Hello – welcome to another mjelly.com mobile 2.0 service of the week.  This time around we are going to look at Mobango – the Anglo-Italian startup which has recently moved into the app store market.  I did an interview with the CEO Fabio Pezzott and got some exclusive info and statistics just for Mobile Zeitgeist readers.

Mobango is mobile content and applications aggregator

Mobango is one of the most successful of the second generation of mobile content aggregators.  The first generation includes players such as Jamba/ Jamster and Buongiorno who focused on distributing content on a paid-for basis supported by heavy marketing spend in TV.   The second generation, such as Mobango, leverage community, user-uploads, free content and viral marketing and distribution.

Initially,  Mobango focused on core mobile content types like ringtones, graphics, screensavers, videos and games but is now moving towards applications.  Talking to the CEO Fabio it was interesting to hear that applications now account for 60% of their downloads - even with all the other types of content available on the site – it seems that apps really have knocked ringtones off the top spot as the number one mobile VAS category.

Mobango statistics and data

Mobango really has become one of the big mobile 2.0 success stories with some pretty big usage numbers:

• 5 million unique visitors/ month

• 12 million visits/ month

• 60 million page views/ month

• Downloads (2009 Jul 13 – 2009 Jul 19): 2,872,264

There is really a thriving community of developers and users around the site which has helped to deliver a large volume of available content:

Mobango provides services for mobile developers

Fabio had a lot of insights into the mobile applications market.  In his view it is very fragmented – lots of developers (maybe 10k plus) with very few large publishers (as we see in the mobile games market for example).  As a result, most developers have small budgets for marketing and which creates an opportunity for players like mobango to come and offer them a low cost marketing service for their applications.

Developers can use mobango to distribute their applications and can buy advertising space on the portal on a pay per download basis. Whereas buying advertising on services like admob can lead to a lot of paid-for clicks but few downloads, Mobango’s model guarantees that the app will be installed on a phone before the developer pays.

Whilst there are more and more appstores appearing from operators, handset players and independents like getjar, mobango really does seem to be building a nice position in the market for itself.  In some ways it is the independent version of the Ovi Store in that it mixes applications with other types of content.  With 5m members mobango could be an attractive aquisition target for one of the major mobile 1.0 players or a media company or mobile operator – watch this space….

You can find mobango on mjelly – a directory of the best mobile web sites and mobile softwares

Author: James Coops has worked in the mobile internet industry since the dark days of ‘wap’ all the way through to the present day. In 2001 he developed one of the first mobile web sites to allow downloading of content over the mobile internet (previously this was done over SMS). He then spent 7 years working all over the world as a consultant for mobile operators, media companies, service providers and investors including the likes of O2, Vodafone, Telecom Italia Mobile, Discovery Networks, FIFA and Goldman Sachs. James has also written for Techcrunch UK, Mobile Industry Review and New Media Age Magazine and runs a directory of mobile sites and applications at http://mjelly.com (PC) and http://m.mjelly.com (mobile) and blogs at http://blog.mjelly.com. He loves Germany, especially the Weiss bier!