Focus Media’s revenue going downhill

It seems Focus Media has spammed its way to a decline in revenue. Focus Media, which was admonished severely for spamming millions of subscribers of China Mobile, has cut its earnings forecast for 2008.

The company has announced that they expect their full year revenue to be around $15 million – a figure that is awfully less than the previously announced $55 million. Focus Media stated the mobile spam controversy and its aftermath as reasons for the decline in revenue.

You spam 200 million subscribers with mobile ads and face a whopping $40 million decline in your revenue. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? I think this will be a huge lesson for mobile advertisers and network carriers all over the world and will make them take mobile spam more seriously, which is ultimately good for mobile users.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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The future is mobile

A recent Harris Interactive Study comes up with some interesting statistics.

1. Around 25% of mobile users like to access mobile internet and purchase things using their credit card.

2. Around 20% of users expressed interest in the concept of mobile wallet – in which charges will be billed to their mobile accounts.

3. Around 10% expressed their interest for stock trading and wire transfers via their mobile phone.

4. Around 16% make use of mobile banking facilities.

While these statistics show that mobile users are becoming comfortable using their mobile phones for banking and shopping, a significant number of mobile users are still worried about security encryption of their data and the possibility of financial scams.

Actually, when services like banking and shopping went online, people raised similar concerns. It took a while for people to understand that doing things online can be much easier and safer. Look at the scenario now. People use internet banking and online shopping regularly. Similarly, I think it’s the duty of network carriers and the concerned parties that offer these facilities to address mobile users’ concerns and reassure them. Once they do, people will embrace this technology and mobile based services and facilities will become enormously popular.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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Mywaves makes waves in the market

Mywaves, a mobile video site, has been making news recently. Especially, its partnership with MTV has got a lot of attention. Through this partnership, MTV will provide free, ad-supported mobile content to Mywaves site from its products like VH1, Jackass, Gametrailers, and Atom Entertainment. This is the first time MTV is offering free mobile content. Previously, the content was available only through network carriers and it required users to either go for the pay-per-view model or the subscription model.

Apart from MTV, Mywaves has got quite an impressive clientele with names like Microsoft, Mini, Paramount Pictures, Toyota, and more. Mywaves serves users with free mobile video content supported by ads. The ads range from text messages to banner ads, content discovery screens, and more. Interestingly, Mywaves came out of beta just about a year back and the kind of progress it has made has impressed a lot of people in the market.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile Web.

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