Lines of Business

Atinco’s business is supported by Content and Technology, the second of which is, in turn, sub-divided into two clearly differentiated lines, namely Applications and Infrastructure.

Content

The Content line is concerned with mass marketing of personalization and interactivity products, games and entertainment. The two basic sales channels are SMS Premium and WAP. This line of business is present in all of the countries where Atinco operates and is the company’s main source of revenues.

Atinco works in two different areas in the field of content. In the first place, it has agreements with the main players in the market owning the most popular branded content. Despite its importance, this activity does not differentiate Atinco or provide any real competitive advantage because it is a commodity. In contrast to its competitors, however, Atinco also has the capability to produce its own content, especially where technology is a key part of the product. For example, the Atinco engineering team has adapted top-selling classic games for mobile handsets, achieving both a short time-to-market and higher net returns, since it is not necessary to pay third parties for developments and rights. Atinco also makes commercial use of innovation to gain competitive advantage. For example, it was the first company to launch virtual pets in Mexico, many months ahead of rivals.

Applications

Modern mobile telephones are small but increasingly powerful portable computers. The main application of this “computer” has so far been the one that allows us to talk to other people or to send and receive text messages. However, these basic functions are just two of the possible applications that can be included in handsets. As users become familiar with new devices, a world of possibility opens up before us. Think of the contents of your pockets for a moment, and then imagine that one day, all of these things will be contained in your cell phone. You will be able to pay for goods and services (and you will not need cards); you will be able to open the door to your house or your car; you will have digital ID to replace the archaic paper you currently carry around; you will have virtual visiting cards; and, of course, you will be able to play music, watch television, receive e-mail, interact with your bank and view documents, amid a whole host of other possibilities. All of these things are already available, but maturity and acceptance are still low and the applications are largely horizontal (i.e. usable by everybody), while little or nothing exists in the vertical market. In the area of healthcare, to take just one example, diabetics could greatly improve their quality of life using mobile devices.

There is an application behind all of this. Very often, there is also a platform behind communications, and it is here that Atinco has a clear competitive advantage. We have already acquired a strong reputation with applications such as VoiceMMS, Affinity and Remote View, but there has been no let up in the Atinco R&D department’s effort to create cutting-edge solutions to provide its customers with the best solutions.

If the content business is currently the key revenue driver, it is investment in R&D to create applications that provides the prospect of a bright and prosperous future for Atinco, in contrast to the majority of our competitors, who are merely marketing firms that insert advertising on the one hand and generate revenues on the other, without adding value of any kind.

Infrastructure

If the applications line of business concerns the technology installed to work on mobile telephones, the Infrastructure line works basically on servers, providing support for the applications resident in users’ handsets.

For example, to watch a video on a telephone, it is necessary to have a video player in the handset, but it is also necessary to have a video platform in a server to send the content to the user.

Atinco’s extensive experience in the field of large-scale infrastructure for the banking, insurance and, of course, telecommunications industries places the company in a privileged competitive position in this area. Applications must not only be useful, they must also be secure, reliable, robust and scalable at a low cost of ownership.

The video and alerts platforms have already won wide recognition in the market, and the Atinco SMS platform, for example, has been used by some of the market’s leading players, now among our competitors. Unquestionably, this is another of Atinco’s main competitive advantages. In contrast to its rivals, Atinco creates the platforms it needs to sell content and applications, achieving a very short time-to-market and stealing the lead thanks to its innovative capability. Once again, this is a clear competitive advantage, because the company is able to work with its own platforms, afterwards licensed to third parties, providing the capability to launch products that are differentiated from those of its competitors in the market (who buy the same platform from the same provider). Once again, differentiation and time-to-market appear as powerful competitive weapons.