Adams Regulatory News (ADA)

21 Feb 2005 08:01

Adamind Ltd21 February 2005 21 February 2004 Adamind Ltd. FIRST DAY OF DEALINGS ON THE ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT MARKET The Board of Adamind Ltd. ("Adamind" or "the Company"), a software provider forthe media adaptation market, announces that the Company's shares have today beenadmitted to trading on the Alternative Investment Market of the London StockExchange ("AIM"). The Company's trading symbol is "ADA". 11,363,636 new ordinary shares have been allocated to institutional and otherinvestors at a price of 132 pence per share (the "Placing Price"), raisingapproximately £15 million for the Company. On admission to AIM a total of35,363,636 ordinary shares were in issue capitalising the Company atapproximately £46.7 million at the Placing Price. Bridgewell is the Company's nominated adviser and broker. Enquiries: AdamindShailendra Jain, CEO +44 20 7645 2990 on the day and thereafter +1 408 468 3961 EmblazeDoron Cohen, Hagit Gal +972 9 769 9831/ 339 PhilipsAndre Manning +31 20 5977199 BridgewellGiles Elliott, Simon Bridges,Stephen Cheung +44 20 7003 3000 Corfin CommunicationsHarry Chathli, Neil Thapar +44 20 7645 2990 NOTES TO EDITORS Company Overview Adamind is a provider of media adaptation software that enables multimediacontent applications and services to be accessible across disparate types ofconsumer devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants ("PDAs") andpersonal computers ("PCs"). Adamind's core solution is branded MediaSpire and is primarily targeted atmultimedia messaging service centre ("MMSC") vendors competing in the multimediamessaging service ("MMS") infrastructure arena, mobile telecoms operators("Operators") and providers of content services accessible over mobile wirelessnetworks ("Content Providers"). Adamind sells software licenses for its mediaadaptation products on an initial licence fee basis, a usage capacity basis andalso charges a recurring annual support fee. Adamind's technologies solve the problem of person-to-person ("P2P") mediatransmission (one person sending images, video and ring tones, for example, toanother person) between devices that are incompatible due to differingconfigurations and enable Operators to launch commercial MMS services that areavailable across a variety of different mobile phones and other devices. Inaddition, Adamind's solution provides media adaptation for theapplication-to-person ("A2P") content delivery market to enable A2P contentservices to take place. A2P defines premium content services which originatefrom Operators or Content Providers and are targeted to many consumers at thesame time. As part of its A2P media adaptation offering, Adamind can offerfurther value-added services embedded within its software solution which could,for example, include an advertising and branding platform. Adamind was established as a separate company in 2004 following the merger ofthe media adaptation business units of Emblaze (LSE: BLZ) and Philips (AEX:PHIA, NYSE: PHG) with the goal of forming a global leader in media adaptationtechnology. MMS Overall Market Development The market in which Operators participate is highly competitive and they arecontinually focused on gaining subscribers and improving average revenue peruser ("ARPU") which has traditionally been driven by voice calls. However,despite the rise in overall number of subscribers, Operators' ARPU has steadilydeclined over the past 10 years as air time has become commoditised and voicecall revenues and profits have decreased. Faced with this, Operators haveaggressively sought data based ARPU generators. These include the short messageservice ("SMS"), MMS, games and other content services. With the significanthistoric success of SMS and the expected plateauing of revenue from SMS in keyglobal regions, Operators are now investing in the natural evolution of SMS,MMS, with the expectation of achieving similar rates of growth and revenue. MMS based services are considered by the Operators to be a key factor ingenerating ARPU growth and reducing churn. MMS enabled handsets have beengrowing and are expected to represent approximately 50 per cent. of all handsetssold in 2004, creating the demand required for the launch of commercial MMSservices into the market. Mobile phone vendors such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung,Siemens and Sony-Ericsson, that currently account for approximately 70 per cent.of the MMS handsets manufactured, continue to introduce new MMS enabled phonesto the market on a regular basis. The Directors believe around $3 billion willbe spent on MMS infrastructure in the next 4 years. With their focus on MMS services, Operators must make interoperability betweendevices a certainty by employing media adaptation technologies for a seamlessusage experience independent of the source and destination device types. Withoutmedia adaptation, almost every MMS transaction will be a lost transaction asmessages will not reach the target user or will reach them in an illegible ordistorted format. The Directors believe that the growth in mobile messaging media adaptation willbe driven by the growth in MMS usage. The P2P MMS services and usage market isforecast to grow to $13 billion in 2008, of which the Directors estimate theMMSC related vendor's revenue to be $1 billion. The Directors believe mediaadaptation represents between $100 million and $200 million of the MMSC relatedvendor's revenue. Key Advantages of Adamind's Technology The Directors believe that Adamind has now established itself as a leading mediaadaptation technology provider for MMS and that the following factorsdifferentiate Adamind from its competitors and represent barriers to entry forpotential entrants: Multi-Format Adaptation - The multi-format approach enables the service providerto build a product with a clear upgrade path to support the next generation ofdevices, formats, media types, protocols and services. Modular Architecture - To address the challenge of multi-component integration(i.e. media adaptation, message adaptation, Device Management Tool and unlimitedapplications) while reducing MMSC vendor dependency and maintaining the abilityto easily support, upgrade and maintain the system, Adamind has developed a setof Application Programming Interfaces that allow quick and easy integration toany existing or future MMS or content download platform. Applications Over Core - Adamind's MediaSpire technology is easily extendableinto other applications which ensures a short development cycle and a low costof ownership for each and every application added into MediaSpire. Suchapplications will include value added services such as advertisement, digitalrights management and anti-abuse software which can be built on top of the coreplatform, thus reducing the time and resources required for further developmentand customisation. Proven Product - Adamind currently has over 80 operational deployments andcontinues to build more as a result of the strong relationships it hasestablished with the MMSC vendors. Adamind's technology is now known andaccepted in the market and both MMSC vendors and Operators are keen to work withthem. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange