Mobile payments company Obopay has nabbed a four round of funding worth $20 million from the likes of Essar Communications Holdings Limited, leading the round and existing investors including Citi, Societe Generale, Qualcomm, and Promethean and new investors like Olayan America Corporation also joined in.

The company is mainly a North American-based venture - it lists Verizon Wireless and Helio among its partners - and its mobile money transfer system works with US bank accounts using a widget, through a browser or SMS. While the company hasn’t given away what it plans to do with the latest round of investments, international expansion shouldn’t be ruled out - Obopay has a presence in India and a number of big names are falling over themselves to bring mobile money transfer to developing economies.

Mobile banking is set to skyrocket, according to mobile analysts Juniper Research, with 816 million of us using mobile banking services by 2011, a tenfold increase on the 2007 figure. The analysts reckon that the annual number of global mobile banking transactions will rise from 2.7 billion in 2007 to 37 billion by 2011, while the average value of mobile transactions will double.

China/Far East region will have the greatest number of users of mobile banking services, followed by Western Europe and the Indian sub-continent, says Juniper, with all the newfound enthusiasm for mobile banking stoked by better consumer confidence.

Mobile banking seems to have been on the cusp of mass take-up for a number of years in the UK but never really quite tipped over into becoming one of those every day applications. Banks themselves don’t seem to be pushing it that hard - after all, if they can’t make money off it, and it’s an additional channel to promote, support and secure, what’s in it for them? Developing economies seem to be doing much more interesting things with mobile banking than developed ones - perhaps UK banks need to look overseas for inspiration.

India is, according to Obopay, adding 8 million mobile customers a month — to a market that’s already got around 250 million mobile users (compared to roughly 257 million in America).  So it makes sense for Obopay to head to that area.  It’s not a tip-toe strategy either.  They’ve got together with YES BANK (the bank, I imagine, that likes to say ‘Yes’?) to deliver a fully integrated offering.  Any customer can ’securely and instantly’ transfer money to and from any mobile phone number via Obopay’s mobile application, text message or the mobile web. Genius.  What’s more, any YES BANK customers can withdraw cash that they’ve been sent via Obopay using their debit card.

An excellent move.  I’ll see if I can connect with Obopay at CTIA and get some more gossip.

SK Telecom is teaming up with financial services giant Citi to create a so-called “next generation’ mobile banking joint venture. The joint venture will go under the name of Mobile Money Ventures and create new services around NFC payments, budget planning and tracking, expense management and location based advertisements and discounts.

The new services will be tested with Citi customers from the second half of this year in “selected markets”. The company doesn’t say where the new features will get a run out, but the join venture will be headquartered in the US, where SK Telecom’s other JV Helio operates, so the States is looking like a good bet.

SK Telecom already has some m-banking products out in the market, like its NFC offering Moneta, getting a big name in financial services will doubtless prove useful in taking its mobile money ideas to new ground.

Scottish tradition has it that on February 29 a woman has the right to propose marriage to any man she likes - and if the would-be husband refuses, he’s liable to a £100 fine.

(So reports Clarissa at the Sydney Morning Herald.)

Heard from Mark Curtis, top chap at Flirtomatic, the mobile/online dating and flirting community (and all round mobile success story) this afternoon. He tells me they added an engagement ring into their burgeoning virtual marketplace for their members for the leap year — and, wouldn’t you know it, they sold over 14,000! That’s an achievement! Right on!

(Alas Mark wasn’t able to comment yet on how many IRL (”in real life”) engagements translated from the virtual rings)

As a postscript to yesterday’s post bemoaning the state of Westminster Council’s ‘pay by mobile’ parking system, I got a surprising text from Virgin Vie today about an order for some home furnishings.

“Your VIRGIN VIE AT HOME parcel will be delivered today.  If you need your delivery on an alternative date reply to this text 1= 28th Feb 2=29th Feb 3=3rd Mar”

Genius!  A one character reply to re-schedule… On the actual day of delivery when I know if I’m available!  I might just buy some more stuff, I’m so impressed.

Why can’t every delivery be like this? Very normob-friendly

With apologies to those seeking analysis or a product review (what are you reading my rubbish for anyway?), this week’s piece is a self-indulgent rant about a mobile payment service gone wrong… a ‘how not-to’ guide if you like. My interest in the matter? An £80 ( $160) ‘penalty charge’ notice sitting on the table in front of me for just over 2 hours of parking that I paid for in full.

—-

Let me explain…

Central London is a place where, frankly, you need to have suffered a serious head-injury before driving around it seems like a good idea. However, in December it was unavoidable and I found myself crawling through the West End traffic, the streets thronged with Christmas shoppers. Having taken several hours to make only a few miles progress we decided to drive directly to our destination rather than parking at the hotel as planned.

Unusually quickly we located a road-side parking space close-by and I braced myself for the cost… £12 ($24) for the 3 hours we needed. My heart sank - we had enough money with us, but not in the coins usually required for on-street parking. Good news - this street was within the area where Westminster Council had replaced traditional parking meters with a ‘pay by phone’ system. This, surely, was a genius idea… and where it all went wrong.

Problem 1 - Register by text: The nearby signage presented two options… pay by call or text. However, paying by text required sending a message including the full credit-card details and car registration. I decided against this, unhappy with the security implications. It was also disappointing I needed to use a credit-card at all - why couldn’t I pay by ‘premium text’ like I do for other services? I rang the number instead.

Problem 2 - The call’s not free: I’m about to pay out for parking that’s about the most expensive I’ve ever seen, but to register for it or speak to customer services an ‘0870‘ number is provided - that is a number that is charged at a premium by most network operators (20p a minute by O2) and cannot be taken from bundled allowance of minutes.

Problem 3 - “Press 2, then 4, then 3, then something else”: I navigated through the interactive system’s voice menus in the usual fashion. It was slow, but not the worst I’d used. Then came the worse bit:

“Enter credit card number” tap tap tap… [16 digits]

“Is that correct?” [1 digit]

“Enter expiry date” [4 digits]

“Is that correct?” [1 digit]

“Enter the car registration plate.  For A to C press 1.  For A press 1, for B press 2… etc” [14 digits]

“Is that correct?” [1 digit]

“Enter the location code” [4 digits]

“Is that correct?” [1 digit]

42 key presses, just for the basic information for the transaction! With only one correction for a typo, I’d now been on the phone for just over 10 minutes listening to prompts and entering information.

Problem 4 - You’re charging me for a receipt!!?!: The next question surprised me. Did I want to pay for a text confirmation? Well, no, I didn’t want to pay, but I certainly wanted to be sure the transaction had completed so I opted to pay 10p each for a confirmation and a warning towards the end of the paid period. Not much I agree, but I’m not in the habit of paying for a receipt from any other organisation! Oh and the call’s cost me almost £3 by now too…

Problem 4 - It needs to be simple, dummy: So having paid my 3 hours, spent what felt like a good portion of that time negotiating the payment system and been charged premium calling cost we headed off, my iPhone buzzing in my pocket as the confirmation came through. When we returned to the car I was surprised to see it had been ticketed… It turns out the location code to be entered is quite specific to the group of spaces it is posted by and in this case is only on one sign. I’d not seen it (8 feet in the air and facing away from the pavement) and misread a second sign entering the example location details in error. The system accepted this without any apparent validation and so I paid for a space that doesn’t exist. Excellent… and I’m not the only one.

In summary: A mobile transaction should be quicker, more simple and cheaper than a cash-based system. This wasn’t and hasn’t paid much (any?) attention to the user experience. It’s likely much of this may sound familiar to people far away from London too - the suppliers of this system appear to operate similar services around the world and although I’m not sure I can blame them for any / all of this, it is a stand-out case of how not to provide a mobile service. Westminster Council’s press information bangs on about ‘ease of use’ and ‘encouraging e-government’ but in one go it’s put me off using mobile payments for anything (financially) important in the future. Note the numbers here: over 200,000 people use this system and over a third of those surveyed were not satisfied or did not find it easy to use.

I have, of course, lodged an appeal, but 2 months of letter writing and form filling wasn’t what I anticipated when I decided to ‘quickly pay by phone’.

Research outfit Gartner has found that while consumers are still more likely to browse than to buy using their mobile phones (no surprise there), they are comfortable with checking the price of an item or finding a store on their handset. According to a survey by the company, US shoppers are twice as likely to check for prices of items as to buy items from their mobile phone and UK consumers were similar.

The survey also found that the younger a person is, the more likely they are to buy over their mobiles, with shoppers between 18 and 27 almost twice as likely to mobile shopping than those aged between 43 and 61.

Meanwhile, Gartner says, the changing form factor of mobiles and faster mobile network are leading many retailers to think about adding a mobile channel over the next year or two. Given the continued reluctance of people to go shopping on their mobiles, you could argue that the willingness to push ahead with m-commerce is a bit incongruous. I’d say quite the opposite - how is m-commerce ever going to flourish if there are no mobile stores for users to go to?

Ringbacks haven’t ever had caught the imagination of the public like Ringtones did all those years ago. However they’re still popular — as this news from Virgin Mobile USA demonstrates.

Virgin reports that over 100,000 of their customers are subscribing to the $1.49/month service. You can choose individual ringback tracks for each of your friends. You could, theoretically, force your friend to listen to some absolutely ridiculous music. Or you can shuffle your tracks so that every time your friends call, they hear a different track. Not something I’d use but I can imagine a lot of teenagers loving this — Virgin reports that customers generally subscribe to an average of two tracks.

Each track that you buy costs $1.99 and is ‘good’ for 6 months (i.e. you need to buy it again in 6 months if you want it).

Most popular among Virgin Mobile customers are Ringback Tones in the hip-hop and R&B categories. Some of the top Ringback Tone titles selected by Virgin Mobile customers are: “Shawty Is A 10″ (The Dream); “Bed” (J. Holiday); “Heaven Sent” (Keyshia Cole); “Crank That - Tell ‘Em/Ne-Yo Chorus (Soulja Boy); and “Apologize,” (by OneRepublic featuring Timbaland).

I couldn’t spot any of those tunes. Kudos to you if you know what a Timbaland is.

Taiwan Mobile has decided to get into NFC payments with new partner Gemalto. The operator has said it’s going to rollout the NFC system nationwide from this year, using Gemalto’s SIM based contactless system, initially starting with mobile payments and moving onto coupons and ticketing in the future.According to the pair, this is the first time that an NFC system has been rolled out with the SIM as the secure element - which means that users can top up credit without having to go into a branch or find a kiosk and, for Taiwan Mobile, it means being able to register new users and manage services remotely.NFC’s main virtue is that it’s a really easy technology to use. That said, anything that makes it even easier can’t be a bad thing.

Tyfone, which develops hardware and software for white label mobile banking and mobile contactless payments, has got a funding injection from Indian-tech-focused VC firm Ojas Venture Partners. Tyfone says it will use the cash injection “to scale its three areas of business – mobile banking, mobile payments including contactless payments and retail merchant relationship services in the US and international markets”.

Tyfone, whose customers include West Coast Bank, didn’t disclose how much the funding was worth but one report suggests the figure could well be in the millions.

Mobile watchers reckon mobile banking is going to go through a “gold rush” any time now, with a report from Juniper Research predicting 612 million mobile phone users generating over $587 billion worth of financial transactions by 2011.

NFC trials are nothing new, both in the United States and abroad, but it’s interesting to know that the testing is getting more and more popular. The latest includes Nokia, a usual suspect, along with Mastercard and U.S. Bank, in the Spokane, WA area. NFC, or Near-Field Communications, allows two equipped devices to exchange information simply by placing them in close proximity to one another. Nokia has been working closely on the technology, specifically in the usage of NFC for mobile payment systems.

For this trial with U.S. Bancorp and Mastercard, participants were given an NFC-enabled Nokia handset equipped with Mastercard’s PayPass technology, for use at the nearly 80,000 PayPass-accepted locations nationwide. Previously Nokia also participated in NFC trials in New York City, the UK, Germany, and China.

This article in the Business Standard reports that over one hundred thousand million customers in India are using PayMate to make transactions for products and services (movie tickets, airline tickets etc) via text message — with over 2,500 transactions being made daily. Fascinating. PayMate has just recently welcomed Indian bank, Cosmos — and will operate their mobile payment service on their behalf.

Link: Cosmos joins hands with PayMate

Pune-based co-operative bank, Cosmos, has joined hands with PayMate to provide mobile payment facility to all its customers. With this, Cosmos now joins the club of Citibank, HDFC and Corporation Bank, which have activated this facility for their customers.

PayMate is currently used by over 1,00,000 customers across the country. The subscribers of this service can pay for their online shopping, buy movie tickets and book airline tickets through an SMS.

Link: QuickOrder - GENOCO by Phil Lu

“Get your coffee fix, fast!” iPhone/iPod Touch application that allows the users to purchase their favorite Starbucks drink without waiting in line. This application also includes QuickPay, a swipe transaction system using semacode technology.

I picked this up via MacRumours. A smart chappy by the name of Phil Lu knocked up these screenshots illustrating how an iPhone/iTouch ‘QuickOrder’ application could work. It’s unfortunately proof-of-concept at the moment but I could really see myself using something like this. Nice work Phil!

Take a look…

First, you login at the shop front…

Then you select your desired coffee…

Then do a bit of customising…

Then you pay…

Complete with semacodes! I wonder what Noah and the team at Gomobo.com make of this — they’re basically doing this (albeit without the fancy iPhone graphics) across a lot of America already.

You know what? I just did a search on Gomobo and found that ‘Del Taco’ here in San Francisco are Gomobo-enabled. They are literally round the corner. Well I never. I’ll need to try it out.

If there’s one thing the beginning of the year is good for, it’s predictions, and there’s no shortage of them for 2008. The latest is from Bango, offering up 5 trends that they expect to see in 2008. Given that Bango is one of the leading mobile payment services, some of these ‘trends’ aren’t a big surprise.

1. An increasing number of people accessing the internet from their mobiles - Duh.

2. Mobile Advertising will surge ahead - Again, duh. As more people use the mobile internet, more companies will want to reach them.

3. Shift from messaging to mobile internet for data usage on mobile phones - I suppose I could agree with this one. As Bango points out, more portals offer search boxes, and search will become big on mobile handsets, rather than SMS for delivery.

4. Moble commerce of physical goods will come of age - I disagree with this. It’ll obviously increase, but as to ‘coming of age’, I think that’s a ways off, personally, at least for the mass market.

5. The PC and mobile will become more closely linked - Agreed 400%. One thing the iPhone really helped out with is educating consumers to the notion of connecting their mobile phone with their PC for syncing and content. This will only increase as they realize that other manufacturers offer this as well, but have been too ignorant to really promote/enable it.

So there you have it, Bango’s Mobile Trends for 2008 and my thoughts on them. Any questions? Do you agree/disagree?

Link: SourceWire | Press Releases - Mobile Phones Price Comparison Site Launched by Phones Limited

Working with over 20 online retailers, dealerships and UK network operators the site reads and compares datafeeds from the likes of The Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone before showing the best deal for any given mobile phone package to include line rental discounts, free gifts and cash back offers.

The back-end system calculates the overall expenditure of each individual deal over the minimum term contract period and then shows a link to the merchant that offers the cheapest overall package for that phone, tariff and line rental discount or gift combination.

This is a useful addition to the UK mobile marketplace. Thanks to Phones Limited, I can tell you that you can get an HTC Ted Baker Needle handset for free on an 35 pounds/month contract from Orange (18 months). Nifty!

The other day I was sat in a movie theatre here in San Francisco.  I wanted to go and see Alien vs Predator (”Requiem”).  I was in the mood for some mindless action together with a bit of popcorn.  The only trouble?  Well, there was a big queue of people.  There were four ticketing windows open, each with about 10 people waiting in line.

Stuff that, I thought, I’m a mobile chappy.  I won’t stand. I’ll sit on the nice sofas, munch on some popcorn and do the booking from my mobile.

Confidentially — that is, don’t tell anyone whilst I pour out my personal foibles — I still very much have an issue ordering tickets via voice on the phone.  That’s because I spent my formative years calling up UCI Cinemas or Odeon and speaking to some right arses.

“Yes, I’d like to book tickets for the UCI Thurrock please?” I say.

“Romford, did you say?”

“No, UCI Thurrock.”

“ROMFORD?”

“No, UCI Thurrock — at the Lakeside Shopping Centre,” I’ll explain, patiently.

“We don’t ‘ave a cinema there mate,”

“Yes you do, I’m stood outside it….”

The excruciating experience of trying to book tickets that, if I had access to their booking system, I could transact in seconds, was just ridiculous.  Online booking fixed this problem for me.

I rarely ever stand in line.  I just can’t.  I can’t do that — it’s akin to a degree of sacrilege standing, waiting for 10 minutes, to buy a ticket.  It’s SO inefficient.

So these sorts of mindnumbing shite experience really effected me, I think.

I occasionally tried booking cinema tickets on my mobile in the United Kingdom.  But that’s just a stupid experience too.  The cinema companies haven’t yet got the mobile wind.  There’s a few isolated exceptions, if memory serves, where you can book a ticket and pay for it with your mobile phone bill.  I can’t recall the service name, but it’s certainly not universal.  I remember looking it up once and finding that I could only book Odeon, I think.
They’re often a lot more joined up with things like this in America.  I was hoping for a simple, easy experience.

But no.

Fandango mobile wasn’t at all helpful.  I was very disappointed.  I’ve been using them to book my movie tickets online and when I saw they had a mobile site (via a mobile Google search), I was delighted.

For some reason there was ‘no data available’ on any of the cinemas in San Francisco that I queried on their mobile site.  The data was available to query on Google and on the main Fandango site.  But not on the mobile version.

Right.  Almost useful.  So I’ve no idea if you can book tickets via Fandango Mobile.

Another Google search later… (and found this brilliant Wap Review article) and I found that MSN Mobile enables you to buy tickets from your handset — although I didn’t get a chance to try it out.. the movie was, by this time, about to start and luckily the queue at the ticket windows had reduced to zero.

Next time I’m going to book via MSN Mobile and check out the experience.

Do you have any recommendations for similar services I should check out?

If you’re into retail and mobile, definitely get a cup of coffee and sit and read this USA Today piece on shopping with the aid of mobile. It gives a brilliant insight into what’s going on in small town America and some of the key companies working to make things happen.

Link: Shop by phone gets new meaning - USATODAY.com

It’s not that stores aren’t trying to go higher-tech. Mobile retailing site mPoria is rapidly signing up retailers, going from eight to more than 130 since the start of 2007. Mobile couponing company Cellfire’s discounts can now be used at more than 250 merchants, including retail and restaurant chains, up from 10 in January.

While mobile company Slifter helps shoppers find items in a geographic area, NearbyNow helps them search anywhere in its 200 member malls. All the mall retailers are part of NearbyNow for at least basic searches — for brands of jeans, but not individual styles or products, for instance — and more than 70% offer full access to their inventories. And retailers are experimenting with a variety of text-message campaigns to see what best draws in the young crowds.

I’ll need to take a look at Slifter, mPoria, Cellfire and NearbyNow.

To Bangkok again this morning for another mobile story — this time about contactless payments. I’m a big fan of the concept of waving my phone at a retailer to pay for a Coke or a rail ticket.

Remember I reported last month that o2 are apparently knocking something like this together? Here’s the image I used:

Well there’s a bit more news on this. I don’t know if it’s related at all to what o2 are planning but it’s broadly the same idea.

Link: Bangkok Post : Database

TrueMoney recently introduced RFID SIM, described as an intelligent contactless mobile payment service, for customers of TrueMove.

The applications used in RFID SIM were recently demonstrated at ICT Expo 2007 and allowed the mobile phone to be used for payments for things such as online shopping, car parking and public transport.

Adhiruth Thothaveesansuk, president of True Money, noted that the company had collaborated with Chinese-based Watchdata, a data security technology company, to successfully develop what he called “the world’s first intelligent contactless mobile payment” system using the RFID SIM via the True Money Payment Platform

Bring it on. I look forward to seeing something like this go live. TrueMoney’s site is here.

Link: Italian firm offers saintly mobiles | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Now an enterprising Milanese firm has the answer - downloadable sacred “wallpaper” for your mobile.

A website advertising the service at santiprotettori.com promises “Holy protection always with you on your mobile”. For €3 (£2) a week, subscribers will get a choice of three saints, and for an extra 50 cents, a prayer to go with them.

Well, it’s definitely an imaginative twist on premium mobile content.

Messaging interoperability and content delivery specialists Sybase 365 have just unveiled a new suite of products for the financial industry.

Sybase mBanking 365 provides secure and direct multi-channel interaction with customers over all mobile messaging channels — SMS, WAP, and rich client. Vital services such as bank account activity alerts that notify customers of potentially fraudulent transactions in real time, and simple activities, such as balance inquiries, can be conducted conveniently and without involving costly customer care resources. Sybase mBanking 365 also features support for natural language, interactive banking services, with the Answers 365 product, to enable customers to access services without the need to memorize set keywords.
“Mobile banking is on the brink of widespread consumer adoption,” said Marty Beard, president of Sybase 365. “The mobile phone is rapidly becoming the one technology that people have access to around the globe. As such, mobile banking will quickly become a critical channel for customer interaction.”
Financial institutions have realized a number of benefits from utilizing mobile banking services, including cost reduction and increased efficiency in communicating with customers, fraud reduction, and improved customer retention. In fact, Sybase 365 recently commissioned a global study across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and more than a quarter of respondents in each region reported they would consider switching banks if an alternative provider offered them mobile banking services.
Sybase is a trusted partner for some of the world’s biggest banks. The company has over 7 years experience through its Financial Fusion product, providing integrated services to more than 200 of the world’s leading financial institutions. Coupled with Sybase 365’s mobile banking expertise as the leading provider of mBanking services (SMS, MMS) for financial corporations worldwide, the company is uniquely placed to enable banks to realize the potential of mobile banking.
Sybase mBanking 365 combined with Sybase 365’s operator-grade network reaches more than 700 mobile operators around the world and 2.4 billion mobile subscribers. One single connection to Sybase 365 enables financial institutions to reach 100 percent of their mobile customers.

Link: Khaleej Times Online - NBAD launches money transfer service by SMS

Clients of National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) may now transfer money to any person in the UAE who has a mobile phone, through SMS (short message service), or text message, the bank yesterday said in a statement.

Launched early this month, an NBAD customer has to contact the bank’s call centre, which will help facilitate the transaction. The message will include a temporary PIN (personal identification number), to be used on any of NBAD’s 184 ATM machines for the payment. Saif Al Shehi, general manager, NBAD’s domestic banking division, said the service answers the high demand for a reliable and secure modern transaction system with the help of mobile phones. “It also represents a part of NBAD initiatives to provide our customers with more electronic banking solutions as we strive to make banking with us easier,” he said.

NBAD have also announced a deal with mobile payment provider LUUP.

XLR8 Mobile announces the first ever portable, widget-based, micro-site, mobile-commerce enabled storefronts, based upon their proprietary “WapItUp!” mobile commerce platform. This patent pending system is revolutionizing how media companies monetize content to mobile users. It’s a unique platform that allows any brand or website to sell mobile content “from any location, to any location”, direct to mobile phones throughout the world.
Unlike other mobile storefronts, WapItUp! widgets bring the content to the people, rather than bringing the people to the content. The widget stores can be copied and pasted onto any site, anywhere on the web, and they can be selling simultaneously in multiple locations. The audience reach potential is unlimited, offering companies greater access and flexibility to place their brands front and center, in the midst of their audience, right where they congregate. Never before have you been able to duplicate multiple storefronts in seconds and place them all over the web. XLR8 Mobile’s widget-based storefronts are compatible with Facebook, MySpace, and other Social Networking sites.
WapItUp! is also the first ever mobile-commerce platform to be embedded directly within an active flash ad-banner, allowing brands to extend their reach by greater interaction with their consumers. Any WapItUp! embedded storefront can be used to sell or deliver content to anyone’s mobile phone, directly from the ad itself, without sending users to another destination. Downloads can be purchased by consumers for a fee, or can be delivered free to end users, sponsored by companies wishing to market to a mass audience. WapItUp! ad-banner widgets are compatible with Double Click’s DART system, so they can be served to the widest possible audience on the web.
XLR8 Mobile is one of the world’s premier mobile content companies, leveraging a vast global distribution network, a proprietary content management system, and their patented technology for direct to consumer distribution (WapItUp!), to merchandise and sell a variety of unique mobile products, including wallpaper images, ring-tones, audio tracks, java games, and video clips via 48+ distribution partners, in over 180 territories worldwide. XLR8 Mobile partners include Fox Mobile / Jamster, Cellfish Media, Zingy, Helio, FlyCell, Dada Mobile, FunMobility, Mobile Streams, Oasys Mobile, Moderati, Versaly, FoneStarz, and many others.
XLR8 Mobile was founded by content experts Perry Tell and Michael Africk, both entertainment industry veterans and recording artists. Perry Tell (Sire/Warner Brothers Records) and Michael Africk (Hollywood Records) are both established songwriters and producers with published works released throughout the world, and a resume of hit songs dating from 1984 to the present day. XLR8 Mobile CEO, Perry Tell, is also a 5 year veteran of the wireless media industry, having negotiated partnerships with many of the major brands and studios, including MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, EMI Music Group, Primedia Publishing, Disney Interactive Group, Konami Digital Entertainment, E! Entertainment, Daimler-Chrysler, among others.

Myxer, the company that radically simplifies mobile content delivery, today unveiled “Mobilized by Myxer(TM)” at the DEMOfall ‘07 conference.
Mobilized by Myxer enables content owners to create and deliver mobile content with drag and drop simplicity right from their existing website. The product takes an ordeal that used to take weeks and thousands of dollars and turns it into a simple process that can be done in minutes and at no cost. In addition to sending individual items to a mobile phone, Mobilized by Myxer automatically creates a custom mobile download storefront for the content owner.
More than 10,000 content providers, including major brands, use the Myxer platform to deliver their content, such as ringtones, images, full-track audio and video, to millions of mobile phones. Their mobile content is available to their sites’ visitors as well as to the more than 2.5 million users of MyxerTones - the largest mobile content site on the Internet today. Mobilized by Myxer now makes is easier than ever for content owners to reach the exciting and growing mobile marketplace.
“Delivering ringtones, songs, and video clips to mobile phones is surprisingly complicated, time-consuming and costly,” said Myk Willis, founder and CTO of Myxer. “Our mission is to radically simplify all aspects of mobile content, and our latest innovation, Mobilized by Myxer, takes that a step further by adding drag & drop ease to the process.”
The Myxer platform is free, allowing content creators to choose whether to give their content away or charge a premium fee.

The increasing deployment of multiple mobile payment technologies and liberalisation of remote gambling legislation in key markets is expected to push total annual wagers on mobile phones to nearly $12bn by 2010, according to a new report by Juniper Research.

Mobile lotteries are expected to be the most popular service by the end of the forecast period, with more than 380m users worldwide. According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, “Mobile lotteries have already experienced significant levels of adoption in the Far East, while we envisage that European state lotteries will increasingly embrace the mobile environment in the medium term.”

The report added that growth would also be fuelled by market liberalisation such as the UK’s Gambling Act which came into force on September 1, and by proposed amendments to existing legislation elsewhere in Europe. Furthermore, it suggested that in the longer term, there would also be opportunities in the US market.

“The intimations from the US are that the act will be repealed or at least reformed,” said Holden. “Should that be the case, then, facilitated by location-based technologies, in-state mobile lotteries, betting and possibly casino services will be available in that market by 2010.”