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LONDON, UK June 5, 2008 -- Synchronica plc (‘Synchronica’
or ‘the Company’), the mobile email
and synchronisation specialist, is pleased
to announce a worldwide licensing agreement with a leading Chinese
consumer electronics and handset manufacturer (“Manufacturer”)
for its award-winning push email and synchronisation software Mobile
Gateway. Synchronica will receive a revenue share of 20% of all revenues
earned by the Manufacturer for the service, with a minimum of US$1.00
per handset per year.
The Manufacturer plans to offer Synchronica Mobile Gateway as an
Application Service Provider (ASP) to both business users and the
mass-market of consumers, providing push email and mobile
synchronisation of calendar and address books. The service will be
introduced, in partnership with major mobile operators, initially in the
Chinese market and will then expand on a worldwide basis. The
Manufacturer will pre-install the Synchronica SyncML Clients on their
Smartphones and will also support mass-market devices, including mobile
phones from other manufacturers. The Manufacturer has enjoyed
significant growth in a number of emerging markets and expects to ship
more than 16 million devices in 2008.
Under the terms of the agreement, Synchronica will receive the greater
of 20% of all of the revenues received by the Manufacturer from its
customers for the service, or a minimum of US$1.00 per active handset
per year. Additionally, Synchronica will receive fees for custom
development, deployment and training.
This deal opens the door for Synchronica to access the rapidly growing
Chinese mobile market and other developing mobile markets, such as Latin
America and Africa. The Chinese market alone is expected to expand by
over 11% annually from US $20.7 billion in 2007 to US $35.5 billion by
2011 (Frost and Sullivan, April 2008). China has the world’s
largest subscriber base, with more than 580 million mobile phone users
and is home to China Mobile, the world’s
largest operator by number of subscribers.
Carsten Brinkschulte CEO said: "We are delighted to have been chosen by
a leading Chinese mobile device manufacturer. This agreement is a
further endorsement of both our cutting-edge technology and our long
term strategy to take advantage of the exceptional opportunities for
mobile email in emerging markets. The Chinese market is ideally suited
for mass-market mobile email, as 82 percent of the population lack Web
connections and six out of ten people still don't own mobile phones,
providing an opportunity for operators to make the mobile phone the
primary form of accessing the Internet and email. It offers massive
potential for recurring and growing revenue streams for Synchronica.”
About Mobile Gateway
Synchronica's Mobile Gateway provides carrier-grade push email and
synchronisation services for the vast majority of mass market feature
phones and Smartphones being used by subscribers today. Based on the
dominant open industry standards Push IMAP (LEMONADE) for mobile email
and SyncML (OMA DS) for contact and calendar synchronisation, it works
with the built-in Email and synchronization clients found in more than
1.5 billion phones. Serving consumers and prosumers, Mobile Gateway
includes back-end support for POP3 and IMAP mailboxes, connecting to
popular services such as AOL or Google Mail. For business users, it
provides a unique zero footprint architecture where users simply
register their devices and instantly start to receive corporate email on
their phone without requiring additional connectors behind the firewall.
Business mailboxes supported include Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino
and Sun Communications Suite.
Information Source: Business WIre
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