For those of you that do not know, an Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) is essential an mobile network or operator that is renting spectrum and bandwidth from a major carrier, say like Sprint or Cingular and white labels it to cater to a niche market. You may be familiar with some of these and not even know they are an MVNO. Of the more house hold MVNO names you have Virgin Mobile, Boost, Helio, Disney and Ampd. You might also be familiar with the ESPN Mobile MVNO experience and all the controversy and speculation about the success of MVNO’s that caused when it went belly-up in less than a year.
There is no doubt in my mind that the MVNO market is a shaky one who’s outcome is nowhere near certain. But, that does not mean that in the meantime it cannot also try to do some good. The well known Credit Card and long distance company Working Assets has been quietly revving up their MVNO engines over the past year. For those of you that are not familiar with the company, Working Assets is a for profit company that takes a portion of what they charge their customers and automatically donates it to a progressive organization working for peace, human rights, economic justice, education and the environment. The company is now applying the same business model to the wireless world through what is proving to be a very interesting MVNO model.
Its nice when a company actually listens to the market its trying to cater to. Many wondered what Helio was thinking when they offered two handsets to the tech savvy crowd and left out simple and necessary application like BlueTooth. Well, now Helio’s new Samsung Handset, the Drift, not only sports Bluetooth but has a built in GPS system with wicked Location Based Services (LBS) to boot.
This sleek and compact slider packs exceptional power and design into a slim, elegant shape. Produced by Samsung and exclusively available to Helio members, the Drift launches in two colors; gunmetal black and frost white. The Drift features a 2.12 inch high-resolution QVGA display, stereo Bluetooth®, 128MB internal memory expandable via microSD™, 2.0 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and flash for shooting photos and video, high-speed 3G network access for lightning fast data, and MP3, MPEG-4 and VOD support for endless entertainment options. The Drift is also complete with GPS capabilities to support innovative new Helio services in addition to existing exclusive services like MySpace Mobile and Helio On Top (H.O.T.).
The built in GPS works together with built in Google maps. In addition to using GPS technology to pull up a current location on a clear and crisp map, Google Mapsâ„¢ for mobile also lets Helio members get:
• Real-time traffic: locate traffic jams or find a new route in over 30 major U.S. metropolitan areas with color-coded traffic reports.
• Detailed directions: routes displayed on the map itself, together with step-by-step directions.
• Integrated search results: local business locations and contact information appear in one place, integrated on the map so you can find the closest pizza joint and get there fast.
• Easily movable maps: interactive, draggable maps let members zoom in or out, or pan in every direction.
• Satellite imagery: get a bird’s eye view of a desired location.
But Helio is really the first mobile company to truly take advantage of GPS for Buddy Beaconing. Buddy Beacon is the new way for Helio members to synchronize their social lives and tell friends where the fun is. Rather than calling or texting, Helio members can switch on their Buddy Beacon and use satellite technology to broadcast their location to the friends they add to their Buddy List. When they turn on Buddy Beacon, their Buddy List friends can see their location on a map along with their closest address. Members can add up to 25 Buddies to their Buddy List. When members change locations and want to let everyone know the party is on the move, one simple button refreshes the location. Want to hide out? Just leave Buddy Beacon off to enjoy a night of privacy or to slip out the back of the club into the VIP.
Buddy Beacon also lets Helio members send out an SMS message asking their friends to flip on their Buddy Beacons. When they activate Buddy Beacon, members can see where everyone’s at and meet up with the closest person for a fun night out or to tailgate at the big game. If a member notices a friend is nearby, a call can be placed directly from Buddy Beacon to check in on the fun.
Pretty damn cool. Its the future and Helio is already there.
So I was in the SUbway here in NY when I caught a glimpse of a young woman listen to a music video on her Helio Kickflip… the first time I have actually seen the Helio MVNO in the wild.
In case you have not heard, the MVNO ESPN Mobile is [add your own ‘giving up’ sports metaphor here]. ESPN Mobile’s parent company Disney announced today that they are putting a halt to ESPN Mobile’s current MVNO practices and will be “revamping” the entire operation to cater the services to already existing carriers. The call to axe the MVNO operations also came from Merrill Lynch already asked Disney to pull the plug in a research note published back in July estimating that MobileESPN had only snagged 30,000 of the 240,000 anticipated subscribers since its Superbowl launch representing a loss of some $135 million. No surprise, really.
I always thought something was up when I noticed that the MVNO side of ESPN was working separate from the already existing “Wireless” part of ESPN in what seemed like trying to get the best of both worlds. I guess they just realized that they should have started out with their original idea of providing wireless services through the carriers.
The ESPN Mobile website has a letter explaining that services will end December 31st 2006 and work to deliver the same content through “another nationwide carrier.” My guess is that it will be Sprint since that was the carrier the MVNO was ridding on the back of.
ESPN Mobile is even refunding the 500 dollar handset after which people could use it as a paper wait or add it to their sport memorabilia.
For what its worth, James at Moconews (link above) makes a good point in the fact that Disney did not even give their MVNO a year. the debate about whether the move is premature will go on, with many leaning towards no. I see many case studies in the future.
Last week on the last day of CTIA I was lucky enough to get a tour of the MVNO Amp’d Mobile’s headquarters in Los Angeles and meet with some of their staff including one of Amp’d’s founders and VP of content and internet services Seth Cummings and director of content business development Brian Mullen.
The boys from Boost have come along way since leaving the company after it was sold to Nextel (and is now a part of Sprint). 2 years of direct media (sans aggregation) deals have made Ampd the test case of true mobile media.
At CTIA Amp’d had a little bit of a story to tell as well. First they announced a new 3G Hybrid pricing plan which blends the low monthly calling rates of a post-paid plan with the freedom of a pay-as-you-go plan. This is done by routing that part of the bill through a credit or debit card. This also exempts customers from the usual 18 month contract.
Amp’d also showed that they to are catching the mobile advertisement fever that Carlo talked about on Mobhappy by announcing that they will soon be working with Rhythm Media to start introducing 15-30 second non-intrusive advertisements into its widely used video content, Proctor and Gambles Herbal Essence products being the first (as well as their first wireless campaign). Thats a pretty big deal for Ampd and their 50,000 subscribers.
Ampd also announced that they are teaming up with Telis to create Amp’d Canada which will have unique programing that I guess caters to Canadians, like Moose watching… just kidding… I love Canada.
First off, I have to get out the way that their LA HQ’s was a real thrill to visit… especially for a fan of the hit TV series 24. You see, Ampd’s office space was at one time the set for CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) for season one of 24. And they kept some of that fully intact, including the metallic staircases and Jack Bauer’s elevated glass office (which Amp’d now uses as a meeting room to plan their next line of mobile media attack). The exciting hustle and bustle atmosphere of CTU was still evident in the work day of Ampd employees. More pictures of Ampd (CTU season one) can be seen here.
You may ask how I was able to get a tour of Ampd’s CTU Headquarters. Well, Ampd Mobile got my attention only a few weeks before CTU when they sent me a pre-release teaser about a new show that they are showing on their Ampd networks called “Lil Bush” a satire cartoon which follows the misadventures of Lil’ George Bush and his precocious pals Lil’ Condi, Lil’ Rummy and the unintelligible, foulmouthed wisecracker Lil’ Cheney. Evidently, without knowing, they sent it to the right guy being that one of my main interests involving mobile technology is its relation and potential impact with politics. I blogged about it over at my blog on the Personal Democracy Forum almost immediately. Not having an Ampd phone I had to wait to see it on YouTube but it was the fact that this show was EXCLUSIVELY made for Ampd that stuck in my mind and got me thinking… “This is really good… and Ampd got this written for them… there is more to Ampd then I thought.”
It was then, by chance, that I bumped into the people promoting the Lil Bush cartoon for Ampd at a CTIA after party and my enthusiasm to learn more turned into an actual experience.
Ampd’s pricing plan is not the only thing thats hybrid. Amp’d is entirely about doing things in house and sports their own personalized studio, editing room and an Ampd Mobile Live van which can edit material live from events such as the SuperCross Series or comedy tours and broadcast them directly to people’s Ampd handsets. This brings up the phrase “Wanna see it live, get an Ampd phone,” which I heard used time and time again. Its really pretty sick. The Ampd’s broadcast vehicle even allows them to create unique and live voice-tones and wallpaper ON THE FLY. Allowing them to catch and market coolness wherever they are!
You really have to think of them less as an MVNO and more like a Mobile Media machine. They are a cell phone service and television studio all rolled up into one. “We like the fact that we can be entirely self sufficient when it comes exclusive Ampd content,” Mullen tells me. “It means something to us to have it in our own studio’s like this.” And it working… 27 percent of the mobile content viewed on Ampd is Ampd exclusive and that number is growing.
I was sat down and showed some of them and I have to say they are pretty damn cool. Besides the Lil Bush episodes shown to me, (especially a sneak peak of an upcoming one which knocked me off my chair laughing) I especially enjoyed another show entitled the Z List which follows Nevada’s “greatest” lounge lizard and casino performers (a great idea) and another show titled “Bush: Stinky or Sweet” in which people on the street where asked to talk to a cardboard cut-out of the President and allowed to “get it off there chest” as if they were really speaking with him. It was classic political viral video at its finest and I enjoyed every second of it, even the one dark moment (you know what I mean Brian).
What I find amazing is that writers and television producers are approaching Ampd and mobile video distribution as a sandbox to prove that the “concept” works enough to expose it later on the television or film level. As television studio’s are beginning to realize that the 27 minute entertainment with commercial standard is based on an ancient code of studio mumbo jumbo that has nothing to do with the multimedia world we live in, mobile media mediums like Ampd are becoming, in their eyes, legitimate testing grounds for this viral like content. But while these shows are being proven “worthy or not” thanks to the mobile medium, they are also at the same time proving that the mobile video medium itself is a viable entity all its own. A viable entity with a BIIIG future in its midst and Amp’d, it appears, is on the cusp of this and is taking both ends of this spectrum on with full force.
Lets just put it this way and I think you will get what I am saying. The Lil Bush Cartoon that was made exclusively for Ampd is now being pursued by 5 major television networks, which is amazing news. BUT the creators of the show have agreed that even if the show gets picked up by a network there will be story lines and extra content that continue only on Ampd’s networks and handsets. So what you are getting here is an ever spiraling circle of love for Ampd. The content they create gets put on television which in turn brings people to their phones. Not a bad deal and a pretty interesting media case study that I think says a lot about the future interoperability between mobile media and its “traditional” media counter parts. “While there are people out there that are saying mobile television is slow,” Cummings tells me, “our experience with Ampd subscribers has been very different.” The content is always specialized mobile content that is filtered or programed to work and be viewed with ease on a mobile phone. For a mobile carrier their “content team” is a pretty big deal. “Ampd’s mobile television,” Cummings continues, “gets used and watched 5x more than all all the MVNO’s.”
What I think is making Ampd a successful test case here is that, unlike their other MVNO counter parts, Ampd is coming from a wireless background that goes all they way back to the Boost days. Other MVNO’s, like ESPN and Disney come from entertainment background and Helio is coming from a broadband and internet wifi background. All these MVNO’s have been, of lately, showing their roots in their product line. Completely run by wireless veterans Ampd gets what it means to make content for the wireless space from the very beginning, proving my advice to those entering the mobile space once again: get to know it better, its not the Internet, its not television its got different rules and a different sociology behind it. You can’t slap old models on it and make it work. Ampd gets that.
And they have been very public about everything, including their numbers which are now approaching 50,000 subscribers. Peter Adderton, Amp’d CEO, is urging other MVNOs like Mobile ESPN and Helio to announce their numbers as well. This is a big move by Ampd in a world that is still a little wary over the legitimacy and success rate of MVNO’s. There has been a lot of skepticism of whether the niche market of an MVNO can really compete with the carriers and drive revenue. Ampds bold move in reporting their numbers shows signs of optimism and self esteem which are key and always a good sign in my book. Confidence is key.
When it comes to the future of mobile media Ampd is definitely someone we should be keeping our eye on, they really are the first ones diving into the niche all out mobile media scene head on. Their subscribers and content are signs of the future to come and based on what they have told me regarding some of their future plans, its safe to say that Ampd has a place in that future. Things like drilled down alert reminders, bookmarking, recommendation voice search and your only personal mobile avatar VJ to help you travel the world of your device are all things that Ampd has there eye on. Not to mention talk of some new cell phones on the way.
They key here is offering things that you could not get, say on V Cast. For me, thats what things like the Ampd Live Events van is for.
The world over at Ampd is getting very exciting and I for one can now say that “I get it.” Its cool, its fly, its entertaining, its funny and cool and it can work and I like it.
This weeks Mobile Monday New York coincides with with the informa MVNO conference “MVNO Strategies & Markets” taking place in New York City next week. At next weeks Mobile Monday, which takes place Monday September 25th at the Samsung Experience Center in NYC’s Columbus Circle we will have a Q&A session with Joe Lazlo, Research Director of Jupiter Research, to talk about MVNOs: Hype or Here to Stay? Interestingly enough a bunch of MVNO’s backed out and or did not want to take part which, I believe, adds some fuel to the fire.
But hey, MVNO’s, if you want to join in the convo their is still time. You know who to call.
The event is free so there is no reason you should not come but we need you to RSVP.
Just in time for the holiday weekend! “Strategery”, “nucular”, “misunderestimate”, “compassionated” – Lil’ Bushisms will soon be appearing on a small screen near you! The MVNOAmp’d Mobile is launching, “Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States” on Amp’d Mobile handsets, Friday Sept. 1 (today). (You can also check it out on Break.com & YouTube next week.)
Think of it as syndicated Jibjab political satire like content on your phone.
Strategy Analytics has let out a bad report for US MVNO’s and has blamed their content for the failure… an odd statement when you consider when you consider that that is what MVNO’s are supposed to specialize in.
â€The new wave of MVNOs has failed to learn lessons from its predecessors. The handsets are boring, pricing uninspired and the distribution strategy is flawed. This is a three-fold recipe for failure,†said Sara Harris, Senior Industry Analyst at Strategy Analytics.
The report indicates the MVNO’s have failed to make any substantial on the market place and which have attracted “miniscule customer numbers.†This, however, only applies to the newer MVNO’s like ESPN Mobile, Disney Mobile and ESPN Mobile. Older prepaid and youth-focused MVNO offerings like Tracfone Wireless Inc., Virgin Mobile USA L.L.C. and Boost Mobile L.L.C. have established a comfortable niche.
This is not stopping Helio, however, which shows no signs of stopping recently announcing the opening of a Flagship store dedicated to Helio devices (a first for an MVNO). Do they know something we don’t or they just overly confident.
I was first introduced to Saki Mobile last month at an MMA even here in New York City at the Mariott Marquee in Time Square. Since that time I have seen them creeping up all over the place… but it was a recent marketing email I got from them that made me decide to put my fingers to the keyboard and start typing up on them.
For those of you that are not familiar with Saki (no, not the Japanese rice drink), which is a service of Texas based DigitalStandard, has been described as “the poor man’s MVNO” allowing brands who do not want or cannot afford the licensing fees and startup costs of starting an MVNO to create branded MVNOish like services such as as IM, RSS readers, social networking, and push email that can be either be purchased on its own or part of your company.
Whatever you want your service to have, such as movie times and reviews, concert events, specific types of news etc…
All Saki really is is Windows Mobile Software on a Windows Mobile smartphone via any carrier you want. Thus, all carrier fees remain the same plus the 10 dollar a month Saki service fee.
So here is the deal. You are a brand. You want your brand to go mobile, sell phones and have a plan. But you cant afford to become an MVNO. So you contact Saki Mobile. Saki Mobile will create your brand’s mobile services with their Saki social networking technology, put it on a Windows Mobile phone with your plan and carrier of choice and allow you to sell the phone with the software running on it.
This could be an interesting solution to the MVNO’s busts that seem to be plaguing the mobile landscape lately. Hopefully they will branch out into other Mobile OS’s shortly.
On an extra note. You can also just by a SakiMobile phone for yourself (via TMobile plan). Not sure what that is all about though.
In these days of failing MVNO results one MVNO here in the States, Boost Mobile (a lifestyle-based youth brand this is a subsidiary of Sprint Nextel Corporation) is trying to give itself a boost while boosting the hope of teenagers (their target consumers) around the country. In what appears to involve no other mobile marketing campaign other then the name “Boost Mobile” appearing in the billboards, the MVNO has teamed up with the RockCorps volunteerism program to teach Americas youth about the power of volunteering and community caring.
“Boost Mobile RockCorps” (BMRC) is offering young music fans the chance to earn tickets to see Coldplay, 50 Cent, Eminem, Green Day, Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah, Jill Scott, and Van’s Warped tour this summer in exchange for four hours of service to their communities. Boost Mobile RockCorps is partnering with non-profit organizations again this year to plan more volunteer projects in major metropolitan areas around the U.S. In exchange for contributing four hours of volunteers work, youth volunteers will receive tickets to signature Boost Mobile RockCorps concerts or popular music events in their area. BMRC is now recruiting members through youth-oriented radio, websites, urban guerilla marketing and more. In other words, they are making volunteering cool. It uses the power of music to connect kids to their community.
The BMRC is coming to New York and signs are beginning to pop up around the city asking kids to “Give 4 Hours, Get One Ticket” for the concert that will take place at Radio City Music Hall on August 23rd 2006.
Last year BMRC motivated more than 6,000 young people to get involved and help their community and inevitably become part of a youth movement for social change.
You can’t buy a ticket; you can’t win a ticket; you have to earn a ticket! It’s all about doing community service.
Boost Wireless has approximately 2.6 million customers - the majority of which are under the age of 25 and they are famous for their walkie-talkie product. But it remains unclear what the wireless company is doing with their wireless technology to promote or be used via the Rockcorps activism if at all.
Seems like a great cause and great branding for Boost Wireless though.
For those of you that do not know, an Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) is essential an mobile network or operator that is renting spectrum and bandwidth from a major carrier, say like Sprint or Cingular and white labels it to cater to a niche market. You may be familiar with some of these and not even know they are an MVNO. Of the more house hold MVNO names you have Virgin Mobile, Boost, Helio, Disney and Ampd. You might also be familiar with the ESPN Mobile MVNO experience and all the controversy and speculation about the success of MVNO’s that caused when it went belly-up in less than a year.
