The polish economy is seen as the one of the European best performing economies during the global crisis. Poland is expected to have a positive GDP growth in 2009 and probably will be the only country in EU10 to achieve that. Still, the tougher conditions force people to find saving possibilities where possible and business to find new sources of income. These conditions facilitate polish e-commerce market to evolve.  More and more people tend to buy goods online and internet transactions are expected to make up 15% of all purchase transactions in 2010.

Mobile penetration in Poland
Source: UKE report on the state of polish telecommunications market (http://www.uke.gov.pl/)

Some part of online transactions may be classified as micropayments, which usually amount to about 1 - 80 PLN. As mobile penetration rate in Poland grows to 116.8% in Q3 2009 (Central Statistical Office), the mobile payments through Premiums SMS seem to be the most favourable payment channel for micropayments. M-payments are very convenient for users and can be used by everyone owning a mobile phone. Polish customers, still a bit anxious about the security of other payment channels like credit cards or virtual wallets, more eagerly use SMS payments for small online purchases. On the other hand, business owners looking for new income sources benefit from the access to the wider group of potential customers, including those not willing or not able to use internet banking or other payment solutions.

According to Frost & Sullivan report Money in Mobile – European Transactions, mobile payment market in Western Europe is expected to reach 4-5 billion EUR in 2013. However, in Poland m-payment market is still in early development phase. Thanks to cooperation of main polish mobile operators and banks in March 2009 the first polish m-payment guidance programme has been established. Sharifah Amirah, the main analyst of the telecommunications sector at Frost & Sullivan, says that “It is worth to introduce new technologies, because Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe could soon catch up with their Western partners. (…) Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary have the chance to outstrip the technological level of infrastructure of developed European countries and begin to apply modern methods of payment using a SIM card on a wider scale.” [1]

Another study, IEMR’s Poland Mobile Payment Market Forecast, expects that the gross transaction value of mobile payments in Poland will reach $1.16 billion in 2013. All these information can only confirm that mobile payment and value added services sector in Poland is facing towards a good direction. In these “recession times” it may turn out that m-commerce is the best opportunity for cost-effective development of already running business as well as a good starting point for new entrepreneurs.

[1] http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/press-release.pag?docid=185179726

Well, this just might be a bit overdue, but we just felt the need to share some of the positive buzz and enthusiasm we experienced at biZbuZZ conference that took place in Niš, Serbia last month.

biZbuZZ is a annual conference dedicated to internet commerce, and it pretty much gathers most of Serbian internet ’scene’ – and some of prominent bloggers, entrepreneurs and internet folk from the region. This year, we had the pleasure of participating with a keynote on mobile and micropayment in general, with a special focus on Fortumo’s take on the topic (you can see the English language version of presentation and video footage in Serbian after the brake).

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Nowadays everyone is speaking about virtual goods market- its key players and who should be involved. Some say it is only for social networks and online games, others are determine that others could also ride on that wave. It’s no wonder, analysts estimate, this year, virtual goods revenue will be $1 billion in the U.S. and about $5 billion worldwide. Another analyst predicts annual revenues will reach $15 billion by 2012. Things have become even more interesting as already universities have been involved to study virtual goods buying habits to have more solid projections for the whole ecosystem (you can read more from here). But what do we know about virtual goods market so far?

Online games were the first adopters of virtual goods. They started to offer users the ability to upgrade their game characters and tools with new features for a small fee. Many such games generate most of their revenue using a virtual goods model.

Social networks were the next ones, they enable members to send virtual hugs, cards and other gifts for much less than buying and mailing a tangible gift to a friend. As most of the people have an account in at least one social network, it has rapidly grew into really big business as everything is moving online these days.

Others, such as luxury brands are beginning to deal with virtual goods as add-on, just-for-fun services. Such companies choose to adopt virtual goods as it is a great way for brands to get additional reach and put a brand in an environment where people can interact with it.

The biggest benefit is the incredible profit margin for virtual goods. Online games for example are providing virtual goods that do not have outstanding manufacturing or physical distribution costs. Marketing virtual goods is minimal as well—most promotion occurs via social media. So basically everything they make is the pure profit.

It is an interesting time with a lot of opportunities and I believe many cool changes are to come. So lets get all virtual and be part of the revolution. I also advice to see the presentation below about virtual goods market in Asia, you’ll be surprised what is actually happening there.

This time in section Fortumo user tells a story we would like to introduce you a neat web and SMS-service developed by Lapadoo. translate.lapadoo.com is a web based translation service that brings translation to your cellphone. No need to have any separated application or even Internet access, the whole translation is done via SMS.

“The service is intended for all those who need translation help while being abroad without access to a computer or dictionary. All you need is to know the phrase you want to translate and your cell phone. “

Where did the idea of offering and starting a service like that come from?

Like many other good ideas, the mobile translation service was born while drinking beer with my buddies. One of my friends was telling me about a comical failure he had due to not understanding the local language. While listening to his story, it suddenly occurred to me – I should make a  service that allows people to translate sentences from one language to another despite the location and situation.

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“Many grains of sand piled up will make a pagoda”, “Little drops of water make the mighty ocean”, there exist many other similar expressions in all civilizations. Actually, they are all about the perception of the quantitative relativity. Sorry, in human words, they are all depicting the idea “Small can be also big”.

The idea seems to be simple. However, as we are evolving from the material based world to knowledge based world, many people still have difficulties to get rid of their old value system. Despite the fact that in the physical world, materials are scarce while in the virtual world, products Read the rest of this entry »

For a while we have been telling you that the financial crisis is not a problem for the owners of mobile services. Look at some facts here, that are taken from IDC Cema’s market alerts and support this thesis.

• Romanian Telecoms Market Expanded 17.1% YoY to $4.8 in 2008
• Central Asia will Continue Flocking to Mobile Telecoms Services
• Broadband and Mobile Data Revenues to Double in Slovakia
• Croatian IT Market Totaled $1.34 B
• Serbian IT Market Totaled $891.71 M

Be mobile!

It’s always great experience to communicate with start-up people. They have the most creative and ambitious mind among us. By luck, I have the opportunity to talk with many undergoing start-up project owners. Frankly, I think they all have brilliant ideas. However, many times it is just frustrating as I get to know they suffered from the same start-up myth.

“I run a web 2.0 start-up. I think to get users has priority over profit. After I have users, I can have all sorts of monetization models.” Actually, most of the start-up owners embrace this belief, despite the fact that facebook’s or twitter’s case is just one out of a hundred. In reality, the other 99 Read the rest of this entry »

June in Taipei is always the best time to spot the latest IT trend and to bump into some big heads of IT industry while Computex is taking place. This year’s ritual has been even more flavored with the publicity from the WiMax Expo held at the same time. The public attention is focusing on “WiMax on the move”.  The new gen mobile internet, provided by the local WiMax connectivity provider “VMAX”, is now accessible for free on one of the metro lines.

Since the issuing of 6 licenses, WiMax Read the rest of this entry »

Have we not heard enough about economic crises?  Global recession has been a terrifying fact ingrained in our minds.  However, the Chinese word for crisis (危機) is composed of two ideograms — the first ideogram (危) means danger while the second ideogram (機) represents opportunity.  The economic crisis indeed presents itself as a danger, and yet the opportunities embedded in this concept can be seen in our ever-growing SMS industry.  As the Chinese saying goes — a crisis is also a turning point — our colleague Alex has proven to us with a great example about mobile advertising revenue .

Positive evidences from Mobile industry are more: Texting 4 Health Conference presented at Stanford University shows the expected growth in SMS users and the traffic volume:

1,900 millions users are expected in 2011, and 2,300,000 millions of messages will be reached overall in 2011, with a stable and soaring expansion in Asia market.  Pyramid Research also suggests that SMS will continue to generate the highest share of global mobile data revenue, expecting to double to $ 300 billion, by 2012.

With all the innovative and 0-budget M-Business models which Fortumo provides you with, as well as our multi-countries functionality in Europe and Asia, now it is your turn to look on the bright side of a crisis — mobilise your creativity, stay mobile, and turn crises into opportunities!

No matter where you live – US, Denmark, Romania or China, you’ll hear words like ‘recession’, ‘global crisis’ and ‘decline’ several times each day. And although most of the industries have felt the harsh bite of the economy winding down, there are some good news, especially for those involved in mobile and web services.

According to a new report released by Magna last week, the market for mobile advertising will grow by 36%, rising from $169 million in 2008 to $229 million during 2009. The numbers represent US market only, but judging by several key factors, such as the extend of recession in the US compared to Europe, and the user’s habits (Europeans tend to use text/SMS and advanced mobile services more than customers in the US), we definitely have something to look forward to.

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