British Embassy, Tokyo, 18th November 2009
Mobile success in the UKCase studies and conclusions
Today, I will be talking about:
A short overview of mobile in the UK
Key influences from the last 10 years
Payment mechanisms
3 case studies of mobile success
Conclusions drawn from the above
British Embassy, Tokyo, 18th November 2009Mobile success in the UK
Mobile in the UK today
• 75.75m subscribers, 124% penetration
• MNOs: T-Mobile/Orange, O2, Vodafone, 3
• MVNOs: Virgin, Tesco, Asda, Fresh, Talkmobile
• Active subscriber base
• 7.7bn text and 49.62m picture messages sent, July 09
0
62,500,000
125,000,000
187,500,000
250,000,000
312,500,000
375,000,000
437,500,000
500,000,000
Sep-07 Jan-08 Apr-08 Jul-08 Oct-08 Jan-09 Apr-09 Jul-09
Key influences from the last 10 years:
Concern over £22.4bn 3G licenses
Perceived failure of WAP
Poor data tariffs
Arrival of the iPhone
Mobile payments
Direct-to-mobile- Premium SMS- Operator integration and PayForIt
Third party billing:- Credit cards, App Store-based
Flirtomatic: the product
Flirtomatic: business models
Initially: paid access (didn’t work)
Now, value added services- Gifts- Visibility services- Vanity services- Alerts
And advertising
Flirtomatic: success
Commercially successful:- Profitable - Active in UK, US, Germany- $12 ARPU pcm (spending customer)- 150m WAP PIs/month
Active user-base of >1.2m- 66% of new signups convert to active users- 30m messages sent per month- Average user sends 30 messages/day- Average user logs in 7 times/day via mobile
MobileIQ: the product
Mobile publishing provider- Key client: Guardian News & Media
Services supplied:- Strategic consultancy- Ingest content- Deliver to range of devices- CMS, analytics and ad management- Tactics for SEO and traffic generation- Application development
MobileIQ: business models
Monitising the Guardian:- Advertising-supported (banner & text)- Premium apps (e.g. iPhone)
Other MobileIQ clients:- Sponsorship (jobs and dating)- Pay-Per-Event downloads
MobileIQ: success
Monitising the Guardian:- profitable within 9 months of launch- March 2009: 1.5m PIs- November 2009: 6.5m+ PIs- Typically 5-6 PIs/visit- International traffic
Puzzler: the product
Puzzler: business models
Billing- Pay-per download (low price, first puzzle free)- Subscriptions: daily, weekly, monthly
Driving traffic- Ads in daily newspapers & own magazines- White labelling by distribution partners- Microsite promoted via operator portals- SIM Toolkit menus- Encourage repeat play through competition
Puzzler: success
Commercially successful:- Profitable - Distributed via 2 UK operators (third soon)- >100k paid downloads/month
Usage figures:- 7.5 plays average for league participants- 2.98 plays average for other customers
Key lessons
Cultivate or leverage a strong brand- Puzzler had one, MobileIQ used one, Flirtomatic built one
Plan to cope with fragmentation- iPhone and the resurgence of apps will make it worse
Engage with operators- Despite being difficult to work with, they drive traffic well
Treat app stores as a route to market- Applications are “just another channel”
Other lessons
Promote mobile on mobile- Mobile ads are the best way to drive traffic to a mobile site
Territorial differences matter- Flirtomatic see them with billing integration & moderation- MobileIQ see them with consumer billing preferences- Puzzler see them in preferences for puzzle types
Invest in technology early- Flirtomatic & Mobile IQ both wish they’d done more here
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