Europe : T-Mobile’s multimedia service t-zones now has more than 4.9 million unique active users per month globally, including T-Mobile’s five European markets (Germany, UK, Austria, Czech Republic, the Netherlands), and the US.

T-Mobile’s percentage of Non Voice Average Revenue per User increased in all European markets from an average of 14% in the first nine months of 2002 to an average of 16% in the first nine month of 2003.

The t-entertainment channels (t-sports, t-games, t-movies and t-music) are the most frequented zones and drive over 70% of t-zones traffic across all European markets. Channels with compelling and frequently refreshed content, as well as those requiring a level of online interaction drive greatest amounts of usage.

“We set aggressive goals for ourselves when we launched t-zones back in March of this year,” comments Nikesh Arora, Chief Marketing Officer at T-Mobile. “Since then, we have developed a suite of exciting services for our customers, have strong media and technology partners in place and are proud to have attracted over 4.9 million unique active users in the month of October alone.”

T-Mobile has struck a series of exclusive sponsorship deals this year for the benefit of t-zones users. With T-Mobile being a main sponsor of the upcoming UEFA 2004 European Football Championship, customers can look forward to an exclusive range of football mobile multimedia offerings (see separate announcement today). Also, T-Mobile’s sponsorship deals this summer, such as the Rolling Stones 40 Licks European Tour, the Charlie’s Angels 2 movie or the EMINEM concerts in Germany, have further enriched the exciting content available through t-zones.

Download services strong; ringtones most popular across Europe
T-Mobile customers have made 18.5 million downloads worldwide (YTD October), with a downloads increase of 59% from Q2’03 to Q3’03 alone. Ringtone downloads is the most popular application across T-Mobile’s European markets, accounting for 68% of all downloads. 81% of ringtones sold across Europe are polyphonic; Realtones have been introduced in Q3’03 and have proved very popular to date. Mobile games have also been very popular, accounting for 20% of all downloads. T-Mobile’s key content partners for entertainment content include Universal Music, Sony, Turner Broadcasting, MTV and Handy.de. In many cases, T-Mobile has been first to market delivering exclusive content with various partners.

SMS solid; MMS rapidly growing
SMS is still the most widely used data service, with 18 billion SMS sent worldwide in the first ten months of 2003. T-Mobile launched its MMS service across all of its markets starting mid 2002. In 2003 (YTD October), T-Mobile customers across the globe have sent a total of 15 million MMS messages. In Europe, there has been an almost 5-fold increase of MMS users in the first ten months of 2003 with an average of over 4 MMS messages sent per user in that timeframe. Over 36% of all new handsets sold in Europe in 2003 (YTD October) were MMS enabled.

Handsets critical to mobile data strategy
Usage of t-zones is greatest amongst customers with devices that support the t-zones experience, i.e. have large colour screens, easy access to t-zones via a hard or soft t-button, an embedded camera, Java, polyphonic ringtones and MMS. In 2003, 50% of all handsets sold in T-Mobile’s European territories support Java, 40% are colour handsets and 13% are camera handsets (YTD October). In Europe, T-Mobile has to date brought 20 handsets to market that feature the “t” hard or soft key, co-branding on handset shell, as well as the T-Mobile ringtone or wallpaper. With the launch of Screen Styles, handset personalisation was pushed a step further, as T-Mobile can now fully brand and guide the user experience, as well as enable simple and customised access to t-zones on seleceted handset types.