The integrated mobile messaging market gained further momentum today as fastmobile, a leader in the design and supply of integrated messaging and content access solutions for mobile network operators, officially opened a dedicated China Development Centre (CDC) in Beijing to focus on J2ME, Symbian and BREW developments, server software development and operator customisation.

The CDC has been established to meet the increasing demand for fastmobile's solutions and will support the implementation of fastmobile's integrated messaging services to customers around the world.

In the last few weeks, fastmobile has announced deals with BT in the UK, Chikka Asia, Globe Telecom in the Philippines and global partnerships with Yahoo! and MSN. Fastmobile's fmX software is also being used by the GSM Association in the evaluation of the impact of mobile communications in developing markets.

Kang Lee, President and co-founder of fastmobile said, "This is an important step for fastmobile to expand our engineering resources to support growing demand for our integrated messaging solutions. We will be able to scale our resources rapidly and leverage the core development teams in the US and the UK."

"China is the world's largest mobile communications market where the number of mobile subscribers surpasses the number of fixed-line subscribers. It is anticipated that China will manufacture around 300 million mobile handsets in 2006 alone." said John Hoffman, CEO of fastmobile. "Our presence in China will help us to bring a superior mobile messaging experience to both China and a greater international market"

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About fastmobile
fastmobile Inc. is a leader in the development, hosting, and delivery of value-added instant communication services over GPRS and other 2.5G and 3G mobile networks. The company offers operators and service providers a range of innovative services designed to improve the user experience, drive incremental ARPU and fully leverage existing service and infrastructure investment to deliver higher ROI.

The fmX platform enables carriers to provide their customers with a simplified way of accessing and using messaging services such as SMS, multi-media messaging, email and instant messenger-type services. It also integrates features such as mailboxes and address books across all messaging services.