Mango was covered as a twitter-style localized SMS service where you can set up groups of friends and broadcasting texts to.

They’re announcing that UFONE has agreed to pick up the service and make it into a VAS within its own platform, to be called "UFONE SMS Buddies". I’ve confirmed that this is a standard VAS contract arrangement between Ufone and Confiz Solutions (the company behind Mango) in that the product and IP remains with Confiz and Ufone will just provide the SMS infrastructure and marketing muscle, revenue being shared. Confiz Solutions will have the option to also license the product out to other telecos in other countries, just like PixSense has been doing with their product.

Considering how heavy sms usage is in the country, I believe this app is poised to be an immense success for Ufone considering it gives people the option to save credit by being charged only for one sms for broadcast messages… but then again sms’s are fast becoming free anyway.

As soon as this is launched however, I also suspect other telecos will try to jump in on the wagon, opening up the opportunity for other similar services (*cough*Chopaal*Cough*) to get a good contract too.

Overall I’d call this a pretty good success story for a locally-conceived product that wasn’t backed by gobs of venture money, still becoming incredibly successful for its parent firm. Good job Confiz.