The mobile content wrapper business expands its global reach and influence

London, December 1st 2010: Accumulate UK Limited today announced that its Flexion service, the solution that provides flexible pricing and retailing options for mobile retailers, has hit 20 million users. This milestone marks a year on year increase of over 100% and the number of new users is growing at a rate of 1.5 million per month.

Wrapper technology is taking off globally as it provides publishers with the ability to enable a range of additional functions and services for their content, without having to make any alterations to the original source code.

Without having to spend time and resources on additional coding or testing, content publishers can add a range of billing and pricing options through Flexion, while through Flexion Discovery, they can add content discovery that allows consumers to find more of their content. On top of this, Flexion can be used for DRM and allow content publishers to explore new distribution channels and methods.

As the number of content publishers, as well as OEMs, that use Flexion increases then more and more consumers are exposed to the service and can access more content with ease. Currently, the number of new consumers is growing at a rate of 1.5 million per month.

“This is a major milestone for us to hit and it highlights the growth that is available in this sector,” said Jens Lauritzson, MD of Accumulate UK Limited. “Wrapper technology enables content publishers to create the best possible content and do that once. The additional services, such as billing or DRM, can be added by the wrapper, so that it doesn’t affect the core content.”

Flexion’s wrapper technology works by creating a small amount of code that is ‘wrapped’ around the original content. This wrapped code can then enable a range of additional services, from DRM through to allowing users to search for new content. However, it is through the flexible pricing options that Flexion has so far seen most of its growth to date. Through Flexion, content owners can create customised pricing options, from “Try & Buy” through to “All you can eat” models, which offer greater retail-style flexibility.

Flexion’s amazing growth has been helped by the support offered to the service by device manufacturers, operators, retailers and publishers. Flexion’s customers include global brands such as Hutchison 3G, Telefonica O2, Orange Group, Sony Ericsson, Alcatel, Nokia and EA. While thanks to its recent integrations with companies like txtNation and Boku, Flexion now has billing solutions in over sixty countries.

While the number of consumers using Flexion enabled products continues to grow, so does the revenue for the industry. For pre-loaded content, the revenue cycle for a product can extend way beyond the norm for the sector, with some deals still reporting good revenue from wrapped content installed 2 years ago.

“What we’re finding is that with the use of Flexion and Flexion Discovery, preloads can be seen as the start of a consumer’s journey rather than the end-point. Each preloaded game also acts as a shop, recommending additional content that the consumer can enjoy,” continued Lauritzson. “This obviously helps to create a snowball effect in terms of revenue and means that our customers can really maximise revenues by using Flexion.”

Thanks to the success of the Flexion service, Accumulate UK Limited will be trading as Flexion from January 2011.

“Most people in the industry know the Flexion brand by now, so it made sense to officially trade under that name too,” said Lauritzson. “Of course, the new name won’t make any difference to the direction we are taking and the continued growth we are predicting.”