Mobiya is ready for September
It’s over, that nice summer vacation. But no holidays for a startup, nor did we give our suppliers a lot of breathing space. The last couple of weeks were very busy. Mobiya is now ready for a mega launch in September.
We finalized an important hosting contract for our production and staging environment with Hostbasket and our development group has been successfully testing some key functionality such as Location Based Services (LBS) and video over MMS.
Sales and marketing wise we are close to an interesting partnership and we are in the middle of activating the marketing campaign around the Fed Cup sponsorship. Duoh!, a world-class design agency has prepared our first advertisement. No preview, just Download (2006_ad_mobiya.pdf) the advertisement and give us your feedback. Thanks!
Outlook for Internet / Mobile M&A
Citigroup Research has released a good report on the Internet and Mobile M&A market, and what areas would the big portal and commerce companies be looking at, in terms of buying companies. Notice how mobile is the biggest empty pie in the charts:
Mobiya is appointed as Official Sponsor of the 2006 Fed Cup Final by BNP Paribas
Mobiya has taken its first steps onto a global stage in a deal with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to become the Official Sponsor of the 2006 Fed Cup Final by BNP Paribas, the women’s tennis team competition spanning 89 countries.
Mobiya will launch its mobile enabled classified advertising service during the Fed Cup Final to be held over the weekend of 16th/17th September, communicating its brand and creating awareness of its service to a global audience. Throughout the 14-hour live TV broadcast the Mobiya name and sms shortcode "4050" will be visible on court side banners.
This groundbreaking sponsorship deal will see the world’s first mobile short code promotion at a worldwide sports stadium event. This is an action replay of the early days of the Internet when startups like Cisco and AOL used sports events, such as the SuperBowl, to launch their online brands and URL’s.
The mobile phone generation of today is driving change – brand communication will evolve from website link URL’s to include mobile phone short codes. Mobile media has become interactive with fans already participating in marketing campaigns using their mobile phones. Over the next decade we will see a major shift in sports marketing communication and Mobiya is here already as a pioneer of mobile social media with its person-to-person classified advertising market.
eBay Belgium announces classifieds
Media groups, beware! This is a serious message. eBay Belgium took the lead in developing an online classified portal under the eBay brand (article in Dutch). eBay Classifieds will launch on the 21st of August. Keep an eye on their beta site. This is a very unique initiative due to past investments eBay has done abroad. eBay bought existing classified portals (e.g. Marktplaats in The Netherlands) or invested in establishing a new classifieds brand (Kijiji). If proven successful in Belgium, the other eBay countries will follow soon.
This announcement was followed in the same week with the launch of a new price schedule. Insertion fees and final value fees go up (a lot). This is all part of an effort to re-position the online auctions in relation to the professional storefronts. This is a major exercise to optimize the revenues, capture new market share and shake-out the market.
What is the consequence for traditional media groups, or even larger existing online media players?
- eBay will chase the Real Estate (Immo) market, which was impossible to capture over online auction
- eBay will accelerate its Car trading sales, as most people want to have a fixed price and a conversation (Skype is too early)
- eBay will make its first moves into Job ads and start a learning curve to enter and capture this enormous market.
Message to all established media: respond with an innovative message and a solid business model. Work with a partner that can redefine the market and beat entrants out of your territory.
Innovation in traditional media
In the last couple of months, Mobiya has approached over a dozen traditional media groups, located across Europe. The fact is that larger and more established media corporation are very open to innovative concepts, but in many cases these project stumble badly inside.
Harvard Business Review recently published an excellent article "Building Breakthrough Business within Established Organizations" that puts innovation theory into new business practice. To thrive new ventures, such as person-to-person communications systems and social mobile media into classified advertising, you have to master three challenges:
- Forget some of what has made your core business successful, see New York Times print versus online example
- Borrow assets from your business such as brands, sales relationships, etc. that provide a competitive advantage
- Learn quickly, the most difficult one. Preparation, forecasting and evaluation helps to resolve inevitable unknowns.
The future of print is interactive content
World Association of Newspapers Congress reports: "The convergence of mobile and print media is giving new life to newspapers. Mobile content enables newspapers to provide interactive advertising and information that attracts a younger readership and offer media owners with a further revenue stream for re-using content". An example: The Times of India offers mobile services that translate into 15 million SMS per day! Read complete article here.
Classifieds for entrepreneurs
Classified ad basics for entrepreneurs and starters: see enterpreneur.com.
Mobiya is patent pending
Another important company announcement. As of today Mobiya is patent pending: see official statement of inventorship and of right to grant of a patent. The UK Patent Office has confirmed the patent application number, providing a priority date and started to examine the invention. Our 22 page document has more than 30 claims describing the process and methodology of our unique person-to-person advertising system, this offers protection for our license paying customers using Mobiya’s technology. This also prepares the company for a first round of funding to commercially exploit the platform on a global basis. Mobiya has a first mover technology advantage in an untapped mobile and media market.
Regional press: lifestyle and technology
Good statements in this HoldtheFrontPage article how regional press have taken active steps to develop their product offerings in order to follow the consumer. The article mentions the move of local press websites to a range of channels (such as mobile) and the threat of Google to news and classifieds. It confirms the correctness of Mobiya’s strategy to work with print media groups to complement and bring a business model into their local digital platforms and strong brands.
Global market opportunity: three times $100 billion
Any savvy investor asks the same question: "What is the market potential for Mobiya?" The difficulty in answering that question has to do with the market segmentation and the relation to our business model:
1. Mobiya’s business model for Classified Advertising ?
Our person-to-person communication platform enables classified advertising giants to include a mobile dialog into their networked classified listings. Classified Intelligence estimates the market size of classified advertising to be $100 billion, globally.
2. Mobiya’s business model for Merchandise Sales?
The listings on Mobiya compete with garage sales, flea markets and all kinds of auction sales. In 1999 eBay (according to this book) had estimated the gross merchandise volume in the US to be $100 billion!
3. Mobiya’s business model for Mobile Data Services?
Revenues are generated via premium sms and mms when interacting with the listings. A recent posting on the Mobile Marketing Magazine site reveal that Mobile Data Revenues have hit the $100 billion mark.
You choose.