Billing on Mobile

…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 [...]

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 [...]

The popularity of Smartphones and high end  mobile devices, such as Blackberries,  the Apple iPhone, Nokia Series, means that Wi-Fi is appearing more frequently as a user connection method accross a range of handsets. In fact  Bango has recently released some stats showing that over 20% of people visiting web sites to purchase content using [...]

Probably not but some doubts are now circulating as to whether it makes sense to focus all your efforts on selling mobile content through app stores.

John Strand of Strand Consult, who’s been advising mobile operators on strategy for many years, is once again making us all sit up and question:

Is Apple’s App Store really [...]

App Stores for mobile phones do seem to be flavor of the month, judging by the announcements at Mobile World Congress this month.

Along came Apple and launched a highly successful iPhone App Store and now nearly all the major handset vendors - Nokia, RIM, Google to name a few - have or are jumping [...]

In this economy, all of us are looking at how we can save money. But we should also be looking at how we can increase revenue.

“Don’t leave money on the table that should be yours,” warned Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango. “Just as a bank may not always pass on interest [...]

If you are looking for a mobile billing solution and think that Premium SMS is the obvious choice for selling your mobile content then it’s probably worth taking a closer look at what other options you have. There are two things to bear in mind:

What’s the user experience going to be?  A poor experience will [...]

Yet more bandages are being applied to Premium SMS based subscription services with the new rules introduced today by UK regulator PhonepayPlus.

The rules (detailed in Regulation of Mobile Phone-paid Services and their Marketing) aim to curb the abuses with subscription services where Premium SMS is the billing method. 

This will protect consumers from rises in [...]

The best way of understanding the recent changes in mobile billing is to think of the mobile content industry as an oil tanker. Previously, it has been moving in a northerly direction in the Premium SMS sea. But the captain (think of mobile operators here) has given the order and now our oil [...]