The Hindu Business Line : Pressmart, IMI Mobile partner to offer mPaper

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Hyderabad Feb. 2 Pressmart and IMI Mobile, both Hyderabad-based technology companies, have come together to offer mPaper (mobile paper) for people on the move.

The venture takes electronic publishing to the next level providing newspaper on WAP-enabled mobile devices.

They partner with networks and help even regional and local papers to go global and on the other hand, help global publications tap into local markets.

It does not matter if a newspaper cannot reach physically, if this facility is available, one can access it over phone.

Value-added

Papermart has partnered with some 140 publications globally, including 11 Indian English dailies so far for their electronic paper initiatives and is now in the process of helping them offer mPaper in tie-up with IMI Mobile, which is a value-added solutions provider for telecom carriers globally.

The model is a revenue share approach, and could come in with a monthly subscription either for a select publication or a group of publications.

The Chief Executive Officer of Pressmart, Mr Sanjiv Gupta, said that through this partnership it is proposed to open up new business avenue for customers to deliver their branded news content over the powerful mobile medium. Even the advertisers would have a different medium and a select target group.

2 million phones

Significantly, while India has over 2 million phones with WAP-enabled facility, the market in the UK and the US is huge for such services.

The Chairman and CEO of IMI Mobile, Mr A.R. Vishwanath, said "mPaper will become an exciting new category of technology offering that will give people an unique newspaper reading experience from their favourite WAP-enabled handsets.

"As mobile carriers move on to what is being referred to as triple play, where there will be lot more data-centric services such as mPaper, a whole new category of users will come in."

Hindustan Times, Deccan Chronicle, DNA, Indian Express, Financial Express, The Telegraph and Pioneer and some regional language publications now have this facility, they announced.

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