Amp’d Mobile branches beyond MVNO mold

Amp’d Mobile Inc. is racking up deals to offer its unique content and user interface abroad, and reap the benefits of revenue sharing without the effort and expense of expanding its mobile virtual network operator business. Two international partnerships are slated to go live in March.
“We see ourselves as a global, mobile entertainment company who has an MVNO business here in the U.S.,” said Bill Stone, president of Amp’d Mobile. Now, he said, the company is “taking the secret sauce of Amp’d Live … and beginning to export this around the world.”
The first deal announced was with Canadian carrier Telus Corp., which has 4.6 million wireless subscribers and wanted a way to better serve the youth market in Canada. Stone de-scribed that partnership as a “hybrid model,” where Telus will take care of back-office operations and Amp’d will handle marketing, events and providing content that appeals to the demographic. The service will be marketed as “Amp’d powered by Telus” and Amp’d will receive a revenue share based on what customers generate.
“They’re really looking to Amp’d to compete for them in the marketplace for content and data subscribers,” Stone said, against competitors such as Fido and Virgin Mobile.
In Japan, however, Amp’d is partnering with carrier KDDI Corp. with an integrated portal model. Amp’d content will be available on about 20 million KDDI handsets immediately, Stone said, and the company will receive a share of the revenue generated by users’ consumption of content. The service will include both a la carte and subscription services, and access to games, music, and the “rich graphic interface” from Amp’d that will be exclusive in the Japanese market, Stone said.
In both countries, Amp’d is opening up facilities including a studio that will allow content from those countries to be recorded for their respective domestic audiences and exported back to the U.S. The company is moving into its Canadian quarters this month, Stone said.
He added that Amp’d is in talks with “a whole bunch of folks around the world,” and that it will consider all three of its models-MVNO, hybrid or integrated portal-as it approaches expansion into other international markets. However, he added, because of the amount of effort involved in launching an MVNO, the company is likely to take “less is more’ as a guiding principal” in its overseas endeavors.
“That doesn’t mean we will never do another MVNO, but that’s not what we’re leading with in other countries,” Stone said.
Stone hinted that Amp’d would be releasing some of the results for its U.S. MVNO in the upcoming weeks. Although he declined to be specific just yet, he did confirm that the numbers are in line with predictions made last year by Amp’d CEO and founder Peter Adderton. Adderton told RCR Wireless News at the time that his company was on track to gain between 100,000 and 150,000 subscribers by the end of 2006.
Amp’d has also been seeing success with its content. The company offers big-brand syndicated content, content from exclusive partners (such as live streamed Ultimate Fighting Championship matches and clips from artists who visit the Amp’d studio), and its own unique offerings, dubbed Amp’d Originals.
Stone said that although original content from Amp’d makes up less than 5 percent of the content on the MVNO’s deck, it generates a whopping 30 percent of the content views. Original content currently offered by the MVNO includes variety show about the “eclectic culture” of Venice Beach, Calif.; a show about struggling casino cover bands; and Moto Mark, in which the host holds “highly charged political discussions with hot models.”
This popularity isn’t going unnoticed. “Lil Bush: Resident of the United States”, an irreverent mini-mobi-series involving pint-sized versions of President George W. Bush and his political cronies Lil Condie, Lil Rummy and others taking on childhood dilemmas, was recently picked up by Comedy Central for development into a television show. Stone said that other players in the entertainment industry who are seeking to go mobile are starting to look to Amp’d to provide an in-road.
“We’re debuting content on mobile and what’s happening is that the media companies are picking it up to take it to TV,” Stone said. “You’re going to see a lot more of that.”
With the flurry of activity in the first quarter and “active discussions” with potential partners in other countries for Amp’d content, Stone said that the company is trying to balance its efforts to capitalize on new market opportunities and still make sure all of its ventures are successful.
“We want to make sure we don’t get spread too thin, do too much too quick and not do anything well,” he said. “We’re being very methodical.”