ASIA : PurpleAce, a pioneer of mobile content discovery solutions today announced that Malaysia's largest mobile operator Celcom has become the world's first to introduce its Ripple Vault service.

Inset is Brojo Pillai, co-founder and Business Development Director, PurpleAce.

The introduction of PurpleAce's Ripple Vault means that Celcom's 4.97 million customers will be able to backup and protect their mobile phone contact list.

The service, branded as SIMcard Rescue, will be offered as part of Celcom's latest pre-paid plan called XPAX, and is available to all Celcom customers regardless of their handset for a nominal monthly fee of 2MYR *. Users will be able to access their online contacts list via the security-protected WAP and WEB portal should they lose their mobile or irreparably damage their SIM card. The service currently protects mobile users' phonebook information, but the product's reach can be extended to backup other mobile data including SMS and rich media like photos and videos.

Users of the service with smart phones have their contacts backed-up automatically, while users of lower-generation phones can simply have their SIM cards read at their retail outlet. Although it offers clear benefits for business users SIMcard Rescue also has mass market appeal. SIMcard Rescue is not limited to SyncML handsets or GPRS users. It's available to everyone and offers incremental usability depending on the handset's capabilities.

PurpleAce CEO Scott Sproule said: "Anyone who's lost their mobile phone, complete with all their invaluable contacts, will tell you how infuriating it can be. The effort spent collating and inputting all those numbers again is colossal, and there are always those numbers that you simply can't get. Ripple Vault gives customers an easy-to-use and cheap failsafe should anything happen to their mobile. It also gives operators an opportunity to differentiate their offering in the marketplace and, crucially, increase revenues."

Celcom"s Group CEO, Dato' Ramli Abbas said: "We believe that the introduction of SIMcard Rescue adds even more value to our customer base. I believe that many of our customers will see the ability to quickly, easily and cheaply backup their contacts as a genuinely indispensable service. Its introduction once again underlines that Celcom is at the forefront of new technologies."

* PurpleAce will be will be exhibiting at 3GSM 2005 in Cannes on the Siemens Mobile Acceleration stand (stand 17, hall two).