October 24, 2001
SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) (www.sktelecom.com) one of the world's largest wireless telecommunications operators, and Thin Multimedia (www.thinmultimedia.com), a leading provider of mobile multimedia solutions, today announced the launch of NATE Video Mail(TM), the world's first wireless video messaging service. The wireless video messaging service enables subscribers to send video messages along with SMS messages to mobile phones. In July of this year, SK Telecom and Thin Multimedia successfully launched a multimedia service which offers subscribers more than 400 content channels, including animations, multimedia cards, movies, music videos, and TV programs. The video messaging service is an addition to the multimedia service, and both are available on both 2G and 2.5G networks.
"We expect our video messaging service to be the killer application that will make wireless video a popular and useful service for consumers of all ages. Parents of students studying abroad can use their mobile phones to see video of their children, while teenagers can send entertaining video mail to one another," said Jae Uk Lim, Manager for Video Messaging Service in the Wireless Internet Division of SK Telecom. "According to initial surveys, consumers are excited about our video messaging service and are willing to pay for it."
>From anywhere in the world, SK Telecom subscribers and their friends can send video to handsets equipped with Thin Multimedia's video player, thinPLAYER(TM). The sender only needs web access and a web camera to create a video message that has a caption and an SMS message. A dozen handset manufacturers - including Motorola -currently offer such handsets. thinPLAYER(TM) supports black and white, grayscale, and up to 24-bit color imaging.
SK Telecom's video messaging service is powered by Thin Multimedia's thinVMS(TM) (Video Messaging Service) solution. ThinVMS(TM) works with the wireless operator's SMS and WAP server to first send the SMS message and later send the video if the user chooses to view the video after reading the message. thinPORTRAIT(TM) is the desktop application used to create video messages.
"thinVMS(TM) solutions enable a wireless operator to launch a wide-scale video messaging service using their existing infrastructure," explained Dr. Chuck Yoo, Founder and CEO of Thin Multimedia. "SMS servers, WAP servers and networks need no modification. Handsets need only to incorporate thinPLAYER(TM) software, which requires very little memory and can turn almost any existing handset into a video-capable handset at no additional cost."
Thin Multimedia is working with UMS and MMS technology vendors to market mobile video messaging globally. In particular, Thin Multimedia is actively targeting the European market, where entertainment companies such as movie studios and game companies are aggressively using SMS messaging to market their films, games and music to mobile phone users.
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