Perth-based media companies Media Powerhouse and Raging Pixel Productions have joined forces to take advantage of the fast-growing demand for mobile phone content.
Perth-based media companies Media Powerhouse and Raging Pixel Productions have joined forces to take advantage of the fast-growing demand for mobile phone content.
The new joint venture, Fonetoons.com, creates animated content for mobile phones, with animated greeting cards its first product offering.
Fonetoons.com co-founder and Media Powerhouse principal, Graeme Hunt, said his attendance at overseas content markets in 2004 and early 2005 had opened his eyes to the market’s growth potential.
“Mobile phone content was the major topic of the workshops,” he said. “I thought there was no reason why we couldn’t do this in WA.”
Fonetoons.com’s other co-founder, Raging Pixel Productions principal Aaron Kennedy, said he and Mr Hunt had found no other company specialising in animated greeting cards on mobile phones in Western Australia.
“We seem to be the first company doing greeting cards in general,” he said. “We have 65 greeting cards already set up and they are expanding every day.”
Mr Kennedy said Fonetoons.com had been in the planning stage for more than eight months and had only been in business for the past three weeks.
“The delivery platform took a while to sort out,” he told WA Business News.
“We had some trial and error periods; we wouldn’t take it to market until all the errors were sorted out.”
Mr Kennedy said Fonetoons.com’s animation was all custom-made and contained no reused animation content.
“We are trying to keep the animation suppliers in WA,” he said. “It is cheaper to go overseas but if WA companies keep going overseas, there would be no business here. What we are trying to do is build a WA industry.”
The greeting cards cost $3 and download time is almost instantaneous.
“The revenue works out to be $1.50 per download, of which we take 30 per cent and animators take 70 per cent,” Mr Kennedy said.
Mr Hunt said the advent of the multimedia messaging system has enabled delivery of combined images, sound and text to MMS-capable handsets.
He said there were plenty of phones with MMS capabilities, but many of these had not been enabled.
“Phone sellers and dealers weren’t telling customers about enabling their MMS capabilities, however education can help sort this out,” Mr Hunt said.
Mr Kennedy said the market was growing considerably, with MMS eventually taking over from SMS capabilities.
“The dealers are really starting to push MMS,” he said. “Around 40 to 50 per cent of the market, rising to 80 per cent next year will have MMS enabled phones.”
The joint venture company intends to expand in the near future, according to Mr Kennedy.
“Over the next six to 12 months we will be looking to go into Europe and the Asian regions as their markets are massive,” he said. “When we start to expand, we are going to keep the supply base from WA and provide animators with employment opportunities.”