Deal with TIM swells Sonera Zed's potential customer base
[ January 31st 2001] International mobile portal Sonera Zed Ltd has announced an agreement with mobile phone operator, TIM
( Telecom Italia Mobile) to distribute Zed mobile services via SMS and WAP to Italian mobile phone customers.
This contract gives zed access to an additional 20.7 million customers, boosting its potential global customer base to over 78 million. Italy is the largest mobile market in Europe, and has one of the continent's highest mobile phone penetration rates; of its population of 58 million, over 70% have handsets. TIM's Italian subscribers send more than 12.5 million text messages every day. TIM, the biggest mobile operator in the country, is also the largest mobile operator in Europe in terms of the total customer base of a single brand.
Zed will be available via SMS on TIM's network and on WAP via TIM's portal. The services will be launched within the next few months and will offer customers in Italy a range of free and paid-for information and entertainment services. Revenues from the paid-for services will be shared between TIM and
Zed.
Zed is already available in Finland, the Netherlands and the Philippines and, in addition to Italy, will be available to customers via further distribution deals with operators in Germany, Singapore, Turkey, and the USA in the first half of this year.
Juha Varelius, chief executive of Zed commented: "Italy is another good example of the strength of
Zed's partnership approach. It gives us unrivalled international distribution and reach with extensive potential market share by country. With our experience of customer behaviour and trends in advanced mobile personalised services, we are well positioned to capture the interest of Italian mobile phone users."
Zed provides access to lifestyle and information services such as games, movie and restaurant guides, sports information and horoscopes, as well as traffic updates, news, directory services, ring tones and icons. Additional services such as healthcare and e-mail are also available in some countries. All of these services can be used on a "pull" basis - that is, subscribers can access them by sending a specific key word or command via text messaging, or via WAP.
New services will be developed with Italian local content providers in addition to core content to ensure relevance and topicality for local customers. Because customers can personalise zed's services, by requesting "push" information at times to suit their own lives, they receive only what they want, when they want it. Some of the most popular to date have included receipt of a traffic report every morning at seven or the local football game schedules every Friday evening.
About Zed
Sonera Zed Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Finnish telecommunications group Sonera Corporation
(www.sonera.com). Established in 1999, the
Zed mobile portal provides personalised information, communication and entertainment services. Unlike most internet-based portals, zed helps its customers by developing services which put content into a context appropriate to customers' lifestyles in an easy-to-use format, both in text messaging and WAP services.
As its technical platform is designed specifically for the mobile environment, zed is well placed to exploit application and service developments such as location-based services and radio network technology developments such as GPRS and UMTS. Zed runs data centres in Finland, Singapore, USA (New Jersey), Netherlands and Germany (Frankfurt - under construction).
www.zed.com
Breakdown of zed's potential customer base
(based on information publicly available from operators)
D1, Germany
16.8
D2, Germany
17.3
E-Plus, Germany
5.8
KPN Mobile, the Netherlands
4.4
Mobile One, Singapore
0.6
Powertel, USA
0.8
Sonera, Finland
2.3
Smart Communications, the Philippines 2.6
TIM, Italy
20.7
Turkcell, Turkey
7.2
Total
78.5 million
