Future Mobile Awards 2009
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The Future Mobile Awards are given to companies that we believe have made significant progress within their sector during the previous year, and are now poised to make considerable market impact in the future.
The awards were granted by a panel of expert judges based on a number of criteria, including: Innovation; Customer retention; Customer growth; Commercial deployment; Ease of use/user interface; Revenue generation; Pricing (for services/products); and Capability/functionality. From a short list of nominations, the case was made for each nominee, with their relative merits and shortcomings debated and scored. Gold and Silver awards were conferred for each category.
The following are the gold and silver category winners and runners up from the Future Mobile Awards 2009:
Mobile Gambling | Mobile Games | Mobile Music | Mobile TV | Mobile Adult | Mobile UGC
Future Mobile Gambling Category
Gold Award: mfuse
A succession of major contract successes during 2008, and significantly deals with William Hill and Sky Bet, has already resulted in a significant rise in the volume of bets placed via mfuse’s proprietory software. The company has established itself as a leader in the mobile betting industry and is well positioned to enjoy further growth in 2009.
Silver Award: Spin3
“Spin 3 continue to impress both with the high quality of their product range and with their expansion into previously untapped markets, most notably Latin America. A number of key deals also resulted in Spin 3’s Gamewire gaming suite underpinning the mobile casino offerings from 32Red, Platinum Play and Spin Palace, among others. A mobile gambling pioneer which remains at the forefront of innovation in its field.”
Future Mobile Games Category
Gold Award: Apple
The combination of the iPhone 3G and the App Store has galvanized the mobile games industry. From a developer’s perspective, Apple has provided a device which enables them to create smooth, compelling, visually attractive games for the mobile which lose little in comparison with console games, together with a business model offering a highly competitive revenue share. For consumers, it has delivered a UI which provides a great gaming experience and ease of use in discovering and downloading content. The result is that even with a comparatively small installed user base, App stores games generated millions of downloads which in turn saw unparalleled levels of gameplay.
Silver Award: Fishlabs
For several years, Fishlabs has specialized in the development of premium 3D titles, and this focus has brought them to the forefront of the industry in terms of both graphics and gameplay. Games such as Powerboat Challenge and Rally Master Pro offer a rich, exciting gaming experience to mobile users. Meanwhile, the company has sought to strengthen its relationship with gamers through the provision of a mobile gaming community, myFISHLABS.
Michael Schade, CEO & Co-Founder of Fishlabs said: “To receive the Juniper Research Future Mobile Awards in the Games Category into second place right behind Apple for innovating the mobile games industry is a great achievement for our company and our products. From the very beginning Fishlabs was constantly pushing the envelope in terms of quality and innovation for both, our games themselves but also the way we sell our products to consumers. With our award-winning mobile games portfolio and our revolutionary free try&buy download model we will change the game of the mobile games industry.”
Gold Award: Apple
Apple narrowly missed out on the Gold Award in this category last year, but with the arrival of the iPhone 3G it was clear that Apple was heading for the top spot on this occasion. Its announcement that full-track downloads were now possible over its 3G network simply set the seal on its triumph. The combination of a handset with a wonderful UI and music player, the capacity to store several thousand tracks, and an easily accessible, user friendly music store is irresistible. Furthermore, the high-profile marketing campaign conducted by Apple has made consumers far more aware of mobile music per se. Frankly, a wonderful boost to the mobile music industry and its consumers.
Silver Award: Shazam
Shazam ID is A clever, addictive application. When integrated with mobile music stores, this not only enables instant recognition of a tune, but also on-the-spot purchases. A smart means of enhancing music downloads and one that is likely to see still higher levels of usage throughout 2009.
Andrew Fisher, CEO at Shazam says: “It’s an honour for Shazam to be acknowledged as a company that has made such a mark in the mobile music industry and this award is testament to the dedication of our team to offer customers the best mobile music discovery experience. Shazam has enjoyed rapid growth over the past year with its incredibly popular iPhone and Android applications; and with more than 20 million end-users of the first mobile-specific music discovery service we’re continuing to develop our technology so we can continue to create the best possible music journey for our customers.”
Gold Award: Telegent
It is fair to say that Telegent’s achievement – developing chipsets capable of receiving signals from terrestrial television networks at low power consumption – is one which will cause the mobile broadcast TV industry to rethink its strategy with regards to the deployment of dedicated networks. While Telegent are not alone in producing such chipsets, they are undoubtedly the most successful chipset manufacturer in this regard, shipping more than 20 million handsets over the past 18 months, and enabling consumers to enjoy live, free-to-air broadcasts.
Weijie Yun, President and CEO of Telegent Systems said: "Telegent has taken a unique approach in the mobile TV industry by focusing on products that enable consumers to receive free and familiar content over both analog and digital broadcast TV standards. In particular, by harnessing the global reach of existing analog broadcast infrastructure, Telegent has provided manufacturers with a global footprint for their products and consumers around the world with mobile access to their preferred programming. We are extremely pleased to have received this award and with it, the acknowledgement of an analyst house as well respected as Juniper Research."
Silver Award: ROK TV
2008 was a particularly good year for ROK TV. The service was rolled out in key markets such as China, India, Mexico and Turkey, offering mass market consumers the opportunity to watch a high-quality, on-demand streamed mobile TV service for the first time. These successful deployments resulted in ROK’s subscriber base rising sharply, from 700,000 in mid-2008 to more than 2.5 million by November.
Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and CEO of ROK Entertainment Group comments: “The is wonderful recognition by Juniper that ROK TV, our high-quality, mass-market mobile TV service, is best of breed in unicast live and on-demand streamed content.”
Future Mobile Adult Services Category
Gold Award: DisPlayBoy
DisPlayBoy’s mobileABC is a full-service, end-to-end product for the mobile adult market. Offering an attractive Livecam application, together with Mobile search engine marketing ,and search engine optimization, direct operator billing and a robust content management system, mobileABC is a new and exciting product offering content providers and operators a fast route to market.
Stefan Kathmeyer, CEO of DisplayBoy GmbH commented: “We are delighted to be awarded the Golden Future Mobile award, particularly since we are receiving it from such a renowned and respected body as Juniper Research. The Future Mobile Awards simply confirms that we are on the right track developing solutions for the mobile internet.”
Silver Award: Cherrysauce
Cherrysauce continues to be at the forefront of the mobile adult industry, offering top-of-the-range B2B services and solutions that were among the leading drivers of adult content across a variety of markets during 2008.
Julia Dimambro, Managing Director and Founder says: “Cherry Media is thrilled, after more than 6 years service to the Mobile Entertainment Industry, to receive our second Juniper award, which makes the 10th award in our trophy cabinet in total. We have always championed our consumers’ requirements rather than accept industry subjectivity. It is indeed possible to commercially blend consumer needs and regulatory requirements. Juniper’s gratefully received recognition vindicates our position that consumer context converts content. We salute those amongst us who know and respect this.”
Future Mobile UGC Services Category
Gold Award: Twitter
A wonderfully simple service, which utilizes mobile’s first mass market data applications – text messaging – to provide a compulsive, easy to use social messaging service, to which mobile users have responded with enthusiasm in their millions.
Silver Award: MocoSpace
A mobile social networking site that experienced tremendous growth in 2008, attracting some 5 million users by the end of 2008 and becoming one of the most popular mobile sites in the US.
Justin Siegel, CEO and co-founder of MocoSpace said: "We're very pleased and honored to be recognized by the Future Mobile Awards 2009 as a leader in mobile. At Moco we've always prided ourselves on building a great experience and a great brand and with the momentum we realized in 2008 like passing 5 million registered members and 2 billion pages a month its strong evidence we've been able to deliver real value to for this young mobile media generation."
*All comments are from the awards panel judges
Contact
For more information on the awards or to contact someone on the future mobile awards team please contact John Levett on john.levett@juniperresearch.com or telephone +44(0)1256 830002
More Information
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