Bango has announced preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2011. Revenues were 26 per cent down on last year at £19.3m (£26.1m), while gross profits were also slightly down at £2.49m (£2.67m). The company reported a loss after tax of £700,000, compared to a profit last year of £100,000.

Over the past year, Bango has refocused its business on the high growth, higher margin smartphone market, and secured an agreement with RIM to provide billing and settlement for BlackBerry App World. Bango also has more than 60 new carrier integrations underway, and says it is due to  announce a second major app store agreement later this month.

“The key development during the year was the decision to focus on the fast growing smartphone market segment, developing relationships with app stores as a way of deploying Bango technology more widely,” says Bango CEO, Ray Anderson. “Bango?s agreement with RIM to provide carrier billing for BlackBerry App World announced in the first half is potentially transformational, and resources have been re-allocated to ensure the success of the project. Bango is now developing a number of other significant app store opportunities, including those focussed on the increasingly popular Android platform.

“As expected, the continued decline in end user spending on low-margin content for featurephones reduced gross profit from that part of the business. However, good progress in growing smartphone payment and analytics business resulted in an overall growth in gross margin in the second half.

“The second half showed an underlying profit after allowing for one-time costs related to the acceleration of cost reduction in the feature phone business, and a change in recognition of gross profit on mobile operator integrations.

“Since the year end, the number of mobile operators activated for RIM has doubled and in May overall end user spending grew compared with April. Progress with RIM and other App Stores in the pipeline gives us confidence that we are well placed to accelerate this growth in future periods.”