STOCKHOLM -(Dow Jones)- Nokia, Monday launched its Nokia Mobility Hosting solution for mobile service providers, offering them to quickly roll out new services for subscribers while keeping investments in check and uncertainties to a minimum.
Separately, Nokia said it had won a push to talk (PoC) hosting trial agreement with Mobitel Slovenia.
In 2005, Nokia said it won push to talk hosting agreements with mobilkom austria, a unit of Telekom Austria and 3 Scandinavia, a venture of Hutchison Whampoa and Investor AB, and Nokia is currently in hosting solution talks with a number of service providers across the globe.
Nokia said Hosting is now starting to take off, and is expected to grow sharply in the coming years as operator competition intensifies.
The company said research group Ovum forecasts the size of the hosting market to double to EUR1.35 billion by 2009 from around EUR670 million in 2005.
"As the telecommunications market converges, operators are increasingly looking in the mirror and asking themselves what sort of role they want to play in this process. They are scrutinizing their business models and asking what is a core activity and what isn't," said Jean-Charles Doineau, Service infrastructure practice leader at Ovum.
"We feel operating service platforms is one area that some operators will offload to outside parties in the coming years. Only a handful of vendors have started to look at the potential in this market, and Nokia is one of them," he said.
The business environment for mobile service providers is becoming tougher, and new multimedia services are becoming increasingly complex to install and maintain, Nokia said.
By opting for Nokia's hosting solution, operators can focus squarely on winning and retaining subscribers by offering popular services such as PoC and multimedia messaging, Nokia said.
Hosting sits alongside Managed Services to form one of the main pillars of Nokia's growing Services business unit, the company said.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires"
Posted to the site on 3rd April 2006
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/16796.php