PR releases

Omnifone welcomes Nokia’s backing for unlimited mobile music revolution

Island Studios, London, 4 December 2007 - Omnifone, which provides unlimited music download services in partnership with major operators such as Vodafone, Telenor, Hutchison Telecom and Vodacom has formally welcomed the announcement earlier today that Nokia would launch the "Comes with Music" mobile music offering on some Nokia devices in the second half of 2008.

Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone stated, "Consumers will increasingly come to expect unlimited access to music, direct to their mobiles. We are delighted to hear Nokia intends to embrace and develop its own version of the unlimited music download model, which we launched back in February 2007."

Lewis added, "Whilst manufacturer solutions have a place in the market, there can be no doubt most carriers believe a first class music experience is a key strategic asset in ensuring long term customer loyalty and network differentiation. The strategic importance of music is shown by the fact that many of MusicStation’s partner networks are already offering, or plan to offer, unlimited music downloads from all the major labels bundled for no extra cost into standard price plans, as well as on a pay-as-you-go basis."

"There is no doubt carriers will want to ensure they remain centrestage of music services and that these services are delivered on the widest range of handsets possible so that data networks are monetised as effectively as possible, and consumers can have as much freedom as possible when choosing a device."

"We already know from operational experience that consumers relish the opportunity to have unlimited access to music, direct to their handset. In partnership with the carriers, we will continue to give consumers unlimited access to the music they want, direct over the carrier’s data network, on whatever device they want to buy."

Omnifone also confirms that it is already in active discussions with the major labels about extending its existing international music licenses to provide even more flexibility to its award winning unlimited music downloads service MusicStation.

Lewis added, "The rollout of MusicStation with Vodafone, Hutchison Telecom and Telenor has shown quite how popular unlimited music services can be in both Europe and Asia-Pacific. We intend to constantly evolve the MusicStation service in order to deliver the ultimate flexibility and value to MusicStation users, and to ensure that this award winning service is available on the widest range of devices, from all manufacturers, in partnership with the carriers."

About Omnifone

Omnifone is Europe's leading direct to mobile unlimited music download service provider. Partners include the likes of Vodafone, Telenor, 3 Hong Kong and Vodacom, all of whom have rolled out Omnifone's MusicStation service. Over 25 other operators have engaged as partners. Omnifone was the winner of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) Music award in 2007 and has won the Red Herring 100 award. The company is based at Island Studios, London with regional HQs in Asia Pacific. For further information please visit; www.omnifone.com.

About MusicStation

MusicStation is an unlimited music download service that will run on virtually all 2.5G/3G/HSDPA music compatible mobiles. MusicStation provides a virtually identical next generation community based user experience across all manufacturer handsets. Built-in networked functions provide the ability to make friends, build and share playlists and individual tracks with other mobile users and receive music news and recommendations based on player behaviour using collaborative filtering and nearest neighbour technology.

MusicStation stores downloaded tracks on the phone's internal or removable memory and these are fully backed up so that if a user’s mobile is stolen, lost or upgraded, the replacement handset will automatically restore the customer’s music, playlists, friends and preferences to the replacement handset. MusicStation users can listen to downloaded tracks when in Flight Safe mode and have unlimited access to the full catalogue when connected to a 2.5G/3G/HSDPA network.