TMCnet News
Alexander Set To ROKLONDON --(Business Wire)-- ROK Entertainment Group, a specialist mobile TV and applications development company, today announced the appointment of Laurence Alexander as Chief Executive Officer. Alexander, formerly a director at O2 where he was responsible, amongst other things, for bringing the first Blackberrys to the UK and, latterly, CEO of mobile handset manufacturer Emblaze, joins the board of ROK as the company undergoes an Initial Public Offering (IPO) through a share exchange with US publicly listed company CyberFund, Inc. (CYFD). Formed in 2003, ROK Entertainment Group currently employs 150 staff worldwide and has, to date, been privately financed. ROK has filed more than 40 patent applications for a suite of mobile technologies it has developed ranging from unicast mobile TV streamed over 2.5G, 3G and Wi-Fi networks through to content-loaded memory cards and mobile VoIP and content applications. Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and founder of ROK Entertainment Group reports "Laurence is a highly respected player in the mobile industry with a proven track record of success through his leadership, vision and insight. He will bring renewed dynamism and focus to the already rapid deployment of our mobile technologies worldwide". ROK is in the midst of its plans to deploy more than 30 on-demand mobile TV services streamed over existing mobile networks with selected operators worldwide by the end of this year and, as part of this on-going roll-out, recently announced the launch of its mass-market mobile TV services with Telenor in Pakistan and with AIS in Thailand. "I've been amazed and impressed at all that Jonathan and the team at ROK has achieved over the past three or four years and I'm delighted to be joining the company at this exciting time" said Alexander. "We'll be looking to consolidate our position as a world leader in the provision of mobile entertainment services and applications through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile operators around the world". ROK aims to secure significant chunks of the mobile TV market worldwide - an industry forecast to grow into a multi-billion dollar business - as well as the mobile content market through its ROK Media Store initiative. About ROK: Formed by Jonathan Kendrick and John Paul DeJoria in 2003 with a mandate to develop innovative technologies for the delivery of entertainment services to mobile phones, ROK has been privately financed to date. With 150 staff and offices in the UK, US and China, ROK has filed more than 40 international patent applications for it's suite of mobile technologies and applications. Selected key technologies currently being deployed worldwide by ROK include: ROK TV - mass-market mobile TV streamed over 2.5G GPRS, 3G and Wi-Fi and licensed to selected Mobile Operators (www.rok.tv) ROK Player - copy-protected audio-visual content stored on memory cards for play on mobile phones (www.rokplayer.com) ROK Media Store - Online content portal and personal content management system for side-loading content to mobile phones (www.beta.rokmediastore.com) FreeBe TV - Mass-market, globally-available FREE mobile TV - advertising supported (www.freebe.tv) ROK's corporate website: www.rokcorp.com About Laurence Alexander: From his early start with Simoco International, a mobile network service provider, Laurence moved on to drive the development of the Dutch-owned ISP World Online before it was bought by Tiscali. Laurence subsequently emerged as MD of Genie (the BT Cellnet subsidiary) in 2000 before moving to O2 in 2002 where, amongst other achievements, he became President of O2 Asia Pacific as well as driving the development of O2's online consolidation in the UK, Germany, Ireland and Asia. In addition, Laurence was responsible for delivering the Blackberry to the UK market and for managing O2's sponsorship of the World Cup-winning England Rugby Team. Latterly, Laurence has served as CEO of Emblaze Mobile, the handset manufacturer, where he delivered several IPO's and M&A's and grew the business from scratch to a turn-over of $350m. Laurence joined ROK Entertainment Group as CEO on 1st June 2007 About the Mobile Entertainment Market: There are 2.8 billion handsets worldwide - being upgraded with evermore functionality at the rate of 1 billion handsets a year. This represents more mobile screens than all the TV sets, all the computer screen and all the cinema screens worldwide, put together. Until the advent of ROK TV - with its ability to deliver high-quality mobile TV over existing 2.5G GPRS networks (as well as over 3G and Wi-Fi) - 3G was seen as the only means to deliver streamed mobile TV. Less than 100 million people have signed-up to 3G to date worldwide. ROK TV has removed the single most important USP of 3G by making streamed mobile TV truly mass-market. "Mobile TV will become a mainstream service in most developed markets by 2010, at which point it will have close to half a billion subscribers." "Expect TV services over cellular (services) to show revenue of just over $100 million in 2006, growing to $15 billion by 2010. SOURCE: Gartner, Inc. "Dataquest Insight: Revenue Model for Mobile TV Needs Tuning" by Carolina Milanesi, 5 March 2007 |
