Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/28/2008 -- Synchronica plc, an international provider of mobile email and synchronization solutions, has raised an additional USD 3.9 million to further fund its push into emerging markets with its mobile email and backup solutions. Mobile Gateway enables operators to offer push email on mass market handsets for both consumer and business users, while Mobile Backup offers a backup and restore service for the personal information stored on devices.
This latest placing of new shares to institutional and private investors is in addition to the funding in January and brings the 2008 investment in the company to USD 7.5 million. The funds will be used primarily to expand Synchronica's sales and support functions in emerging markets including Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The investment comes as Synchronica makes significant in-roads into emerging markets. The first mobile operator has already launched Mobile Gateway, and another 15 operators are currently trialling the software.
Mobile Gateway 3.5 works with more than three billion of the phones in use around the world today, both smartphones and mass market devices, making it ideal for emerging markets where low-cost handsets represent the vast majority of devices. Mobile Backup is also ideally suited, because the mobile phone is increasingly becoming the primary repository of choice for social and business contact information in these regions.
Informa predicts that there will be 4.81 billion mobile phone subscribers by 2012, with the majority of the next billion subscribers coming from emerging markets where PC and fixed-line penetration is low and consumers rely on their mobile phones for communication.
Commenting on the funding, Carsten Brinkschulte, Synchronica's CEO, said: "This new round of funding is important because it allows us to continue to strengthen our efforts in emerging markets. We have a robust pipeline of prospects in these regions and a first rate solution that truly offers mobile email for everyone, regardless of which phone they use. With these funds and our recent announcement of the strategic partnership with Brightstar to distribute Mobile Gateway in over 50 countries across six continents we are well positioned to offer mobile operators a 'BlackBerry for the rest of us'."
Mobile Gateway is ideally suited for consumers and business users in emerging markets because it provides zero footprint, carrier-grade push email and synchronization services for virtually all mass market feature phones and smartphones being used by subscribers today. With Mobile Gateway 3.5, even the most basic phones can receive email via an email-to-SMS gateway which shows header and body text in a text message.
Another benefit for subscribers in emerging markets, where PC penetration is low, is that they can now sign up for the service from their handset via WAP, removing the need to register using a PC.
Mobile Backup 1.2 features two fast and simple ways for consumers to sign up to this service directly from their phone, which is important for emerging markets. Customers can now register via a straightforward WAP interface or through a simple SMS signup procedure. A built-in client provisioning module automatically configures the phone.
About Synchronica
Synchronica plc develops and markets industry standard mobile email and synchronization solutions for the vast majority of devices in the market today. Mobile operators, device manufacturers, and service providers in emerging and developed markets use Synchronica products to offer mobile email, PIM synchronization and backup and restore services to their consumer and corporate customer base. Products include the push email and synchronization solution Mobile Gateway and the mass market device backup solution Mobile Backup. Headquartered in the U.K., with a development center in Germany and presences in the USA, Hong Kong, and Dubai. Synchronica plc is a public company traded on the AIM list of the London Stock Exchange (SYNC.LN). More information is available at http://www.synchronica.com
