• FlashGAMM in Moscow (May 14th)
• Social Gambling & Gaming Summit in Berlin (May 14th-15th)
• The App Summit in Las Vegas (May 21st)
• CTIA 2013 in Las Vegas (May 21st-23rd)
• Casual Connect Asia in Singapore (May 21st-23rd)
• Nordic Game 2013 in Malmö (May 22nd-24th)

Attending one of these events? Send us an e-mail at bd@fortumo.com and let’s meet up!

From May 7th to May 8th, over 10 thousand participants from the mobile industry – including Fortumo – will gather for keynotes, networking and experiencing new technologies first-hand in the exhibition area.

Fortumo provides the broadest mobile payments coverage in 80 countries and supporting all major platforms. In addition to payments over the web and in Android & Windows 8 apps, we recently launched payments for NOOK and Windows Phone devices as well. Interested in reaching overseas markets through a simple payment solution with great conversion? Send us an e-mail at bd@fortumo.com to set up a meeting during GMIC.

From April 3rd to April 5th Fortumo is exhibiting at the Guangzhou Game Show in Guangzhou, China. With an estimated 200,000 people in attendance, Guangzhou is the largest game conference in Southern China. Fortumo has also been selected to give a speech at the conference. In the speech, our VP Gerri Kodres will provide tips and recommendations on what Asian game developers should do to expand to Western markets.

So, if you are an Asian developer looking for billing and distribution outside of China or a Western developer looking to enter the huge and growing Chinese market, you are welcome to visit our booth in Guangzhou Game Show on Thursday and Friday. You can also send e-mail at bd@fortumo.com to set up a meeting.

In total over 23 thousand games industry professionals will be attending these events and Fortumo will be there as well.

For the next two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) we will be participating at Game Connection and starting from tomorrow will be joining GDC too. If you want to learn more about monetizing users on the web and in Android, Windows 8 & Windows Phone apps or would just like to meet up for a chat, let us know at bd@fortumo.com. You are also welcome to drop by Table 252 at Game Connection and look out for the guys in red jackets at Game Developers Conference.

The first reason why feature phones are not yet dying out is data connections. The main advantage of smartphones – apps and cloud services – are mostly useful only when the user is connected to the internet. Looking at worldwide data from Ericsson, 3G connections (WCDMA/HSPA) are currently available only to ~45% of people in the world. Even though the prediction says ~85% of people will have access to 3G by 2017, this still means four years of billions of people not having full functionality on their smartphones.

Secondly, there will always be people who prefer older technologies. Even though the idea of a “post-PC era” of tablets and smartphones widely circulates in the media, there are still 350M traditional PCs (desktops & laptops) sold annually. Nokia just recently announced a new 20$ feature phone. The benefits of older technologies is that they are often cheaper and more durable. In emerging economies, this can be the key factor for deciding which phone to purchase. What does this mean for developers?

From the perspective of mobile payments, feature phones should not be discarded yet. There are 3 billion mobile phones running Java globally and enabling users to pay on these devices can help expand revenue. In addition to payments made over the Internet on such devices, games built on J2ME can also be potentially lucrative.

Since feature phones are not going anywhere during the next few years, we have created a customized payment flow of Fortumo web payments for use on feature phones. The solution automatically recognizes when a feature phone environment is being used and morphs itself to enable payments on phones without in-app payment capabilities. Click here to see what the payment flow looks like in a feature phone.

All you need to do to your existing Fortumo web payment integrations is to add the v=wap parameter to force the feature phone friendly flow, but as stated early, we will do this automatically if we see a feature phone.

There is no reason to leave billions of feature phones out of the mobile payments ecosystem. If you want to make sure that even more people have access to your payments, check out how to integrate payments for feature phones in our Developers Portal.

After a short tour of the office, the ambassador sat down to talk with Fortumo co-founder Martin Koppel and VP of Business Development Gerri Kodres about the mobile payments industry, its future and how Fortumo could be more involved with the UK.

Under discussion were also business development opportunities and help which Fortumo can provide to British developers looking to increase their export through mobile payments.

Thank you for the visit and we look forward to seeing you again!

Based on feedback from developers who are already using Windows 8 payments solution, our development team has been busy upgrading it and adding additional features. Today, we are launching a new version of the product with two major updates: support for Windows Phone and cross-device integration.

The new version has less code and makes integration of mobile payments with Microsoft devices significantly faster. Developers can now use a single SDK to activate payments in all Microsoft devices: desktops, laptops and tablets running Windows 8 & smartphones running any version of the Windows Phone operating system.

The improved native SDK also reduces the payment friction and users can make payments with 2 simple clicks. For the end-user buying virtual coins or unlocking new features, payments are completed without leaving the app, leading to better payment conversion and increased revenue.

Developers already using Fortumo payments in Windows 8 can upgrade in their own time as we will continue to support the previous version – however, you should definitely test out the native user experience and payments on Windows Phone as well. If you’re new to Fortumo, all you need to do is install the NuGet Fortumo package and write a couple of lines of code:

using Fortumo;
using FortumoWindowsPhone; //or using FortumoWindows

//Create the Fortumo object, use your Service ID and secret.
Payment p = new Payment(“serviceID”, “secret”);

//subscribe to the Completed event (see PaymentCompleted function below)
//do this right after creating the Payment object to make sure that
//you don’t miss out on any “completed” notifications
p.Completed += PaymentCompleted;

//add extra parameters
p.AddParameter(“cuid”, “my_users_id”);

//show the payment window.
p.Show();

You can download the latest Fortumo Windows 8 Payments Library from your Fortumo Dashboard and read more about the changes in our developers portal.

If you happen to be in Birmingham on Thursday, send us an e-mail at bd@fortumo.com and lets meet up!

We will have some great updates to share about our Windows 8 payments soon, but as a reminder for now: all developers who integrate before May 31st will receive 6 months of free payment processing. Try it out!

During our five years in business, Fortumo has always taken a somewhat different approach.

While others are focusing primarily on the US and large Western European markets, Fortumo has given equally strong emphasis on emerging and growth markets where credit card penetration may be low but mobile usage is very high.

While others are focusing on large merchants alone, Fortumo is also servicing a “long-tail” of small and medium-sized merchants (via self-service setup on our website), giving them the same access to the billing capabilities world’s largest mobile operators that Angry Birds and Facebook have.

And, while others are focusing primarily on desktop, Fortumo has paid a lot of attention to solving mobile payments within a mobile device, like in-app payments on Android (and now on Windows 8) as well as HTML5 mobile apps.

Taking a different approach from others has enabled Fortumo to grow fast, and – equally important – profitably. Thus, when we’re now welcoming our first outside shareholders since our founding in 2007, we’re doing it because we at Fortumo believe that Intel and Greycroft can add additional value to our business and help us to take Fortumo to the next level.

The deal does not change much in terms of Fortumo’s strategy or day-to-day operations. However, it will help us better pursue more growth opportunities in the $200 billion mobile payments market, including additional business lines, strategic partnerships and acquisitions.

I want to thank our partners and customers: we’ll continue to be the best mobile payments provider we can be. We’ve got a few more exciting announcement coming in the next weeks and months. Stay tuned!

Full press release here.

It might seem that Google Play with its massive coverage is the best way to reach all Android users. Unfortunately, the average user downloads only 40 apps for their phone while Google Play has 700 000 available apps. This makes gaining visibility expensive and user retention tricky due to hundreds or thousands of competing apps. Fighting for attention in Google Play is definitely worth it, but it would also be smart to try out alternative channels where the competition is less tough.

In addition to Google Play, there are over thirty different app stores available for Android. Smaller competition means better chances for getting noticed and it also lets you market your app to a targeted audience. For example, with O2 Appstore you can advertise regionally in the UK or promote only to Samsung device owners when your app is published in Samsung Apps.

Trying out alternative marketplaces is not accompanied by any additional costs since a large majority of them do not charge for publishing apps. More importantly, mobile payments are supported in almost all of them so you can be certain that all of the users can actually pay you (after all, they are downloading your app for a mobile device) which can not be guaranteed with credit cards.

For some developers, publishing in alternative stores is the only solution – China and Brazil are notable countries whose developers can not distribute freemium apps on Google Play, while premium apps are supported for developers in 32 countries.

Additional distribution does not require you to invest extra money, but it does require time to figure out which app stores to focus on, complete the submissions and later keep track of the data. Since the Android user base is fragmented, it makes sense to involve a partner who knows the ecosystem and can provide support.

Fortumo has established relationships with almost 20 app stores and we can help you get your app published. If you are interested in taking advantage of the additional distribution channels, let us know at bd@fortumo.com.

App Planet will occupy two areas within Fira Gran Via, bringing mobile developers and industry experts together to share their ideas and showcase new technologies.

If you would like to arrange a meeting with Fortumo at MWC, please email us at mwc@fortumo.com or drop by our stand at Hall 8.1, Stand 8.1C40. See you in Barcelona!

Android is the undisputed mobile OS volume leader. Android currently holds nearly 70 percent share of the global smartphone market.

Android is closing the gap with iOS in terms of revenue. Previously, there has been an issue with Android not monetizing well. This is changing fast – Google Play revenue doubled during the last three months and the gap with Apple’s App Store is closing fast.

Flexibility of Android allows for many sources of revenue. In addition to Google Play, there are dozens of other app stores (global, regional and preloaded such as Samsung Apps) and alternative revenue streams (carrier billing, advertising) available for Android. This means developers don’t have to depend on one channel for success. If all the alternative channels are added up, Android might already be very close or equal in revenue to iOS.

Freemium is overtaking premium on Android, especially in gaming the segment. In January 2012, revenue from Google Play’s freemium and premium apps were roughly equal. Nine months later, freemium app revenue was three times bigger than premium app revenue. Freemium works better on Android because of several reasons:

1. Users don’t want to risk paying for a low-quality application
2. App-store billing is weak (e.g. low coverage for mobile payments)
3. There are free alternatives available to paid apps
4. App piracy

If the outlined arguments have convinced you to aim for a freemium business model on Android, I would suggest doing the following to increase probability of success:

1. Go for emerging markets, these offer the best potential for Android
2. Use carrier-billing, which can help you to monetize almost all mobile users (almost 5 billion phone owners as opposed to 1 billing with credit card)
3. Payments need to be priced locally. One dollar in USA is much less valuable than one dollar in China – adjust your prices according to the market
4. Use many distribution channels, combine the alternative channels with “official” Android channel

Fortumo can help you with carried billing as well as getting access to alternative distribution channels.

If you want to find out more about how to better monetize your Android app, let us know at bd@fortumo.com.

Fortumo will be attending as well – find one of our guys wearing distinctive red jackets or visit booth #9 at the Bronze Room. You can also book a meeting in advance by e-mailing us at bd@fortumo.com.