Nokia to buy mobile phone ads business Enpocket

Mobile phone maker Nokia plans to move into the mobile phone advertising industry with the acquisition of US-based Enpocket for an undisclosed fee.

The company provides mobile carriers such as Nokia with an automatic delivery system for adverts to mobile phones. This includes ads by text and picture message as well as video advertisements for video-capable mobile phones such as the iPhone from Apple.

Enpocket began in 2001, converting television commercials and web ads into a mobile phone friendly format. Since it started, Enpocket has been refining its techniques to produce what they refer to as "relevant and rewarding mobile marketing." Originally, the Enpocket service yielded 'pop-up' and scrolling adverts only when a mobile phone user browsed the web, conducted a text search, or purchased a game or ring tone. The addition of random promotional text messages and videos created a much more lucrative business. An industry estimated by Enpocket and others to be worth over $11 billion (£5.5 billion) within five years.

"Nokia has already announced its intention to be a leading company in consumer Internet services and we believe that mobile advertising will be an important element in monetizing those services for our customers and partners. Enpocket's mature leading edge platform and people expertise are a strong fit with Nokia existing capabilities in the mobile advertising market," said Tero Ojanpera, chief technology officer at Nokia. "This acquisition is a game changing move to bring the reach and depth of Nokia to organise the market across the world, and make it easier for an ecosystem to develop."

Enpocket's current clients include Vodafone, AT&T, Alltel, and Sprint. Trends show that after being released from the Enpocket network, these carriers will seek to develop their own advertisement delivery systems or partner with other ad service providers targeting mobile devices such as Yahoo.

Both Time Warner and Microsoft acquired their own mobile marketing start-ups earlier this year in preparation for an expected boom in adverts on mobile handsets, which are widely expected to become as commonplace as email ads in the next two to three years.

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