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UnWired Nation Announces Key Customer, Partner Wins Highlighting Strength of Voice Publishing Platform
PALO ALTO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- In conjunction with the launch of its Voice Publishing Platform at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit (please see today's release, "UnWired Nation Unveils Voice Publishing Platform, Removing Carrier, Complexity and Cost Barriers to Going Mobile"), UnWired Nation today announced that it has signed many important customer, technology, advertising and business partnerships, creating a vibrant new ecosystem that leverages voice as the medium to connect businesses, marketers and consumers.
The UnWired Nation Voice Publishing Platform allows virtually any business-- from e-commerce services, to news and information sites, to social networks --to reach and interact with mobile users, over the most widespread and accepted communications medium--the telephone. This model allows businesses to not only create and strengthen relationships with customers, but also generate new revenue streams through in-call promotional messages.
Key Customer Adoption, Wins, Signal Strong Demand
UnWired Nation's first product, UnWired Buyer for eBay, has allowed users to bid on eBay Auction style listings over mobile phones since September 2005. Since that time the service has placed millions of calls to users, representing interaction opportunities that would have otherwise been missed simply because the user was away from the computer. UnWired Nation has also tested out-bound mobile advertising on many of the calls with positive results.
In addition to eBay, five exciting technology companies, representing a diverse blend of Internet based businesses, are announcing solutions using the UnWired Nation Voice Publishing Platform:
Pheedo, the premier RSS marketing and content distribution company, will leverage the Voice Publishing Platform to vocalize RSS feeds and address the largest possible market for mobile information delivery: connecting RSS to the mobile phone via voice.
uShip, the first and largest online marketplace for shipping services, will use UnWired Nation's platform to provide phone call alerts for both consumers and service providers, helping them manage their uShip activities in a timely manner and speeding the overall time to transaction within the uShip marketplace.
Zooven, a real estate search engine based in Central Texas, will use the Voice Publishing Platform to distribute "fresh" lead information to real estate agents in the field, allowing them to interact, and immediately send collateral materials to potential buyers.
Loanables, a neighbor-to-neighbor borrowing network, will be using the Voice Publishing Platform to provide real-time alerts of questions and borrow requests to Loaners in the Loanables community.
Benchmark, an online fastasy sports site, will use the Voice Publishing Platform to reach out with real-time notifications on players, teams, and league issues. It will also give their users the tools to keep up to date on all stats and status for their leagues, teams and players.
Technology and Advertising Partners Strengthen Platform
To solidify and "future proof" its Voice Publishing Platform, UnWired Nation has teamed with partners Nuance and Apptera to tackle the voice recognition and mobile advertising challenges that have to date served as barriers to connecting businesses, consumers and marketers via the telephone. Nuance (Nasdaq:NUAN) provides UnWired Nation with telecom-grade Voice XML, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Text-to-Speech (TTS) functionality, while Apptera is delivering technology for MobileAds.
"What sets voice-powered marketing apart from other forms of mobile and online marketing is its inherent ability to strengthen brand loyalty and customer relationships by delivering timely content tailored to a user's particular interests and preferences," said Randy Haldeman, chief marketing officer for Apptera, an UnWired Nation partner. "The UnWired Nation solution offers marketers a new and powerful channel to go mobile to reach and interact with customers."
Verisign Extends Solution to Enterprise, Government Sectors
In addition to the launch, UnWired Nation also today announced that Verisign (Nasdaq: VRSN), a leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services that enable and protect billions of interactions everyday across voice and data networks worldwide, has incorporated UnWired Nation's core Voice Publishing Platform into its Mobile Enterprise Services offering.
"UnWired Nation's platform breaks down the barriers to going mobile and our early customers and partners demonstrate both strong demand for our service and our ability to quickly capitalize on this rapidly emerging market opportunity," said UnWired Nation CEO Indraj Gill. "Working with partners such as Nuance and Apptera has enabled us to bring this solution to market quickly, while establishing a robust technology and advertising infrastructure from the start. Our relationships with Verisign and Pheedo take our offering a step further, providing both important distribution points into the enterprise market and a complement to existing RSS marketing programs."
About UnWired Nation
UnWired Nation provides a Voice Publishing Platform that allows companies to reach any mobile phone through the ubiquitous medium of voice. The service allows our customers to deliver interactive, timely and personal opt-in voice-enabled content or services to their users for free. The platform can be easily and quickly integrated into companies' existing infrastructure through the use of APIs, and provides a revenue generating component through in-call advertising. The company's first product, UnWired Buyer for eBay, allows eBay users to remotely bid in the final three minutes of an auction. UnWired Nation has delivered millions of voice-based mobile interactions on behalf of eBay, resulting in increased average selling prices and overall utilization of eBay. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas and funded by Gefinor Ventures, Accent Texas Fund I, LP, Aegis Texas Venture Fund, DFJ Mercury and other investors.
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