Interview with Wenhan Zhou – Cofounder of 2359Media

Having changed their business model since its inception, 2359Media has transitioned from being an ad network to being focused on mobilising content across smartphone platforms. With their first mobile application, SG Malls (opens up iTunes) as an example, they look to continue building high value location-based applications that are useful to consumers, and effective as rich media advertising platforms for advertisers. They also recently won the Microsoft Mobile Incubation Week. We sit down with one of the co-founders, Wenhan to find out more.

Hi Wenhan, glad to have you on SGE. Tell us about your background and how you met your cofounder, Hong Ting.

Hi Gwen, We met on the National University of Singapore (NUS) Overseas College program where we were both part of NCSV 12th Batch. We worked together for the first time when we formed a team in our Global Venture Creation Class taught by Tom Kosnik, as part of the program. Hong Ting and I are academically trained in the fields of Quantitative Finance and Computer Engineering respectively.

Why was 2359Media started?

2359Media was started because we felt that the mobile space will be undergoing a sea change, with opportunities for us to become a driver of this revolution. Our name “2359” (a minute before the dawn of a new day) reflects the belief that we are just at the cusp of the mobile revolution, where the confluence of factors will bring about the true potential of mobile as a media platform.

While we started off as an ad network with standard ad banners, we felt that we could benefit potential advertisers more by providing custom ad units and formats. Given these considerations, we have since morphed into a mobile advertising platform, providing an easy route for advertisers and content publishers alike to mobilise materials into attractive mobile applications across the major handset platforms. For content providers such as websites, blogs, magazines, newspaper, our advertising engine is available for publishers to monetize their content.

2359Media recently won the competition at Microsoft Windows Mobile Incubation Week. Tell us about that experience.

Microsoft Windows Mobile Incubation Week was hosted by Chris Chin to introduce developers to the Win Mo 6.5 platform, undergoing technical training with Nick Randolph, a Microsoft MVP. In addition to the training, the experience sharing that took place between attendees added fresh perspectives and sparked new ideas for possible mobile applications.

From a development perspective, the platform was relatively easy to pick up, and by judging day, the SGMalls WinMo version was 60% feature complete. Right now we are focused on polishing the UI to ensure that the WinMo users have a good an experience as our iPhone users.

Where do you see the mobile space heading in the next 3 years?

The successes of the iTunes App store, has proven that the app store model works as an app distribution channel, as well as an important factor in the purchasing decision of mobile phones. Given this, while Apple currently dominates the mobile app space, every other handset/OS player is launching competing app stores. At CommunicAsia 2009, for example, Samsung and LG both featured their own app Store that will initially sell Window Mobile apps. With this trend in place, we foresee that mobile apps will certainly flourish both in terms of quantity and quality over the next 3 years at least.

On the horizon though, with the cost of data on the decline, a question remains whether mobile web apps will overtake native apps. Currently, with the high cost of data, native applications have a leg up as they are more responsive and can provide a better user experience. However, as we have seen in iPhone 3.0, mobile web apps are taking advantage of certain features that were once the domain of native apps (e.g. location sensing and local SQL storage).