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WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
SEVEN Acquires Smartner, Increasing Global Presence and Positioning to Accelerate Growth
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., CAMBRIDGE, England and HELSINKI, Finland, April 11 -- SEVEN today announced that the company has acquired
European-based Smartner, a leader in mobile email solutions. Terms of the deal
were not disclosed. The acquisition extends SEVEN's leadership in the mobile
email sector. SEVEN now has a leading customer base consisting of 45 operator
customers across 30 countries, with a combined total addressable market of
over 360M mobile subscribers. SEVEN additionally has licensing agreements with
the top five handset manufacturers -- Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung
and Siemens -- and others to integrate the company's software onto their
devices, creating an 'out-of-the-box' email experience for end users. SEVEN
also has broad support for all mobile device platforms, including support for
100 shipping handset models. Over 5000 companies have deployed SEVEN's
enterprise-class services and several hundreds of thousands of individuals
currently use SEVEN's personal email services.
"With this acquisition, SEVEN is well positioned to quickly take advantage
of the growing demand for both individual and enterprise mobile email
solutions," said Kent Thexton, president and CEO of SEVEN. "Smartner has a
significant presence in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and strong
relationships with the leading device manufacturers as well as leading channel
partners such as Ericsson. The combined entity broadens our global footprint,
enabling us to drive mass-market adoption of mobile email."
The merger will build on high levels of synergies between the companies in
order to:
-- Expand SEVEN's operational footprint to provide world-class global
sales and support to new and existing customers;
-- Deliver a comprehensive technology portfolio from Fortune 500 to
individual consumer solutions;
-- Broaden and deepen R&D, and bring new products and solutions to market
more quickly.
"There are obvious synergies between Smartner and SEVEN's technologies,
and there is great potential that the market will benefit from the blending
their innovations," said Roger Entner, Vice President, Wireless Telecom, of
Ovum's North American practice. "The market for mobile email and office
solutions is growing rapidly and there is a significant untapped opportunity
for the newly created SEVEN. The merger will enable the company to target this
potential and accelerate growth at a much faster rate than could be achieved
individually."
The combined company will operate under SEVEN's brand, with headquarters
in Redwood City, CA, USA and regional headquarters in Cambridge, UK; Helsinki,
Finland; Singapore; and Tokyo, Japan. The company will operate local offices
in Beijing, China; Cambridge, UK; Madrid, Spain; Gothenburg, Sweden; Rome,
Italy; Paris, France; Munich, Germany; and Seoul, South Korea. Kent Thexton
will continue as CEO and Paul Hedman, Smartner's CEO, will be responsible for
EMEA and APAC as Managing Director. Bill Nguyen will assume the title of
Founder and Chairman of the Board. Smartner's management team, including all
of Smartner's founders, will hold management positions at the new SEVEN.
Smartner investor and board member, Andrea Traversone of Amadeus Capital
Partners Ltd., will join SEVEN's Board of Directors. SEVEN has 160 employees
and is recruiting to continue to grow operations.
"Both companies had reached a similar level of maturity, and market
conditions are very favorable. We both have leading solutions and have posted
excellent results in landing important mobile operators in different parts of
the world, said Paul Hedman, Managing Director, SEVEN EMEA and APAC.
"Furthermore, Smartner and SEVEN have extremely complementary businesses. The
motivation for this deal is the opportunity to create the leading provider of
mobile email. Combining Smartner and SEVEN is the opportunity to be that
company."
The only mobile email vendor with a presence in Japan, the world's leading
data market, SEVEN partners with mobile operators and other channel partners
to provide a white-label solution for both individual subscribers and
enterprises. SEVEN's software is designed to meet the needs of distinct market
segments from the Fortune 500, to small-to-medium sized organizations, to
individual professionals and consumers. It is available as Server Edition,
Enterprise Edition, Workgroup Edition, Personal Edition and Consumer Edition.
SEVEN's software currently enables all major email systems including Microsoft
Exchange, Lotus Domino, IMAP 4 and POP3-compliant email servers. SEVEN's
software delivers a feature-rich, easy-to-use, push-based mobile email
experience at an affordable price, and typically costs 50% less than other
solutions in the marketplace.
For more information please visit: http://www.seven.com.
About SEVEN
SEVEN is a leading global provider of software that enables mobile
operators to offer their subscribers secure, low-cost, real-time access to
critical information including business and personal email and applications.
SEVEN is available as Personal Edition for consumers, and Workgroup Edition,
Server Edition and Enterprise Edition for businesses. Our software supports a
wide variety of device platforms, including BREW, J2ME, Microsoft Pocket PC,
Microsoft Smartphone 2003, Palm OS and Symbian-based phones, and currently
supports over 100 shipping handheld devices manufactured by Hitachi, HTC,
Motorola, NEC, Nokia, palmOne, Sanyo, Samsung, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and
Toshiba. SEVEN is available today across major international network
standards, and is sold by 45 leading mobile operators worldwide including:
Cingular Wireless, Globe Telecom, KDDI Corp., NTT DoCoMo, O2, Orange, Optus,
SingTel, Song Networks, Sprint, Telefonica Moviles, Telkom Indonesia, Telenor
Group and Vodafone Italy. SEVEN is a global company headquartered in Redwood
City, CA with offices around the globe.
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