Swapcom sells its Swapcom SMS subsidiary to mBlox for French SMS transmission business

Swapcom, a leading provider of mobile software systems, today officially announces the sale of its Swapcom SMS" subsidiary, specialized SMS transmission business, to UK-based mBlox. This transaction sees mBlox continue to execute its strategy of consolidating the SMS messaging industry.

London and Lyon (PRWEB) January 23, 2004 --mBlox will acquire Swapcom SMSs established messaging customer base and its long-standing relationships with local mobile operators. The agreement provides mBlox with a strategic foothold into the fast growing French market and will enable Swapcom to continue to focus on mobile software for value added services, its core business since the foundation of the company in 1999, which today represents more than 90 per cent of its net income. mBloxs premium-rate SMS services now extend over 14 countries including the United Kingdom, United States of America, Germany, France, Spain and Scandinavia.

Todays announcement means that content and application providers will now have much greater choice when selecting how to manage their premium and bulk SMS traffic into and out of the French market. Until now France has been dominated by integrated SMS content and distribution providers, not all of which have the capacity or global reach to serve the fast-growing international SMS media channel. This has limited the growth of pure-play content and application developers because they have been dependent on companies they compete with on the content side to manage the transmission of SMS services.

Andrew Bud, Chairman, mBlox said: France is a pivotal market in Europe. Our acquisition of the SMS subsidiary of this established player will help reinforce mBloxs position as Europes leading dedicated provider of SMS transmission services. Content and applications providers have been eagerly awaiting a financially strong partner who can provide them with a consistent level of service across Europes main markets and into the US. I am confident that mBloxs model of providing a focused transmission service, backed up by an unrivalled depth of resource, will make us the logical choice."

Bud continued: We firmly believe that focus and scale will shape the winners in this sector. mBlox started to consolidate the transmission side of the SMS messaging industry over a year ago. The acquisition of Swapcom SMS is a further building block in our plan to be the leading international SMS operator."

M. Olivier Graëff, CEO, Swapcom said The logic behind the divestment of our Swapcom SMS subsidiary is two-fold: one, to concentrate all our efforts on our core software business. Two, to increase our cash reserves in order to implement an aggressive growth strategy in 2004. Our main priority is to confirm our position as a leading provider of middleware software from remote handset configuration (device management) to distribution of personalized multimedia contents to mobile devices (content & message management). I am confident that this agreement with mBlox will also benefit our customers in terms of improved service and product choice."

Swapcom SMS clients throughout Europe will continue to receive their existing services and will be seamlessly migrated to mBloxs transmission platform. They will now gain access to mBloxs full range of premium and standard services based upon its own carrier-grade SMSC. mBlox is the only SMS service provider in the world to own and operate its own SMSC, enabling it to exercise unrivalled control over the quality, reliability and security of MT services.
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