Organized by Ericsson in Australia and New Zealand, one winner from each country was chosen by a panel of operators and other market stakeholders based on such criteria as innovation and market-readiness.

M-Com won its second New Zealand prize in two years for its M-banking appl ication, while Australian company Amethon Solutions won for its FriendsWhoForward application.

M-Banking

M-Banking enables customers to manage bank services on their mobile phones via SMS, WAP or a downloadable Java client. Amethon's FriendsWhoForward is a P2P application that encourages users to develop fun, compelling content, driving messaging services.

Adam Clark, CEO of M-Com, says the Java client enables the user to utilize the full range of services offered by the application, including balance inquiries, recent payments, funds transfers between accounts, alerts on account activities and P2P payments. The next version will also include billing services.

Adam Clark

The SMS and WAP versions of the service enable mass-market reach, but the functions are more limited than the Java version.
Clark says that including a Java client was one lesson learnt after winning last year with the application M-Payment. "With the Java front we have brought the application to life. It has given M-Banking a compelling interface that people easily understand," he says.

M-Com was founded in 2000 and has seven employees, many of whom have a background in developing payment solutions. "From this experience we have been able to develop a product with levels of security superior to internet banking," Clark says.

The company started developing M-Banking at the start of the year and plans to launch the application commercially in early 2006. "Because Java phones are now widespread we have seen lot of interest from the market for the Java version," Clark says. "Banks can see the opportunities in a heavily branded Java client that makes bank services more convenient for their customers."

Clark says the prize means a lot for the company. "Apart from the obvious joy and satisfaction it brings to our team, the result confirms that M-Com is developing compelling products for consumers, mobile operators and banks, he says. "The award is the most prestigious in the region and winning it two years, back-to-back shows the level of our work. It gives us a boost in our public relations and credibility with our business partners."


Amethon Solutions' FriendsWhoForward application allows a user who has created some interesting content – such as a funny video clip – to register it by sending it to an operator's short code where it is tagged and tracked. The user then sends the content off to his friends. The operator can then track the content as it is forwarded to more and more subscribers. The content creator can be rewarded with incentives such as airtime and free messages, and so encouraged to create more traffic-driving content.

Another benefit of the patent-pending technology is that operators can determine what kind of content is popular within certain customer groups, and derive strategies to speed uptake of new multimedia services.

James Cleary

James Cleary, executive director of Amethon Solutions, says it is an opportunity for operators to gather new information. "P2P messaging is the most common type of messaging, but it’s difficult to measure what people like today," he says. "Through FriendsWhoForward, operators can find out who the most influential users are, who forwards the most, and, in terms of driving messages, who the most valuable subscribers are."


There are other uses for the underlying technology, such as tracking viral marketing campaigns. "This can now be achieved without effecting privacy laws," Cleary says. The technology can also support new business models between operators and content providers, including P2P distribution models based on revenue share.

The technology is handset independent and requires a minimum of system integration. Cleary says the first solution will shortly commence operator trials and is planned to be launched at the end of this year.

He says the Frontier Award has been a way to launch the application. "It has been very exciting for the team, especially, of course, as we won," Cleary says. "We have had excellent feedback and great exposure to partners and potential customers."

More information about the Ericsson Frontier content and application competition here.

By Lars-Magnus Kihlström