Bango (LON:BGO) , the mobile web payments and analytics company, today warned that profits in the year to march 31, 2011 were set to miss current market expectations because of a delay in wrapping up deals to migrate some of its existing customers from premium messaging to the Bango billing platform. The company insisted that the migration of these customers was still expected to contribute to profitability in the current financial year and beyond. It also said that the boom in application – or ‘app’ stores – triggered by the likes of Apple and Google, would benefit the company and have a material impact on its profitability in the year to March 2012. Shares in the AIM listed company responded with a fall of 13.3% to 146.5p.

Bango’s systems allow businesses of all sizes to collect payment for music, games, applications, videos and services sold to internet connected mobile phone users. The company is able to charge payments to mobile phone bills or use other billing methods such as credit card based on intelligence about the consumer. Bango also provides an analytics service that provides accurate information about visitors and the effectiveness of marketing activities for mobile web sites.

RIM (Blackberry), Apple and Google have been driving the recent adoption of smartphones and smartphone technology. According to Bango, the success of Apple's application store and the increase in mobile advertising spend suggest that mobile commerce is now becoming mainstream. This is a market in which Bango is already active and intends to focus on in the future as it is apparent that the application stores are becoming an important route to market for mobile content vendors.

During the first half of the year, Bango saw significant growth in demand from these application stores for its billing and analytics technology, including from industry leaders such as RIM, Gameloft, EA, Fox, Yahoo and Turner. The company said it expected that these market developments would improve its growth prospects and profitability as it gains increased revenues and higher percentage margins from larger customers in the medium term. It noted that this should lead to more visible and higher quality revenues. In particular, Bango said it saw considerable potential in its relationship with leading smartphone maker RIM. The company has also launched similar billing and analytics technology for Android…

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