LAS VEGAS-Mforma Group Inc. is the latest mobile-game publisher to get a makeover, dropping its name in an effort to become more consumer-friendly.
The San Francisco-based developer is rebranding as Hands-On Mobile and expanding its portfolio to offer a variety of lifestyle applications in addition to its familiar wireless gaming titles. The company hopes to beef up its off-deck business with an Internet storefront hawking faith-based content and other targeted offerings directly to wireless subscribers.
Hands-On said it’s seeking to increase its distribution channels for licensed, subscription-based offerings from noted names including Billboard and CBS Sportsline. The company also owns licenses from Marvel Enterprises Inc., Universal Pictures and Viacom.
“Part of the name change is focusing on how we take into consideration what the consumer wants,” said Gina Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of the company’s Transformational Applications Group Inc.
Centoni disclosed the news at Billboard Mecca 2006, a day-long wireless entertainment conference hosted by Billboard.
The move follows similar rebranding efforts by U.K.-based publisher I-play, formerly Digital Bridges, and Glu Mobile, the new name of Sorrent Inc. and Macrospace Ltd., which merged last year.
Indeed, the growth of direct-to-consumer third-party content was a theme throughout yesterday’s event. Fox Mobile Entertainment President Lucy Hood used her keynote as a platform to tout Mobizzo, an Internet storefront offering ringtones, images and other content from hit franchises “The Family Guy,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.” The company also plans to act as a content aggregator, offering games from I-play and Airborne and ringtones and images from Warner Music Group and other labels.
The storefront eventually is expected to carry mobile video clips, and Fox plans to introduce content from its hit show “The Simpsons.”
“We believe that some customers will want a quick two-minute laugh on their way to work on the subway,” Hood said, “and we think some customers will want more long-form content.”
It seems aggregators and others looking to sell off-deck content to consumers will need to move beyond ringtones, which account for as much as 90 percent of off-deck revenues. While mobile music clips still generate the lion’s share of third-party revenues, analysts say the window is closing quickly on the ringtone market. The industry will continue to explode in usage, according to American Technology Research analyst Albert Lin, but revenues will decline and eventually disappear altogether as users learn to create their own music clips on computers, digital music players and mobile phones.
“The mobile ringtone industry has peaked and will likely see rates of growth decline (and then go negative) as activity will be concentrated in convenience-based sales that are generated from the phone (spontaneous purchase) as consumers quickly figure out almost any tone that is commercially available can be ripped and taken without charge,” Lin wrote earlier this year.
Others disagree with Lin’s assessment, however, noting substantial uptake in mastertones even as revenues decline from less-sophisticated mobile music clips. Indeed, Billboard said yesterday that it plans to introduce rankings of the top-selling original clips, expanding on its two-year-old ringtone polls.
Research firm iSuppli Corp. last month said mastertones will continue to be a driving force during the next several years as the market for premium mobile content explodes into a $43 billion industry by 2010.
“Mobile music, led by ringtones and ringtunes (clips from original singles), represents the largest and fastest-moving premium-content segment in the wireless world,” iSuppli reported. “The market in 2005 grew rapidly over the $3.8 billion revenue mark achieved in 2004, as the industry made a major transition from traditional polyphonic ringtones to ringtunes.”
