Unwired Appeal has announced the launch of ZaptoPhone, a mobile entertainment service designed to easily enable Web sites to offer their photos, graphics, sounds, and music files to cell phone users. Read on…
Unwired Appeal has announced the launch of ZaptoPhone, a mobile entertainment service designed to easily enable Web sites to offer their photos, graphics, sounds, and music files to cell phone users.
?We were kicking around some ideas on how to help new independent bands promote their music as ringtones,? recalled Stephen Nye, director of business development at Unwired Appeal, ?when it quickly became apparent that managing such a diversity of files from a large number of bands just wasn?t realistic. So we came up with the idea of simply letting the individual websites host and manage their own content and we developed Zaptags that are inserted in their web pages to identify their files and make them accessible to cell phones.?
The ZaptoPhone service now supports audio/visual content in standard file formats (MP3, MID, GIF, and JPEG). The cornerstone of the service is Unwired Appeal?s Adaptive Content Server (ACS) that processes the conversion of the source files to formats suitable for individual cell phones. When a website visitor clicks on a Zaptag, the ACS platform retrieves the content from the host website and places it in a special off-site webcart. New users need only perform a quick compatibility check to verify the precise capabilities of their individual cell phones. The music or graphic is then optimized to fit the playback capabilities or screen size of the cell phone. The optimized file is then transferred directly to the cell phone where it can be used as a ringtone, wallpaper, screensaver, or simply stored for later playback/viewing.
Unwired Appeal charges a small delivery fee to end-users of ZaptoPhone and also makes it possible for websites to charge for their premium content. ?From a business standpoint, ZaptoPhone can also provide an excellent revenue stream for websites that own unique content.? continued Nye, ?And we have created a web interface that connects directly to our billing platform so that websites can track in real-time their ZaptoPhone activity right down to the individual file names of accessed content?.
It is projected that mobile-enabling services like ZaptoPhone will see substantial growth especially in mature internet markets like the USA. Websites are continually seeking ways to not only gain additional revenue, but also extend their marketing and branding efforts beyond the PC environment. The ZaptoPhone solution furthers these efforts by providing access to millions of cell phone users and is easily integrated into existing websites.
