US Mobile Giving Space Heats Up

Guide by Cell (www.guidebycell.com) announced that it has become one of Mobile Giving Foundation's (MGF) (www.mobilegiving.com) approved application providers. MGF administers mobile giving for major US phone companies.

According to MGF Chairman and CEO Jim Manis, Guide by Cell is the US leading provider of mobile solutions to the museum and cultural nonprofit community. The Guide by Cell program, which will operate through a new Give by Cell division, allows participants to make on-the-spot donations. Guide by Cell also offers audio tours, mobile advertising, training, and a mobile platform. To make a donation, the donor sends a text message to a short code provided by Give by Cell, referencing the nonprofit's name. The donor receives a confirmation message and will see the donation charge on a subsequent phone bill.

MGF is a tax-exempt non-profit (501[c][3]) organization headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, founded in 2006 by Jim Manis and Jenifer Snyder. Other MGF application providers include Distributive Networks (www.distributivenetworks.com), mGive (www.mGive.com), Mobile Commons (www.mcommons.com), MobileCause (www.mobilecause.com), and Wireless Factory (www.wirelessfactory.com). Mobile carriers collect and forward the donated funds for free.

Some mobile giving campaigns are being aggressively promoted with high-profile advertising. The United Way took a ten second ad (www.youtube.com/watch?v=b38idebP4ag) during the 2008 Super Bowl, urging viewers to text "FIT" to 864833 (UNITED) to donate $ 5.00 to United Way Youth Fitness.



Actress Jessica Biel shot a one minute video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrR-8sDgQU) in conjunction with Major League Baseball urging viewers to text STAND to 40202 to "Stand up to cancer" (www.standup2cancer.org).

-Stuart Whitaker

AWAITING OVI STORE LAUNCH WITH GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Announced in February with a planned May debut, Nokia’s Ovi Store (www.ovi.com) has the benefit of learning from mistakes of earlier application stores, including Apple, Blackberry, and Android. One of the most powerful aspects of the Ovi Store is its social networking strategy. Consistent with the hypothesis that advertising is dead—or dying—and making best use Nokia’s acquisition of Navteq’s mapping capabilities, the Ovi Store reportedly will offer a recommendation scheme based on three factors: 1. The individual subscriber’s social network; 2. The individual subscribers’ location; 3. The individual subscriber’s particular interests. The Ovi Store's social discovery feature will allow users to share information about applications that they have downloaded. The Ovi Store will be available initially on an estimated 50 million phones, including S60 and Series 40 devices, using XHTML and Java. Nokia estimates that by 2012 300 million users will have access to the Ovi Store. The Nokia N97, scheduled for launch in June, will be the first phone with the Ovi storefront onboard.

An example of an application running on Nokia devices is the Nokia Sports Tracker (www.sportstracker.nokia.com). Using GPS information in compatible Nokia devices, information such as speed, distance, and time are automatically stored in the user's diary. Data can also be published and available on the Internet. The sports Tracker won the Best Mobile Internet Service award earlier this year at GSMA.

Nokia indicates that there will be thousands of applications initially available at the Ovi Store. Missing from the ecosystem is a public discussion group along the lines of Android, though reports are that a discussion group is being developed and will be available within a matter of weeks. Developer revenue opportunities exist through application subscriptions, advertising, content sales, and application hosting.
-Stuart Whitaker

ORANGE UK APPLICATION CHALLENGE: FIVE CUBED

The Orange Partner program (www.orangepartner.com) announced a challenge to get five new mobile apps into the Orange UK Application Shop on five devices within five days during the JavaOne conference (actually four days--June 2-5).

The five devices are the Nokia 6500s, Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K800, Sony Ericsson W910i, and Samsung G600. The application must fall into one of the Orange UK Application Shop categories:

- Just for Fun;
- Phone Magic;
- Astrology Zone;
- Orange services;
- Men’s Zone;
- Books & recipes;
- Themes & Personalization;
- Messaging services;
- Health & Fitness;
- Quizzes/Trivia;
- Travel guides. -Stuart Whitaker

CONTXTS WEIGHS IN TO MOBILE CONNECTION MARKET.

Contxts (www.contxts.com) is a service available in the US that provides a simple way to send and retrieve contact details via SMS. Texting "daniel" to 50500 produces information about Contxts' developer, including his name--Daniel Sullivan--as well as his company, phone number email, twitter account, and AIM account. Daniel--or any other Contxts member--can send his or her details just as easily. From Daniel's phone, texting "send 3034759204" to 50500 would send Daniel's details to 3034759204.

Users can log into Contxts online to edit their own details. There is a page for "my contacts," which appears to be a placeholder where users can view information about their own contacts. Assuming this information online will be available in a vCard or other standard format when later versions are released, Contxts' utility will be significantly increased. The service is free and in alpha with very little additional information. The service appears to be based in Denver, Colorado. Other companies in this space include DubMeNow (www.DubMeNow.com).
-Stuart Whitaker

NOKIA INNOVATION CONTEST

Nokia has launched the 2009 Calling All Innovators (www.CallingAllInnovators.com ) contest, inviting anyone with "bold ideas and tremendous talent" to enter. Nokia says total cash and prizes are worth more than US$ 250,000, including US$ 30,000 for the grand prize winner, US$ 15,000 for the second place, and US$ 10,000 for third place, in each of the categories. Categories include internet innovation; flash; emerging markets and mobile necessities; and apps on maps. The entry deadline is June 30th. -Stuart Whitaker

PLEASE CALL ME (PCM) WIN-WIN: ADVERTISING REVENUE PLUS CALL TRAFFIC

Vodacom in South Africa offers an advertising-paid, free to subscribers, Please Call Me (PCM) service that allows one mobile subscriber to ask another mobile subscriber to initiate a mobile call--South African mobile callers are charged for calls, while call recipients talk for free. To request a call, subscribers dial *140*TARGETNUMBER, where TARGETNUMBER is the number of the person being asked to place the call.

This service is similar to international "call back" services and South African "beeping" practices. International call back is a service designed to reduce international charges between countries with disparate international telecommunications tariffs. To use an international call back service, a person in country where outgoing calls are expensive who wants to speak to someone in a country where outgoing calls are less expensive, dials a number in the low cost country, hangs up, and awaits a "call back" from the service in the low cost country. The user is then able to "conference in" others in the low cost country. South African beeping is the practice whereby mobile subscribers with zero mobile balances call subscribers with positive mobile balances, immediately hang up, and await a call back.

With the PCM service, the target subscriber receives a text message with the message "Please Call Me," the number to be called, and an advert. Mobile subscribers have the option to turn off receipt of PCM messages. Vodacom reports having over 2.4 million unique users each day and that between 18 and 20 million messages are delivered per day across networks.
-Stuart Whitaker

MOBILE TECH 4 SOCIAL CHANGE GOES GLOBAL

Following events in San Francisco in November, 2008 and New York City in February, Katrin Verclas from MobileActive.org announced plans for Mobile Tech 4 Social Change (MT4SC) events in Washington, DC, London (http://m4changelondon.eventbrite.com/) and Halifax (http://mobiletech4socialchangehfx.eventbrite.com/) in May, Barcelona and Nairobi in June, Cape Town in July, Kampala in August. Dates for Toronto and Geneva have yet to be announced.-Stuart Whitaker

APPLE POSTS STEADY GROWTH IN REVENUE AND IPHONE SALES.

APPLE POSTS STEADY GROWTH IN REVENUE AND IPHONE SALES. Apple (www.apple.com) announced second quarter 2009 revenue growth of 8.7%, to US$ 8,163 million, compared to US$ 7,512 million in the second quarter 2008. Net income for the quarter was US$ 1,205, up 15.3% from US$ 1,045 the year before. For the first half of the fiscal year, revenue grew 7.1% from US$ 17,120 million to US$ 18,330 million, while net income grew 7.0% from US$ 2,626 billion to US$ 2,810 billion. Apple reported sales of 3.79 million iPhones, a 123% growth from the same quarter a year ago, bringing total iPhone unit sales to 21.1 million.

Apple

	2Q09 $ M	2Q08 $ M	Change $	Change
Revenue	8,163	7,512	651	8.67%
Operating Income	1,667	1,315	352	26.77%
Net Income	1,205	1,045	160	15.31%
Apple
	1H09 $ M	1H08 $ M	Change $	Change
Revenue	18,330	17,120	1,210	7.07%
Operating Income	3,793	3,441	352	10.23%
Net Income	2,810	2,626	184	7.01%

TELUS PUSHES MARKET TRANSPARENCY

In a move that reflects a determination to keep the markets fully informed of developments, Canadian carrier TELUS announced that its wireless subscriber net additions in the first three months of 2009 were 48,000, off 46% from the net additions of 88,000 in the first three months of 2008. Churn per month rose 9 points from 1.53% to 1.62%, and ARPU fell 5.6% from C$ 61.88 to C$ 58.39. TELUS attributes these results to the weakening Canadian economy. Detailed results will be released in May. TELUS share price fell 10.46% on the day of the announcement.-Stuart Whitaker (http://tinyurl.com/cjkqox)

CHACHA: THE FUTURE OF INFORMATION?

Industry-leading advertising-supported game developers have felt the adverse impact of unscrupulous advertising-supported game developers, and we believe information service providers do--or will--face similar reputation-related issues concerning the quality of information they deliver. There was a tremendous backlash in the US in the 1990s as competitive directory assistance providers entered the market using lower quality listing information, some of whom delivered accurate results only two-thirds of the time. As a result, "telco quality" listings became the standard, and the accuracy of successful directory assistance providers now remains in the 90% range.

We are reminded of a sign we once saw—answers: $ 0.25, right answers: $ 1.00, dumb looks: free.

Issues of accuracy become increasingly important as newspapers--historically, the purveyors of objective information--reduce staff and, in some cases, close altogether.

ChaCha's promise to "provide answers, for free, to any question, anytime, anywhere," is simply more than it is able deliver. Here's a simple example.

We called ChaCha at +1-800-2-ChaCha and asked the automated attendant "how much money has ChaCha raised?" We heard an advertisement for AT&T--one of ChaCha's partners--and received an SMS reply shortly afterwards, that read:

"ChaCha heard ur Q as: 'how much money has Cha Cha raised' Stay tuned!"

Within a minute we received a second message:

"You'll have ur answer b4 u know it! 'The Fray is touring this summer! Would u like to get ur tix before they go on sale in Virginia? Rply VAPRESALE"

Shortly thereafter we received this:

"ChaCha makes money from the companies they advertise for. Thanks for doing the ChaCha! *The Fray Presale! Txt TIXVA"

While we don't expect ChaCha's service to provide any inside or proprietary information, ours was a softball question--we would expect them at least to deliver accurate public information about themselves. This information would include, at a minimum, the fact that ChaCha announced this week that it has secured US$ 12 million in equity financing to expand its local and national advertising sales activities, including a newly opened New York office.

Regarding this announcement, Scott A. Jones, CEO of ChaCha, said “this funding is a tribute to the strength of our service and the continuing rapid growth of the mobile search and advertising market."

ChaCha's announcement did not identify who made this new investment, so it is entirely speculative as to whether previously announced investors have re-upped and whether new investors have come on board. Previously announced investors include Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment firm of Jeff Bezos; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS as well as Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; and Jack Gill, Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist.

In addition to announcing the new investment, ChaCha announced it is streamlining and restructuring itself to preserve its cash. The company is reducing headcount, overhead, and expenditures through a series of cost-saving actions to ensure the company is positioned for long-term success. VentureWire estimates that the company laid off 25 of its 81 employees. ChaCha reports that it delivers 30 million impressions per month and has had 3.6 million users since their launch in January, 2008. Last year, ChaCha reported having over 35,000 guides who had answered over 30 million queries since their launch.-Stuart Whitaker