Buy Virtual Movie Tickets on Your Phone

[difenbaker]

MobilRelay today launched Mobile Box Office, a service that enables moviegoers to use mobile phones as tickets. It is the first service of its kind in the United States and it is available beginning January 18 for all shows at Emagine in Canton, Mich.

http://www.slashphone.com/news/uploads/3469/mob.jpg

Anyone with a web-enabled (WAP - Wireless Application Protocol) mobile phone and a color screen may use Mobile Box Office to browse movie listing dates and times, select and pay for any movie. To use the service, moviegoers navigate to mbo.com on their mobile phones and follow prompts to browse and buy movie tickets.

After making a show selection and secure credit card transaction, moviegoers receive an electronic, bar-coded ticket on their mobile phones, which is scanned for entry at the theater.

"Mobile Box Office speaks to people who live the mobile lifestyle," said Tom Beals, founder of MobilRelay. "For them, Mobile Box Office is more convenient, since anyone can use their mobile phone at any time and from anywhere to browse and buy movie tickets."

Mobile Box Office offers advantages to consumers and theater owners:

Consumers

* Convenience of browsing available movies and times and purchasing from anywhere, anytime with a mobile phone.
* Guaranteed seating at point-of-order.
* Ability to by-pass ticket lines.
* Ability to purchase tickets to popular movies the moment they are released for sale.

Movie Theaters

* Reduced operational costs, resulting in more profit for each ticket sold through Mobile Box Office.
* Build customer loyalty through increased patron convenience.
* Market to interested customers who opt-in to receive alerts about upcoming movies and special offers.
* Increased ticketing security.

Mobile Box Office works with and is optimized for all U.S. carriers and numerous mobile devices. MobilRelay has a patent pending on a process for distributing bar-coded messages to mobile devices. MBO technology incorporates Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL), the largest open source movement for mobile device compatibility.[/URL]

cheers!

[url]www.phonemag.com (http://www.phonemag.com/)

[Jose_R.A.M]

Hmm...I'd rather do it old school way.

Even though it saves seats before hand, thats 1 seat. Who goes to the cinema on their own?

Also, what happens if your battery runs out?

Plus Wap is sort-of expensive here.

Right - with all those potential problems aside its quite a nifty idea.

How is it paid - via credit card or phone credit?

[difenbaker]

By credit card.

:)

[Jose_R.A.M]

it woulda been nice if you had the option to pay from your call time balance.

Because of the sim card I have, whatever I top up rarely gets used because it gives me free calls/txtx/pic messages/wap. It would be nice use that accumulating credit somewhere.

[carcomptoy]

all shows at Emagine in Canton, Mich.
I love that...how many people do think are actually gonna take advantage of that in Canton, Michigan?? They should've made it nationwide!

[MobileBoxOffice]

Hi,

I am with Mobile Box Office support and we are trying to help people understand our service and how it works.

To answer your questions Jose R.A.M.:

"Even though it saves seats before hand, thats 1 seat. Who goes to the cinema on their own?"

You can purchase multiple tickets at once and obviously each person can purchase their own. Also, having a guaranteed seat is great and thats one advantage of the service. Another value is being able to purchase your tickets anywhere AND not having to wait in box office or ticket dispenser lines.

"Also, what happens if your battery runs out?"

If your battery were to run out you could use someone your withs webenabled mobile phone to retrieve your tickets or no matter what you can get them from the box office. Although this would be an inconvience it is important to make sure your battery is charged. ;)

and Carcomptoy:

We are testing pilots in other parts of the country right now as well and plan to roll out nationally this year. We just launched our first theater in Canton.

More information can be found on our F.A.Q. (http://www.mbo.com/web/faq.jsp)and if you have any questions please let me know.

Emmanuel Smith
Customer Support
Mobile Box Office