The note which has fallen into Pandora’s hands suggests instead that they support a
The note, which has fallen into Pandora’s hands, suggests instead that they support a range of Blairite candidates. “I understand from conversations with members, that many of the candidates standing for the constituency section of the NEC are unknown to you,” reads the (supposedly) personal missive “Some members have asked me who I am supporting and why. Last year, Walter Wolfgang was grabbed by the collar and ejected from the Labour Conference, for accusing Jack Straw of talking “nonsense”. Twelve months on, supporters of Tony Blair have launched another campaign against the harmless, left-leaning pensioner. This time, they hope to prevent him being elected to Labour’s ruling NEC.
On-message backbench MPs have been instructed to sign a “dummy” letter to Labour activists in their constituency, urging them to vote against Wolfgang in this month’s election. Improving the Chinese market in the long-term could produce similar spending splurges as more Chinese people get hold of mobile phones.
But until the promise of legitimate mobile content has been proven to generate sustainable recurring revenue in a number of regions, Monstermob’s message might be lost amidst a cacophony of bleeping “stop” text messages.. Neighbouring Japan and South Korea have some of the highest mobile phone revenue per user rates in the world, driven by huge amounts of content and not just the Crazy Frog. He said he expects to gain market share once smaller players have been weeded out. If Monstermob does remain a key partner of China Mobile’s over the coming years, it could recover some lost ground. “It’s a very bleak market to be operating in,” Mr Darley said. Mr de Masi said that although third-quarter results will suffer from the regulatory move, he expects Monstermob’s revenue to start recovering in the fourth quarter.
When the company reports results in September, it will provide more clarity about the specific impact of the Chinese situation. Mr de Masi said that after some short-term pain as the market is restructured, Monstermob still expects to be a “top-four player” in Chinese mobile content. The company said that the regulatory intervention is likely to impair its ability to acquire and retain new subscribers, and it will take steps to migrate revenue to single-purchase sales. Other Chinese operators, such as China Netcom, China Unicom and China Telecom, could also tighten content subscription guidelines. Many ceased purchasing content for mobile phones altogether, while others steered clear of independent content producers such as Monstermob and Jamdat. Instead, consumers started using mobile phone company portals for mobile content, as well as other ” trusted” brands like The Sun.
The move by the Chinese authorities suggests that similar problems have occurred in the Far East. Monstermob, which has bought a number of Chinese content developers over the past year, expects a significant short-term impact. About 50 per cent of its current net revenue has been derived from China, and about 40 per cent of that revenue is subscription-based. Jamster’s Crazy Frog, the mobile content golden goose, proved the worst offender, but all mobile operators were affected.
Understandably, the scandal left a bad taste in the public’s mouth. Anecdotally, mobile content companies offering one-time downloads of content found that many users would text “stop” after each purchase even though it was not necessary to do so. Andrew Darley, a KBC Peel Hunt analyst, said: “The basis of these subscriptions appears to be that the customer either forgets about the subscription or does not even know they have been registered. All China Mobile is doing is reminding people they can easily cancel these subscriptions.” In the UK, Monstermob’s home market, the telecoms regulator, Ofcom, acted after consumers, many of them children attracted to cartoon characters and pop ringtones, did not realise they had signed up to relatively expensive monthly subscription payments for content they did not want. Nasdaq-listed Chinese content specialists such as Sina, Tom Online, KongZhong Corp and Linktone will also feel the heat as a result of China Mobile’s crackdown. After Mr Higginson’s departure, Mr Snook talked of pushing the share price back above 300p, “where it belongs”. Yet after the Chinese policy change, Monstermob’s shares crashed a further 59 per cent to 56p.