SAN DIEGO, CA -- February 4, 2010 -- Verve Wireless, the leading provider of mobile publishing and advertising technologies to local media companies, today announced its end of year milestones and highlighted its work with Nokia in providing local media companies worldwide with a series of mobile news applications for Nokia’s foremost smartphone, which are available for download from the Ovi Store.
Mobile Access to News Increases by 500% via Verve Network: Apps in Demand
During the month of December 2009:
- 100 Million mobile news pages were served, a 160 percent increase year over year.
- Over 8 million readers accessed news from mobile devices via Verve's mobile publishing platform, a 500 percent increase from the same period a year prior.
- Over 3 Million mobile applications have been downloaded to date.
"The amount of page views to our local media partners has grown tremendously this past year, and is indicative of how quickly consumers are adopting new ways to access their news and information. As we roll out our white label app solution we expect a tremendous increase in readership," said Tom Kenney, President and co-founder of Verve Wireless. "If this rate continues because of growing adoptions, the increasing sophistication and ease of smartphones, and prevalence of high speed networks, we are looking at over 20 million people visiting our publishers' mobile sites and applications, and serving up approximately 300 million mobile news pages to those readers by this time next year."
Types of Mobile News Accessed: Local News Maintains Interest but Breaking News Creates Spikes - Local news was the most accessed content.
- Within local, general news followed by sports, and then national was the most accessed content.
- However, major breaking world or national news drove the biggest traffic spikes, for example the news of Michael Jackson's death spurred a daily increase in traffic by 133 percent.
- Video has grown in importance for local media. In the past 3 months, more than seventy local media companies started mobilizing their video content through Verve's platform. Viewership has increased by 106 percent.
Think Global: Read Local
The first publications to launch with the news applications included Metro International, the world's largest international newspaper, The Associated Press, and The Khaleej Times, the largest English language paper in UAE. The Metro Mobile News is offered in seven languages across eight countries with 30 different local editions including Denmark, Holland, Finland, Italy, Mexico, France, Sweden, and the United States with more countries scheduled to follow. Since launching last quarter, the news and information applications in the Ovi Store by Nokia gained top ratings and have been downloaded in 82 countries around the world.
"Staying informed and having access to local news is a common desire across the globe," said Purnima Kochikar, vice president, Forum Nokia. "Working together, Nokia and Verve have enabled leading media companies around the world to take advantage of the sophisticated capabilities of Nokia devices like the Nokia N97 Mini using the Verve publishing platform. When combined with the ubiquitous availability of the Ovi Store, consumers in any language and in any market are able to enjoy more utility from their Nokia devices every day."
About Verve Wireless
Based in Encinitas, CA; Verve Wireless, Inc. and their proprietary Verve Local Content Gateway(TM) allow local media companies and advertisers to seamlessly extend their reach into mobile devices across all the major carriers. Verve Wireless currently works with over 700 leading media companies from the US, Canada, and Europe including dailies, radio, local broadcast stations, and online properties. For more information visit
www.vervewireless.com.
