mobile success in the uk
DESCRIPTION
What's the mobile landscape like in the UK? What's gotten us where we are today? Three case studies of companies that have done well operating here. Some lessons drawn from these case studies, for Japanese companies looking to enter the UK.TRANSCRIPT
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
