Feature

Mobile Briefs

Networks & Network Services

Mobile marketing company i-movo has hooked up with mobile technology provider i-text to launch a text-for-ads service – users send text messages for free in return for viewing ads on their phones.The number of free texts will be down to the advertiser. i-text reckons this approach delivers a degree of measurability that goes well beyond the traditional ‘pay per click’ models used by search engines.Macromedia Flash is now being shipped on more than 45m mobile phones and consumer electronics devices, says Adobe Systems. British mobile content company Monstermob has signalled its ambitions by acquiring the top Russian mobile content business Mobicon. The price depends on Mobicon’s audited earnings but is expected to be around $27m, with an initial $15m up front. Ericsson has fixed up a pan-European mobile music agreement with EMI Music covering the ringtones and full-track downloads from a catalogue that includes the likes of Coldplay, Gorillaz, Norah Jones, KT Tunstall, and Robbie Williams. Around 12,000 ringtunes and 200,000 full-track downloads will be made available to consumers through Ericsson’s white-label portal solution, which the company describes as “the most widely commercially deployed personalised mobile music service among operators today”.MobileMusicDirectory.com is a web directory for sourcing mobile content including ringtones, news, video, sports, and games. It’s US-oriented, which means some of the offerings will be fresh to the European market.SBB, the Swiss railways company, has started offering MMS ticketing alongside its existing SMS MobileTicket service. A barcode sent to the phone can be read as a valid ticket by the ticket agent on the train.