Mobile social networking platform mig33 has introduced its new Game Developer Program.
This new platform will enable social game developers to access its 40 million registered users and fast-growing virtual economy. Developers will be able to create games based on the platform, which can then be sold to mig33 users.
The new program will help mig33 expand its social game offerings. It has already witnessed over one million game plays in the third quarter of 2010.
Social game developers worldwide will have access to the 40 million registered mig33 users who access the mobile social entertainment service via its J2ME downloadable client, WAP site and the web.
The new program offers developers full API integration support, significant promotion opportunities, virtual goods options, and a share of revenue.
mig33 has also announced the initial partners of its new program, which include Blue Leaf Games, an independent South Africa-based gamehouse developing multi-player games for mobile platforms, and the developer of Moonbase, a massive multi-player online strategy game in which players seek to rule the moon.
Another developer is TheMobileGamer (TMG), a publisher of mobile social games for the fast-growing South-East Asian market. The mig33 platform has been created by a Beijing-based developer of more than 300 socially connected Flash Lite games.
In 2010, mig33 members have purchased on average more than four million virtual gifts per month, and have exchanged nearly one billion mig33 messages every day.
“This new program opens the floodgates for social game developers who can build smart, engaging games, and who want access to a very large and loyal mobile-first community,” said Steven Goh, chief executive officer and co-founder, mig33. “For developers, it’s a virtually turn-key opportunity to get a big audience very quickly and generate significant revenue in fast-growing markets.
“This is more evidence as to why mig33 is exploding across multiple mobile-first markets, as opposed to being – like China’s Tencent QQ, Japan’s DeNA and others – landlocked within specific regions.”
mig33 will offer support for integrating a billing application programming interface so that developers will be able to integrate into mig33’s billing system to enable in-game monetisation of micro-transactions such as virtual goods and the purchase of game currency using mig33 credits.
It will also offer authentication API support which allows players to register and/or login using their mig33 credentials.
This new platform will also help developers to create built-in product and promotion opportunities, including access to thousands of fan sites, potential promotions through carrier relationships, a dedicated game page, and viral loops that publish scores, events, and other game achievements into the mig33 Activity Feed.
mig33 has also announced that it will share revenue with game developers. However, specific figures were not disclosed.
mig33 launches game developer program
NSE registers over 20,000 downloads of its mobile app
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has seen over 20,000 downloads of its mobile trading application. The Exchange had started providing market data through the App in September, and will launch a trading facility on Friday, November 5.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, an official from NSE said, “There is a lot of excitement among brokers regarding this application. As of now, we are only offering market data through this app but this week, we will be introducing trading service as well. Still, downloads have crossed the 20,000 mark.”
NSE Mobile app at present provides information related to latest prices of stocks, latest index values, top gainers/losers, corporate announcements, interest rate futures and currency future.
On the future prospects of the mobile app the official said, “We are still waiting for the big push and as we launch trading, we expect a lot more people to download. In the next couple of months, we hope downloads will reach a few lakhs.”
The official further added, “We have just completed our system audit and have done the checks that Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) required us to do for mobile trading. We will receive the approval from SEBI by tomorrow and then we will launch the trading platform. Lot of members have shown interest in trading and they are waiting to download it.”
NSE saw total turnover of close to Rs 850,000 crore in the cash segment and of more than Rs 58,00,000 crore in the futures and options segment during April-June this year.
Tata Docomo to launch 3G services in nine circles
Tata Docomo, the GSM arm of Tata Teleservices Limited, said it would launch its 3G services in nine telecom circles across the country on November 5, the Diwali day.
Tata Teleservices Limited shall simultaneously launch its 3G services on November 5 in all the nine circles where it has the 3G licence- Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh-Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, UP (West), Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra, Tata Teleservices Limited managing director Anil Sardana told reporters.
“We have been able to complete the ramp-up of our network to support 3G services due to the superb 3G-ready network we created at the time our 2G launch itself, last year. Our 3G rollout across all nine circles will be completed this year itself”, he said.
Tata Docomo’s HSPA+ 3G network, set up with the assistance of NTT Docomo, supports high-speed internet access with speeds of up to 21.1 Mbps. The network also supports high-definition voice (HD Voice) for a superior voice experience on calls.
“We will cover 51 per cent of Indian towns with a population of over a million for over a million and 60 per cent of towns that have over half-a-million people.
Additionally, our footprint covers 55 per cent households with an annual income of over Rs three lakhs and 49 per cent households in the remaining cagtegories”, Sardana added.
Deepak Gulati, executive president, mobility business division, Tata Teleservices Limited, said “Our 3G services will enable richer communications through video calls and SMSs, add the advantage of adding mobility to the power of internet”.
3G devices such as handsets, dongles and tablets, powered by Tata Docomo applications and services will be available across 4,000 3G lifezones in the nine circles, he said.
Tata Docomo had invested around USD 500 million on 3G services, he said adding the 3G offering starts off with applications like Video-SMS, Video-Streaming, Mobile Television, Ultra-High-Speed Data Transfers, Route-Finder, Live Aarti and much more.
“Our customers can watch 50 TV channels on their 3G handsets to begin with. We will be taking the number to 90 in the coming days”, Gulati said.
As an inaugural offering the 3G services will be free till November 11, he said.
India adds 2.5 Lakh CDMA data card subscribers every month
In a country where Broadband targets have continuously been missed, CDMA operators have crossed the three million subscriber mark with their EVDO data cards, which provides high speed internet access.
According to research done by Telecom Yatra, CDMA operators are adding around 2.5 lakh data card subscribers per month. Also, the absence of 3G data cards has proved to be a big factor in success story of CDMA data cards.
Amongst the CDMA operators, Reliance is the biggest player in the data card business with about 55 per cent market share, and Tata Indicom is the second with close to 35 per cent share.
On the other hand, MTS – the new operator in the space is a distant third with 2.5 lakh subscribers.
Public sector operators BSNL and MTNL, who also have CDMA networks, are only marginal players. BSNL has upped the ante and hopes to capture a bigger market share in this lucrative market.
In terms of net additions per month, both Reliance and Tata are in close competition. Both are adding one lakh customers a month with an additional 50,000 being added by MTS and the public sector operators.
In the vendor space, Chinese equipment manufacturers have captured almost the entire dongle market in India. ZTE has 43 per cent market share while Huawei has close to 55 per cent. Together they have been able to push more than 5 million dongles to operators.
The dongles business is very lucrative for CDMA operators – while their average revenue per user (ARPU) hovers at around Rs 111; ARPU for data cards is more than Rs 700.
Given the importance of the business each operator has already chalked out plans for expanding their EVDO network. RCom plans to expand its Netconnect (Its wireless internet brand) service to 600 towns and cities from the current 69 cities. MTS is also planning to take its MBLaze service to more than 100 cities. Right now it is available in 84 cities; while Tata Photon plus is available in 76 cities.
Operators are also thinking of upgrading to next generation EVDO Rev B platform which will enable them to offer speeds up to 14.3 Mbps. However, none of them have committed a time period for this upgrade.
So far, CDMA operators have had no competition from GSM operators in data connectivity from. But with the launch of 3G in the offing they will soon have to face the onslaught of HSPA data cards. Though HSPA data cards will offer similar speeds, being a GSM product can help their brand.
Kunal Bajaj, director, Analysis Mason, had a different perspective, “I don’t think CDMA camp will face any threat from GSM camp in this space. It will in fact help in expanding the market. Moreover, 3G operators will also have to carry voice in this limited Bandwidth available to them, so they will not be very keen on pure play dongle business, I think they will use 3G to provide better value added services”.
Despite being successful, CDMA operators other than MTS refused to share the number of dongles sold by them. The probable reason for this could be the criticism from GSM operators that CDMA operators are getting unfair advantage as they are able to offer 3G services (EVDO is a 3G standard) without paying for it, While GSM operators have to pay a huge spectrum fee.
Mobiesta to be available on app stores soon
The mobile guide application Mobiesta is going to be available on various application stores soon. The company, which launched operations early this year, has already registered over 10,000 users who are actively using the application.
Udit Joshi, marketing manager, Mobiesta, said, “We have a good following in Delhi NCR region and the user base would increase in leaps and bounds as we move to other cities. To reach out to the same, we are making ourselves available on various App stores.”
The company initially started with Delhi NCR region on a single mobile platform, Java /J2ME. It has now moved to other cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad, and works on the major mobile platforms – Blackberry, Android, iPhone and Symbian.
Speaking about future plans, Joshi said, “We are planning to go pan-India, catering to all major cities like Pune, Chennai and Indore. We are also working on offering our services internationally and catering to all tourist-centric cities of the world.”
Mobiesta also plans to bring in high-end features. Soon, it will offer a payment gateway through which transactions could take place directly. It will also add features such as GPS, user reviews and ratings.
Joshi said, “We would be bringing in GPS in later stages. Mobiesta shall create exclusive apps that would provide information on special events like World Cups, IPL and more. We would also be coming out with Mobiesta applications devoted to specific fields like sports, business and news.”
The company’s business model revolves around mobile marketing. It features banner ads and event listings. He added, “As a vision we aim to create and bring the acceptability of the mobile phone as the new media for advertising and marketing, which is very low in India.”
Idea Cellular, Indian Railways partner for campaign
Telecom services provider Idea Cellular today said it has partnered with Indian Railways to promote its language helpline service.
As part of the campaign, the Idea Language Helpline will be promoted across Indian Railways network for a week with the Idea Language Helpline jingle playing on 139, Idea Cellular said in a statement.
Through this initiative, Idea Cellular wants to connect with crores of travellers during the festive season and introduce the ‘Language Helpline’ in order to assist them in their communication with the people in new city and areas, it added.
“Indian Railways is one of the world’s widest and leading railways network. This gives us a platform to connect with maximum number of passengers across the country, and offer a utility service to crores of passengers,” Idea Cellular Senior vice president of marketing, Anupama Ahluwalia said.
Idea had launched the ‘Language Helpline’ to offer communication support to callers in 16 languages.
Nimbuzz has 2.5 million users in India
Nimbuzz, a Dutch company offering a mobile social networking application, has 2.5 million users in India and globally about six million users log in on the App every day.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Jamshed V Rajan, country head, India, Nimbuzz, said, “Globally, we have crossed 30 million members, and in India, we have about 2.5 million users. Maximum downloads in India come from GetJar and Nokia Ovi store.”
The application comes embedded with mobile phones of 19 handset companies in India and Nimbuzz plans to associate itself with the remaining companies as well.
Rajan also said that Nimbuzz will come up with a push notification service for Symbian and Java platforms by the end of this year.
He said, “We will introduce Nimbuzz Ping by year end. The application will enable offline users to get updated if some of their contacts want to chat with them. It will offer push notification to Symbian and Java users.” Currently, the push notification service is available only to Apple, Android and bada customers.
Speaking on monetisation opportunities, Rajan said, “We will introduce contextual, targeted advertising with our application on Symbian phones. However, this will never become our core focus.”
MTS to offer 14.7 Mbps speeds through CDMA dongles
MTS, the mobile telephony services brand of Sistema Shyam TeleServices (SSTL), plans to upgrade its network to EVDO Rev B platform. This new technology is an advancement over the currently deployed Rev A.
With this new platform, MTS will be able to offer speeds of up to 14.7 Mbps. Currently, the CDMA operator offers speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps through its Rev A network in 84 cities.
The company, however, declined to give a specific timeline on the upgrade.
Leonid Musatov, chief marketing officer, Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), said, “We certainly plan to migrate from Rev A to Rev B; but due to strategic reasons we would not be able to share a definite migration timeline.”
He added, “MTS would like to extend MBlaze to 100 cities by the year end. We intend to cover 20 per cent of the data subscribers’ market share by 2012.”
MTS has 2.5 lakh data subscribers using its MBlaze service (CDMA dongles). It offers MBlaze at speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps in 84 major cities across India.
Leonid Musatov said, “The Wireless Broadband data market is still relatively small, but is growing at an extremely fast pace. Given this context, MTS is clearly one of the major players and leader in the prepaid segment within the Indian mobile broadband market.”
Data subscribers are a very sought after segment as they bring very high ARPU (average revenue per user). For the mobile broadband industry, blended ARPUs (prepaid and postpaid), are generally about Rs 700.
This is why 3G auctions garnered such a high price. Tata Teleservices, which also offers CDMA based high speed data services, has tried the Rev B platform and announced that it too will upgrade its network.
Samsung Galaxy Tab up for grabs
South Korean electronics major Samsung on Friday announced its first tablet PC Galaxy Tab in India.
The device can be booked for Rs 1,000, and will be up for sale from November 10 at Rs 38,000. Booking can also be done via the Samsung web store.
The tablet has been touted by many as an Apple iPad killer and Samsung claims it has features that are missing in the iPad.
Galaxy Tab has a Internal Memory of 16 GB, expandable to 32 GB. And it supports Adobe’s Flash 10.1. It also has two cameras, one in front and another at the back, for video calling. The tablet can be used to make calls using a wired or wireless Bluetooth headset as well.
However as iPad is still not available in the Indian market Galaxy Tab will have to compete with Dell’s 5 inch Android tablet, Streak only.
India is one of the first three markets where the device has been launched – the other two being the USA and some parts of Europe.
Hopeful of the response to the product, Ranjit Yadav, director, mobile and IT, Samsung, said, “The Indian tablet PC market is expected to touch about a million devices in sales over the next 12 months and we are looking at a 50 per cent share of this market.”
Samsung will also partner with telecom operators such as Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, Tata Docomo and RCom to bundle data plans with Galaxy Tab.
Asim Warsi, general manager, marketing, Samsung, said, “We will be putting up specified online pre launch campaigns. There will also be some print and television campaigning which will start with the sales launch on November 10.”
The device will be available across India through 800 key partner stores at select locations.
He added that the Tab has been customised for India. “We have tied up with MapmyIndia for voice guided navigation which will be free for life for users. Then, with the Tab, we are relaunching our music store with over one lakh Indian songs; plus our reader’s hub provides access to 55 Indian newspapers in English and vernacular languages.”
He added that a 2GB Memory card loaded with content, such as the movie 3 Idiots, will be given with the sales pack.
Lemon Mobiles to bring in 3G handsets by November
Lemon Mobiles, a brand promoted by Fastrack Communications, announced that it will roll out affordable 3G handsets by November.
In an official statement the company said that it also has plans to launch an Android phone after it launches its 3G handsets.
Lemon’s first 3G phone will be named W100 and will be available within the price bracket of Rs 3,500.
Sandeep Mushran, director, Fastrack Communications, said, “Though the 3G handset is attractively priced, the acceptance amongst our customers would also highly depend on the tariffs and pricing of 3G services.”
The 3G handset will be available pan India and will include features such as live TV, video calling on 3G network, browser, multimedia and dual camera.