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Together, SEVEN and Smartner Work With Leading Handset Manufacturers to Deliver Mobile Email Solutions to 45 Operators Worldwide
Redwood City, CA, Cambridge, UK, and Helsinki, Finland (April 11, 2005) - SEVEN today announced that the company has acquired European-based Smartner, a leader in mobile email solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition extends SEVEN's leadership in the mobile email sector. SEVEN now has a leading customer base consisting of 45 operator customers across 30 countries, with a combined total addressable market of over 360M mobile subscribers. SEVEN additionally has licensing agreements with the top five handset manufacturers - Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Siemens - and others to integrate the company's software onto their devices, creating an 'out-of-the-box' email experience for end users. SEVEN also has broad support for all mobile device platforms, including support for 100 shipping handset models. Over 5000 companies have deployed SEVEN's enterprise-class services and several hundreds of thousands of individuals currently use SEVEN's personal email services.
"With this acquisition, SEVEN is well positioned to quickly take advantage of the growing demand for both individual and enterprise mobile email solutions," said Kent Thexton, president and CEO of SEVEN. "Smartner has a significant presence in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and strong relationships with the leading device manufacturers as well as leading channel partners such as Ericsson. The combined entity broadens our global footprint, enabling us to drive mass-market adoption of mobile email."
The merger will build on high levels of synergies between the companies in order to:
"There are obvious synergies between Smartner and SEVEN's technologies, and there is great potential that the market will benefit from the blending of their innovations," said Roger Entner, Vice President, Wireless Telecom, of Ovum's North American practice. "The market for mobile email and office solutions is growing rapidly and there is a significant untapped opportunity for the newly created SEVEN. The merger will enable the company to target this potential and accelerate growth at a much faster rate than could be achieved individually."
The combined company will operate under SEVEN's brand, with headquarters in Redwood City, CA, USA and regional headquarters in Cambridge, UK; Helsinki, Finland; Singapore; and Tokyo, Japan. The company will operate local offices in Beijing, China; Cambridge, UK; Madrid, Spain; Gothenburg, Sweden; Rome, Italy; Paris, France; Munich, Germany; and Seoul, South Korea. Kent Thexton will continue as CEO and Paul Hedman, Smartner's CEO, will be responsible for EMEA and APAC as Managing Director. Bill Nguyen will assume the title of Founder and Chairman of the Board. Smartner's management team, including all of Smartner's founders, will hold management positions at the new SEVEN. Smartner investor and board member, Andrea Traversone of Amadeus Capital Partners Ltd., will join SEVEN's Board of Directors. SEVEN has 160 employees and is recruiting to continue to grow operations.
"Both companies had reached a similar level of maturity, and market conditions are very favorable. We both have leading solutions and have posted excellent results in landing important mobile operators in different parts of the world, said Paul Hedman, Managing Director, SEVEN EMEA and APAC. "Furthermore, Smartner and SEVEN have extremely complementary businesses. The motivation for this deal is the opportunity to create the leading provider of mobile email. Combining Smartner and SEVEN is the opportunity to be that company."
The only mobile email vendor with a presence in Japan, the world's leading data market, SEVEN partners with mobile operators and other channel partners to provide a white-label solution for both individual subscribers and enterprises. SEVEN's software is designed to meet the needs of distinct market segments from the Fortune 500, to small-to-medium sized organizations, to individual professionals and consumers. It is available as Server Edition, Enterprise Edition, Workgroup Edition, Personal Edition and Consumer Edition. SEVEN's software currently enables all major email systems including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, IMAP 4 and POP3-compliant email servers. SEVEN's software delivers a feature-rich, easy-to-use, push-based mobile email experience at an affordable price, and typically costs 50% less than other solutions in the marketplace.
About SEVEN
SEVEN is a leading global provider of software that enables
mobile operators to offer their subscribers secure,
low-cost, real-time access to critical information
including business and personal email and applications.
SEVEN is available as Personal Edition for consumers, and
Workgroup Edition, Server Edition and Enterprise Edition
for businesses. Our software supports a wide variety of
device platforms, including BREW, J2ME, Microsoft Pocket
PC, Microsoft Smartphone 2003, Palm OS and Symbian-based
phones, and currently supports over 100 shipping handheld
devices manufactured by Hitachi, HTC, Motorola, NEC, Nokia,
palmOne, Sanyo, Samsung, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and
Toshiba. SEVEN is available today across major
international network standards, and is sold by 45 leading
mobile operators worldwide including: Cingular Wireless,
Globe Telecom, KDDI Corp., NTT DoCoMo, O2, Orange, Optus,
SingTel, Song Networks, Sprint, Telefonica Moviles, Telkom
Indonesia, Telenor Group and Vodafone Italy. SEVEN is a
global company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with
offices around the globe.
Media Contacts:
U.S.
Kate O'Sullivan
+ 1 415 307 3148
kate@seven.com
Europe
Arlinda Sipila
+ 358 40 528 8651
asipila@smartner.com
