Jamba!

Last updated
Jamba
FormerlyJamba!
Company typeMobile content provider
Founded2000
FounderOliver Samwer
Website Jamba.de

Jamba (formerly Jamba!) is a German company that created and marketed ringtones for mobile phones. It operated under the name Jamster in Australia, New Zealand, China, Armenia, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, France, Kuwait, Turkey, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Austria, Brazil, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States (incl. Puerto Rico), Canada, Sweden, Iraq, Poland, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Contents

History

The company was founded in Berlin's Kreuzberg district in 2000. [1]

VeriSign was a successful internet security company that had a series of product lines that connected mobile network companies' text message networks together securely, processing about 3 billion per day in 2004. VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos recognised that with VoIP products developing, the revenues could decrease, and so he hired Vernon Irvin as Executive Vice President and General Manager of VeriSign's Communications Services division to solve the problem. Irvin saw good but technical and expensive products, but saw the volumes of exchange over the system as the solution. [2]

In late 2004 under Irvin's direction, VeriSign bought Jamba for $270 million. Jamba at the time built mobile applications, games, ringtones and wallpapers, and was also in over 40 countries worldwide. The VeriSign team had recognised that there were twice as many mobile phones as there were computers, which also had built-in computer technology. Effectively, VeriSign now had a new content distribution platform which also integrated with the internet, which was both secure and auditable—now all they needed was the content.

VeriSign relocated Jamba's HQ Office to prestige premises in the Dom Aquarée building near Alexanderplatz in the centre of Berlin.

In 2005 Jamba started doing business in China.

While Irvin sourced content, Jamba became Jamster in the United States. Irvin struck a deal with Kevin Liles, President of Warner Music Group, to provide mobile consumers with early access to hip-hop artist Mike Jones' debut album "Who Is Mike Jones?"—in return, Jones created the first artist-endorsed Jamster ring-tone advertisement in the US. When "Who is Mike Jones" was released it debuted among the top 5 albums on the Billboard charts and went on to sell over a million copies. The Crazy Frog ringtone did the same in Europe. [3]

Jamba/Jamster boomed—when VeriSign bought the business it had a turnover of $15 million per quarter and 3 quarters later this increased to $150 million a quarter—in 2005 the company made close to $600 million in revenue. VeriSign expanded Jamba/Jamster by the acquisitions of UNC-Embratel and Unimobile. Jamster also added to its revenues by adding "impulse purchasing"—when you downloaded one ringtone, you were offered others. This turned into interactive advertising, for which the mobile owner was charged, sometimes unknowingly. This created controversy in Europe, and was quickly withdrawn.

Later developments included a collaboration with L'Oréal encouraging users to send in photos to find 'America's next supermodel' and promoting VeriSign Back-Up as a mechanism to re-download music tracks a customer had previously bought to a different mobile phone, for example if the previous phone was stolen, broken or lost.

On 12 September 2006 News Corporation announced it would pay approximately $188 million for 51% shares in Jamba! and would combine it with Fox Mobile Entertainment assets, [4] such as Mobizzo, with Lucy Hood, formerly President of Fox Mobile Entertainment, becoming CEO of the joint venture. [5] On 23 October 2006 it was announced that Vernon Irvin would join XM Satellite Radio as Chief Marketing Officer. [6] In late December 2010, Jesta Group acquired Fox Mobile Group from News Corp. Jesta Group renamed the mobile services company to Jesta Digital. [7]

Controversy

Jamba! had drawn criticism for allegedly misleading customers in its service advertisements. In general, Jamba! services were sold as a subscription, despite advertising that seems to imply that customers are buying a one-off phone ringtone. The company drew criticism for making it difficult to unsubscribe; for example, during December 2005, Jamba!'s German website FAQ did not mention the SMS code needed to cancel all subscriptions.

Jamba! advertised aggressively on youth-oriented channels such as MTV and German VIVA. In 2004, it spent €90 million on television advertising in Germany alone. In Jamba! countries in Europe, it was not uncommon to see a multitude of the same Jamba! commercials on television in the same commercial break. An online petition in Germany protesting against the firm's advertising practices drew some 200,000 signatures.[ citation needed ]

In late September 2006 television channels MTV, ProSieben, RTL II and Viva cited ethics concerns over refusing to air Jamba's advertisement for a Hitler themed SMS-downloadable cartoon titled "Der Bonker". Illustrator Walter Moers's short film depicts Hitler in toilet humour scenes with his dog Blondi and three German uniformed rubber ducks. [8] The work had earned criticism from some Jewish memorial groups and politicians, while garnering praise from others. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS</span> Text messaging service component

Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, typically transmitted over cellular networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vodafone Romania</span> Romanian mobile phone network operator

Vodafone Romania S.A. is a Romanian telecommunications operator owned by Vodafone Group Plc. It launched in April 1997 as the first GSM network in Romania.

Jamba may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991</span> U.S. federal law

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1991 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush as Public Law 102-243. It amended the Communications Act of 1934. The TCPA is codified as 47 U.S.C. § 227. The TCPA restricts telephone solicitations and the use of automated telephone equipment. The TCPA limits companies or debt collectors from calling clients or prospective customers using automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages, and fax machines. It also specifies several technical requirements for fax machines, autodialers, and voice messaging systems—principally with provisions requiring identification and contact information of the entity using the device to be contained in the message.

Mobile content is any type of web hypertext and information content and electronic media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like text, sound, ringtones, graphics, flash, discount offers, mobile games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid-1990s, the usage and significance of the mobile devices in everyday technological life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make photo snapshots for upload, twits, mobile calendar appointments, and mostly send and receive text messages, listen to music, watch videos, take mobile pictures and make videos, use websites to redeem coupons for purchases, view and edit office documents, get driving instructions on mobile maps and so on. The use of mobile content in various areas has grown accordingly.

Mobile phone content advertising is the promotion of ring tones, games and other mobile phone services. Such services are usually subscription-based and use the short message service (SMS) system to join up to them. Another method is broadcasting messages to the mobile phone's idle-screen, enabling the mobile operators or advertisers to reach millions in real-time. The advertising and sale of ring tones in particular has seen a massive growth in recent years, with some commercial breaks, particularly on music television channels and in motor racing, being dominated by such adverts. Advertising in newspapers and magazines has also become popular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verifone</span> Multinational point-of-sale equipment manufacturer

Verifone, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Coral Springs, Florida. Verifone provides technology for electronic payment transactions and value-added services at the point-of-sale. Verifone sells merchant-operated, consumer-facing and self-service payment systems to the financial, retail, hospitality, petroleum, government and healthcare industries. The company's products consist of POS electronic payment devices that run its own operating systems, security and encryption software, and certified payment software, and that are designed for both consumer-facing and unattended environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crazy Frog</span> Swedish CGI-animated character

Crazy Frog is a Swedish CGI-animated character and Eurodance musician created in 2003 by actor and playwright Erik Wernquist. Marketed by the ringtone provider Jamba!, the character was originally created to accompany a sound effect produced by Daniel Malmedahl while attempting to imitate the sound of a two-stroke engine.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phones 4u</span> Mobile phone company

Phones 4u was a large independent mobile phone retailer in the United Kingdom. It was part of the 4u Group based in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. Opening in 1996, it expanded to over 600 stores. On 14 September 2014, EE and Vodafone, the company's final remaining suppliers, ended their contracts.

Vernon L Irvin currently works as EVP and chief revenue officer at Everbridge one of the fastest growing publicly traded Saas companies in the world. Irvin was formerly President of the Government, Education, Medium & Small Business business unit within CenturyLink. Prior to CenturyLink, he served in several executive positions at Time Warner Cable, CEO and president at Virtual World Computing and was executive vice president and chief marketing officer for XM Satellite Radio.

A mobile campaign is a campaign, usually marketing, advertising, or public relations-related, through which organizations contact their audience through SMS. This form of campaigning allows organizations to reach out and establish relationships with an audience in a more individualized, intimate way. The foundational function of mobile campaigns is regularly referred to as mobile marketing. A campaign's goal can have varied consumer consumption objectives including flashing, informing or engaging. Mobile campaigns have developed from the periphery of advertising to being an integral part of an effective marketing strategy. Online advertising is the second largest advertising spend at $113 billion, next to television's $196.5 billion. Near the introduction of mobile campaigns, they were primarily created to boost the impact of primary campaigns. A good example of one of the first mobile campaigns is the viewer voting system employed in American Idol. Using the American Idol example, the primary campaign was television, and the engagement was mobile, “watch this show, and text to vote”. In 2012, there were over 131 million votes in a single night, setting the world mobile voting record. With over 90% of Americans having cell phones, and there being over 6.8 billion cell phones in circulation globally versus 2.4 billion with internet access, mobile campaigns are evolving to be the way of the future in advertising and consumer engagement.

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mobile web site.

Lucille Anne Hood, commonly known as Lucy Hood, was the founder of Fox Mobile Entertainment and the Executive Director of the Institute for Communication Technology Management (CTM) at the University of Southern California. Hood guided the Institute's strategy and its consortium of corporate members, which include AT&T, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Qualcomm, Motorola Mobility, Alcatel-Lucent, Disney, Fox and Ogilvy & Mather. Hood was also a member of the faculty at USC's Marshall School of Business.

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Zamano plc was an Internet and mobile technology company based in Dublin. The company decided in February 2017 to bring their premium rate SMS business lines to a close by the end of 2017. In November 2018, Zamano plc issued a press release stating that it was entering voluntary liquidation. A liquidator was appointed in early 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">4INFO</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Club Nokia</span>

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References

  1. Lucks, Kai (2007-06-27). Transatlantic Mergers and Acquisitions: Opportunities and Pitfalls in German-American Partnerships. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   9783895786129.
  2. VeriSign's New Personality Archived 2006-12-30 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Hermann Simon mentioned this company in his correspondent Book as an example of a "Hidden Champion" (Simon, Hermann: Hidden Champions of the 21st Century : Success Strategies of unknown World Market Leaders. London: Springer, 2009.- ISBN   978-0-387-98147-5. P. 12)
  4. News Corp. takes majority stake in Jamba | CNET News.com
  5. News Corporation And VeriSign Announce Joint Venture To Create Leading Global Mobile Entertainment Company
  6. Career Moves: October 23, 2006 | Digital Media Wire Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  7. Fox Mobile Group, Now Jesta Digital, Gets A New CEO, (Jan 13, 2011) Leena Rao, Techcruch
  8. Haines, Lester (2006-09-21). "Hitler net cartoon ruffles German feathers • The Register". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2024-03-22.
  9. Duke, Katy (2006-09-20). "Hitler internet cartoon causes storm in Germany". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-02-01.