 15%. 3. By rolling out Helio's exclusive services to the Virgin community it increases margins for the business without any additional investments. Imagine 5 million people now being able to use exclusive services such as Answer Rings, Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) Maps, Buddy Beacon, Tell Me...
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