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  • Belgacom Buys SMS Parking Payments Provider Mobile-For

    Belgian network operator Belgacom has bought SMS parking payments provider Mobile-for. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The two year old start-up was created by Belgian parking operator Apcoa Belgium and the Estonian Now! Innovations and currently offers SMS parking in seven Belgian cities. It plans to roll out in three more by the end of the year. Belgacom said the purchase fits with its strategy of investing in the growing mobile payments market, which would allow it to expand its products ( 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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  • Twitter 'Bigger In UK Than US', White Van Man Taking It Mainstream?

    And you thought it was mostly Americans addicted to the SMS/IM/web presence thingamy… ? Web measurer Hitwise says it's the reverse - at least, proportionally . "Last week the site's share of UK internet visits was 70 percent higher its share of visits in America," said analyst Robin Goad. " Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it's getting there ." Its growth here - 485 percent so far this year and 631 percent year-on-year - is slower than the eightfold annual international increase , though. Twitter may seem too esoteric and the crowd too geeky to be adopted by the Facebook masses, but Goad says the "demographics are also pointing towards more wide-spread adoption". Last month, the audience was evenly split on gender and over-45s made up 37 percent of users. And, while the most prevalent users are high-rolling "city adventures", students and young professionals, young families, ethnic-minority singles and "white van culture " (for our American readers, "a white van man" is sort of equivalent to a pick-up driving worker) are also heavily represented, suggesting "more mainstream appeal" , Goad said. Fancy metrics aside, the barometer I always use is the girlfriend test - if she's adopted a new technology (hey, it happened with Facebook and Last.fm), you know it's reached a tipping point; she started tweeting several weeks ago. Now if only Ev and Biz would tell us their business model.. Related Twitter Buys Micro-Blogging Search Site Summize; Reportedly $15M Cash+Stock
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  • France "Inviting" Operators To Cut SMS Prices

    Record high inflation is apparently taking its toll on the purchasing power of French citizens, so what better way for the government to tackle the problem than to target the high price of SMS messages? Days after the EU announced it would move ahead with "measures" to slash the price of roaming SMS, France is "inviting" its operators to cut the price of text messages. Reuters reports that along with the invite the country's junior minister for consumer goods Luc Chatel is penning a letter to the networks to "make them aware of the difficulties of consumers with low budgets." That should warm the hearts of the operators. According to a study published by French telecoms regulator Arcep , French consumers on pay-as-you-go phones, pay an average cost of 12 euro cents ($0.19) per text. While the volume of SMS sent in the country is nearly twice the amount sent in 2004, prices have remained stable. Moreover, the price of an SMS from France's various MVNO's, which buy network access from the carriers, actually cost 25-30 percent less than the main operators--Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom. Roaming text, the target of EU scrutiny, is nearly double the cost of domestically sent SMS. Related European Commission Vows To End SMS Roaming Rip-Offs With Price Cuts T-Mobile Hikes Text Price To 20 Cents Each
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  • Player X Buys Spanish Games Firm, Splits Production And Publishing Arms

    UK mobile games maker Player X is buying Madrid-based mobile games publisher Gaelco Móviles for an undisclosed cash amount - its first acquisition and part of a European expansion plan. At the same time, it's separating out its production and publishing operations in to two new divisions - Studio X and Player X Distribution . Joining the latter unit on game aggregation and portals, Gaelco Móviles is mostly strong in the Mediterranean, has carrier tie-ups with Telefonica ( NYSE: TEF ), Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ), TNM, Bouygues and Wind, and is responsible for titles like Mini Morris Fun Car (after the jump). Player X CEO Tony Pearce said it's the first of a "raft of significant strategic moves" that are coming. 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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  • Mobispine Mobile News Aggregator Buying RSS Reader NewsAlloy

    Mobile newsreader service Mobispine is acquiring NewsAlloy , an Ajax, web-based RSS reader, intending to merge the two in to a "seamless" product offering personalized newsfeeds across desktop and mobile. The acquisition price is not disclosed. The NewsAlloy website claims 11,331 registered users, and Stockholm-based Mobispine says it has over 300,000 active mobile users per month. Somewhat ambitiously, they are targeting 10 million users for the combined operation . The online RSS reader game is frankly a tough challenge, in the face of mature offerings from bigger players like Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) Reader, Bloglines and easier alternatives like My Yahoo ( NSDQ: YHOO ). But Mobispine says its NewsAlloy combination can offer "a welcome change" that can be used by "everyone from tweens to seniors". It also uses the word "murfing" seriously in its 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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  • European Commission Vows To End SMS Roaming Rip-Offs With Price Cuts

    Here it is: After months of threats and warnings, the European Commission announced today that it will end "roaming rip-offs" for text messages abroad after calls to the industry to cut rates themselves have "not been answered." Telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding said she would recommend an October timeline for proposing a rule to slash SMS rates. The commissioner said they would also seek "to put an end to bill shocks" on roaming data rates, which she noted continues to be "heavily overpriced." No specific price cut guide has been announced yet, and Reding said the Commission would have to discuss how to deal with data roaming. The industry itself has argued that mobile data is still a nascent service that needs more time to establish itself before price cuts are imposed on it. According to the EC's own research, sending a text from abroad costs 10 times more than a domestic message. The average cost of a roaming text message in the EU between October 2007 and March 2008 was 29 euro cents ($0.46) according to the European Regulators' Group (ERG), but can be as high as 80 euro cents ($1.28) for Belgian travelers. The ERG said that a more "appropriate price" would be between 11 to 15 euro cents ($0.18-$0.24) per text . Meanwhile, the Commission has created a handy web site to show European travelers how much they are currently being fleeced by their operator. ( Release ). Related European Commission May Propose Legislation Tomorrow For SMS Roaming Fees European Operators Braced For EU-Dictated Price Cuts On SMS 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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  • European Commission May Propose Legislation Tomorrow For SMS Roaming Fees

    The European Commission is expected to announce tomorrow that it will propose legislation to cut the cost of sending and receiving text messages while roaming, according to the NYTimes . On average, when sending a text in the EU, users paid €0.28 last month for a message, which represents an "insufficient drop" from the third quarter last year when it was €0.29 (US 50 cents). On June 30, European operators had to tell EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding know how much they were charging for roaming text messages and data downloads. Since then, it has been determined the prices were too high, but legislation against other data charges, like Internet access, isn't expected. Related European Operators Braced For EU-Dictated Price Cuts On SMS ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more .
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  • SnapNow's Fuzzy Picture - MMS For Marketing

    A bizarre twist on SMS marketing, SnapNow today brought to Europe an MMS picture recognition variant that's been floating 'round Japan for years. Just like SMS, SnapNow lets marketers send responses to folk who send a message to their particular shortcode. What's different - unlike SMS, SnapNow requires people photograph a billboard, magazine page or other ad, then send it via MMS (the server recognizes the image). In other words, not only is the process more convoluted than merely texting a keyword string to a number , it also costs more than a regular message. SnapNow is being trialed from today with Haymarket Publishing's Inside United official Man Utd magazine and youth style mag SuperSuper. The service comes to the US in three months, I'm told. Related Industry Moves: Seatwave CFO, Jamster EVP, Endemol CEO, Joost Hires Ticket Exchange Seatwave Raises £12.8 Million Third Round Ticket Exchange Sites Criticised By MPs, But Escape Regulation Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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  • German MoSo Aka-Aki Raises Investment To Go Full-Time

    German mobile social network Aka-Aki , which uses Bluetooth to do location-aware proximity networking and is also available in English, has raised a small investment of an undisclosed size from Crea Thor Ventures . The service started as a Berlin university diploma project but will, from August 15, have staff working full-time from an office in the city, Deutsche Startups says . This pretty mad explainer video is slightly confused but gets to the point in the end… ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more .
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  • Guardian Execs On ContentNext Acquisition: McCall, Brooks Talk Up Expansion

    The acquisition of our parent company , ContentNext Media, is a major change for us, but it also marks a turning point for the UK company to which we now belong. ContentNext is Guardian News & Media 's first acquisition outside the UK and its first of this sort at all; we are also now the company's largest U.S. presence. I spoke separately with Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Media Group , and Tim Brooks, a former journalist and managing director of Guardian News & Media, the part of the company where we fit in. No details on finances (we'll leave that to Kara ) but this is clearly a significant investment of energy and resources for Guardian as well. Why paidContent and ContentNext? : Brooks: "Absolutely essential to what we do is editorial independence and editorial integrity, and ContentNext absolutely lives by those same very high standards. Rafat always exemplified that way of operating and we wouldn't have looked twice at any business that didn't exemplify those standards of integrity and independence. ... It's a growing business. It's very well regarded by very senior people in the industry it serves, including, incidentally, all the senior people here, and it's in a space—media and technology—that we very firmly believe is central to our development going forward." McCall: "We respect the people at paidContent. We have known Rafat for a long time and really have admired the integrity that paidContent brings to content. It's a very good fit for the Guardian. And so it fits just incredibly well into the strategy of escalating what we do digitally. Working with an organization like yours, where we'll be learning from you—and I hope you'll be learning different skills from us—there are things where we can add a lot of value to paidContent, but there's a lot of value that paidContent can add to the Guardian." Fit with Guardian : Brooks: "Thanks to the web, we have a large...
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  • RealNetworks Sees Growth Of Snack-Sized Mobile Content; No iPhone Plans For Rhapsody

    RealNetworks ( NSDQ: RNWK ), which helps carriers sell ringtones, ringback tones and full-track music, believes the continuing trend in mobile content is to provide a bite-sized or "snackable" content experience, whereas the TV and PC will be the venues for longer, richer, high-definition experiences, according to Analisa Roberts, RealNetwork's senior director of market planning and analysis. That's not a new concept in the industry, however, the thinking has started to get muddled with new entrants, like mobile broadcast TV, which offers full-length shows and movies, and other content providers that see phones with big screens and faster network speeds as away to move everything from TV or online over to mobile without any alterations. To be sure, RealNetworks provides the range when it comes to music, by selling slices of music that are used for ringtones and ringback tones and also full-track music downloads. Here's a snapshot of their thoughts on the matter: On recent developments: About two years ago, RealNetworks acquired South Korean-based WiderThan for $350 million for its mobile music expertise and then more recently it bought Sony NetServices for $9 million to gain a European mobile music foothold. Last month, it gained recognition for launching an exclusive deal for Rhapsody with Verizon Wireless that includes both full-track and subscription music services. Lots more, including thoughts on mobile music, after the jump … Mobile Music by the Numbers: -- Ringback tones: Ringback tones make up the bulk of RealNetwork's business when counting subscribers. As of Q1, they had 16 carrier deployments in 10 countries with 28 million mobile subscribers, which mostly have subscriptions. "Our ringback tone subscriber base continues to grow at a great rate....It's strong in the U.S. and Asia, but Europe is a focus and we are seeing traction there." To give an idea, 10.5 percent of the global subscriber base has a ringback tone subscription...
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  • 3 UK Looking To Double Customer Base

    3 UK, the country's smallest mobile operator, wants to double its customer base to 6.8 million in the next three to four years, reports the FT.com . 3 UK chief Kevin Russell said he is ready to grow the business after reining in costs at the carrier, which is still losing money. Russell told the paper he hoped to "more than double the net revenue" and "double the customer base"--though no mention where these customers will come from in a market with one of the highest mobile penetration rates in Europe. Last year, T-Mobile and 3 struck a deal to share their network infrastructure, which would see both operators reaping major savings in capital and operating expenses. Three has also invested in its retails shops to sign on customers, rather than relying on the more expensive route of getting them through independent dealers. Meanwhile, even if 3 were to double its current size of 3.4 million customers (as of the end of last year), the network would still be smaller than the UK's four main operators—O2, Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ), Orange and T-Mobile. Three has also been dogged by the steep termination costs it pays other networks. In May, Ofcom dealt it another blow, saying that the carrier would have to cut its termination charges 45 percent, as it was no longer a new player than needed protection in the market. All networks pay each other termination fees to handle the calls their consumer make outside of their own network. But Three is at a disadvantage—while termination rates are usually a wash for its larger rivals, Three routinely pays out more to its competitors for handling calls its customers make to their other networks, than it brings in. In 2006, for example, they paid out £50 million ($99 million). Related 3 UK Strikes Mobile Ad Deal With Yahoo! 3 Group Revenues Up; Hutchison Predicts 3G Mobile Operations May Become Most Profitable Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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