Navio sells multimedia networking software to media companies that allows subscribers to buy, share, download, store and access content while protecting the content. Their technology can be integrated into customers’ storefronts through the internet, mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks. It also allows customers access and redownload their purchased content when they lose or upgrade their devices.

Lead participants in this round were the WK Technology Fund and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

The system will not only provide ratings for content but will also allow parents to block access to particular content on their children’s devices. The two-tiered system will divide content on a carrier’s portal into Generally Accessible Carrier Content and Restricted Carrier Content. To avoid inconsistencies with other rating systems, the system will categorize based on existing movie, TV and game rating systems.

The initial phase of the rating system will label content provided on carrier portals, with a second phase to address internet content accessed through mobile devices.

Adult content on mobile devices has been available on carriers in Asia for years and is quickly growing in Europe. While this type of content has not been a large part of the U.S. mobile content industry, it is good to see U.S. carriers beginning to provide the tools to consumers to monitor the type of content accessed on their plans.

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Link to Complete Article at Computer Business Review Online

TNS asked 7,000 mobile users in 15 countries regarding their preferences for device capabilities and features. Over 75% of respondents said better battery life is the main feature they want from phones, PDAs and similar devices.

For converged devices (with a phone), the top required feature in 14 of the 15 was “two days of battery life during active use”. In China, the 15th country, respondents most requested “20 Gigabytes of memory” as the key feature in the future. Along the same lines, battery life was listed as one of the top reasons “consumers do not use games, music, and TV applications on their mobile more frequently”.

Other key features of the report included:

• 48% of respondents across all countries listed “high resolution camera and video camera” as an important feature
• 47% of respondents across all countries listed “20 Gigabytes of memory” as an important feature
• In Brazil, 53% of respondents listed video conferencing as an important feature
• 46% of mobile phone users across all countries send pictures and photos via MMS, with higher usage in particular countries: 80% in Japan, 68% in France, 66% in Korea, 65% in the UK
• 46% of mobile phone users cited the cost of MMS as the main reason for the lack of MMS uptake, while 22% said “photo and video quality” and 15% said interoperability problems was the reason
• 23% of mobile phone users across all countries send video or audio clips through MMS

The study also found that developing countries without a strong fixed line communication infrastructure show a much higher usage of VoIP when compared to more developed countries. As examples, VoIP penetration levels are 44% for Brazil, 30% for India, 22% for Russia, 2% in Japan and 2% in the Netherlands.

We have only seen summary information for this new research report, but the findings do seem interesting and presented clearly. The usage rates for MMS appear a little high when compared to known usage and revenues from these services, but that may be accounted for in consumer understanding of the services they are actually using.

Carriers setup their internal tracking systems to handle consumers’ usage of one type of product – voice minutes. To a large degree, internal tracking/usage systems relied on manual input to enter consumer pricing and quality checking. As the product/service range available to consumers has grown to include hundreds and thousands of individual products/downloads/services, billing and tracking systems at carriers have begun to strain. The industry is working to improve the situation, but content originators, aggregators and owners continually voice concerns over the accuracy and timeliness of royalty reports for sales of the offerings.

If you work for a company that creates, aggregates and/or owns content sold through mobile phone carriers, Carl’s article will be worth the five minute read.

Mobile content sales, tracking, billing and compensation is an area we are extremely interested in. Please let us know your thoughts after reading through Carl’s write-up on how you think this will effect growth in the industry and the availability of new content/applications/services.

Jamster! has received quite a bit of attention in the past for being both widely successful and widely controversial. Youths know the company as a frequent advertiser in magazines and on MTV in Germany. Parents know the company because of the charges that regularly show up on the phone bills they pay for their children. The company was sued earlier in the year for allegations of signing consumers up for monthly subscriptions and recurring charges without proper disclosure.

Jamster! Guardian should go a long way toward answering the critics. Parents should always discuss the cost of purchases, whether mobile or fixed, with their children, but this new service gives parents additional control. The service should be offered in the UK this week and will be rolled out in other countries before the end of the year.

This may seem like a small number of total users, but it is a respectable start for a new content service that has only recently entered the market. Using the $9.99 per month price charged for the service on Sprint as a benchmark, carriers are already receiving $5 million per month ($60 million per year). Estimates have not been released yet for the revenue share paid to MobiTV or to networks for content.

Nintendo has corrected that and taken the first step into mobile content outside of core gaming devices by creating Nintendo Mobile. Nintendo Mobile will begin by offering sounds and graphics related to the Super Mario series and upcoming Nintendo games, but we can only hope that mobile games will soon follow.

Consumers on NTT DoCoMo will have the first access to the new offering on October 17th, with releases on KDDI on October 20th and Vodafone on November 1st. Some content will be free, but most initial content will be available for a subscription of ¥210 ($2) per month.

Nam Joong-soo, KT’s newly appointed CEO, told reporters that “contents, handsets and networks will be converged, putting the focus on customers.’. He also said that the company will invest 10.4 trillion won ($10 billion) between now and 2010, with 7.8 trillion won being used to strengthen South Korea’s telecom infrastructure and 2.6 trillion being spent on new growth areas.

These recent moves by KT Corp are in response to growing pressure from SK Telecom Corporation, South Korea’s largest mobile operator. SK Telecom has been aggressively advancing into digital content through a series of M&A transactions with broadcast and entertainment companies. The moves includes a 14.4 billion won investment into IHQ, Korea’s largest entertainment company in February, an acquisition of YTN Star (affiliate of broadcaster YTN) and an acquisition of YBM Seoul, Korea’s largest music company.

Why is this important for the rest of the world? South Korea is quickly becoming a first mover in the world of technology. South Korea has the highest density of DSL subscriber (per hundred main lines) in the world, with Taiwan a close second. While South Korea’s population is roughly 17% of the U.S. population, its penetration of high speed internet matched the U.S. in total subscriber numbers, and its adoption of mobile technologies is more impressive.

Content companies and telecoms in Europe and North America need to keep a close eye on the consolidation and developments in the content and distribution within South Korea. For good or bad, South Korea’s increased combination of content and distribution will help accelerate the market by removing discussions over pieces of the value chain. This may not be the best for the overall market, but it is sure to provide a consumer test bed for consumers’ opinions on digital content and access technologies.

MM makes some great points about how device convergence is different for the mobile phone is different for the camera than for the portable music player. In the case of digital cameras, stand-alone cameras still offer an advantage over their camera-phone counterparts at the same price. This leaves a place for both combined and stand-alone cameras in the market.

Music capable cellphones though offer almost the same functionality as stand-alone music players such as iPods and Mp3 players. While this is true, battery life is still a major concern for consumers in the phone market. The devices may have the same capabilities, but the functionalities are very different.

Research has shown than talk-time/standby-time is the single most valued phone function. When consumers are told that listening to two hours of mobile music uses over half (phone-dependant) of the batter life, consumers’ desires for a mobile phone that plays music changes drastically. Unfortunately, phone manufacturers are not likely to give this type of full information to consumers.

The MM article continues to look at some interesting possibilities for changes in the music market and distribution as convergence with the cellphone begins to take hold. While we disagree on when this will happen for reasons such as battery life, we do believe that it will happen in time. MM discusses the possibilities for MobSharing of music. MobSharing may not become the major distribution channel in the future, but it is likely to become an important means to share new music and monitor trends.

Mobile companies have historically spent the largest amount of their marketing budgets on sponsoring sporting events and sports teams. However, this may be changing as these companies are drastically increasing the advertising budgets for live music performances, which have seen a boom in concert attendance.

In addition, mobile content is becoming an increasingly important area for mobile companies to focus on with customers, and sales of music and ring tones are a high-margin business for these technology companies.

Some key stats from the article include:

• More than 1.7 million concerts have been held in England and Wales over the past year
• The U.K. live music industry is estimated to be worth GBP 487 million per year, up 50% since 1997, despite a decline in the sales of recorded music sold via old medium
• T-Mobile signed an exclusive deal with singer Robbie Williams in July where its customs could download the singer’s content onto their phones
• O2 is moving its GBP3 million per year sponsorship of the Arsenal soccer team, and perhaps other athletic sponsorships, to music sponsorships, with almost GBP2 million to be spent on music sponsorship this year alone
• Other mobile provider sponsorships of live music include: Virgin Mobil sponsoring the V Festival, France Telecom SA’s Orange’s sponsorship of the Glastonbury Festival and T-In-The-Park Festival, and various music sponsorships by Ericsson.

Much of the delay in additional content and services can be attributed to delays in bandwidth advancements, but there is also a better understanding in the market now (arguably) of what consumers’ want access to on their phones.

How do adult services fit into this picture? A recent study by Gartner believes that 5% of the mobile content space in 2010 will be attributed to adult services. While this portion may seem small when compared to music and games, Daniel Winterbottom senior research analyst at Informa is quoted in an article by The Guardian as saying “If you take it out of the context of the wider market, $2.3bn is not a small amount of money.”

Also in the article, Julia Dimambro, director and co-founder of Cherry Media, which operates the Cherry Sauce mobile phone adult content portal, says “Operators are saying that it is not the big revenue driver, but they cannot be seen to be promoting adult content because it affects their brand as a mobile operator.” This is a great point.

Adult content has been a “touchy” area for wired ISPs for years. ISPs must provide access to adult content much of the customer base, but several companies (e.g. AOL) have differentiated themselves by offering family friendly filters and software to limit access to this type of content. Carriers are in a difficult position here, as generally any content made available on their networks is accessible to all (at a cost, generally). This is one of the areas that companies like Cherry Media can help carries, by age-verifying users and providing filtered content.

For now, most of the Vindigo branded services will retain the Vindigo name, and most of the approximately 45 Vindigo employees will be retained. Zingy, with close to 130 employees, has been quite successful and profitable with sales of songs, wallpapers and games. The integration of Vindigo’s operations seek to improve the results of the division and capitalize on Zingy’s experience in mobile content.

‘Senses’ is claimed to work with a wide range of cell phones and smartphones, in addition to maintaining backward compatibility for content delivery.

Qualcomm has stated that it will market the new version of ‘Senses’ to both GSM and CDMA operators.

What may be next for the Sprint Nextel? The company owns 2.5 gigahertz coverage for about 80% of the U.S. This spectrum may be used to offer a “wi-fi on steroids” service similar to the wireless hotspots offered in airport terminals and coffee shops. Imagine taking a train trip coast-to-coast without disconnecting from the internet.

The application is called Meetro and it is essentially a location based instant messenger that also consolidates AIM and ICQ. It locates mobile users via wi-fi nodes and allows landline users to enter their address (or a close one for privacy, if at home). Users are then shown in the window sorted by distance from you. With this initial version the company is looking for critical mass, but there will be filtering by keywords, demographics and profiles soon.

I have used it for a few weeks in Chicago to try it out and test the experience. It is kind of neat to be sitting in a coffee house or at the airport and find someone else close by with common interests. It would be nice to be able to integrate LinkedIn into Meetro, but it is a really good start.

Take a look at it.

What do you think about the program and where mobile social networking will go in the future? Is there a market for social networking applications?

At least in the few private studies I’ve seen on beta applications, “social” applications that use cell-id seem to work better for buddy alerts for close friends than necessarily for extended networks, random meets or business networking. The reasoning seems to be that people are generally not willing to traverse the distance of a cell-id (even in the city center) or take the extra step of trying to find who is actually close to them unless they already have a close personal connection.

GPS is an option. However, the urban-canyon effect and lack of indoor locations (until low frequency receivers are adopted) again limit the usefulness of non-buddy alert social applications.

With that said, wi-fi is not commonplace on phones and thus has its own limitations. The one thing wi-fi does do is allows a system to more accurately (at least for now) determine location – often simply showing people that are on the same access point (e.g. in a coffee house).

Do you think consumers are willing to sign up for another network or will any successful mobile social application have to tie in Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Friendster, LinkedIn, etc.?

Two years ago, experts predicted that by 2005, 3D games on mobile devices would be everywhere. They were premature – yet recent stirrings suggest the sleeping giant is finally waking. The article includes quotes from Kurt Uhlir – IGDA Mobile-SIG Chair and Chicago-based technologist, Thor Gunnarsson – Ideaworks3D and David MacQueen – Screen Digest.

Link to PDF of full article, courtesy of the magazine’s editor

Free trial download available on their website for many Nokia models

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ANNOUNCEMENT

Portuguese publisher YDreams has announced the release of Undercover 2: Merc Wars™, the sequel to the studio´s pioneering 2003 title. The company has also announced licensing agreements with SIC, Portugal´s largest TV network, and KULTO, a weekly publication for teenagers, for TV and print content based on the game universe. An animated series, a comic strip and a TV program are already in development.

Undercover 2: Merc Wars™ sets the bar for next-generation mobile massive multiplay combining roleplaying elements, real-time fast-paced tactical action, extensive multiplayer interaction and evolving campaign play, and as well as a host of innovative features. Players step into the shoes of hardened mercenaries trying to make it on the streets of a dangerous dystopian future—not too far from our own. They can create and customize characters, develop skills as they progress in the game, specialize in different fields, form alliances and establish powerful clans, buy and sell a multitude of useful items and take on treacherous story-driven missions.

The action unfolds on the streets of the real world: Undercover 2: Merc Wars™ incorporates accurate Navteq™ maps for hundreds of cities. Players will travel all over the world looking for real streets and landmarks, meeting clan members for international coups, eliminating enemies and facing danger in awesome, real-time multiplayer action on their mobile phones. All this supported by cool online community resources such as in-game messaging and forums, solo and clan rankings, buddy lists, player searching and a fully-featured, user-friendly clan-management system. Optional live-location is another fun innovation: players with a GPS device or whose operators provide location services may activate live-location gameplay, which unlocks a host of enhanced features like real-world teleporting, portal rental and high-precision weapons.

The game will be available in Portugal in the end of June at Vodafone, TMN and Optimus (Portuguese players can also send an SMS to 3370). Download and subscription via premium SMS will be available from June 18 in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Austria, The Netherlands and the USA. YDreams Entertainment is currently negotiating publishing agreements for Undercover 2: Merc Wars in over 25 countries. For more information, please visit the official game website: www.undercover2.com.

About YDreams Entertainment

YDreams Entertainment is a pioneering Portuguese developer and publisher of mobile games. The company was founded in 2000 and has already published several successful titles, including Bluetooth-based multiplayer hack´n’slash Lex Ferrum and Undercover, the world’s first mobile MMOG with a graphic interface and real player location. For more information, please visit www.ydreams.com.

Complete Press Release