Synchronica Wins Breakthrough

RNS Number : 0292W

Synchronica PLC

05 June 2008

 



05 June 2008

Synchronica PLC

('Synchronica' or 'the Company')

Synchronica Wins Breakthrough Contract for Mobile Gateway in China 

Landmark agreement with a leading Chinese handset manufacturer gives Synchronica access to the world's largest mobile market 

Synchronica plc (AIM: SYNC), 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.”

 

 Enquiries:

Synchronica plc	Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO, Angus Dent, CFO,  Nicole Meissner, CMO,	[phone] [phone] [phone]
Corfin Communications	Neil Thapar, William Cullum, Alexis Gore	[phone]
FinnCap	Charles Cunningham, Geoff Nash	[phone]

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.

About Synchronica

Synchronica plc develops and markets industry standard mobile email and synchronisation solutions for the vast majority of devices in the market today. Mobile operators, device manufacturers and service providers in emerging and developed markets use Synchronica products to offer mobile email and synchronisation services to their consumer and corporate customer base. Products include the push email and synchronization solution Mobile Gateway and the mass-market device backup solution Mobile Backup. Headquartered in the UK with a development centre in Germany and a presence in Hong Kong, Dubai and U.S. Synchronica plc is a public company traded on the AIM list of the London Stock Exchange (SYNC.LN). More information is available at www.synchronica.com.

 

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