Females more into mobile downloads compared to males
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: When it comes to males and females, everyone first talk about how women are superseding men in all aspects. Here comes one more example where women throughout the world have overtaken men. According to a latest survey, females are using and buying mobile entertainment content more than males.
Women downloaded twice the amount of mobile entertainment content as men in the month of April which is 4.5 million downloads, or 67% of total content downloads, compared to 2.2 million downloads for men.
49% of females chose Blackberry compared to 43% of the males. However, males use Android devices more frequently than females, with 23% of them choosing the Android platform vs. 18% of females.
When it comes to downloads on Android and iPhones, females far surpass males again as average female using an Android device downloaded 7.6 pieces while male downloaded 6.0 items, for the month of April.
LATAM Board members announced by MEF Announces
The results of the election for its inaugural LATAM Board have been announced by The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF).
In order to accelerate the growth of mobile media and entertainment across the region by creating dialogue between the industry and regulators, MEF’s LATAM Chapter was launched in November 2009.
Ron Czerny, CEO of Playphone, who has been elected Chairman of MEF LATAM, expressed his heart felt gratitude and welcomed their very experienced board of directors, a group which represent the interests of the entire mobile entertainment value chain.
According to him, the company will be building upon MEF’s expertise in fostering collaboration between the industry and regulators to promote sustainable business models and ensure that regulation is proportional to protect and grow members’ revenues and safeguard consumers.
A few more important dignitaries included in the MEF LATAM Board are Jorge Partidas, Co-Founder & CEO, WAU M³vil (Vice-Chairman), Rafaela Furtado (Mobile Business Manager, Abril Digital) and Ana Paula Lima (Sales Director VAS, Spring Wireless).
Buongiorno Enters Gaming Market
Buongiorno, the world’s biggest mobile entertainment company, has announced its entry into the online and mobile ‘skill games’ market in Italy. The company seeks opportunities in business with the launch of WINGA, which includes a set of skill games, including slot machines, roulette, black jack and baccarat, plus casino, poker and bingo.
The company expects to launch WINGA by the end of Q2 2010 as it has secured a license to operate in the gaming business from the State Monopoly. In order to launch its commercial activities, as soon as the regulatory framework in those countries allows it, the company is also monitoring the evolution of regulatory procedures in other markets where it is already successfully operating in the B2C segment.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of the company, Andrea Casalini, the company sees a major opportunity opening up at the international level. After Italy, their target is the developments in gaming regulations in Europe.
Myxer and Quincy Jones III team up for DVD Mobile Campaign
Myxer, one of the largest mobile entertainment sites on the web, has teamed up with urban entertainment artist Quincy Jones III (QD3) for a new mobile entertainment campaign that shows the power of free mobile content downloads to drive the sales of DVDs.
In order to support the DVD launch of ‘The Carter with Lil Wayne’, Myxer offered free mobile content from its site, on the behalf of QD3. As per the data, consumers downloaded more than 1 million pieces of mobile content from the documentary including wallpapers, ringtones and videos in a four-week long campaign. This led to a 20% increase in DVD sales which helped the DVD to drive to the No.5 position on iTunes.
According to a source in QD3, while the company was expecting several hundred thousand downloads of the free mobile content in the one month period, they were blown away by the fact that there were 1.1 million downloads in such a short time period. The company is thrilled to have worked with Myxer to create such a huge impact on their sales.
According to Myxer CEO Myk Willis, the campaign shows that the branding power of mobile personalization content is superior to many other forms of digital advertising. In his opinion, the quality ad frequency of user engagement with a mobile download, such as a ringtone or wallpaper that users seek out and carry with them for weeks, is clearly differentiated from that offered by traditional digital ads.
Bharti Airtel is India’s largest Music company!
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Mobile Music has become the largest contributor to Value Added Services Revenue of the mobile operators in India. In a recent announcement, India’s largest telecom operator by subscribers’ number, Bharti Airtel has claimed its Music Bharti†to be the largest music company in India ahead of another giant of the music industry, Saregama. After this announcement by Deputy CEO Sanjay Kapoor, it becomes easy to understand why Bharti Airtel decided to set up separate divisions for Mobile Entertainment and Mobile Commerce.
Meanwhile, there are doubts regarding the top slot claimed by Bharti after beating Saregama. Saregama has still not revealed its financial results for 2008-09 whereas Airtel has generated Rs. 708 crores from music distribution in 2008-09 (FY09). But having a glance of the financial results of the two companies in the year 2007-08, Bharti Airtel emerges as a undisputed king by generating Rs. 458.4 crores in FY08 while Saregama earned 143.7 crore.
Though music is not produced by Airtel, it contributes to the revenue of the company through distribution via caller ringback tones, mobile radio and music on demand. Earnings from SMS service has already being superseded by the money generated by music. Rs. 481.3 crores of Airtel’s Value Added Services (VAS) revenues in Q4 was not from SMS but from this non-SMS component.
Airtel collects and sells music from many music publishers like Saregama, T-Series, Yash Raj Films, UTV, Rajshri Films, and several publishers from SIMCA and it has not yet decided to enter into the field of music publishing.
