Today, Bango, the mobile web payments and analytics company, announced that it has gone live with Mozilla’s Firefox Marketplace. Bango will provide users of the Firefox operating system and newly available smartphones with operator billing, where the user pays for apps and other digital content through his mobile phone bill. Mozilla is a global non-profit organisation, creating open source products for its developer and user community. Bango’s service has been launched for Firefox OS customers in Spain and Colombia (with Telefónica) and Poland (with Deutsche Telekom). More markets will be announced over the coming weeks.
The financial impact of this launch is difficult to assess, but it does exemplify the position that Bango is building for itself in the mobile payments industry.
Bango has insinuated itself into the value chains of several Internet and social media giants, including Facebook, Blackberry App World, Windows Marketplace and Amazon, thus succeeding in a land grab in this area of mobile payments. This gives the prospect of rapid revenue growth and better margins, given the rise in smartphone numbers and mobile apps delivered.
However, the share price is back near its August 2012 level so the Market is not convinced a) that the concerns alluded to in our March HotView, Bango and the investor from Mars, can be set aside and b) that operating losses (as reported in the period to December 2012) are being eradicated.
Nonetheless, recent pronouncements from the management have been upbeat, with end user spend up 100% over the previous year and margins resilient. Bango’s analytics business has also doubled. The increased global operator connections and the new customer roll-outs should enable the management to present a positive view of progress when they publish their half-year results in mid-September. We await them with interest.