Thaindian News

New York, June 13 (ANI/Business Wire India): New Motion, Inc., doing business as Atrinsic (NASDAQ: NWMO), a premier Internet media and mobile entertainment company, today announced that it has formed a joint venture, called Mango Network, with India-based Visionaire Technologies PVT limited, to extend the mobile and Internet product portfolio of Atrinsic to the fast-growing, emerging Indian market.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India :

– The total wireless subscriber base in India stood at 269.3 million at the end of April 2008.

– During March and April, a total of 18.4 million new wireless subscribers were added.

– The Indian market continues to show a trend of over 7 million net subscriber additions per month.

With aggressive rollout targets by operators such as Airtel who plan to expand coverage to rural areas, industry analysts expect the trend of new subscriber additions to continue. Despite the continued record growth during the last 12 months, only 23.7 per cent of India ’s 1.1 billion population owns a telephone, suggesting the growth rate for new wireless subscribers will continue indefinitely and likely accelerate.

The mobile device as a platform for youth socializing and online social networking is gaining popularity in India, which is underscored by a key trend in the 2008-2009 timeframe of device improvement and more ‘on-the-go’ content.

The Company formed the joint venture with Visionaire Technologies and launched Bid4Prizes, its innovative and popular reverse auction product, to the Indian marketplace. Bid4Prizes allows users to bid via their cell phone to win prizes such as cell phones, LCD TVs and to have their utility bills paid for a year. This has been successfully marketed across online and offline channels.

Atrinsic’s product portfolio combines the power of Internet media with the latest in mobile entertainment, creating an unequalled competitive advantage and the Company believes there is a unique opportunity to capitalize on the explosion in cell phone usage and the sizeable and growing number of Internet users in India by offering them localized products based on Atrinsic’s portfolio of products.

Burton Katz, the Company’s CEO, commented, Atrinsic has built a powerful platform for growth in the United States, and we are excited to leverage mobile and Internet products combined with Visionaire’s local presence and strong technical team, to target the rapidly growing market in India. The explosion of IT-related industry in India has brought state-of-the-art technology to millions of Indian residents, leading to rapid acceleration of cell phone usage and a surge in Internet utilization.

We are confident that Mango Network is well-positioned to deliver new and exciting products to this growth market, beginning with Bid4Prizes. In the near future, we plan to roll out a localized version of our casual gaming product as well as our mobile marketing platform to enable top-tier global and local brands access to marketing through the handset. Mango Network, in which Atrinsic has contributed eight e-based staff in New Delhi , is forging partnerships with media companies to provide them with white-label and turn-key mobile marketing solutions, he added.

Katz continued, Our strategy of converging PC-based Internet and mobile Internet provides us with an exceptional entry into markets like India where the majority of people access the Internet through their mobile phone. An underlying dynamic of the joint venture has been driven by the 100,000+ organic or ‘free’ unique visitors per month from India accessing, and interacting with, our content, which we have been able to monetize without additional costs and, therefore, contributes to our highly competitive acquisition model. We expect to leverage our mobile business to drive entry of our network, performance-based ad business to these markets as well. Not only can Mango Network deliver more ‘on the go’ content, it will also be able to leverage Atrinsic’s SEO capabilities combined with media buying in both search and display to deliver additional products and marketing solutions.

Katz concluded, We look forward to working closely with our joint venture partner, Visionaire, to strengthen and expand this relationship with our unique product portfolio. We view this as an important first step towards achieving global acceptance and market penetration and will continue to evaluate joint ventures where we can develop strong local partnerships in emerging, international growth markets. (ANI)