Submitted by Mike Grenville on Fri, 07 Nov 2003 12:51

With one of the first major pan-European entries into the European mobile content market by a Japanese company, Netsize is to provide content hosting, delivery and billing for Yamaha mobile ringtones across 24 European mobile operators.

The service will launch with about 1,000 ringtones with both global and local hit songs, music box sound tunes, original club music, classical music, jazz, and various sound effects.

Already a major mobile content provider in Japan, with more than 3.4 million subscribers, this is the company’s first venture into the growing European ringtone market. Using the Netsize infrastructure, Yamaha hopes to achieve first year sales of over ¥100 million (about .5 million UK pounds).

Covering Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in November, followed by the UK, France, Italy and Spain through to early December; Netsize will manage the hosting, delivery and billing of all Yamaha content. Netsize will also provide consumer helpdesks with local language support and control digital rights management across the content catalogue. Ringtones will be priced at 2 euros per ringtone, will be available to suit most popular mobile handset formats (WAP Push compliant) and will be available in a number of ringtone formats, including SMAF and MIDI. All ringtone content will be promoted both offline through local press and online via web and WAP channels.

“This is one of the first major pan-European entries into the European mobile content market by a Japanese company,” explains Craig Barrack, UK country manager at Netsize. “Yamaha is already a major supplier of ringtones in Japan and is looking to replicate its success through Netsize’s European network.

“As an exclusive producer of SMAF format chips embedded in many mobile devices and covering the whole music value chain, it is a key strategic decision to be present in the fast moving European market for multimedia content,” says Keith Taniguchi, General Manager Digital Contents Business Division of Yamaha Corporation.

yamaha-ringtone.com

www.netsize.com