press releases April 2, 2008 April 1, 2008 March 19, 2008 February 19, 2008 February 12, 2008 February 12, 2008 February 11, 2008
upcoming events Mobile Marketing Forum Global Mesaging |
Airwide last year launched a sponsored industry blog on the topic of Mobile Messaging 2.0. Editorially produced and managed by Corante, the world's first blog media company, the blog focuses on mobile messaging and counts among its contributors some of the industry's keenest observers, commentators, and prognosticators. Also worth noting: it is a “hosted discussion,” a bold experiment by a growing number of companies to sponsor editorially independent conversations around the respective company's industry or category. We’d now like to hear your thoughts and feedback on the blog and ask that you take a minute to complete our 3 question survey.
Global Mobile Messaging Trends Roundtable
Present at the roundtable were Jay Seaton, CMO of Airwide Solutions; Mike Short, Chairman of the MDA and VP of Research and Development at O2; Andrew Bud, Vice Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Executive Chairman of mBlox; John Darnbrough, Market Development Manager at the GSMA; Graham Rivers, CEO of WIN; Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer of Informa; Michele Scanlon, Founder of Green Giraffe Consulting and Paul Ruppert, Founder, Global Point View Ltd and contributor to industry blog, Mobile Messaging 2.0. The roundtable sparked an interesting debate about how mobile use across the world has changed over the last few years. The debate discussed the differences in mobile phone use between the developing and more developed parts of the world and helped highlight the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead for mobile operators worldwide. The panel also debated some of the key themes from Mobile World Congress including mobile advertising, mobile payments and social networking. Andrew Bud, Vice Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Executive Chairman of mBlox commented: “SMS used for business-to-consumer purposes continues to be a runaway success worldwide: to illustrate this, in 2007, mBlox processed over 2 billion application-to-person transactions and grew by over 40%. By 2011 we can see carrier revenues from all wholesale enabling services more than doubling to $8bn, if they replicate SMS’ successful wholesale business model. At Mobile World Congress, the biggest theme was the huge opportunity for the entire industry in the emerging markets, where applications like mobile banking are already beginning to drive the mobile transactions business. With a market of over 3 billion consumers to reach and serve, there is a lot to be excited about.” Mike Short, Chairman of the MDA and VP of Research and Development at O2 commented: “Text – we’ve only just begun. Fifteen years since the start of text is just the beginning. There remains much more to be done in 21st Century messaging from CRM to Enterprise Messaging, from screen interactivity to better memory stores of your favourite messages from mobile marketing to personalised alert services, from public sector services to charity text."
Audio from the roundtable is available in the Resources section of the Airwide corporate web site at http://www.airwidesolutions.com/resources.html along with the full-length global messaging trends report.
The challenge lies in being able to roll-out these new services quickly and to scale. The big operators in China, namely China Mobile and China Unicom are now concentrated on developing cross platform applications that are able to support mass users, such as IM. SMS marketing is extremely popular in China and approximately 20% of all SMS messages on the network are advertisements. As time goes on, it is expected that MMS marketing will take some of the share of SMS. The here and now There is still huge potential in China with only 35% penetration leaving a massive available market of 850 million people. Mobile communications in China is dominated by voice which takes up 70% of the total market, although SMS is still an extremely popular service with an impressive 28% of market share. In contrast to some other regions, China has made virtually no headway into mobile IM, although MMS and mobile email are at the very seedling stage of gaining traction within the market, each accounting for 1% of the total market share. Trends and forecasts Voice and SMS dominate services in China, but over the coming years, this looks set to change as new methods come to the fore and the popularity of MMS and mobile email begin to make their mark. SMS looks to remain as popular as ever. In the next two to five years, the promise of unified communications looks set to become a reality with it beginning to creep into the public’s consciousness from 2010
What’s hot Mobile spam is a hot issue in China and will continue as such over the next five years. Similarly, the threat of mobile viruses also looks set to increase. The market for mobile gaming also remains flat, but that’s only over the next couple of years as it promises to build significant momentum from 2010. Although popular right now, the popularity of mobile ringtones is set to diminish over the coming years as is marketing via SMS. But SMS marketing’s slide is more about the expected rise in popularity of MMS marketing, leaving the overall mobile marketing segment in good shape. Presently, and for the foreseeable future, the incumbent operators in China are likely to remain in place with no likely MVNO entrants to the market.
To dowload the full text document please visit our Resources page.
Solution Spotlight: Airwide’s Mobile Advertising Solution
Airwide recently announced a mobile advertising solution that enables mobile operators to effectively capitalize on the growing demand for mobile marketing and advertising. The new, award-winning solution, which has already been deployed at Blyk, the pan-European mobile operator targeted for 16 to 24 year olds funded by advertising, enables operators to better promote their services and brand differentiation, as well as support multiple advertising models and interactive sales campaigns. Due to its ubiquitous, ‘always available’ and highly personal nature, mobile has the potential to become the preferred digital marketing channel. The Airwide Mobile Advertising Solution is the fastest way for operators to ad-enable their service delivery platform to take advantage of this revolution. The Airwide Mobile Advertising Solution lets operators tap directly into messaging and browsing streams enabling unprecedented control for campaign execution.
Mobile Advertising and Marketing Awards - Airwide is a winner!
This was the inaugural awards conference and Airwide won the The ‘Innovation in Mobile Advertising’ track received more than three times as many entrants as the other award tracks which included: ‘Best Use of Content in Mobile Advertising’, ‘Best Handset or Device’, ‘Best Location-based Advertising Technology’, and many others.
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At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Airwide convened a roundtable designed to forecast the future mobile messaging. The roundtable and Airwide’s accompanying report revealed that: 
Lord Digby Jones, Minister of State for Trade & Investment, said: “This report shows the strength and energy of the ICT sector in the UK. British firms in this business have to be at their creative and innovative best. The text message was created in Britain and the British public are always early adopters of technology. There were a record number of text messages sent in the UK last year. Now companies in the sector are innovating to include data messaging using picture and video. Once again British consumers are taking up the technology before many other markets around the world. Companies in the UK are only able to innovate to this extent because of the world-class research being done in British universities and the highly-skilled workforce. All these factors make British firms fantastic commercial partners and will allow them to remain world-leaders for many years to come.”
The mobile market in China is still growing at a rapid rate, with five to six million new subscribers signed up each month. However, handsets are still at the relatively low end of the market and ARPU remains low at approximately USD 10. This means that the race is most certainly on in China to further develop data based services such as mobile music, mobile email and capture high-end enterprise users that use CRM applications in a bid to increase ARPU.
Airwide is pleased to announce that our Mobile Advertising Solution has received the Gold Award for Innovation in 
premier spot in the most hotly-contested track, beating out all other entrants to secure the Gold award.
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