Nokia Money due to launch soon
Nokia is attempting to create a multi-bank, multi-operator and multi-device collaboration on mobile banking, a service dubbed Nokia Money.
Nokia’s mobile banking and payment service is expected to be commercially available in its first market in Q1 2010, though no location details have been revealed yet.
According to Teppo Paavola, vice president, GM mobile financial services, Nokia cannot reveal any details until a banking partner is confirmed. It is learnt that the service requires a banking license before it can be launched.
Nokia said its target is to have 300 million active users of its services by the end of 2011.
Paavola said the service will enable un-banked people in emerging markets to transfer money, top up prepaid mobile services, pay bills, carry out online transactions, and pay merchants.
Global mobile payments market is expected to be worth €18 billion by 2014 – €12 billion from emerging markets and €6 billion from developed markets.
Approaches to mobile banking so far have lacked scale and have not worked across operators and across banks. Nokia therefore plans to drive the collaboration on an open financial ecosystem, with Nokia Money at its core.
The Nokia Money application will not only be pre-loaded but could be sideloaded, or downloaded later.
Nokia will also be able to provide the physical distribution channel that is critical for the service to work. For example, Nokia handset sellers can be turned into Nokia Money agents, providing the devices, the application, and the ability to handle cash.
Indonesia’s Indosat says lost 9 pct of mobile users
JAKARTA, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s second largest telecommunications company, PT Indosat Tbk , says it has lost around 9 percent of its mobile phone subscribers due to a government decision to register pre-paid phone users.Wahyu Wijayadi, a director at the company, said late on Thursday the operator, controlled by Singapore’s ST Telemedia, has around 14 million users and has not revised its target of picking up between 3-4 million new mobile phone users this year.
“We lost 1.29 million of our subscribers. It was around 9 percent of our total customers. The target of 3-4 million new users this year does not take the subscribers we lost into account,” Wijayadi told reporters.
“We have to see whether we can achieve that target or not,” he added.
The Indonesian government has ordered phone companies to register all holders of pre-paid services — which account for around 90 percent of the total number of users — in an effort to tackle hoaxes and other misuse of the technology.
As a result, an estimate of around 5 million prepaid mobile phone accounts from all operators in the country were wiped out after the government-set deadline to register them by late September expired.
Indosat had around 14.4 million users by the end of 2005, a year when its number of subscribers expanded by around 50 percent.
But in the first quarter of this year the company’s customer base fell by around 10.7 percent from the end 2005 levels to 13 million, partly due to tough competition in the industry.
Revenue from cellular operations accounted for about threequarters of Indosat’s total revenue. In the first half of this year, its net profit fell by around 30 percent due to higher operating costs.
Indonesia has more than 50 million mobile phone users and industry officials see the number expanding to 100 million by 2010 with rapid growth in the sector in recent months.
Despite the huge numbers and rapid expansion, the country’s mobile phone penetration rate is still low compared with other countries in the region such as Malaysia where around 80 percent of the population has signed up for a cell phone service.
The company, with a market capitalisation of around $3 billion, has been facing tough competition from its rivals, such as PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel) and PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk .
Source- http://sg.news.yahoo.com
