KELANA JAYA (Dec 16): Sedania Innovator Bhd, a recently listed mobile phone platform developer and service enabler, has introduced ShareShare OTT application, an over-the-top extension to its airtime transfer (ATT) service.

While its existing ATT service allows only prepaid credit transfer among users of one telecommunications service provider, Sedania in a statement in conjunction with the launch today said ShareShare OTT allows prepaid mobile subscribers from various networks to top up, transfer and request airtime credit via its proprietary ShareShare credit 'Heartz' to users of other network providers.

Participating telecommunications providers included Celcom Axiata Bhd, DiGi.Com Bhd, Maxis Bhd, Tune Talk Sdn Bhd and U Mobile Sdn Bhd.

ShareShare OTT also enables users to transfer and request airtime from users of the same network or others, via the over-the-top method, according to Sedania.

Speaking to reporters after ShareShare OTT's launch, Sedania's executive director Firoz Mohd Noor said the mobile application's launch was timely to adapt to the growing consumption of mobile data.

"SMS (short messaging system) is still relevant (among mobile telephone users) — even in Malaysia. But data usage has become more relevant today than it was this time last year," he said.

The introduction of the new service is timely for Sedania to combat the slowdown in consumption in Malaysia. Firoz conceded that since the goods and services tax (GST) was introduced in April, there was a drop in customer transactions.

Nowadays, Firoz said the average daily transactions came to 266,000. This compared with the approximate 324,000 transactions it used to garner before the GST regime.

"But we expect that consumption will rebound next year, when people are getting used to prices after the GST," he added.

Consequently, turnover for the nine-month ended Sept 30, 2015 (9MFY15) for Sedania's Malaysian operations dropped by 12% to RM5.1 million.

Its Bangladeshi segment's top line, however, grew by 10.52% year-on-year to RM1.86 million. Firoz said for now, Sedania will offer the ShareShare OTT application to the Malaysian market first, taking things "one step at a time".

Sedania, which went public on June 29, is climbing back from its lowest point of 31.5 sen recorded on Nov 30. At the noon break today, its stock gained 1.5 sen or 3.49% to 44.5 sen, with 4.27 million shares done.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company's profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)