Billing on Mobile

Thank you for stopping by to read our blog today.

Since 2008, Billing on mobile has endeavoured to bring you the latest news on important developments in mobile content billing, focussing on the billing of digital content on the mobile web.

As from Monday 19th July 2010 this blog will no longer be updated but instead we will be offering the same expertise from our main blog blog.bango.com . But don’t worry the content of this blog will still be available if you would like to access archived information for reference.

We hope you stop by at blog.bango.com. If you have any topic suggestions that you would like us to write about or are interested in being a guest blogger for us for anything mobile analytics or mobile payments related, please email info@bango.com

Karen Webster from PYMNTS.COM recently interviewed Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Co-founder of Bango. Listen to their discussion on this podcast around mobile payments, how mobile app developers can make money from their mobile apps and the findings from the recently published Bango white paper.

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn about:

• The best ways for developers to make money from their mobile apps
• How the web browser is the best aplication in a mobile phone
• What must developers measure to improve the performance of their apps
• The best payment models for developers
• Results of a road test of the Nokia Ovi store and Android market

Plus much more…

I’ve been experimenting with the Android Market on a variety of phonesover the last few weeks. In particular I’ve downloaded and used several travel apps - flight trackers, city guides etc.

In almost every case, I have taken advantage of Google’s policy of allowing full refund for apps returned within 24hrs to get my money back after using the app - because I’d probably got what I wanted out of the app in the first hour.

Having thought more about this, I realise that I feel a bit uneasy about what I did.  First because of how I “gamed the system” to get value for nothing. But second because the App developers had no protection from what I was doing.

To appear in the Android Market, and help it become more successful, a developer has to allow 24hr “free use” - which seems a bit excessive to me.

Unlike with the iPhone, there is no requirement that Android apps be acquired from Android Market.  Android apps may be obtained from any source including a developer’s own website.  The good news therefore is that if developers want to adopt a different policy - for example in-app Freemium models, pay before you can use, and other payment models they are free to do so.

It will be interesting to see whether Android market drops its 24hrs free use model, or if vendors simply use it as a distribution platform - like GetJar, and take control of their own customer care and refund policies.

You can find out more about in-app payment models in our recently published white paper: “How to make money from mobile apps”.

Bango has released a new white paper “Make money from you mobile apps” which aims to provide an overview of the mobile application marketplace and how application developers can capitalize on this opportunity. This is a summary of what you will learn:

• Overview of the current mobile application marketplace
• Best practices for making the most out of your mobile apps
• How to effectively distribute and market your applications
• How to maximize sales with the right payment model
• How the payment experience affects your sales
• What the future holds for mobile applications

The white paper offers a lot of useful information on how to succeed when putting your application out there. With the large number of applications in the current app market, relying only on app stores to commercialize your apps won’t be enough. Considering alternative payment methods and ways to market outside of the app stores, will have a very positive impact in the revenue you earn. Learn all about it downloading a FREE copy of the white paper “Make money from your mobile apps”.

The idea of creating a channel to market across a large and unified customer base is clearly attractive. The operator-backed Wholesale Application Community is an attempt to achieve this, according to the media read-out, to “rebalance” the domination of Google and Apple in app delivery. WAC appears to have started off on the right lines, by selecting existing capabilities - the Joint Innovation Lab model, and the BONDI standard, for example. Read more

This was the thinking behind Touchnote’s innovative mobile application, which allows people to create and mail cards using their mobiles, from anywhere in the world. The application launched in 2009 after Raam Tahkar, CEO of Touchnote, realized there was a gap in the market and uses in-app billing to charge their customers.

In a recent conversation with Raam, he explained that the idea of Touchnote was born from a simple business model: Capitalize on the billion of photos being taken with camera phones and stored on social networks, such as Facebook.

What a great idea, people love to share photos with friends and family. Touchnote’s application is available on the Nokia Ovi store and Apple app store and soon on others. Cards can be mailed to anywhere in the world from £1.49.

When Touchnote were looking to monetize their application, there were limited in-app billing solutions. They decided to use Bango for in-app billing, as it offered a quick and easy integration, enabling them to charge their customers anywhere in the world.

Touchnote is now one of the most popular applications within the Ovi Store and Apple app store. As they say there’s an app for everything and Touchnote proves that if you spot a gap for an app, you can be a winner!

You can read the full Touchnote case study here

…at least five evidently – and you’re right it’s not funny, especially if you are a mobile app developer trying to build and maintain apps for the growing smartphone market. Google recently revealed high levels of fragmentation in their Android platform and has now announced their own Nexus One handset that uses yet another version of the operating system.

After little more than one year Google have announced over 5 notable Android platforms, 3 of which they strongly recommend app developers support. With all the current hype around mobile apps this is a bit of a reality check for developers hoping to keep things simple and cost effective.

Their “platform version report” can be found on the device dashboard of the Android Developers website. It shows that app developers should at least support versions 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0.1 of Android to reach 96% of customers. To further complicate things the latest range of Android phones, such as the Google Nexus One or Sony Ericsson X10 feature higher resolution screens, which app developers will need to account for in addition to the other new capabilities in version 2.1 of the platform.

But could the Nexus One phone actually help reduce fragmentation rather than making it worse? By introducing their own reference phone Google are effectively raising the bar and giving sharp focus for future Android app development. Developers will naturally tend to release apps on the Nexus One first, which will force other Android handset manufacturers to keep current in order to maintain good compatibility and market share.

Even if the Nexus One solves Android fragmentation it still doesn’t overcome the cost of developing apps across all platforms including Apple, Symbian and Microsoft. Fragmentation is a major part of developing apps for mobile today and is something that needs to be factored into the costs of developing and maintaining any mobile application. For example, to just target the Apple and Google markets an app developer should be looking to build and maintain at least 6 variants (3 each for Google and Apple). Considering these escalating platform costs and the very low sales numbers from the app stores being reported by many developers it makes it crucial to have your market accurately targeted and your business model finely mapped out.

And this is not limited to Android. Although Apple appears to do a better job of upgrading their iPhone platform by retaining tight control over the hardware even they have fragmentation – app developers already need to consider the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. Then there is the big list of bugs resolved in each version along with changes in fonts between 2.0 and 2.1. Apple updates have tended to be bigger and less frequent but innovation has been much slower as a result.

Although you may have a big urge to dive in and develop that trendy app, the wise developers are now looking to the web – both as a way to deliver services without developing apps and as a way to directly sell the apps onto open handsets (i.e. everything except Apple). The web uses standards that work across all handsets and don’t require lengthy approvals to get live – in fact you can be set up and selling in minutes in most countries – see Bango Payment for details. Mobile browsers are getting richer with more functionality as screens get bigger, touch interfaces evolve, Javascript and AJAX work and projects like Google Gears and Bondi are standardizing Javascript APIs for browser access to on-handset services traditionally only available to an application – and even then in different ways depending on handset.

Advancing browser technology on the PC has enabled fully featured “web applications” – there is even a new version of Microsoft Office coming that will run *IN* your browser. With the accelerating pace of mobile technology, it won’t be long before mobile apps will be web based by default.

Google uncaged the best mobile platform for innovation with Android and is now whipping it into the lead position with Nexus One.

There’s great news for O2’s 21 million strong customer base who can now all benefit from the industries fastest single-click Payforit payment experience – thanks to Bango. This includes the wide range of smartphones and significant number of Apple iPhone, Windows Phone and Palm Pre users connecting over O2’s internet gateways.

Customers with smartphones that pay via operator internet gateways using other billing solution can be presented with a poor experience – they may be declined, encounter problems or see additional screens prior to payment. All of which results in significantly lower sales conversion rates and loss of revenue.

By delivering full automatic billing authentication across all network connections on O2 as well as Vodafone, T-Mobile and Three in the UK, Bango consistently provides the best single-click payment experience on all handsets and networks, making it easy for customers to pay on their phone bill every time. Even customers browsing over a Wi-Fi connection are able to pay on their phone bill.

Providing customers with the quickest and easiest way to pay for your mobile content and services is essential for you to sell more and this is just one of the ways Bango gives you 25% more sales than any other mobile billing solution.

Selling your mobile app could not be simpler, you just send it over to your favourite App Store and it gets published to millions of eager consumers – it’s all part of the App Stores 30% revenue share. They take care of all the complex stuff such as secure app delivery and rights management etc.

Well, it appears that’s not the case and people with wooden legs, eye patches and hooks for hands are running riot over at the Apple AppStore. Breaking news already reveals two stories about mobile app piracy. First Mobile Entertainment reported that the creatively titled iPhone developer “Smells like Donkey” revealed its Tap-Fu game saw piracy levels above 80% in its first week of availability. ME then reports that “Fishlabs” revealed its new Rally Master Pro 3D game for the iPhone has been hit by a 95% piracy rate on its first day of availability. I’m sure these initial reports will trigger more over the coming days.

So who should you trust to sell your apps? Well if it is an open system like Android, BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian or Windows Mobile simply sell your apps and content yourself – it’s actually quite simple to take control and reap the benefits – it really is the best way to maximize your sales. By integrating just once with a mobile billing provider like Bango your customers can easily buy using their mobile phone bill, credit card or PayPal internationally.

You will get paid promptly and reliably. As you’re a grown-up, you don’t have to ask Apple’s permission to sell your product, you decide the price point, you see real-time sales and revenue figures. Oh, did I say you get paid promptly and reliably? Some billing methods like credit card will pay you 80% or more of what your customer pays. Even some enlightened network operators will pay you 80% at some price points (thank you, UK carriers). Even if you can only collect 60% of what your customer pays, you will get paid…..that’s right, promptly and reliably. Try it!

If rumours are true, then we can all expect to see more consumers in the USA browsing the web from their smartphone and making purchases soon. According to The Boy Genius Report from September AT&T will provide customers with a suitable data plan for their smartphone.

The high cost of data has long been known to reduce the number of consumers browsing the web from their phone. Reports have shown that people are reluctant to browse, buy or download because of the high data charges and the failure of operators to successfully promote and sell separate add-on data plans to their customers.

In contrast, AT&T has shown that customers with iPhones browse the web far more frequently and that part of the reason can be attributed to the included data plan – it removes the risk of running up high costs. By providing all smartphones with data, AT&T are opening up the full potential of the web to their smartphone customers – a good thing for all.

Some of the other operators are already starting to follow a similar path, further accelerating growth in web browsing from mobile phones. It removes consumer fear of excessive charges and encourages them to browse and buy more. Bango Payment is already optimized to deliver the highest sales conversion rates from smartphones to give you the maximum benefit from AT&T’s decision. Removing blockers to browsing also allows mobile advertising to grow quicker, generating additional revenues for operators and brands alike. Bango Analytics is the most accurate way to measure these mobile marketing campaigns, especially as consumers switch their smartphone connection between their operator network and wifi.