Final hammer drops on M1's mobile auctions

By WINSTON CHAI

DESPITE receiving an overwhelming response from consumers, the final hammer has quietly dropped on M1's popular mobile auction service.

Introduced in June last year, the offering allowed customers to bid a range of snazzy handsets like the Nokia N80 and the O2 XDA Atom at the operator's mobile portal - MiWorld Mobile - for as low as $1. Customers will have to incur data charges when they log on using their phones to place incremental bids ranging from one cent to a dollar.

Industry sources told BizIT the company had pulled the plug on the offering and an M1 spokesman confirmed the move.

'We offered m-Auction for six months, and it ended in November last year,' he said.

This curtain call came despite the immense popularity of the service. According to M1, five to eight handsets were put up for auction every week and during the six-month period, it received more than 150,000 bids from customers. The results are hardly surprising given the auction platform is a sure hit with bargain-hungry Singaporeans as evidenced by the growing popularity of sites like eBay and Yahoo.

Moreover, each placed bid also served to boost the M1's mobile data revenue, a feat which all three local telcos are trying to achieve with the availability of higher speed networks and the proliferation of third-generation (3G) multimedia handsets.

As sales of 3G phones in Singapore continue to soar, operators have been pulling out all the stops to get consumers to do more with their new-fangled handsets. These include promises of video calling, faster Web surfing, and even the ability to watch TV on-the-go.

According to statistics from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the number of 3G subscriptions stood at 953,400 in January this year, representing nearly one-fifth of Singapore's total mobile subscriber base.

When queried, M1 said it took down m-Auction as it is 'evaluating the service' and 'exploring' enhancements. However, the company did not confirm plans to re-introduce the offering.

S'pore firm develops social networking tool

S'pore firm develops social networking tool

It connects mobile phone and desktops to same service, writes AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY

A SINGAPOREAN IT company, Velvet Puffin, will today release a unique new social networking service here and in the United States that allows users to instantly communicate, create and share various multimedia content with others, either through a mobile phone or desktop computer.

Speaking to BizIT, R Chandrasekar, president and CEO of Radixs Pte Ltd, the parent company of Velvet Puffin, said the service, also called Velvet Puffin, is the first of its kind in the world.

It provides connectivity and cross communication between existing instant messaging solutions like MSN and Yahoo! and repositories of content like YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe.

Mr Chandrasekar said the service also allows the sharing of user-generated content. He noted that till now, other sites have attempted to capture individual features of desktop-based social networking sites on the mobile phone, 'but this effort has been fractured'.

'By aggregating all features associated with social networking, Velvet Puffin creates a holistic mobile social networking experience . . . Whether users are at their desktop computer or on the go with their mobile phone, no functionality is lost.'

Velvet Puffin's operating system - MXI - allows all user-generated content, including videos, photos, blogs and more to be delivered on mobile phones or computers in real time. The Velvet Puffin official added that the service is completely carrier independent and software is offered at no cost to the consumer as a free download.

On the PC, Velvet Puffin provides a 'socially active desktop' environment allowing users to be always connected to friends. Users can also access shared content without the need for a Web browser, Mr Chandrasekar said.

'Instantaneous alerts are generated to notify 'buddies' on both the desktop and the mobile device whenever new content is posted,' he added.

Radixs was founded in 2002 by Mr Chandrasekar and his childhood friend Sam Hon. Radixs owns and licenses the flagship Motion eXperience Interface (MXI), a mobile data operating system built on open standards, which serves as the backbone of Velvet Puffin.

Explaining the inspiration behind the idea, Mr Chandrasekar observed: 'As users, we had poor mobile experience in relation to services and functionalities when compared with the desktop . . . We could not understand why we should put up with a stripped down experience on mobiles.'

This drove the two to find a solution, he said. 'We believe that the user experience through any access devices should be consistent and rich and that is reflected with Velvet Puffin. Communication and the need to network is an inherent human trait and we have merged both of that with our approach in Velvet Puffin.'

Explaining the business model of Velvet Puffin, Mr Chandrasekar said users will enjoy the service for free and the company's revenue streams will be generated through contextual advertisements (much like ads on Google), licensing of service to mobile operators and royalties.

'Contextual Ads will be served on both the desktop and mobile phones. Ads delivered to users are specific and relevant to their usage patterns. For example, a user who searches for Liverpool videos will be served relevant ads such as Liverpool merchandise. This ensures that users will find ads that are being delivered useful,' he added.

Through contextual ads, advertisers will get a greater return on investment as they are targeting their ads to relevant target groups, he added.

'Google serves contextual ads to desktop users. Our model is similar in that regard. However, we have the benefit of an integrated desktop and mobile service.'

The second revenue stream will come from licensing of the service to mobile operators as they represent another distribution channel, Mr Chandrasekar said.

'Operator licensees of the service will co-brand Velvet Puffin and distribute it to their captive user base. Velvet Puffin will generate additional data revenue for operators and we plan to do a revenue split with the operators on incremental data revenue generated through Velvet Puffin,' Mr Chandrasekar said, adding that the company is in talks with a major regional telco in this regard.

The company's third revenue model involves generation of royalties from device manufacturers who pre-load Velvet Puffin client in their mobile phones.

Mr Chandrasekar and Mr Hon, both 26 years old, were classmates and, before setting up Radixs, took up several freelancing projects since they were 17 years old. They are born and raised in Singapore.

Both hold an advanced diploma in computer science. They deferred their degree programmes in computer science from Monash (for Mr Chandrasekar) and Portsmouth University (for Mr Hon) to focus on Radixs full time.

Velvet Puffin has received US$10 million in funding from both institutional and private investors in Asia.

'We are in our second round of funding and major investors include Purple Ray and Artisan Encipta while the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) was a Seeds investor,' Mr Chandrasekar said.

Headquartered in Singapore, there are currently 60 Radixs employees worldwide.

'We have a diverse team comprising Singaporeans, Indians, Chinese, Britishers, Australians and even a French Canadian . . . (software) developers make up 80 per cent of Radixs workforce,' Mr Chandrasekar said.

SMS will remain the dominant force in the region

SMS still No.1 in Asia, study finds By Farihan Bahrin, ZDNet Asia 26/2/2007 URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,61992389,00.htm The outlook for text messaging in the Asia-Pacific region remains bright, according to a new study from Portio Research released Tuesday. Despite strong challenges from other mobile messaging services--such as mobile e-mail and mobile instant messaging (mobile IM)--short messaging service (SMS) will remain the dominant force in the region, the study outlined. Portio analyst John White told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail that there will be estimated 1.4 billion additional mobile phone users in Asia by 2012, and SMS revenue in the region will mushroom from US$16 billion in 2006, up to US$22.7 billion in 2012. White added that regional SMS traffic within the same period will explode, fuelled by a flood of new subscribers and handset purchases in the Asia-Pacific. The number of SMS messages will spike sharply from 967.7 billion in 2006 to a staggering 2071 billion messages by 2012, he predicted. In contrast, Portio's outlook is different for the North American market. Mobile instant messaging (MIM) is forecast to supplant SMS as the mainstream messaging service within the next four years due to the proliferation of smartphones and wireless Internet, its study showed. White said that although there will still be more SMS users than mobile IM users, "our study forecasts the number of IM messages to grow more than SMS messages in the United States sometime after 2011". In Asia, doubt remains over IM's ability to ever topple SMS as the mainstream messaging service. "SMS will remain the dominant peer-to-peer messaging service in Asia-Pacific, as IM will require the user to have 'always-on' services like GPRS or 3G," said Alex Chau, senior research manager at analyst house IDC, in an e-mail. Chau noted that in developing countries like India, China and Thailand, users are still using just the basic services, such as voice and SMS. Portio's White agreed with this assessment. "We do not see this trend in Asia…mobile IM will be popular in Asia, but not as popular across the whole region as SMS," he said. The Portio analyst added that, while mobile e-mail--another messaging competitor--will become popular, it is unlikely to pose a major threat to SMS revenues within the next few years. "Mobile e-mail will continue to grow very healthily in the enterprise sector," White observed. "But outside Japan, mobile e-mail will have little impact on mass consumer markets, only with the elite, high-end smartphone users."