OZ Set To Unveil U.S. Deal

October 1 2005 by The Systemic Analyst.

Plans to hire 100 Email phones for the masses 

By Nicholas Van Praet, The Gazette

Tiny Montreal high-tech firm OZ Communications Inc. is set to announce a deal today with the biggest wireless carrier in the U.S. that it says will bring email phones to the masses.

OZ and Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless LLC are expected to jointly launch the Cingular Mobile Email service, which they say will allow consumers to access their email on affordable, entry-level cellphones.

” That’s what makes this announcement so huge!” said Alicia Wanless, a technology consultant with The SeaBoard Group in Toronto.

” Mobile email just hasn’t taken off yet, other than with business Blackberry users, and mainly because of the lack of low-end price point handsets.”

OZ technology will power the Cingular service. The company said it is in talks with other mobile carriers for similar deals. Bell Mobility, which recently introduced OZ-powered mobile instant messaging, could roll out email service with OZ in Canada within five months, said Hilmar Gunnarsson, executive vice-president of global sales and marketing for OZ.

” The consumer email market has been totally neglected by the industry as a whole,” Gunnarsson said in an interview. “We see a big, big opportunity for mobile operators to make a lot of money.”

OZ and Cingular want to go after the estimated 172 million U.S. cellphone users who don’t have wireless email. Canada is also largely a virgin market for the technology.

Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion Ltd. has arguably had the most success selling an email cellphone. Its Blackberry wireless products have attracted more than

4 million devotees, many of whom use them for business.

A Blackberry handset typically costs $450 to $550 with a one-year contract, plus monthly access fees. OZ and Cingular are promising email on five Motorola phones to start, including the V551 and Razr. Those phones cost $280 and $375 respectively, with a one-year contract, plus fees.

An average cellphone user will pay between $3 and $6 U.S. per month for Cingular Mobile Email, Gunnarsson said. He said consumers will pay based on how much data they use. There will be no initial subscription fee for the service, he said. Users can access existing accounts at AOL Mail, MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail.

The deal promises to raise the profile of privately held OZ, which had been tapping venture-capital funding as recently as last year.

OZ said it expects to hire at least 100 new employees for its Montreal headquarters in coming months, bringing its total workforce to 230 or more.

The company, founded in Iceland in 1990, focused initially on developing software for high-end 3-D graphics before switching its energies to real-time communications.

Posted in In The News | No Comments »