mig33(part-1.INTRODUCTION)

Mig33 is a mobile social network accessible
on mobile Java J2ME, via the web, WAP, and
also Android version 2.1 and above with
most users coming from South East Asia and
some parts of Africa.
<hr>Background
Mig33 was launched in Silicon Valley, but
due to the customers mainly coming from
outside the USA, the investors moved it to
Singapore as part of a plan to bring its
service to developing parts of Asia. Mig33 is
intended for use not only on smartphones,
but also the feature phones that are used
widely in developing regions.[1]
Development
As of October 2010, Mig33 has 40 million
registered users (47 million registered users
at end of April 2011), a figure which
doubled in the two previous years. 20
million users come from Indonesia. It has
been used in 200 countries. Mig33 started
as an inexpensive voice-over-the-internet-
protocol ( VOIP) service, but today it has
evolved into a social networking service. The
company also sells virtual goods and
develops mobile social games. Mig33 has
also available on Android.[2][3]
As of February 2011 there are 4 million
online transactions per month to buy virtual
gift products, with an average of $2.5 per
member. The majority of transactions come
from Indonesia. In India, Mig33 users feel
that virtual gifting helps them save costs on
real gifts and 69 percent of them spend on
virtual gifts that cost less than Rs15 ($0.35).
<hr>VAS (mobile content)
Mig33 has partners on open platform to VAS
(mobile content) providers and handset
manufactures such as PT Numedia Global
from Indonesia, Olive Telecom from India
and ThumbMOB from Philippines. It is
follows super-successful way of Mobage
Town and Tencent.
Mig33 Merchant program
Merchants are users who buy credits in bulk
with discount through credit and debit card,
Paypal, wire transfer, Western Union, etc.
and then resell/transfer them to others
users. So, merchants can get profit on it.
Cooperation
On April 2011, a big Japanese mobile social
gaming GREE and Mig33 have made a
cooperation which Mig33 will adopt the
"GREE platform for smartphone", so GREE
and Mig33 will be compatible each other.<hr>
Competitors
China's Tencent, which operates the huge
QQ social chat network
Japan's DeNA, a mobile social game
company, with 22 million users at end
of 2010.