Vringo, video ringtones service provider, launched today a service called “Vringo Channels” just in time for the presidential campaign.
Vringo’s team identified the difficulty in the frequent need of searching for relevant video ringtones, purchasing the ringtones and installs them.
The process takes time and initiative while most users do not refresh their content as often as they would have if it was easier to do.
Vringo channels is a push based service and resembles a lot technologies like RSS and media concepts like the YouTube Channels.
Basically you “subscribe” to a Vringo channel and your video ringtone updates on a daily or a weekly basis automatically.
The channel’s content is dictated by the channel managers but there is still no declaration on a personalized channel like in YouTube.

Vringo chose her campaign very wisely, trying to capitalize on the elections in the states with a very appealing content of a daily roundup about each candidate, Obama and McCain.
Once subscribed to the Obama channel, the user gets a free daily video ringtone edited and taken from multiple sources.
Because the video ringtones also play on the devices of other Vringo users who call you, it is a great way to give your hand to the campaign of your favorite candidate.
But it can’t all be good right? While Vringo pushes to support many relevant devices, at the moment they support mainly Nokia S60 based phones. It could be still relevant with worldwide share of around 40% to Nokia phones. In the U.S. this number drops dramatically and is located around 5.1%. So there is no real big market potential to the great service until more devices are supported and we get a real social enabler with a significant market penetration.

Our bottom line: Hey it is free, although not anyone can use it and you need to get your friends to install Vringo in order to make it really interesting.

Vringo Channels are available for free to consumers worldwide at www.vringo.com/channels.
for more details check out the video below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U3vgCCn–w[/youtube]

Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist reports today that Brightstar, the world’s biggest mobile phones distributor, sold 500,000 devices in Southeast Asia with Tjat’s software components. The partnership between the companies was signed in the last mobile world congress on February 2008 and grants Tjat with royalties and monthly revenues from using its services. Tjat, an Israeli company, develops a “cloud” technology for multimedia devices that enables multimedia devices to access IM services, social networks, e-mail service, and more.

Tjat’s focus is on the low-cost mobile devices (under 50$) market and its solution is a lightweight, server centric solution that requires no installation on the Tjat enabled device. This approach requires fewer resources from the device and gives Tjat a strategic hold over the services used by the users. By being the services gateway, Tjat can charge the users according to their usage. Gartner predicts that 450 million low-cost devices will be sold annually in the coming years and Tjat aims to a market penetration of 25% of this market.

The services dispensing concept in various forms already exist in the market and lately was mentioned in the case of the new iPhone 3G. Nokia played the game with its games download service (which wasn’t a big success), Qualcomm’s BREW content system (that is supported by acquired Elata), and more. Usually the device manufacturers / distributors have small or no influence on the services market and only the marketing of the operator or a local service / content provider can be significant enough to attract users to the services. Although the focus is on low-cost phones, these phones still have internet access, and are capable of using other services or the same services directly with no costs (internet browsing, IM clients etc). Tjat will need to smartly develop services roadmap and other supporting business models to fit the future of the mobile content and services market.

The Olymics is undoubtedly a big opportunity for value added services.
It seems that everyone prepared ready for the Olympics, not only the athletes.
Celltick collaborated with China Unicom, the 2nd biggest operator in China with more than 180 million subscribers.
Celltick will provide the platform named LiveScreen. The platform delivers content and advertising material, while the mobile phone is on idle mode. In this way no interruption is caused.
News, real time results, videos and more will be displayed with the help of Xinhua News, the official news agency in China.
The platform is distributed on Unicom SIM cards at main airports and Unicom’s retail outlets around Beijing.
The service will be available in both English and Chinese.
the cooperation of China Unicom and Celltick started with the  Beijing Olympic games. the cooperation is  estimated to generate  Celltick an income of 30 million dollars over a period of 3 years.

LiveScreen is action credit: slashphone

Walla, israel’s biggest portal announced today on Walla! mail for mobile phones.
Israel E-mail market has no obvious leader but Walla! mail is definitely a major player.
“Walla! mail has more than 2 million active users” says Guy Sa’ad Walla’s vice CEO.
“We are obliged to expand and enhance our service functionality… Therefore, we are launching today a service that connects user’s mail with his mobile phone”.
The service is accessible through a Walla! mail account for Cellcom and Pelephone users only.
When new mail arrives an SMS will be sent to notify the user.

The new service will be provided for a two month trial period and afterwards it will cost 4.90 NIS a month.
Although I am using Gmail, It will be nice if a free access is given while not using the SMS notification system.

Credit: Walla