Member News

AIME member Net Mobile to launch new iPhone apps, becomes acquisition target for NTT DoCoMo

05 October 2009

A big shout of congratulations goes out to AIME member Net Mobile AG ( formerly Minick ) this month. The mobile content distribution company’s great work in the European mobile market has caught the attention of Japan's No. 1 mobile operator NTT DoCoMo. The Japanese mobile operator unveiled its intentions late last month to play a much bigger role in the international mobile content delivery services market by announcing a planned takeover of the German value-added services specialist Net Mobile.

Net Mobile provides mobile content distribution and mobile payments services to more than 500 telecom operator and corporate clients around the world. Outside the telecom market, it has partnerships with the major record labels as well as broadcasters and film studios for the distribution of premium music and video content. Net Mobile also has a mobile payments business which is an area that DoCoMo is developing in its home market as the latest addition to its service portfolio expansion.

Commenting on the announcement, Net Mobile’s UK MD Lourens de Beer said the proposed deal has the support of Net Mobile’s Board and other key shareholders such as Swisscom.

“NTT DoCoMo plans to use the net mobile group as a spring board to launch its advanced platform services and technologies in Europe and this will greatly benefit our European and American clients in the very near future,” said de beer. “The deal also includes a significant cash investment in the net mobile group which will help us to fund further developments and enhancements in what is already one of the best mobile services platforms in the market and secure our long term future.”

Meanwhile, the move by Apple to enable in-application billing in its iPhone OS3.0 SDK, is a challenge which Net Mobile has taken up in the development of a suite of application coming to market shortly. In-application billing brings the chance to deliver a free, or almost free, application to iPhone users as a sort of teaser or marketing tool and then charging the user for upgrading to new content within the app. This effectively turns the application into a something that allows for on-going revenue generation and marketing communications with the user.

Net Mobile will be one of the first to bring a live product to market later this month and has teamed up with Mobi Pro to offer professional golf tips.

“This is a key way to monetise content short form content,” says Lourens de Beer. “And it can be tied to anything: a Hollyoaks app, a BBC app, a newspaper app. It allows for value-adds to be sold in an on-going way to consumers through the application.”