Telecom Event -- Mobile World Congress 2010 Barcelona

Synchronica to launch Mobile Gateway 5

Hall 2 Stand 2A35 - MWC, Barcelona - 16 February 2010

Synchronica introduces next-generation messaging adding mobile social networking and mobile instant messaging for mass-market devices

• Mobile Gateway 5 combines mobile Instant Messaging (IM), Web-Feeds and Social Networking Services (SNS) with Push Email & Synchronization
  
  
• Churn-busting mass market solution that works on virtually any handset
  
  
• Based on Industry-standards using IMAP, IMPS, SyncML and ActiveSync
  
  
• Full demo available at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Hall 2, Stand 2A35

Synchronica plc, the international provider of next-generation mobile messaging services, today announced Mobile Gateway 5, a complete mobile messaging suite that enables operators to offer Push Email and Synchronization, Instant Messaging (IM), Social Networking Services (SNS) and Web-Feeds to consumers and business users, regardless of the handset they use.

Mobile Gateway 5 enables operators to provide a broad range of mobile messaging services from a single platform aimed at increasing data usage and subscriber loyalty. Mobile Gateway enables users to connect to existing Internet communities such as Facebook, Google Mail/Talk and Web-Feeds, driving traffic and user uptake, but also enables operators to create their own Email and Instant Messaging communities, creating the “stickiness” that reduces churn.

Based entirely on open industry standards, Mobile Gateway 5 is a client-less solution which works on virtually any handset in use today ensuring fast take-up in a large addressable market.

New Key features introduced with Mobile Gateway 5 include:

• Mobile Instant Messaging (IM)
  
  Mobile Gateway 5 enables users to connect to their existing IM services such as Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, AIM, GoogleTalk and Facebook Chat. To encourage subscriber loyalty, operators can also offer their users a carrier-hosted IM community to chat, send pictures and see others’ status. Mobile Gateway 5 enables aggregation of up to five IM accounts and leverages the built-in IMPS client of most mobile phones from
  
  Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other manufacturers, and provides a downloadable IMPS client for J2ME enabled handsets. The Mobile Gateway IM community can also be accessed from a PC or Smartphone using any XMPP client like Apple’s iChat.

• Mobile SNS
  
  Mobile Gateway provides client-less Push SNS for a wide range of popular Social Networking Services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to the built-in Email clients of Smartphones and mass-market feature phones. Mobile Gateway even extends Social Networking to entry-level phones by sending feeds and status updates as MMS or SMS. By simply replying to messages, users can comment on, and ‘Like’ friends’ photographs, post status updates and wall posts and instantly upload and share photographs taken from the mobile phone’s camera.
• Web-Feeds
  
  Mobile Gateway 5 allows users to subscribe to live Web-Feeds from a list of operator-defined news feeds (e.g. ESPN, BBC, Al Jazeera) as well as from any RSS-enabled site of personal or business interest. Updates are pushed automatically as emails into a separate mailbox on any phone supporting the IMAP and OMA EMN or ActiveSync industry standards. On entry-level phones, Mobile Gateway sends Web-Feeds as an SMS or MMS, including text and pictures.

Mobile Gateway 5’s email-to-SMS, email-to-MMS and Push-to-WAP gateways connect literally any phone to email, IM and SNS – ideal for emerging markets, where PC-based access remains limited and entry-level devices continue to dominate. The carrier-grade solution delivers mobile Email, IM, Web Feeds and SNS through established technologies such as SMS and MMS for basic handsets, as well as via the industry standard IMPS, IMAP and ActiveSync for mid- to high-end handsets.

According to a recent report from Frost & Sullivan on the Mobile IM market in Africa and Latin America, the total market for Mobile Instant Messaging solutions is estimated to grow to almost 500 million users by 2015 from almost zero in 2008. This represents a CAGR of 54% over the next five to six years in these regions alone.

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica, comments: “With Mobile Gateway 5, we are providing a one-stop solution for next-generation mobile messaging. While our competitors are busy replicating the social network sites with proprietary clients for a rather limited number of high-end devices, we are using a client-less, industry standards based approach to connect users to Email, IM, SNS and Web-Feeds – offering a true, mass-market solution with the largest possible addressable market and service uptake. Mobile Gateway 5 provides operators in particular in emerging markets with a solution that can significantly increase revenues from data traffic, and can help to combat the #1 problem – churn.”

A recent report by Informa estimates the mobile social networking market will undergo substantial growth over the next 3 years. At the end of 2008, there were approximately 92.5 million mobile social networking users globally, with conservative estimates putting this number at 641.6 million by 2013.

Mobile Gateway provides Push Email and PIM Synchronization for consumer mail services such as Google Mail, Yahoo and Hotmail/Windows Live, as well as for business servers such as Microsoft Exchange, Sun Java Communications Suite and Lotus Domino. Unlike other solutions, Mobile Gateway does not require users to install additional software on the handset or behind the firewall. The combination of this “zero footprint” architecture with an additional over-the-air provisioning module for service activation increases adoption rates and improves the overall user experience. Mobile Gateway 5 uses open industry standards such as Push IMAP and SyncML to integrate with the native email and synchronization clients built into more than 1.5 billion devices from major handset manufacturers including Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung, Motorola and others. For mobile IM, Mobile Gateway 5 supports IMPS and XMPP standards and connects to the IM client built into handsets from Nokia, SonyEricsson and other leading device manufacturers.

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