FSBM Holdings Berhad (FSBM), an information technology service and systems provider, is the honourable recipient of the 2008 Frost & Sullivan Malaysia Telecoms Award for Most Innovative Application or Product of the Year, for its mobile communications application, UNOS. Now, the registered users for this software application are coming from more than 80 countries worldwide and keep counting. Mr. Michael Ta, CEO of Multimedia and Communications group, shares with Frost & Sullivan, the challenges, targeted markets & expansion plan, and the application roadmap for UNOS.

Can you share with us how UNOS was 'born', starting from the idea, development, and launch into the market. What were the main challenges encountered at the early stages?

Mr. Michael Ta

We believe that the future trend of value-added-services (VAS) is in the mobile space. Due to various mobile and Internet applications made available to the market, consumers have to remember a basket of access numbers, such as the access number or ID from mobile, fixed-network, e-mail, and instant messaging services. So, we worked to build an application on an open-based platform, which is service provider and mobile infrastructure neutral, user friendly, and consumer centric. The most important point is all the functions provided by the application refer only to 'one-access-number', which is the existing mobile number on consumers' mobile device. 'UNOS', the name of this application, is derived from the Latin word and known as 'one'.

We started with a team of six people, and spent about twelve months of development before we officially launched UNOS with our first flagship, which was UNOS Voice in April 2007. Instead of concentrating only on the domestic or regional markets, we chose to launch UNOS through our Internet portal to target the potential users across the globe. The latest flagship called 'UNOS Pro' is packed with more features in mobile push messaging services, and was officially launched in March 2008. We currently have registered users from more than 80 countries worldwide.

The main challenge that we encountered at the early stage is the compatibility of our mobile software applications on various operating systems from different mobile handset manufacturers. To overcome this issue, we focused on the international open-source standard MIDP1.0 platform. Later, we further extended to MIDP2.0 compatible mobile devices.

There are numerous well-established VAS providers in the region, especially from the developed markets. As a homegrown (Malaysia) VAS provider, how do you position and differentiate yourself against your competitors, either in domestic or international market? Which segments are the major targeted user groups?

We always remind ourselves to 'dare to go ahead beyond common procedures'. We are not purely dependent on a single-revenue business model, such as the business model commonly applied in logo and ring tones download services. We build a platform with the capability to support multiple revenue models with multiple mobile services. Our definition of multiple revenue models include the revenue churned from UNOS voice-call services, which is from individual usage, advertising & promotional services for the merchants and marketing agencies, subscription-based services from the enterprise market segments, and the customizing mobile push delivery solutions through our partnership programs.

UNOS service is marketed as a 'virtual-SIM' on mobile devices. Can we say that UNOS is positioned as an 'alternative service provider' in the mobile space? Do you foresee UNOS facing the impact if mobile operators slash their mobile voice charging rate in future? If not, could you please share with us why? If yes, could you please share with us the potential strategy to adopt in order to cushion the impact?

We have seen the voice-charging rate in downward pressure due to the intense competition among the mobile service providers, such as the introduction of 'family-and-friends' services and the competition from the VoIP-calling card services. UNOS provides low-cost voice call solution for users to make a call-back to their home country while they are in the foreign country. Furthermore, our solution is able to help busy executives or travelers save significant amount of cost in receiving calls when overseas, compared to paying full international roaming charges. Apart from that, UNOS also provides other useful VAS such as buddy-call (call transferring), hotel connect, conference calling services, which are not available for most of the mobile service providers at present.

In addition, our revenue is churned from multiple services through multiple revenue models.

The trend of mobile communication industry is moving toward high-speed wireless broadband transmission such as 3.5G/HSPDA, WiMAX, and LTE. Will this trend bring the benefit to UNOS service in future? Could you please share with us the potential benefits of, pls specify?

Our application is not constrained by the wireless transmission technology, as we run on an interconnect neutral platform, and the software is infrastructure neutral. In fact, we will gain the benefits when higher bandwidth wireless transmission is introduced, because we will be able to provide more VAS on our existing platform, especially in push-service delivery. This will increase our ARPU. Furthermore, our users will also benefit by saving more on data charges, as our in-house developed data compression technique is able to compress data by up to 70% before being forwarded to their mobile devices.

Currently, UNOS service is more focused at the mass consumer market. Do you have any special plan to enter into enterprise, SME/SMI market segments? Could you please elaborate the partnership strategy to expand into these market segments?

For enterprise, SME/SMI market segments, we offer them to join us as a UNOS Alliance Partner. By being a partner, SME/SMI or enterprise segments can expand their available online services into the mobile space through system integration with the UNOS platform, such as customizing push-service delivery features for inventory checking on mobile devices by the sales personnel, mobile banking, mobile-transactions query services, and so on. We are currently in talks with several enterprises in Malaysia, including financial institutions and the enterprises in Australia for these mobile integration solution services.

The company has successfully ventured into overseas market through providing local customized service features known as 'Man Yu Bo' for the Chinese market. Do you have any plans to emulate the similar strategy and business model for the other potential overseas markets? Which market has a highly penetration potential, after China? Could you please share with us why?

We launched 'Man Yu Bo' in the Chinese market on a different platform with local customized features, which are specific to their market demand. From our research, we noticed that in general, Chinese users are technically savvy in mobile applications, and yet push-messaging services on mobile phones are still very limited in the local market. Due to the increasing popularity of 'Man Yu Bo', we did receive the request from the local Chinese handset manufacturers to embed our mobile software into their new mobile phone models. For the markets of Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, we use the common platform with our standard features.

The earlier version of UNOS features voice-oriented services, and the software is further enhanced by adding mobile data services such as push e-mail/SMS function in UNOS Pro. Can you share with us the future roadmap in the next three years for UNOS service?

In the coming new edition of UNOS software, which is expected to launch in the next one or two months, we will focus more on push-service delivery features, as well as enhancing our compression technology and mobile advertising feature. In order to increase our competitiveness in the competitive market environment, and to continue leading the 'virtual mobile operator' segment, we have set up our R&D center in China. With the future trend of moving toward high bandwidth wireless transmission technology, such as HSPA, WiMAX, and LTE, paired with our enhanced data compression technique, we believe that there are more VAS, especially the potential of video-based services, instead of current voice and data services, that we will be able to build into the UNOS software.