Sendandsee and Zed/LaNetro launch mobile magazines in European markets

^{Whopla Riento!} Sendandsee and Zed/LaNetro launch mobile magazines in European markets

8 Nov 2004 at 14:19 GMT Jos Schuurmans, Timo Poropudas

Finland-based Sendandsee mobile magazine house goes into production with three mobile magazines with Zed/LaNetro – one of the leading providers of consumer mobile value-added services in European, Asian and American markets.

The magazines, Whopla! – a weekly celebrity magazine, Riento! – a weekly sports magazine, and Rocsport.mob – a weekly extreme sports magazine, are marketed and delivered to mobile end-users through Zed's portals and marketing partners.

”Sendandsee’s mobile magazines are very interesting new subscription driven products for the mobile market. For sure, this area will have a strong development path ahead” says Mikko Armila, Director, Nordic at Zed/LaNetro.

“We are one of the first players to have this advantage into our product portfolio, and we can offer a completely new and interesting concept already today, a magazine stand,” Armila says.

The both companies see that the publishing houses have already taken the first step into mobile magazines.

“It is very positive to see that publishing houses and big magazine brands have now seen this opportunity and start to think mobile publishing. This supports our understanding of a mobile magazine stand concept”, says Armila.

The objective of this cooperation is to learn about mobile magazine business in selected markets and expand it through experiences into other parts of the new Zed/Lanetro organization. Zed/LaNetro is one of the leading mobile VAS providers and operates in Europe, Asia and Americas.

“This distribution agreement is very important not just to us, but for the whole mobile services sector, as it will be the first real commercial launch of rich media containing services targeted at users of multiple handset types almost simultaneously in several markets and thus gives us important data on the development of future services” comments Aape Pohjavirta, Sendandsee’s Chairman of the Board.

The contents in Whopla! and Riento! are created by a team of professional editors utilizing visual content from the world's leading imagery company - Getty Images. ROCsport.mob is produced in co-operation with ROCsport Media Group - one of Europe's leading Extreme sports media companies.

The mobile magazines are published with Sendandsee's mobiprint publishing technology and support a wide variety of Symbian, J2ME and WAP-enabled handsets. The versions for different handsets are all produced with the same production system thus enabling an automated production process and democratic treatment of all customer groups regardless of the handsets they are using.

"The most important issue in the implementation of new, rich media containing mobile services should be the non-discrimination of users based on their handsets,” says Aape Pohjavirta.

"Services that are only targeted to users of high-end handsets are great for development work but cause a polarized treatment of user groups that might have a negative impact on the commercial development of such services.”