Nokia Networks and Sonera zed, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sonera Corporation today announced a cooperation agreement in the area of mobile value added services. Together, the companies will develop platforms for mobile value added services. Under the agreement, they will also work together in system integration and sales and marketing, targeting mobile operators worldwide.
Joint research and development means both companies will commit staff to work on developing new architecture and applications for mobile value added services. These are targeted at meeting the strongly growing global demand for new mobile services. The companies will benefit from a highly sophisticated product solution and even faster time-to-market.
Juha Varelius, CEO of Sonera zed said: "Statistics show that real revenue growth for the mobile market is in the area of non-voice traffic, or in other words value added services. The advent of 3G underscores the benefits for zed to work with Nokia, a world leading network infrastructure company."
Pekka Oranen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Internet Applications, Nokia Networks said: "We believe that the next generation mobile Internet service platform will help operators to create innovative value added mobile Internet services to their customers rapidly and effectively. This cooperation will help us increase the richness and time to market of our product offering in mobile Internet services, as well as expand our offering to operator customers."
Nokia Networks and Sonera zed bring complementary skills to the partnership. Nokia has a strong global presence in the market with cutting edge experience in network infrastructure and technology platforms for mobile operators. Sonera Zed has strong experience in consumer services which further enhance mobile devices to become truly personalised communication and information tools.
About zed
Zed is a pioneer in global personalised intelligent services for wireless devices combining the best features of mobile communications and the Internet. Zed was conceived, designed and built to support and promote true mobility in both consumer and corporate environments. The range of zed services turn the wireless device into a communications, information and mobile commerce tool. Currently zed services are available in SMS and WAP environments, with the ability to expand the services into future technologies, GPRS and UMTS. At the end of June 2000, zed had over 700,000 monthly users out of Sonera's 2.5million GSM customers in Finland. Of these active zed customers, 30% had registered at zed's Finnish website in order to personalise their services. Sonera zed Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sonera Corporation (HEX: SRA; NASDAQ: SNRA, www.sonera.com). Zed's headquarters are located in the UK. More information on zed can be found at http://www.zed.com.
About Nokia
Nokia is paving the way to the Mobile Information Society with its innovative products and solutions. The company is the leading mobile phone supplier and a leading supplier of mobile, broadband and IP networks, related services as well as multimedia terminals. In 1999, Nokia's net sales totaled EUR 19.8 billion (USD 19.9 billion). Headquartered in Finland, Nokia is listed on the New York (NOK), Helsinki, Stockholm, London, Frankfurt and Paris stock exchanges and employs more than 60,000 people.
Further information:
Sonera zed
Chembi Merser
chembi.merser@sonera.com
Tel: +44 208 606 6000
Nokia Networks
Communications department
Tel. + 358 9 5113 8193
Email: nokia.networks@nokia.com
www.nokia.com
Nokia and Sonera zed to cooperate in developing mobile value added services platform
| Source: Nokia Oyj