BSD.L Regulatory News (BSD)

8 Feb 2006 07:15

Emblaze Ltd08 February 2006 Emblaze Ltd Adamind enters China with strategic acquisition Purchase of SenseStream will accelerate penetration into the world's biggest mobile market and provide access to blue-chip Chinese customers Ra'anana, Israel, 8 February 2006: Emblaze Ltd ("Emblaze or "the Group") (LSE:BLZ) announces that its Group company, Adamind Ltd ("Adamind" or the "Company"),the leading global supplier of media adaptation software for mobile messaging(MMS), content and convergence services market, has signed an agreement toacquire all of the issued and outstanding share capital of Hong Kong based,SenseStream Ltd ("SenseStream") for a consideration of up to US$2,000,000 incash and shares. Under the terms of the agreement, Adamind will pay an initialamount at completion of US$1,000,000 payable in cash with the balance payable inshares by April 2007, dependent on certain targets being met during 2006. Thedeal is expected to close by end February 2006. Description of SenseStream SenseStream is a leading 2.5G / 3G MMS content adaptation and media technologysolution product vendor in Asia Pacific. It develops, markets and distributessoftware that helps Service Provider, Portal and Enterprise customers to provideand deploy mobile value added service for business and wireless solutions. Since 2002, SenseStream provides critical Multimedia Management Technology thatmany mobile multimedia services and applications rely on to successfully andseamlessly deliver multimedia messages. SenseStream's advanced and powerfulmultimedia content adaptation server, DynaFitTM Server, is used by many of Asia's leading wireless operators for deployment of successful mobile multimediaservices. Its proprietary PONFATM (Publish Once N Fit All) Server and publishingtools allow content providers to create and publish wireless multimediacontents. SenseStream also participates in the commercialization of the newAVS-M (video on mobile) China video standard. Kiok Tan, CEO of SenseStream, has a long history of building up a businesses inthe communications industry. Prior to setting up SenseStream, he worked forMotorola for six years, his last assignment was as Business Director at MotorolaChina, Personal Communication Sector, based in Beijing. He also worked with HPas Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific for many years prior to joining Motorola. TheCTO and co-founder is Eno Tsin who was formerly a research scientist withcomputer laboratories of London and Cambridge University. He was a TechnicalManager with SkyTel and was co-founder of Media60X that developed the firstcommercial location based system using enhanced Cell-ID technology in Hong Kongin 1996. Rationale of the deal SenseStream's acquisition is the first by Adamind since its flotation inFebruary 2005 and marks a major strategic move by the Company to expand intomainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as large amount of monies are beinginvested in telecommunications infrastructure to cope with demand in the run upto the Olympics in 2008 and beyond. The acquisition is highly complementary with Adamind's footprint in the regionwith recent wins in Australia, Philippines and Singapore. It will enable theCompany to accelerate its penetration into one of the world's fastest growingand largest mobile markets, namely, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The number of mobile phone subscribers in China alone is reported to be morethan 393 million (33% of the population) and is set to rise to 742 millionsubscribers by 2010. For the Asia Pacific region as a whole, Frost & Sullivan,the independent market consulting business, expects mobile data revenue to growat a CAGR of 19.2 percent from 2004 to reach over $58 billion in 2009. SenseStream MMS products are already powering the infrastructure and livecommercial services of seven major operators in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore andTaiwan. China's leading telecommunication equipment manufacturer Huawei, basedin Shenzhen is a key customer of SenseStream. In addition, SenseStream also hasrecently become a qualified supplier of ZTE, another leading networkingequipment manufacturer based in Shenzhen. Shailendra Jain, CEO of Adamind, said: "The acquisition of SenseStream is astrategic milestone for Adamind and takes us into the world's most dynamicmobile data market. We will gain access to major customer accounts in China,creating a truly global footprint for Adamind as well as shareholder value inthe long term." Enquiries Emblaze +972 9 769 9831/339Doron Cohen, Hagit Gal Corfin Communications +44 20 7929 8989Harry Chathli, Neil Thapar NOTE TO EDITORS About The Emblaze Group (Emblaze LTD) Emblaze Ltd is a group of companies sharing a common mission to provide telecomoperators with technologies, products and solutions for next generationservices: Emblaze Mobile, a new breed in handsets design and manufacturing;Adamind (LSE: ADA), a global leader in content adaptation (transcoding) forwireless operators; Visual Defence (LSE: VDI), a provider of wireless and IPvideo solutions for military and homeland security markets; Emblaze VCON,recently created from the merger of Emblaze Systems and VCON , is a leadingprovider of wireless video communications technologies and conferencingsolutions for operators and enterprise markets over IP networks and OrcaInteractive (LSE: ORCA), provider of Interactive Television IPTV middleware forVideo On Demand (VOD) and broadcast services, aimed at Telecom, cable and xDSLoperators. Emblaze Group is traded on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: BLZ) since 1996 andhas offices in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, China, Korea andIsrael. www.emblaze.com About Adamind Adamind is a pure-play provider of rich media content adaptation and enhancementsoftware solutions for the mobile space. The Company's flagship platform,Adamind SpireTM provides industry-leading automated solutions for message andcontent transcoding and benefits virtually every player in the mobile deliverychain. Its superior multimedia capabilities enable service operators to deploysuccessful media rich content services, generating new revenue streams, drivingkey new Value-Added-Services (VAS) enablers, such as Advertising, Branding, DRMand spam filtering and anti-abuse support. With over 100 deployments in mobileoperator networks worldwide, Adamind is strategically poised to enable thepromise of the Mobile Lifestyle revolution. Adamind has strategic relationshipswith major infrastructure vendors and system integrators including Ericsson, HP,IBM, Accenture, LogicaCMG, Motorola, Openwave, Critical Path and CBOSS.www.adamind.com This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange