Viewpoints: acquisitions strategies

Elinor Schops
International business development director
Mobile1
Israel

What are your acquisition strategies for 2009?

Mobile1 is a mobile content provider and leading aggregator in the Israeli mobile field (please read more on our activities on our website www.mobile1.co.il). Throughout the years we have been operating mainly in the general Hebrew-speaking content areas (within the carrier's portals), providing end-users with premium contents such as online sports results, live news reports, financial updates and entertainment.
In 2009, we are planning to further pursue the steps we initiated in 2008 and target additional sectors, such as the Arabic speaking and Russian speaking content worlds. Our catalog of content already includes attractive content for both these sectors (as well as attractive content for other sectors, as top Bollywood content), yet we aim to deepen even further our presence in these worlds and enrich our extensive catalog with new appealing titles for these target audiences.

What genres are you looking for?

We are seeking both to license existing new-media formats for exploitation in various mobile content worlds, and also to co-produce original mobile content, (as we are also a production house and our abilities in customization of existing contents to the spoken languages in Israel are extensive). In fact, in many cases we would recommend content providers who seek to operate in Israel to allow us to customize the content to the local languages on the one hand and to the local contexts on the other. See for example, the screenshot of the java game we co-designed with a European company for the Israeli market. The game presents questions in Hebrew about the local Israeli soccer clubs. It is important to understand that the original game concept was different from this customized version, yet we found that such customization of context provided a new product that superseded the distribution of simply another generic soccer game, which is less relevant to the Israeli end-user. Accordingly, our aim is to wisely characterize the Israeli end-users and to offer them attractive contents from around the world; And with the support of the original creator/developer of the content- customize it (video / imagery/text/music/game or application) to the local market.

What rights are you looking for?

We are seeking for television/video content, including supporting products, such as imagery, music, games and applications for mobile exploitation. These contents can either be edited or allow full live broadcast (as we hold exclusive broadcasting rights for the Israeli basketball League and the Israeli National Soccer Team). Full adaptation of any content to the required mobile formats is done in-house.

What products will be on demand during MIPTV 2009? Please give us your opinion.

We believe that User Generated Content will continue to govern this year, so we assume that various tools that support such content (both content and technology wise) will still be in demand. A second ongoing trend, which will continue to govern, will be "Big Brother" programs. Mobile1 took a vital part in such a mobile program this year, providing all the technical support required for delivering the live feed to the end user's handsets.

Example of an original in house service we designed and support in various languages. It allows targeting multiple target audiences (Hebrew speaking, Arabic, Russian, etc.)