South Africa’s mobile industry under spotlight as MTN launches Mobile IM service powered by Colibria

Colibria moves one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets forward with new generation community messaging solution.

Colibria, the leading global provider of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) and Presence enabling solutions, today announced that MTN, South Africa, has launched a new generation Mobile IM (MIM) service in South Africa. MTN is the leading provider of communications services in Africa and the Middle East with over 54 million subscribers in 21 countries.

MTN’s new ‘noknok’ MIM service (www.noknok.co.za), which uses Colibria’s award-winning Elevate platform, takes mobile messaging a significant step forward and lays the foundations for an entirely new community-based mobile experience. The feature-rich service enables MTN subscribers to impulsively communicate and share experiences with individuals and groups via Mobile IM. With Presence also enabled as part of the MIM service, subscribers can additionally see what their friends are up to, how they are feeling and whether they are available to chat or talk at a glance.

"This is one of our most exciting deployments yet," comments Keith Gibson, CEO of Colibria. "Africa is one of the key major global growth regions for the telecoms industry, especially mobile services. Furthermore, subscribers here have been using third-party mobile IM services for the past three years making South Africa a unique and highly competitive market. We believe this deployment will illustrate how Mobile Operators can win the battle for Mobile Instant Messaging revenues by providing a feature-rich service."

South Africa has a relatively high penetration of mobile phones and a relatively low penetration of PCs and broadband, making it an ideal market for Mobile IM. However, many of the mobile phones in use are not recent models making it a challenging environment for advanced Mobile IM services. The Colibria solution utilised by MTN is fully interoperable with SMS, via the interworking module, and also provides innovative mobile and PC-based Instant Messaging clients, including a WAP client. Supporting SMS continuity, as advocated by the GSMA’s Personal IM Initiative, is a vital part of ensuring a seamless messaging experience for all users.

With today’s consumers increasingly searching for new, exciting and interactive ways of communicating, Mobile Operators are increasingly seeing Mobile IM as one of the largest business opportunities since the launch of SMS.

"Today's consumers are searching for new, exciting and interactive ways of communicating with individuals, groups and communities," comments Ashraff Paruk, GM Strategy at MTN. "We believe this deployment will not only help satisfy that demand and differentiate our brand, but also provide the catalyst for a higher level of interaction amongst our subscribers."

Rather than replacing voice or existing messaging technologies, mobile IM provides a complimentary revenue-generating service. This compelling offering not only delivers spontaneous and engaging group-based dialogue but is an enabling technology that enhances the functionality and usability of existing applications and services. Strategy Analytics believes the mobile IM market will be worth $4.6bn by 2011.

In 2007 Colibria also powered Europe’s first commercial inter-Operator MIM service, providing the interconnect between Telefonica and Vodafone Live Messenger in Spain, as well as Asia’s first interconnect MIM service, between DiGi and Maxis in Malaysia.

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About Colibria

Colibria is the leading global provider of new generation Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) and Presence solutions for Operators and Service Providers. Founded in 2000, Colibria has offices in the UK, Norway, Belgium, Spain, Singapore and the Philippines. Colibria powers a growing number of mobile communities throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America with a total addressable subscriber base in excess of 300 million worldwide.

The messaging industry is in a new phase of growth driven by mobile communities, social networking and convergence. Colibria created its Elevate platform to unlock these new revenue streams for Operators and Service Providers. Elevate is a flexible, market-leading server and client product suite which enables the deployment, expansion and growth of MIM, IMS based messaging and Presence services.

Colibria is an active participant in the evolution of international standards, contributing to the OMA IMPS forum, as well as the GSMA’s Personal IM initiative. Colibria is also a founding member of the COMET alliance. Colibria’s investors are Northzone Ventures (www.northzone.com), Verdane Capital (www.verdanecapital.com) and Ferd Venture (www.ferdventure.no). www.colibria.com