Another PR approach from a company representing TocMag, who sent me a press release about their usage figures. A quick scraping of their top magazine stats (kudos to them for publishing figures)and a dusting-off of rusting Perl skills gave me this graph:

 

What I take away from this is that TocMag content is more dominated by larger players than I'd have expected; the curve seems steeper than yer classic "long tail". About half the mags have negligible readership, I'd say. The top 5 mags make up 25% of all downloads, the top 12 make up over 50% of it.

The "dumbass" series of magazines seems incredibly popular, making up about a quarter of all downloads. I went to download this and was presented with a choice of either a Java download or 3GP file. Actually, something worrying here: every time I went to this page, the download counter for the mag increased. So their download counts aren't actually downloads (i.e. folks successfully getting a piece of content onto their phone), but rather visits to the specific page on the TocMag site. Actually downloading the 3GP file (of someone falling off a travelator) or the Java app didn't affect the figure.

Weirdly, the 3GP and the Java app contained different content. The Java app was a slideshow of a few images, fairly poorly presented - though the presentation was probably down to the folks who set up the mag, the overall feel of the app wasn't particularly slick.

In the last month, I've noticed that I'm getting loads of emails from PR companies, contacting me with "interesting news" or offers to review or meet tech companies.

In one sense this is great: I'm genuinely interested in what goes on in the mobile industry, and anything which means I get to hear about more stuff is good by me. On the other hand I'm kind of nervous being a knowing part of someones communication strategy - I like the idea that what you read here (when it comes to the mobile industry) is independent, and biased only by my own neuroses, rather than those of a marketing department somewhere.

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It was interesting to talk through their product and how they see the industry; I didn't learn anything much about their product roadmap (which is hardly surprising), but I have a few notes from our conversation, things which sparked thoughts or struck chords:

1. There's an asynchronicity to text messaging which IM lacks, and which is attractive in itself;
2. Hotxt users are surprisingly enthusiastic about the web as a means of access to the Hotxt service (though I suspect that when you're launching a mobile proposition this puts you in competition alongside a whole set of businesses you're looking to radically differentiate yourselves from, and forces you to put effort into competing with them);
3. The Hotxt service has gone free partly to "build an audience", and more interestingly because compliance with ICSTIS regulations around handling of premium SMS services were off-putting to customers;
4. Anonymity and control of your own identity are a big advantage of a service like this over raw SMS (where you're effectively giving away your mobile number with every message you send);
5. As online social services grow, they're taking market share away from the dating companies - who are in turn forced to focus on niche communities to survive;
6. Operators are really bad at billing accurately for mobile data usage - Doug told a story about his daughter Hotxting from China and not paying a penny in charges;
7. Services like group messaging are where Hotxt plan to differentiate themselves from the competition: augmenting text messaging rather than replacing it;

Good fun. Dragons Den doesn't do Doug justice.

Two beautiful things: this gallery of the Northern Lights (soon my pretty, soon...), and these incredible city-on-oilrig pictures.

3 might be exiting the UK but there is some good news: "The one outstanding success for 3 has been its mobile content strategy. 3 UK CEO, Bob Fuller, said last month that the firm will generate mobile entertainment revenues of £100m in 2006, a far higher figure, per subscriber, than its rivals. Mobile music has been a strong play for 3. Sales of music via its network represent 10 per cent of the UK singles market. Historically 3 has had a strong portal and walled garden approach to mobile content but it is now rapidly embracing web 2.0 and a more open approach. Its strength in mobile entertainment has enabled 3 to generate the highest ARPU figures in the UK. In the second quarter of 2006, 3's blended ARPU - averaged out across postpaid and prepaid customers - was £41.51, according to Informa Telecoms & Media of which £10.16 was derived from messaging and entertainment services."

I'd note that whilst they may now be moving to a "web 2.0" approach (whatever that is) 3 managed to stimulate these sales of content through a deeply unfashionable means - a walled garden - which seems to have worked nonetheless.

How do these figures compare to those from other operators? Has anyone else seen this level of ARPU or contributed this much to UK music sales?