A brilliant piece of news from Will at Sharpcards. I’ve been trying to get him on the podcast (or the MIR Show itself) for a while but he’s been rather busy. No wonder.
Sharpcards have a wicked model. They actually embed the functionality to send happy birthday greetings (for example) directly into operator-branded devices. In fact, Will describes the process far more eloquently in his update:
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Hi Ewan
Hope you’re well. Here’s a quick update as to where we are:
We’ve just signed a 3 year agreement with T-Mobile UK to have EMMA (that’s our Enhanced Mobile Messaging Application – i.e the application that allows customers to send ecards) embedded on some of their devices. The idea being that our application will sit in the messaging menu of specific handsets, alongside SMS and MMS, making it simple for T-Mobile customers to send high quality ecards to their friends. Launch likely to happen in Q1 09. It’s been a long time in the coming, but it’s very very exciting!
You’ll remember that EMMA comes in both Java and Symbian and as it’s embedded on the handset, it doesn’t require any installation from the users point of view. Not only is it ready to use straight out of the box, the content is continually updated and the customer won’t pay a data fee to access the ecards.
The ecard is sent via MMS for which users are charged their normal MMS rate of 20p. Each ecard costs a one off fee of 75p, and once the card is sent, it can be used again and again without paying that 75p fee again.
I’ll keep you in the loop on our news and nearer Christmas I’ll be happy to do that podcast!
Very best
Will
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Will, congratulations — that’s super, super news. I look forward to seeing that in the wild on T-Mobile!