July 2005

Maxis Developer Programme (MDP) participants are poised to tap into the growing mobile application and content markets in Asia and are targeting sales from the overseas market in Asia to contribute significantly to their revenues.

Connie Chng,
Computerworld Malaysia

Maxis Developer Programme (MDP) participants are poised to tap into the growing mobile application and content markets in Asia and are targeting sales from the overseas market in Asia to contribute significantly to their revenues.

INavigate, a Kuala Lumpur-based provider of multimedia content and enterprise solutions and one of the pioneer MDP participants, has already provided its Java games and MMS contents to mobile service operators in Thailand and China - AIS and DTAC, and China Mobile and China Unicom, respectively.

Said iNavigate chief executive officer, KK Lim, "The overseas markets are expected to gradually become our main source of revenue and we are looking at China, which has 350 million mobile subscribers as compared to Malaysia's 14 million subscriber base."

"Although China has a relatively lower penetration rate, it is quantitatively larger than the Malaysian market and we expect sales from the Chinese market to contribute to about 10 per cent of our revenues by end 2006," Lim added.

Apart from iNavigate, Meta-Dome, an Islamic mobile content and applications developer, is also gearing up to enter the overseas market.

The company, also a pioneer MDP participant, has already offered its Solat Times Java application to operators in the United Kingdom like O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile.

Solat Times is the world's first mobile application of its kind that notifies users of the five daily Islamic prayer times in major cities in Malaysia, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

Meta-Dome has recently ventured into Indonesia and the Middle East, and will soon be venturing into Brunei to offer its solutions, said its managing director, Ferhard Ahmad.

"The overseas markets that we enter are mostly growing markets. It is important for the company as we aim to get a large portion of sales from our overseas ventures by next year," he said.

Karim Abdul Malik, Maxis head of Product Development and Management, said this is an opportune time for Malaysian developers to explore the viability of their applications and position them for the global market.

"It is also in line with the objectives of MDP, which is to provide Malaysian mobile content and application developers with the skills set and industry knowledge to deliver their innovations for the mobile devices both domestically and internationally," he said.

Launched in August 2003, MDP is the first mobile service operator-led developer programme in Malaysia.

It was set up by Maxis Multimedia with a RM30 million commitment over five years to build and nurture a community of local mobile content and application developers, to help them develop "indigenous" applications, and to assist them to be on par with their counterparts in the region such as Korea, Japan and China.

This year, Maxis Multimedia has also announced that it plans to invest RM8 million from the initial fund to further boost and enhance the programme to include tools and development support for technology platforms like Java SIM, Windows Mobile and Symbian.

Maxis Multimedia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysian telecommunications comany Maxis Communications. A Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)-status company, Maxis Multimedia leverages on Maxis' voice and data services to jointly develop innovative mobility content and applications with technology partners.

The company also plays a pivotal role in the development of local talent in telecommunications technologies and content creation through human capital development in collaboration with local universities. For more information on MDP, visit mdp.maxis.com.my.