Mobile Entertainment Conference Concludes Greedy Phone Companies are the Biggest Barrier to Mobile Entertainment

June 15, 2007 (London, UK) — While analysts continue to predict great things for mobile entertainment, delegates at the recent Mobile Entertainment Market (MeM) conference in Monte Carlo were talking as much about barriers to explosive growth as they were about new developments in mobile content. The Mobile Games Manager from Slotland.com, a leading provider of real-money mobile casino games, attended the conference and reports that the concensus in Monaco was that if phone network providers loosened the reigns it would stimulate development and make more entertainment more available to mobile users.

"There’s lots of interesting things happening, especially in progressive markets like Italy," said John Lancelet of Slotland.com. "But mobile network providers slow the pace by making data transfer so expensive and by pretty well excluding independent content providers from their portals"

Data transfer costs are prohibitive and many users are confused about what it will actually cost to download a song or play a game. They are understandably reluctant to buy an MP3 for $1.50 knowing it could cost another $5.00 in data transfer fees to download it, or to play a casino game only to have their winnings gobbled up by phone charges. According to the word on the street at MeM, Italy is the place to go for the most reasonable flat fee offers and South Africa has the best price-per-megabyte fees for downloads.

Phone companies, whose mobile portals are still the only significant source of mobile traffic, have a virtual monopoly on mobile content — mostly because customers don’t know that they can venture off the phone company’s home page. And unfortunately, since mobile network operators take a much higher percentage of the profits than internet portals, most independent entertainment providers can’t get their product to players this way. However, just because the phone company isn’t offering mobile gambling doesn’t mean players don’t have access to real-money casino games on their mobile. Mobile surfers that leave the phone company’s portal soon find popular independent operators like Slotland.com.

"Generally, mobile content market today is in a similar stage to where the internet was in the late 80s and early 90s when AOL, MSN and similar internet access providers thought that every internet visitor will access the web through their home portals, and no other pages, and every content provider would have to advertise and gain customers through their portals only," observed Lancelet.

Meanwhile, independent companies like Slotland.com continue to make fun mobile entertainment available. The long-popular slot machine and video poker web site has 5 real-money slots on their WAP site, wap.Slotland.com. The mobile games are tied to Slotland’s famous online progressive jackpots, and players can use their Slotland.com player account on the computer or on the mobile phone.

—ENDS—

For further information on Slotland.com’s web games (www.Slotland.com)
and mobile games (www.Slotland.com/mobile), please contact:

Larry Colcy
Lyceum Media
(604) 685-6240 Slotland@LyceumMedia.com

About Slotland.com
Established in 1998, Slotland.com is renowned for its fairness, security and sincerity. Slotland.com’s progressive jackpot is currently won on average every six weeks and usually stands at over $100,000, making it one of the most frequently won jackpots on the Internet. In 2005, the pioneering entertainment company introduced its first slot machine for the mobile phone/PDA platform. Since 2004, the company has proudly supported a Canadian curling team and sponsored amateur bowling tournaments across western Canada and recently built a school that will give new hope to a small village in Africa. Slotland.com was recently voted “Most Unique Slot Site” and “Best Progressive Jackpot Site” by Strictly Slots Magazine readers, named “Best Web TV” in a Gambling Online Magazine poll, and selected as a finalist in the inaugural ME Awards “Best Mobile Gambling Company” category.