The acquisition has now been officially announced, saying that one shareholder will make it “faster”.
O2 has now released an official confirmation of its acquisition of the Weve mobile marketing venture that it had previously shared jointly with two other primary participants: Vodafone and EE.
The upcoming buyout of O2 is believed to have put somewhat of a rush on this acquisition.
O2 is preparing to be bought out by Hutchison Whampoa, and in this acquisition, it will be taking on the rest of the Weve deal, allowing Vodafone and EE to step out of the previous partnership. Weve will soon be proceeding forward exclusively as a subsidiary of O2. The mobile operator is going to keep up its ability for leveraging its customer data in order to provide the legs for the platform. Moreover, it will be adding another 20 million opt-ins for the platform, which will be gleaned from the 6 million Priority customers and 14 million O2 WiFi customers.
This will make it possible for the platform to be able to provide highly targeted mobile marketing.
The initial launch of Weve as a mobile advertising and wallet joint venture among the three giants occurred near the end of 2014. At that time, it was already boasting a massive customer database of a combined 20 million people. That was built upon the databases of all three of the partners in the project. Together, the three held a share of 80 percent market share. It wasn’t long before the mobile wallet component of the business was dropped and they proceeded with the marketing element.
According to Weve, this latest move represents a “strategic re-evaluation” of itself, and as the three partners break away and it continues under O2, it will provide the company with the flexibility that it requires to move ahead at a pace that reflects the current market.
Digital director of O2, David Plumb, explained that Weve has been successful through its focus on mobile advertising. Since 2014, it has witnessed a year over year growth of an estimated 45 percent. He added that there is still a great deal more room for growth, as “The UK mobile digital advertising market is big, growing by almost 100 per cent year on year to £850m in 2014.”
BWild |
February 28, 2014
As smartphone based transactions take off at breakneck speed, everyone is trying to hop aboard.
The speed with which mobile payments services are growing and are becoming accepted have now made it clear to most large banks that if they want to be able to remain relevant into the future, they will need to be able to offer their customers the ability to pay for goods and services through the use of smartphones.
Many telecoms and credit card companies are also hopping on board this massive trend.
Even retailers are starting to come up with their own opportunities to hop onto the mobile payments bandwagon and are coming up with their own unique strategies. As the shift toward smartphones as a platform continues, a growing number of companies from massive international giants to small mobile app development startups are trying to turn themselves into important players in this sector.
As mobile payments adoption becomes more common, the competition for those positions is growing.
In fact, it has already reached the point that solutions providers are trying virtually anything to carve out their share of this market, and to continue clawing to broaden that share. Unfortunately, as this continues to occur at an increasingly rapid rate, it is also causing this particular market to fragment. The technology as a whole is owned by many groups and within each group there is a flood of different players. Every one of them is looking to dominate as opposed to creating a consistent experience overall.
The result has been the development of what David Sear, Weve managing director, called a “mess”. He pointed out that “It is confusing for people and for banks, as well as being costly all round.” He explained that scalability is critical in order to make this market work. While it is currently questionable whether the situation is contributing to bank revenues in any way, it is undoubted that these institutions must hang onto it, regardless, in order to succeed in the future.
This fact makes the future of mobile payments extremely hard to predict. The form of it, at the moment, suggests that it will only continue to become more muddied and complex before it has the ability to improve.
