location based blog: Here Are The Mobile Companies To Watch Right Now

What would you do if you were sitting on a really big (possibly the biggest) pile of data on the mobile marketing & advertising industry?

Analyze it, of course – and publish an insights report to spread the word!

Now, in the past year and a half wikimobidex.org has grown into the world’s largest web-based index of mobile marketing & advertising firms, with hundreds of listed companies generating tens of thousands of monthly site visits.

With all of this B2B traffic and industry representation, the site in many ways is a near proxy for the mobile marketing industry itself – and an analysis of the wiki’s site metrics can yield powerful insights about the mobile marketing industry proper, as well as the companies driving these trends.

And, while it would be neat to see if traffic patterns on the wiki confirmed the general marketplace trends that we are witnessing each and every day in the mobile space – trends like the explosive growth of the app economy, or the rise of the mobile web (yes, the report does a good job of charting and confirming what we think we already know). What would be far more interesting if we could use the analysis to make actionable predictions about what will occur in the near future – and not on a general, macro scale – but with respect to specific companies listed in the wiki.

Now, what if I told you that this report could identify specific companies that were likely to be on the verge of becoming acquired? Or were about to raise significant investment, launch a big new product, partnership, or would soon be entering a legal quagmire? Would that be something you might be interested in?

Well that’s exactly what this report intends to do. The methodology is simple enough: First compile a list of the most trafficked company pages on the wiki in a given period… let’s say, a month. Then, compare that list to the previous month’s traffic, and isolate any company whose page jumped ten or more positions month over month.

Still following? Good, because this is where things get interesting. Now, we’ve found that there are three basic reasons why traffic to a company page jumps ten or more places in the wiki a given month: Either some sort of investment activity has occurred regarding the company in question; the company launched a new product, partnership or other initiative; or it was involved in some sort of legal action – all within the month the traffic spike occurred.

But what if, after extensive research, no explanation can be found for the sudden rise in popularity of a particular company’s wiki page? No investments, product launches, or other significant events occurred in the month. What if the sudden rise in page popularity was a precursor for the companies in question to experience such events? Perhaps the industry knew something that wasn’t yet publicly announced… and this pre-market knowledge was being manifested in the traffic patterns of wiki itself.

To validate this theory we conducted an analysis of the July traffic on wikimobidex.org, and identified 18 company pages that jumped 10 or more places in site rank, month-over-month (we dubbed these company pages “High Jumpers”). It seems that 9 of these companies had been quite busy that month: 2 were acquired, 1 had announced the raising of additional capital, while 6 launched significant new products or other initiatives (details of these events can be found in the report itself).

That left 9 with no explanation for their sudden rise in popularity (we’ve dubbed these companies “Companies to Watch,” and watch them we did). In the immediate period following the study, 6 of the 9 “Companies to Watch” launched significant new products, partnerships, or other initiatives. Additionally, at least 2 of these companies were also found to be in the advanced stages of raising additional capital – although since neither publicly announced their investment-raising efforts we cannot go into further detail at this time!

Now, obviously mobile is a very dynamic space and this type of activity should be expected for many of the companies listed at wikimobidex.org. Still, while some companies on the July “Top 40” list not identified as “Companies to Watch” also experienced significant events following the period measured, when viewed in aggregate this group did not demonstrate nearly the same level of activity as the “Companies to Watch.” Clearly, we’re on to something here…

So, what follows is the first of what we hope will be many “Wikimobidex Insights Reports,” which will identify and chart the progress of these mobile “Companies to Watch.” Companies that we believe are on the verge of something big. Check out the complete report, and let us know what you think!

Oh, and for those of you that just gotta know, below are the top “Companies to Watch” as identified by the December Wikimobidex Insights Report.

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Watch List for December 2010:

1. Mobile Fringe. iPhone and Blackberry app developer and member of the July 2010 watch list jumped eleven (11) spots in the last month without significant activity observed in the period. Increase possibly due to the increasing interest around mobile apps (see Rhomobile, also on the December watch list), although not all mobile app makers listed in the wiki have experienced a similar lift in page traffic.

2, 3. Mobiweb and MobiDirectory. Bucking the mobile app trend the Scottsdale, Arizona mobile web developer and SEO firm Mobiweb jumped nineteen (19) spots, while its MobiDirectory unit jumped 25 spots month-over-month– both without significant activity observed in the period.

4. Rhomobile. The second mobile app developer on the watch list, Rhomobile jumped thirteen (13) spots without significant activity observed in the period.

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Now click here to check out the complete report!

Jamie Wells is director of global trade marketing for Microsoft mobile advertising solutions. This post was originally published at MobileStance, and is republished here with permission.

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