European Carriers and Industry Analysts Contribute to Successful OTAFF Meeting in Athens

Collaborative sharing of ideas between experienced and emerging MDM players

Laguna Niguel, Calif., October 22, 2006 - The OTA Flash Forum (OTAFF), a special interest group addressing the business, technical and operational issues facing over-the-air (OTA) management of mobile devices, continued work on its revenue generating services whitepaper at its Q4 meeting in Athens. The meeting was well attended, including representatives of Telefonica, Vodafone, Cosmote, Mobiltel, Motorola, NEC, Bitfone, WDS Global, Vision Mobile and Informa Telecoms & Media. Due to the location of the meeting, several Greek and Balkan operators were in attendance including Vodafone Greece, Cosmote and Mobiltel.

The keynote presentation was delivered by Andreas Constantinou of Vision Mobile, an independent industry analyst. Andreas presented an overview of the global Mobile Device Management industry based on a recently published ArcChart report which he authored. The meeting also included a working session about creating revenue-generating services from Device Management, where all participants engaged in an interactive workshop to identify high-potential revenue generating services. This working session builds upon the work started at the recent meeting in Beijing to create an OTAFF position paper on delivering revenue-generating services. Also discussed was a final report on a recent OTAFF usability study for OTA software updates. This consumer research study, sponsored by OTAFF, identifies potential consumer experience issues with OTA software updates and provides actionable recommendations to address these issues. Bindu Rao of Bitfone presented a new topic of interest regarding the challenges and opportunities of updating dual mode devices. Market forecasts predict a rapid increase in the number of dual mode devices. These devices are expected to open up new opportunities and challenges to providing firmware updates and other device management services.

"I am very excited about the level and quality of participation at our Athens OTAFF meeting," said Jim Eckels, a General Manager at Motorola Mobile Devices and Chairman of OTAFF. "All throughout the meeting, we had very spirited and open discussions between mobile operators, handset OEMs, solution providers and independent industry analysts."

OTAFF membership has increased rapidly as mobile operators begin to deploy a broad range of device management technologies and now has more than forty members. The OTA Flash Forum encourages participation from all interested parties and membership information is available at its website www.otaflashforum.org.

The next OTA Flash Forum meeting will take place in early 2007. For more information about this meeting, please see the OTAFF website at www.otaflashforum.org.

About OTA Flash Forum
The OTA Flash Forum is an open membership special interest group formed to foster the worldwide development, implementation and use of over-the-air (OTA) software updates for mobile devices and related OTA technologies. The OTA Flash Forum consists of leading carrier, manufacturer and solution provider companies which seek to promote widespread adoption of standards-based OTA update technology and contribute to the evolution of OTA services and applications in support of broader device management strategies. Founding members Bitfone, Gemplus, Motorola, Orange and T-Mobile USA initiated the OTA Flash Forum in June of 2003. For more information, visit www.otaflashforum.org.