While the mobile games industry is traditionally thought of as consisting specifically of a rich-content downloadable market, there are many companies trying to make their own niche in the mobile games industry with "low-tech" solutions such as SMS and MMS games.
The recently launched Frengo is one of these companies, describing itself as a "social play network," offering members SMS/MMS games and messaging services. Games On Deck talks to Mahi de Silva, co-founder and CEO, and Dan Mosher, Senior VP of operations and business development, about the company.
Games On Deck: Describe Frengo.
Mahi de Silva: Basically, we're building a set of services that are focused at two important categories: one, building very lightweight, mobile play experiences, that are either entertaining or informative to our core demographic, 16 to 28 year olds. Secondly, it's a set of social messaging tools that help you stay connected with your friends, whether it's your inner circle of friends, or your friends online from other social networks.
We started the company in May of last year, and put out our beta in November, to market and test our ideas, and just a few weeks ago launched our 1.0 version.
GOD: What spurred the creation of the company?
MS: Well, the four of us (Mahi de Silva, Co-founder and CEO, Dan Mosher, Senior VP of operations & business development, Steve Manning, Co-founder and chief product officer and Sameer Merchant, Co-founder and CTO) that founded the company, we've all got long experience in the mobile industry, at least 5 years each. I ran the mobile business for Verisign, for example. One of the findings, or rather one of the things that I learned from that was that graphics and ringtones downloads are massively successful, but that they don't have any meaningful lifespan. So one of the things that we wanted to concentrate was on really offering things that were of long-term value to the consumer. Whether that's by informing them or entertaining them, or by keeping them connected to their friends.
GOD: What's the exact market for this service, then?
MS: Well, as I previously said, 16 to 28 year olds. That demographic is very familiar with SMS messaging, and most will have a camera phone and have used it for photo messaging to their friends or to use it to upload to the web. They really use the device as a multimedia and social tool. So that's our core demographic.
We are an off deck provider, in that we've made deals with carriers in the US and are live on their networks, but they don't promote our service and we're not beholden to them either.
GOD: Is this a service that's really aimed at non-gamers?
MS: Well, we hope that our proposition is of interest to a broad cross section of the market. But you know, the thing about downloadable mobile games is that there is a wide variety of phones and networks that change what you get, and traditionally, it really focused towards a male market place.
There's the big players, Glu and EA that are trying to expand their casual games catalogue, appeal to women, but we've taken even a broader approach. In the US there are at least 230 million cellphones, well we'd like to reach every one of them and address their needs.
But if you're Glu, for example, and you create a title, what handsets can it work on? What carriers will hold it? It really starts to restrict the availability of the title to all consumers. So we've tried to take broader approach and address as much of the available marketplace as possible.
