CANNES, France - February 18, 2003 - Nokia Venture Partners (www.nokiaventurepartners.com), a leading global venture capital firm focused on early-stage mobile technology companies, today announced that five of its portfolio companies will feature their latest developments at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes. At the show, Bitfone, Covigo, Oplayo, ProQuent Systems and WiderThan.com will unveil their latest products, services and new features for the first time at the Nokia Venture Partners stand in Hall 2 G19A.
"We are very pleased to be showcasing some of the most promising mobile technology companies in Cannes and are exceptionally excited by our recent investments. The 3GSM World Congress offers companies funded by Nokia Venture Partners the perfect vehicle to reveal the products that will continue to change and enhance our mobile world," said John Malloy, partner, Nokia Venture Partners. "We are very proud of these entrepreneurs and hope that their efforts inspire and encourage more innovation by other emerging businesses."
Nokia Venture Partners was formed in 1998 as an independent venture capital firm investing in leading edge mobile technology companies targeting high growth market opportunities, such as mobile and IP network and software infrastructure. Nokia Venture Partners maintains USD $650 million under management and has funded more than 30 companies within the mobile infrastructure hardware and software, applications and services sectors, from the US, the UK, Germany, Finland and South Korea. The companies participating in the 3GSM World Congress represent only a portion of the $650 million fund.
The Nokia Venture Partners portfolio companies participating in this year's event will make the following announcements:
Bitfone Corporation, a leader in over-the-air firmware update technology for mobile devices, is demonstrating its mProveTM solution on the Nokia 7650 phone. mProve is the wireless industry's leading technology that updates a mobile device's core embedded operating system, over-the-air in a secure and fault tolerant manner. mProve offers wireless manufacturers and carriers significant benefits, including the ability to reduce warranty, recall, and customer service costs, as well as enables the delivery of billable services and software.
Covigo, the leading provider of operator service enablement and enterprise mobility software, will introduce version 3.5 of its operator service enablement suite. Covigo's award-winning software enables operators and enterprises to develop and deploy mobile, web and portal applications with faster time-to-market and 50% less cost. Covigo has been awarded PC Magazine's Editors' Choice Award for Best Mobile Development Solution for 2002. In addition, Covigo was rated by Forrester Research as a strong performer in the mobile middleware market in December 2002. Covigo customers in North America and Europe include software vendors and integrators such as Software AG and CMG Wireless Data Solutions and organizations such as the State of Texas, Fast Search & Transfer ASA and CricInfo.
Oplayo, the company that brought the world's first video streaming to existing GPRS networks, will be demonstrating video streaming to Java MIDP-enabled phones. Oplayo is leading the market by providing video streaming to mass market mobile phones for the first time ever. The launch of the Oplayer for Java phones, the OplayerJV, will allow high quality video content to be streamed directly to more mobile phones than ever before. Most new phones entering the market in 2003 will contain Java MIDP technology, opening up the market, making it easier and cost effective for consumers to watch videos on their mobile phones.
ProQuent Systems, the premiere partner for mobile operators, billing, mediation, and prepaid system vendors, who wish to generate profit from wireless data, announces the market readiness of it's industry leading open services platform, the ProQuent Mobile Services Switching Point (MSSPTM). The ProQuent MSSP is a new class of network element that makes existing GPRS, UMTS, CDMA and WLAN infrastructure content aware, enabling billing, mediation, real-time rating and prepaid systems to recognize, discriminate and control user data sessions in real time. This allows development of innovative new revenue generating products and services and real-time flexible content charging solutions for both prepaid and postpaid environments that can be applied seamlessly across mobile networks and WLAN. See the ProQuent MSSP in Stand G19A - Hall 2 and see a combined ProQuent/ XACCT/Accenture demo hosted by Accenture in hospitality suites 01.33, 01.34 and 01.35.
WiderThan.com, the global wireless Internet enabler, is scheduled to show its Color-ring service, the personalized ring-back tone service which has attracted over 5 million subscribers in South Korea since its launch in 2002. The service enables the terminal owners to express their personality by changing existing call connection tones to several kinds of music or human voices. WiderThan.com's other exhibition items include such solutions as the Content Service Manager (CSM) and the Multimedia Content Gateway (MCG). CSM, supplied to Israeli Orange of Partner Communications in 2002, provides integrated management platform for downloadable contents such as ring-tone, content based on Java and VM, among others. MCG provides the standard interface on which VAS applications on MMS could be easily added.
To register for press credentials for the 3GSM World Congress, please go to http://www.3gsmworldcongress.com/press. For more information about Nokia Venture Partners and its portfolio companies, visit stand G19A in Hall 2 during the 3GSM World Congress or visit the Nokia Venture Partners website at www.nokiaventurepartners.com.
Nokia Venture Partners
Nokia Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. Launched in 1998, Nokia Venture Partners has USD$650 million under management and leads investments in early stage mobile technology companies around the world. The fund is backed by a number of value add limited partners and has a strong track record of leveraging its combined resources, experience and contacts to help build successful mobile businesses. The firm also has offices in Washington DC, London, Helsinki, Seoul, Hong Kong and Tokyo. For more information, visit http://www.nokiaventurepartners.com.
Contact for this media alert:
Gina Bauman
1 (408) 504 4664
press@nokiaventurepartners.com