Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Betting on the carriers?

One of my mega-uber value readers put me in touch with Richard Marshall of Rapid Mobile, and he paid a visit to my office today to give me a demonstration of the betting solution and some other projects which aren't public yet. I was blown away. Keep your eyes open for some news from this company. One thing Richard conveyed to me, which was not particularly surprising, is that the company has found the process of trying to get carriers onboard frustrating - so they've given up. The subscription betting model they have been running has processed a staggering amount of bets to date (I'm not sure if I should state the number, so I won't), and you would think that any carrier would be eager to enter into a revenue share or at least be a transaction agent for this and whatever else it might evolve into (banking, lottery, stock trading all spring to mind, just for starters). Alas, the only upside for the carriers is incremental data revenues.

Tags: missed opportunities, dumb pipe