Europe : Yamaha Corporation has selected Netsize to deliver its catalogue of mobile ringtone content (Yamaha Super Ringtones) across 24 operators in seven European countries. Already a major mobile content provider in Japan, with more than 3.4 million subscribers, this is the company’s first venture into the growing European ringtone market. Using the Netsize infrastructure, Yamaha hopes to achieve first year sales of over ¥100 million.

Covering Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in November, followed by the UK, France, Italy and Spain; Netsize will manage the hosting, delivery and billing of all Yamaha content. The market leader for Premium SMS and mobile business and entertainment solutions will also provide consumer helpdesks with local language support and control digital rights management across the content catalogue. Ringtones will be priced at approximately €2, will be available to suit most popular mobile handset formats (WAP Push compliant) and will be available in a number of ringtone formats, including SMAF and MIDI. All ringtone content will be promoted both offline through local press and online via web and WAP channels.

“This is one of the first major pan-European entries into the European mobile content market by a Japanese company,” explains Craig Barrack, UK country manager at Netsize. “Yamaha is already a major supplier of ringtones in Japan and is looking to replicate its success through Netsize’s European network.

Yamaha will use the Netsize Content Management Platform to enable the delivery of ringtones. The platform, which has been designed to offer content providers an immediate route to market, manages not only content hosting and delivery, but the billing mechanism and content regulations most appropriate to the target country. This enables content providers such as Yamaha to quickly target multiple European territories with minimum investment.

“As a leader in both mobile ringtone player technology and content, we have been very impressed by Netsize’s capacity to satisfy our expectations and European launch plan. As an exclusive producer of SMAF format chips embedded in many mobile devices and covering the whole music value chain, it is a key strategic decision to be present in the fast moving European market for multimedia content,” says Keith Taniguchi, General Manager Digital Contents Business Division of Yamaha Corporation.

“We are delighted to be part of Yamaha’s European mobile strategy. With an end-to-end solution, we provide a complete package for the hosting, delivery and billing of mobile content, as well as local market intelligence and project coordination. This has enabled us to support Yamaha’s very precise requirements for entry into the European market. It confirms our goal to be the natural and privileged partner of world wide industry players looking to address all European mobile users and operators,” finishes Barrack.