May 20th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Interviews | No Comments »
Over the past months, Artificial Life has hit the media a couple of times with their licensing deals and very possitive financial status. Time for a small interview with the CEO Eberhard Schonburg.
[Arjan] To kick off, it would be nice to have a bit of a background on the heritage of Artificial Life. Who started it and when?
[Eberhard] Artificial Life, Inc. was founded in 1993 by current CEO Eberhard Schoneburg, and incorporated in Delaware in 1994. ALIFE began as a developer of intelligent avatar internet based applications for the banking and insurance industry. By1998, ALIFE became public on NASDAQ.
In 2001, due to the global internet crisis, ALIFE reorganized and changed its business strategy and overall focus to mobile rather than internet based applications, and moved the base of operations to Hong Kong, which is one center of telecommunications in Asia. Since then, ALIFE has become a leader in broadband 3G, iPhone games, mobile software development and publishes its applications worldwide.
[Arjan] When did Artificial Life decide to move onto the EU/US market and what were the main reasons for it?
[Eberhard] After we successfully consolidated our Asian business in 2003, we then managed to sign up more partners in the EU and US in 2004. Our initial success was due to the invention of a 3G interactive mobile game, V-girl, which combines hundreds of streaming videos with highly interactive game play on mobile. It won several major awards in the industry, and caught media buzz and attention from the EU and US market. At that time, 3G was just starting in EU/US, and we managed to get into the market at the perfect timing.
[Arjan] Looking at the brand licensing part of the business, Artificial Life seems to have a strong focus on geographically smaller brands (i.e. football clubs). What is the big idea behind this strategy? (it's questioned by a lot of readers)
[Eberhard] Generally, we focus on brands that have a loyal fan base and have a cool image that is appealing to the users. Some of them are local brands, but they have strong influence and status in the territory. (i.e. football clubs). Some of them are international brands (i.e. car brands), and these brands appeal particularly to the target audience of the iPhone, which is one of the key platforms on which we have been focusing.
[Arjan] What is the key driver to Artificial Life’s success? The company seems very profitable in a time where others have a hard time to continue.
[Eberhard] On the company operation level, our success is due to our diversified business in mobile games, mobile TV and mobile business applications, which have generated multiple recurrent revenue streams to maintain our significant growth in profits. Besides providing mobile entertainment on the traditional mobile platform, we have advanced into the latest platforms such as iPhone and Android at a very early stage, and received extremely positive feedback from the market. Because of our extensive know-how in mobile and our international exposure, we are in a better position to win trust and contracts from partners. A recent example would be our latest adventure to manage a 3G portal for one of the major Chinese telecom operators.
Apart from mobile entertainment, we have diversified our business into interactive mobile TV, which is named as MoPA-TV (www.mopatv.com). It is a technology combining live TV shows with real time mobile participation via SMS / MMS. This product has brought us into close contact and cooperation with many TV stations around the globe and further assisted our global expansion. Additionally, we have diversified our business into business applications provisioning, one of which is called Mobil Diab. We work closely with hospitals and research institutes to bring this product to diabetic patients.
On the company philosophy level, we strive to provide premium contents and high quality products to our customers. This dedication brings us returning clients and loyal customers, which also contributes to our success.
[Arjan] What can we expect from Artificial Life for the near future? What are the platforms and markets of interest?
[Eberhard] You may expect we will continue our efforts to excite the markets with premium mobile contents through partnerships with brand owners. iPhone is one of our main focus, while we will continue serving the traditional mobile platforms. Regarding markets of interest, I would say US and China will be our main focus for the upcoming 6-12 months.
