The Digital Concierge programme allows developers to leverage common enabling content and functionalities to develop a richer and wider variety of mobile services and to build exportable capabilities. The current Digital Concierge enablers include:

Mobile Location Positioning Enabler

The Mobile Location Positioning Enabler is a platform that enables businesses and mobile service developers to develop and deploy operator-neutral location-based services easily. The service will be integrated with the location infrastructure of the mobile telcos in Singapore, reaching consumers irrespective of the network they subscribe to. It provides a single interface for businesses and mobile service developers to gain access to telcos' mobile location positioning capabilities on a user opt-in basis, without compromising privacy.

The Mobile Location Positioning Enabler includes software development toolkits, a sandbox development environment and common Application Programming Interfaces which developers can access via a developer portal to help them reduce development time and complexity in deploying location-based services.

Shared Business Directory

SPH Shared Business Directory

The SPH Shared Business Directory contains regularly-updated information on local Retail and Food & Beverage (F&B) businesses which is being offered to interested third-party mobile service developers.

An open Application Programming Interface (API) webkit will be provided to enable developers to access the shared directory database which contains a standardised set of information on businesses including their locations, opening hours, and images of the retail shop front. Developers will also be provided with value-added content such as local lifestyle information and reviews of products and services, as well as rich media and search capabilities.

Places.sg

Places.sg is a shared directory service that provides a set of comprehensive and standardised business information on Points-of-Interest (POI) including Retail and F&B outlets. These POIs are updated regularly by a dedicated content team as well as crowd-sourced from both web and mobile users.

The service will allow third-party mobile service developers to shorten their time-to-market by leveraging the information on Places.sg using a set of APIs that is available free-of-charge, to develop new mobile services. In addition to providing a standardised set of business information, the service will also allow businesses to rapidly syndicate campaigns, promotions and other information across multiple mobile services.

Mobi-Sites Enabler

The Mobi-Sites Enabler is a platform that offers quick and simple tools for businesses, particularly those in the Retail, and the Food & Beverage (F&B) sectors, to create their own mobile websites without the need for technical or design knowledge, or the infrastructure to support the websites. The platform includes many useful interactive features to help businesses to reach out to their customers, for example:

• Marketing tools to connect to users of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter,
• Mobile commerce and shopping carts,
• Mobile bookings/reservations,
• Mobile event calendaring, and
• Seamless integration with traditional mobile capabilities such as Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

With the Mobi-Sites Enabler, businesses will be able to easily create and update content through the service's WYSIWYG-enabled (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) online portal. To facilitate content creation, templates are available for different types of businesses in the Retail and F&B sectors. The service will also optimise content delivery to more than 5,000 models of mobile devices with different form factors and operating systems.

Mobile Ticketing and Fulfilment Enabler

Smoov Pte Ltd

Smoov Pte Ltd will provide an open-access, standards-based platform that enables third-party mobile service developers to make use of cinema as well as event ticketing and fulfilment functionalities. These include ticket purchase and electronic ticket delivery to the consumers' mobile phones for direct auto-gate access to venues. The platform can also be used for the distribution and redemption of merchant vouchers and coupons.

With the Mobile Ticketing and Fulfilment Enabler, third-party mobile service developers have a single interface to multiple ticketing operators and merchants, thus reducing development time and complexity. The use of a standards-based ticket format also helps lower the cost-of-use and reduce development costs. The platform also allows businesses to leverage a wide variety of third-party mobile services to reach out to a larger base of mobile users.

SISTIC.com Pte Ltd and Mobiquest

SISTIC and Mobiquest will develop a system that enables the buying and issuing of tickets via a mobile phone. The system will emulate, as closely as possible, the user's Internet booking experience. An optional feature allows users to gain access to venues without a traditional ticket, thus providing an end-to-end paperless experience. For greater flexibility, patrons will be allowed to exchange mobile tickets for traditional tickets where venues have not yet deployed access control systems that can read mobile tickets. Venues can also mix and match ticket modes, allowing both patrons and venues with greater flexibility in the fulfilment part of the ticketing process.

The mobile ticketing system leverages SISTIC's extensive event content and ticketing infrastructure and Mobiquest's mobile ticketing platform which delivers the tickets to the mobile phones. The mobile tickets are based on industry-standard 2-D barcodes and delivered by SMS via existing telecommunications networks.

Mobile Taxi Booking Enabler

The Mobile Taxi Booking Enabler enables third-party mobile service developers to integrate taxi booking functionalities into their services. This will enable consumers to book taxis easily from their mobile phones. For example, a button can be embedded onto a restaurant's mobile website to enable customers visiting the website to conveniently book a taxi with one click.

A set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will be made available for developers to gain access to taxi booking functionalities of multiple taxi companies, starting with Comfort Delgro. These functionalities will be similar to what is available on voice and SMS bookings, such as current and advance booking. The service is available free-of-charge to mobile service developers.

Mobile Remote Payment Enabler

Two PayPal solutions enable businesses and mobile service developers in Singapore to easily integrate mobile payment functionalities into their mobile websites and applications. The solutions are:

• Mobile Express Checkout for the integration of payment into m-commerce websites, and
• Mobile Payment Software Development Kit (SDK) for the integration of payment into mobile applications.

Both solutions are based on an open-access model, with transparent pricing and open technical interfaces.

The Mobile Report Payment Enabler is expected to help grow the volume of mobile payment transactions in Singapore by allowing businesses to provide payment functionalities on their mobile commerce websites so that customers can complete their purchases through their mobile phones.

View contact information of vendors offering the above enablers under the Digital Concierge programme.

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