Europe : ShoZu unveiled an agreement to provide its mobile media services to customers of Austrian mobile network provider Hutchison 3G Austria, initially as a free download to the handset from the carrier’s mobile portal and tentatively as a pre-installed application on select phones. The agreement marks ShoZu’s first partnership with a mobile operator and an important step in building a mass distribution channel for ShoZu’s services through carrier affiliations.

Effective immediately, 3Austria subscribers can use ShoZu’s one-click “Share-It” service to upload photos and video clips from their camera phones to the carrier’s 3FotoAlbum photo community without transferring the files to a computer, dealing with the complex navigation of other uploading methods, or interrupting normal use of the phone. Image uploads to 3FotoAlbum are free of charge as part of the subscriber’s flat-rate data package.

Over the longer term, 3Austria plans to add ShoZu’s “ZuCast” service for automated delivery of videos, photos, music and other user-selected content directly to the mobile phone. ShoZu’s proprietary data replication technology enables files to be downloaded invisibly in the background without the need to open a mobile phone browser, perform complex multi-click navigation sequences, wait for pages to load, interrupt phone calls, start over in the event of a dropped connection, or sync to a PC.

“Mobile subscribers today are looking for an easy bridge between their camera phones and the online world. ShoZu offers a fast, user-friendly solution that will be especially attractive for members of our 3FotoAlbum community,” said Berthold Thoma, CEO of 3Austria. “We believe this will help us attract new subscribers, drive sales and upgrades of data bundles, and continue to build our market share.”

“This agreement is part of a broader strategy to establish commercial relationships with mobile operators, and our success with 3Austria reflects the appeal of our service as a means of driving consumer adoption of value-added services and increased data usage,” said Dean Wood, Senior Vice President, Commercial, for ShoZu. “It also demonstrates the significant time-to-market advantages and flexibility of our managed service approach to carrier partnership. This is a strong case study to take to the wider Hutchison Telecommunications Group and other carriers around the world.”

ShoZu enables mobile operators to generate new revenue streams by offering a wide range of multimedia services through a single gateway and a single application on the phone. Additional benefits include ease of use, rapid rollout, nominal upfront investment, no interference with other revenue-generating services, and support for a wide variety of destinations ranging from photo communities and social networks to personal blogs and citizen-contributed photojournalism sites.

ShoZu also offers easy interaction with customers in the mobile channel for brands, media companies and content providers; increased web usage and stickiness for web communities through easy extension of community services to the mobile phone; and unlimited content support on one open application platform for handset manufacturers, eliminating the need to install different clients for each service or upgrade the client when a new service is added.

ShoZu currently supports 95 handsets, including Symbian and Java devices as well as Microsoft Windows Mobile phones such as the Motorola Q.