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Worried with your business results on the internet?

Israel — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:42:00 +0000

Ok, download for Free our Marketing Kit

and learn more about mobile marketing or social media here.

If you need more information, no doubts, TALK TO US.

Tired of using technology?

Israel — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 10:19:12 +0000

We can’t sit down on top of you, but we can propose you four different versions of this excellent song to enjoy, Ayo Technology.

The original song of 50 Cent ft. Justin Timberlake from 2007 had a deep consideration how we use the technology and how the saturation of technology can produce an effect of rejection on us. This song has had some versions after, the most popular from the belgian artist Jonathan Vandenbroeck, better know as Millow.

Emerging Markets & Digital Content – Free Whitepaper

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:29:45 +0000

mmCHANNEL is giving away a free whitepaper when you sign-up to our e-mail newsletter

The free whitepaper discusses trends over the past few years in emerging markets and provides some valid insights on digital content.

Building Mobile Websites for iPad, Netbooks & Smart Phones

Damien — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:25:03 +0000

Where to start with building a mobile app or going mobile has been a popular topic for some time. Many FMCG brands and agencies are requesting only quotes for mobile apps – forgetting the less popular java app or branded mobile game. At the expense of budget – haha – focusing on a mobile app can be a costly exercise starting from about 10k to 100k plus.

Marketing Agencies and their Brands need to go and reconsider their mobile strategy – and if you’ve already built a mobile app – you maybe disappointed how it looks on the larger screen devices.

The announcement of a large screen Apple iPad and netbooks running Google Android will be exciting for consumers – essentially these are mobile devices with wifi and 3G mobile broadband. For marketers its another screen that needs its own plan.

Recently, I attended a workshop on an Android powered Netbook – the developers present, some of them with popular music apps were, with one voice crying foul about the screen size. It’s one thing to make an app work on small mobile screens – its another to make an app work on a 7″ wide screen notebook thingy.

2010 will bring a number of problems for mobile apps – the easiest strategy is to get someone in to help you build up your mobile website.

Mobile Social Media in Africa

Cristobal Alonso — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:40:12 +0000

The number of Africans who use their cell phones to access the internet now exceeds the number of those who rely on traditional desktop means of connecting to the World Wide Web.

PC and broadband penetration rates are very low while mobile penetration keeps growing. In Opera Software’s October 2008 “ State of the Mobile Web report”, South Africa ranks 6th and Egypt ranks 8^th in the global Top 10 for mobile internet usage, ahead of many Western countries.

Today almost 29% of South Africans use mobile UGC services/content on a daily basis and by the end of 2013, the total South African mobile UGC revenue will reach a total of $476 million (JBB Research). Although Facebook is the most popular mobile South African site today, two local names MXit and The Grid have become a driving force for the South African mobile UGC services market today.

MXit, which stands for message exchange, provides a free instant messaging application for both computers and mobile phones. It has also recently tried to extend the brand into what they call MXit lifestyle including music, social networking, and more. Their latest innovative entertainment product has been the launch of their first instant messaging book, ‘Emily and the battle of the veil’, which sells for an equivalent 50 euro cents. Since its launch in 2005, MXit has attracted more than 15 million users across the developing world. South Africa is by far their largest market with over 7 millions users.

The Grid is a location-based social network, enabling subscribers to locate their friends on a map, chat via instant messaging, and share geo-tagged content. Lately it has been focusing on creating social interactions around content. Although Vodacom Ventures is the The Grid’s main funding source, it is wisely open to use by all South African operators and is actually being launched in countries where Vodacom is not present. Today it has more than a million users after less than a year in operation and is expanding into Tanzania and Nigeria, among other African countries

The future? At mmCHANNEL we believe and invest in Application Protocol Interface (API) connectivity and building social interactions around content for these and similar social media sites (take a look at East Africa’s first mobile social media community, Sembuse). In our opinion, these social media sites are going to become key outlets for mobile advertising, customer surveys, content consumption, and financial services in the near future. Location-based services, pricing flexibility, and viral marketing make the mobile social media space an African story. Stay tuned.

2010 Mobile Marketing Predictions

Cristobal Alonso — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:19:44 +0000

Imagine Steve, Bill, the Google Boys, Warren (Buffet) and myself get together to chat about 2010 and the Telco space. Warren is not really in the mood for TMT investments but he is listening. Bill believes that Windows will finally make a play in the mobile space with their first good product – Windows Mobile 7.0. The rest smile and say ‘good luck’ to him because being good most of your handset suppliers like HTC are now with the Google Boys and Android.

The Google boys look puzzled but excited. They brought to the chat more than 50 devices with Android for 2010. However they’ve not got enough apps and transactions yet (why is Steve managing to do this just with one device?) and it is still unclear how long it will take for mobile advertising to become a reality. There is still not enough money on mobile search, “… No worries, we just bought AdMob and there is lots of room for smaller companies to play in this space and find interesting niches and then we will buy them”. How many companies will they buy in 2010?

Warren is watching the Advercontent (advertising based games and applications) space, but just watching and learning and maybe China, India, Brazil and South Africa is where real scale will happen for this (paired with finally fast enough networks and accessible medium end handsets, we can imagine the big smiles of the Huawei and ZTE fellas). The internet boys don’t make any money on social media but he does believe mobile in these territories may be the place to monetize social media (content, analytics, location based). He also took several calls to listen to some interesting ventures on m-payments and micro-transactions in Africa and the Middle East. Hmmmmm

Why did we not invite Nokia to the meeting? They are too busy sorting out their house. It is true, first they shout OVI for president, now Symbian is not good enough, and now instead of embracing Android or buying Palm OS they are going to create another Linux based OS!!! Now we start understanding why they did not come today or they are not going to WMC 2010

Hey the RIM boys got to the meeting late. The rest have already divided the mass market application space between them and some upcoming startups. However vertical oriented apps is going to be an upcoming segment and the blackberry device is king here. Can their OS and their app store be a business oriented apps thriving space and take upcoming tech young companies on the ride. Warren is listening and nods

Where is Steve? Did he leave to launch another Apple phone or they were just getting ready to open up the app store next year. We agree to give him the 2009 champion, will he win again in 2010?

As we were walking out the room, Warren says ‘What about the operators?’ I said we need to get together again for lunch to figure that one out.