(13 February 2006 1:30 pm)

MUMBAI: The California-headquartered Openwave Systems Inc., provider of open software products and services for the communications and media industry, is planning to co-market and support mobile television services integrated with the Openwave Mobile Integrated Dynamic Application System (MIDAS) environment.

As part of Openwave's mobile TV initiative, the company is engaging with two mobile television providers, IceTV, who delivers live TV broadcasts and custom programming developed specifically for handhelds, and Nexage, a leading wireless and multimedia software and services company that recently announced its PhoneCast mobile video solution. The companies will work with Openwave to enable operators to deliver real-time and video on demand to MIDAS handsets.

"Mobile TV services offered through MIDAS, will afford operators the benefits of a high quality mobile television service that is easily accessible and can be personalized based on the preferences of various consumer segments," said Olivier Bartholot, head of the client business unit at Openwave. "We look forward to further developing the relationships with both IceTV and Nexage and ensuring that we enable our operator customers to bring to market mobile television services that are rich, compelling and easy to use."

Midas provides a flexible user experience layer that links to underlying handset resources, enabling a powerful new way to design and deliver services, like mobile television. IceTV, which stands for Interactive Communications and Entertainment TV, enables mobile phone users to watch their favourite local channels and cable television shows live on their mobile devices, anywhere there is a wireless data signal available. Nexage's PhoneCast software platform offers a mobile video solution for operators, content providers and media companies, allowing customers to watch live TV, live events and sportscasts, and video on demand content on their mobile phones globally.

"We're excited to be deploying a high-quality, personalized mobile television experience that is simple for operators to implement and will allow broadcasters to increase viewership and offer targeted interactive marketing to their advertisers," said IceTV president & CEO Bill Stack. "Working with Openwave to include our service on Midas handsets will enable us to bring our mobile television services to market faster and integrate with operators easier."

"With its proven experience in bringing mobile content to the mass market, Openwave will be an asset to us as we look to bring our mobile television services to operators around the world," said Nexage CEO Devkumar Gandhi. "The marriage of our two solutions would be a natural fit for operators who are looking to quickly deploy powerful new entertainment services, like mobile television, live events and video on demand to mass market multimedia phones."