Nokia and international sports marketing company IMG/TWI teamed up to develop the Essential Sports Service to deliver sports images, news, updates and audio commentary to sports' fans mobile phones. In total five operators in Asia Pacific and Europe offered the individually branded services to their MMS subscribers.

 

"This project has clearly demonstrated the value of MMS for sports content services" says Mark Selby, Head of Mobile Division, IMG/TWI. "When linked with SMS and WAP, MMS enables comprehensive, timely and exciting content to be consumed by sports fans. Mobile data services can now genuinely deliver the emotion of sport and generate new income for mobile operators."

 

"For Nokia this trial has been immensely valuable as it confirms our belief that sports, as a prime example of branded content, will be one of the big drivers in mobile multimedia. Already today, mobile data services is around EUR 40 billion annual business globally, and we expect this to grow to over EUR 180 billion by 2007," says Esa Harju, Director, Marketing, Nokia Networks.

 

"Nokia continues to support its customers in generating new revenue streams by creating early reference points in emerging business areas and bringing together content providers and operators," he adds. 

 

All the participating operators, including CSL in Hong Kong, DTAC in Thailand, M1 and StarHub in Singapore, and O2 in the UK, confirm that the service trial has had a positive impact on their data usage and revenues, and provided a useful experience and platform in building their future MMS service offering.

 

Over 90% of the users in the trial expressed satisfaction with the services they had received during the trial. Content was structured for each geographic territory on the basis of local sports interest.  Sports covered included football, golf, tennis, athletics, cricket, motor sports, badminton and horse racing.

 

About IMG

IMG was founded by Mark H. McCormack in the early 1960s. The company is the world's premier sports management and marketing agency, with an international staff of more than 2,500 in more than 80 offices in 32 countries.  Its television division, TWI, is the largest independent distributor of televised sports and annually produces and distributes 6,000 hours of original programming in over 240 sports to more than 200 countries. Every day of the year, IMG is commercially involved in an average of 11 major sports and cultural events around the world, represents the interests of major corporations, is a literary agency and book packager, manager and presenter of world-renowned classical music artists through IMG Artists, and its IMG Models is the world's leading international modeling agency.

 

About Nokia

Nokia is the world leader in mobile communications. Backed by its experience, innovation, user-friendliness and secure solutions, the company has become the leading supplier of mobile phones and a leading supplier of mobile, fixed broadband and IP networks. By adding mobility to the Internet Nokia creates new opportunities for companies and further enriches the daily lives of people. Nokia is a broadly held company with listings on six major exchanges.

 

Media Inquires:

 

Nokia Networks

Communications

Tel. + 358 7180 38198

Email: networks.communications@nokia.com

 

Nokia

Communications

Tel. +358 7180 34900

Email: press.office@nokia.com

 

www.nokia.com