FAME™ Beckons Global Mobile Marketers
New Worldwide Group Engages Marketing Leaders from Wireless Industry in Advocacy and Research Program

3GSM WORLD CONGRESS, CANNES, France (Feb. 17, 2005) - The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, an elite affinity group of 1,200 chief marketing executives in the technology, communications and digital media sectors, today announced FAME - the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience™.

FAME is a new strategic authority leadership initiative with an agenda to accelerate marketing programs and research aimed at advancing the wireless user experience. Wireless industry members of the CMO Council will contribute and participate in FAME events, seminars and focus groups to provide guidance, advice and advocacy from the marketing community.

A key contributor to the FAME initiative will be the GSM Association – the global trade association for the world’s wireless operators.

Members of the FAME coalition include wireless carriers, handset vendors, mobile application vendors, content providers, software/game vendors, and OS and middleware players with a key stake in accelerating the growth and adoption of these value added services.

Announced at the 3GSM Congress in Cannes, France, FAME is expected to involve around 200 mobile technology companies who are active members of the CMO Council. These include Cingular, Google, GSMA, HP, Intel, LG Electronics, Lucent, MCI, Macromedia, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, OpenWave, Orange, palmOne, Proxim, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, T-Mobile, Verizon, Virgin Mobile, Visto, Yahoo!, and many others.

The FAME group will team with the CMO Council to promote the use of new mobile applications and create marketing thought leadership programs and research to advance the cause. FAME will gather real-time intelligence and develop industry programs that will help guide campaigns and programs advancing the mobile user experience.

The group builds upon the momentum gathered at the Mobile Marketing symposium panel held at last year’s CMO Summit. At the summit, companies such as Intel, Visto, iLoop Mobile and OpenWave participated in an interactive session with technology leaders around the issues and challenges surrounding the rapidly evolving mobile landscape. Leaders identified that a key obstacle holding back more rapid adoption rates are issues around usability and the user experience.

“FAME brings together many of the world’s top marketing leaders in wireless technology that share interest in driving and calibrating effective marketing programs to boost adoption rates and improve customer affinity,” said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. “As the proliferation of mobile applications continues at a frenzied pace, these executives need collective insight and collaboration to tailor marketing initiatives accordingly.”

Welcoming the initiative, Bill Gajda, CMO of the GSM Association said: “We see FAME as an ideal complement in the marketing arena to the acceleration of standards activity we’ve been driving from a technical perspective. At the 3GSM World Congress we announced initiatives to drive down the cost of handsets for the emerging markets and to better integrate messaging services in the developed markets.

“Now the FAME program will provide a platform for key players in wireless marketing to keep pace with the challenges and opportunities of the exploding market for mobile applications and devices,” added Gajda, who will serve as a strategic advisor to the FAME program and also serves on the advisory board of the CMO Council.

THE BACKGROUND TO THE FAME INITIATIVE
The wireless ecosystem shares an interest in effectively driving adoption rates for mobile data services because future growth of revenue per user (ARPU) and continued profitability will be more dependent on the depth and breadth of consumer usage of next generation services.

Due to the economic structure in which carriers typically invest more than $300 to acquire each new user and that basic voice minutes have become a commodity, the entire industry is relying on next generation/data services to be the profit driver. The ability to launch and drive adoption of value added services in many cases will determine success or failure.

Mobile marketing leaders involved in FAME will team with the CMO Council to:

• Work with software and hardware vendors to improve the usability of these new services by pooling resources for key consumer research
• Demonstrate thought leadership on issues around privacy; mobile user experience; and techniques to drive user adoption and retention
• Facilitate market understanding of the opportunities and challenges of new wireless applications such as opt-in advertising, health monitoring, and streaming video and audio

FAME will also team with top media partners to aggregate research and reports and to create a strong media profile and a credible voice on all new developments, innovations and advances relating to the mobile experience.

Mobile marketing executives from around the world are invited to join leading marketers from some of the biggest names in the wireless business to enable application proliferation and accelerate knowledge exchange in this burgeoning market landscape. Initial membership in FAME is free. Vendors are also able to get involved in sponsored programs and content development that will significantly shape and transform adoption in the industry and help promote their company’s contribution to the exploding wireless application arena.

About the CMO Council
The CMO Council is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior marketing and brand decision-makers in the global technology industry. Based in Silicon Valley, the Council works to further the stature, credibility, influence, and understanding of the strategic marketing function among business executives, opinion leaders and critical stakeholders in the technology sector. More than 1,200 technology companies are currently represented on the CMO Council, accounting for well over $500 billion in aggregated annual revenues. These include top decision-makers controlling more than $40 billion in global marketing expenditures for many of the world’s foremost computer systems, software, networking, communications, consumer electronics, component, distribution, and consulting brands. For more information, please visit our web site at www.cmocouncil.org.