airG Inc.

airG Incorporated
Type of business Corporation
Available in Multilingual
Founded 2000 (2000)[1]
Headquarters Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
No. of locations 12
Founder(s)
President Michael Kader
CEO Frederick Ghahramani
Industry Mobile social network, mobile gaming
Revenue $1 billion+ [3]
Employees 167 [4]
Subsidiaries Hookt
Website www.airg.com
Registration Open
Users 100,000,000+[3]
Current status Live
Written in C, C++, Objective-C, Perl, mod_perl, Python, Javascript, Node.js, Pliant, Java, J2ME

airG Incorporated (airG), also known as airGames and airGames Wireless[5] is a Canadian software company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia.[6] Its products include telecom software, a social networking service designed for mobile use, and a suite of multiplayer mobile games and applications.[7] The company was founded and incorporated in April 2000 by Frederick Ghahramani, Vincent Yen, and Bryce Pasechnik.[2] airG announced that it had more than 20 million customers in 2007.[8] Seven years later, airG reported that it had surpassed that figure substantially, now having more than 100 million customers.[3] The company's reach is also a global one, as it has sales in 40-plus countries.[9] The Ground Truth mobile analytics census conducted in 2010 identified airG's weekly media time as 1 hour 31 minutes, making it one of the top 10 most frequented services on mobile phones in the United States.[10]

Overview

airG has received awards and commendations from several organizations. In 2001, airG was awarded the BMO Bank of Montreal First Place Prize in the first annual New Ventures B.C. competition.[11][12][13] Four years later, airG's founders won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Business Development Bank of Canada.[14][15] The company was recognized for excellence once again 2010. Mediacorp named airG as one of the Top 50 Employers of young people in Canada.[16][17]

The company has also given back to the local community. In 2008, airG formed a partnership with the Canadian charity, Kids Help Phone. The partnership led to the donation of $200,000 to the charity along with the deployment of several digital outreach campaigns.[18]

Products

Mobile games

airG released AtomicDove, a 'persistent' and 'multiplayer' game, in November 2001.[19][20] AtomicDove launched a $50,000 global competition on June 1, 2002, through partnership with 17 mobile operators in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Belgium, Russia, and Switzerland.[21] At the end of 2002, AtomicDove generated 100 million minutes of mobile data traffic.[22]

Big Barn World is a multiplayer farming game built for mobile devices by airG. [23]

Mobile chat

airG is the private label provider of the Sprint 'Games Lobby Lounge'.[24][25]

airG runs Conexion Latina for 1 million Spanish speaking customers in America.[26] The service is branded by Telcel in Mexico as Conexión Ideas.[27]

Mobile advertising

airG started selling mobile advertising across its games and social networking services in 2006. The company sold just 2% of its 20+ billion mobile advertising impressions in 2006.[28] Eventually, airG built advertising targeting capabilities to target ads,[29] interactive polls,[30] and engagement units specifically to customers based on their profile information. This led to a dramatic increase in advertisers using the airG ad platform, whereby in 2012 Red Bull announced that more than 10% of the registrants for a sporting event, sponsored by the energy drink giant, came in via mobile thanks to an airG mobile social campaign targeting winter sports enthusiasts.[31][32]

References

  1. ↑ "airG Crunchbase" (XBRL). Crunchbase Business Graph by AOL Inc. February 1, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Engineers Seek Top Prize" (XBRL). Simon Fraser News. September 6, 2001.
  3. 1 2 3 "airG Inc. Visiting company at MWC 2015" (XBRL). Government of Canada Trade Commissioner Service. February 12, 2014.
  4. ↑ "airG Inc. LinkedIn" (XBRL). LinkedIn. February 1, 2013.
  5. ↑ Thomson, Clive (August 30, 2002). "Are cellphones meant to save time -- or waste it? These days, mobiles re the new Game Boys". The Globe & Mail. Retrieved 30 August 2002.
  6. ↑ Lewis, Rob (February 8, 2011). "Vancouver's airG - the world's largest mobile social network". Tech Vibes. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  7. ↑ Indvik, Lauren (April 22, 2010). "More Than Half of Mobile Internet Time Is Spent on Social Networks". Mashable. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  8. ↑ "airG Claims 20 Million Users of Mobile Social Networking Services". Cellular News. October 16, 2007. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  9. ↑ "Meet airG, The Mobile Social Network You've Never Heard Of That's Ten Times Bigger Than Foursquare" (XBRL). Business Insider. Feb 3, 2011.
  10. ↑ Indvik, Lauren (April 22, 2010). "More Than Half of Mobile Internet Time Is Spent on Social Networks [STATS]". Mashable. Retrieved 22 April 2010.
  11. ↑ Luckow, Diane (Oct 18, 2001). "Engineering students win $50,000". Simon Fraser University News. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  12. ↑ Aberle, Katherine (Sep 6, 2001). "SFU STUDENTS ADVANCE TO FINAL ROUND IN NEW VENTURES BC COMPETITION". Simon Fraser University News. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  13. ↑ "2001 Competition Winner" (XBRL). New Ventures BC. September 27, 2001.
  14. ↑ "Frederick Ghahramani and Vincent Yen win BDC's Young Entrepreneur Award" (XBRL). BDC Bank of Canada. October 18, 2005.
  15. ↑ "BDC to honour young Canadian entrepreneurs for outstanding accomplishments" (XBRL). The Globe & Mail Globeinvestor.com. October 18, 2005.
  16. ↑ "Top employers for young people" (XBRL). Canadian HR Reporter. June 3, 2010.
  17. ↑ Press, Jordan (Jun 1, 2010). "Full list of Top 50 Employers". The Globe & Mail.
  18. ↑ Murphy, David (June 3, 2008). "airG Helps Kids with Mobile Ad Space". Mobile Marketing Magazine.
  19. ↑ "Storm8's "World War" RPG on iPhone/iPod Touch" (XBRL). 4th Kingdom. Jan 22, 2010.
  20. ↑ Daniels, Tiffany (Nov 30, 2001). "Leading Edge Wireless Games". Scoop Sci-Tech Independent News.
  21. ↑ Philip, Dmitri Echin (April 2, 2011). "airG Research, MKTG 4960 Ecommerce & High Tech Marketing". docstoc.com. York University Schulich School of Business. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
  22. ↑ Banks, Jay (Jul 17, 2002). "At Last: Some Positive Telecom News!". The Free Library.
  23. ↑ "Big Barn World" (XBRL). CNET.Com. Feb 27, 2013.
  24. ↑ Lee, Nicole (May 11, 2006). "Sprint announces Game Lobby Lounge with fanfare". CNET.
  25. ↑ Yuan, Li (April 4, 2006). "Social Networking Goes Mobile". Wall Street Journal.
  26. ↑ Marek, Sue (Feb 3, 2007). "airG Launches Spanish-Language Community". Wireless Week.
  27. ↑ "Ideas Telcel".
  28. ↑ Tuten, Tracy (2010), Enterprise 2.0: How Technology, eCommerce, and Web 2.0 Are Transforming Business Virtually, Santa Barbara California: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 168, retrieved July 1, 2010
  29. ↑ Dostal, Erin (June 14, 2012). "airG launches ad targeting capabilities". Direct Marketing. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  30. ↑ Fehrenbacher, Katie (August 18, 2006). "airG, A Mobile Network Of 10 Million Users". GigaOm.
  31. ↑ Tode, Chantal (June 1, 2012). "Red Bull energizes event registrations with mobile, social campaign". Mobile Marketer.
  32. ↑ Smith, Steve (June 4, 2012). "Red Bull Campaign Shows That Social Mobile Has To Get Beyond The Banner". Media Post.
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