LatCel eyes U.S. Hispanics for mobile

November 14, 2007

Jorge Partidas, CEO of LatCel

LOS ANGELES – A wireless content services provider focused on the Latin American community, LatCel is tapping into Hispanic Americans, the largest minority in the United States.

The company serves more than 300 million subscribers across Latin America. The reason for the company’s reach is simple: the mobile channel is where most young Latin Americans go to get content, said Jorge Partidas, CEO of LatCel and panelist at the Mobile Marketing Forum, Los Angeles.

Only 5 percent of Latinos have Internet access in all of Latin America, whereas 60 percent use a mobile phone. Ninety-five per cent of LatCel’s business has been in premium services for the mobile channel. But the company’s recent partnerships are a testament to the challenges of providing premium content to a prepaid audience.

LatCel recently partnered with Edioma, a bilingual education company, to create and deliver content specific to their core demographic of Spanish-dependent customers.

The company recently initiated a premium service called E-Goal with the help of Edioma. E-Goal, a downloadable mobile soccer game that teaches users basic English vocabulary, was made available for free use up to 30 days and then for an ongoing subscription rate of $4.99 a month.

That application saw 19,000 downloads in the first three weeks and 24,000 by week four, said Larry Upton, principal at Edioma, Inc, Austin, TX.

“Eleven per cent of users downloaded the product and overall sales spiked 3 per cent, the pickup rate has been really impressive,” Mr. Upton said. “It was a litmus test; we didn’t know what the outcome would be.”

LatCel is partnering with a T-1 carrier that will enable it to deliver 40 million impressions per month. The company aims to offer music and games as growing categories, which the company wants to use to deliver advertising.

“We see that there’s a lot of value, the numbers are starting to show,” Mr. Partidas said.

From its own in-house research, Edioma found that 50 per cent of first graders are Spanish dependent in Austin, TX, where Edioma is based. Only 30 percent of those children have Internet access at home -- another reason why the educational-based applications for mobile generate high adoption rates from users.

“When you look at the growth trends in the five- to 12-year-old segment, it became really obvious where they’re going to get content,” Mr. Upton said.