The Right Connection

Irish Independent 21st March 2007

Dublin-based Xiam Technologies is a pioneer in the area of mobile content retailing and has customers in South East Asia, South America, North America and Europe.

‘We’ve seen very strong interest over the last 18 months and are on the brink of doing two large deals’

With the portal presence of mobile phone operators becoming increasingly important for ensuring customer loyalty and brand-building, Xiam Technologies has developed a suite of products designed to make the mobile portal experience a more relevant one for individual subscribers. Employing 30 people, the company’s strategy over the coming years is to continue selling content management and content marketing solutions to network operators.

Even in the world’s most developed mobile phone markets, the current take-up of portal services is estimated to be just 5pc. “One of the big problems is that the portals are very generic:’ explains Martin Clancy, Marketing Communications Manager at Xiam Technologies. “It doesn’t mean anything if everyone is getting the same messages, advertisements and information on the portal. One reason why the take-up is still quite low is that it’s not really seen as a meaningful experience.”
The company’s flagship product, MPOS was launched in 2005 to address this problem by helping mobile operators increase their mobile content revenues tlrough one-to-one marketing and by automatically promoting and retailing premium services directly to individuals. “What we’re trying to address with MPOS is how to best dustomise that portal and its content so that, when you log on, you’ll see content that is relevant to you,” says Clancy. “The idea is that operators will sell more content and the experience will become more significant to the subscriber.”

Different modules in the MPOS set of products allow operators to manage and deliver content, create a centralised metadata view of all content and services on a portal, target different sets of subscribers and deliver personalised content. The company sells its products to mobile operators and to wireless service providers (WASPs) all over the world. “One of our products is a media platform that allows the likes of RTE, a customer of ours, to run premium SMS events such as text-ins, comment lines and competitions:’ says Clancy.

The company opened its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore last November and currently has several major customers in the region, including AIS, Thailand’s largest mobile phone operator. “A lot of our implementations are around the management and delivery of mobile content, but they’re working up to marketing the content as well:’ explains Clancy. “We have a global footprint so we’re always looking at new markets. At the moment we’re looking at the Middle East area, specifically Egypt.”
Clancy believes that one of MPOS’s newest modules will prove particularly useful over the coming years. “Network operators have this real estate, which is their portal. They can throw it open to third parties, One of our products, AdSpace, addresses that from the point of view of the people who would advertise on the portal. The product is designed to allow advertisers to guarantee themselves a cer
tam number of impressions and visibility to a specific demographic group.”

According to Clancy, AdSpace allows advertisers to harness certain information from the operator, such as location, age profile and gender, to see in real time how many of their target subscribers they could reach before actually going live.

Xiam Technologies has achieved an increase of 3Opc over the last 18 months. Clancy will not divulge the exact turnover of the company, which is privately owned, but says that it is in the low millions. This is expected to increase substantially in the next couple of years. “We’ve seen very strong interest over the last 18 months and are on the brinli of doing two large deals, one with a western European operator and another with a WASP in North America,” he says.” The company’s strategy is to continue selling content management and content marketing solutions to the network operators. “We would then be looking at up-selling that to the advertising solutions:’ says Clancy.

The potential market for mobile content is considered to be enormous. Its current value is around US$4bn and this is expected to increase to US$8.3bn by 2010. “There’s certainly a consensus within the industry that there’s huge potential. It’s just a question of how best to harness it:’ says Clancy. “With new technologies that are allowing higher bandwidth, the technical issues are getting solved. As we move towards fiat-rate packages, there should be a better take-up of portal services.”
 

About Xiam Technologies

Xiam provides software solutions that enable Operators to optimize marketing and promotion of mobile content and services. Xiam’s MPOS suite uses sophisticated analytical techniques to identify the right content for subscribers and the right time to promote it. By presenting content relevant to subscribers’ interests and lifestyles, MPOS can dramatically accelerate take-up of mobile content and services. Xiam has pioneered recommendation systems for mobile services that dynamically select the best content by automatically collecting and analysing subscriber data and behavioural patterns. Xiam’s customers include O2, Vodafone, Rogers Wireless. Xiam were GSM Association award winners in 2003 and 2004.

For more information please contact:
Martin Clancy
Marketing Communications Manager
Xiam Technologies Limited
Block S
East Point Business Park
Dublin 3, Ireland
T. +353 1 4832000