Nokia ties up with Malayala Manorama to launch news portal on mobile

Nokia ties up with Malayala Manorama to launch news portal on mobileexchange4media

Nokia has announced the launch of the industry's first vernacular newsportal with Malayala Manorama.

With this offering, all Nokia GPRS enabled handsets users in Kerala will be able to get national and international news in Malayalam across various categories of news likesports, travel, music, astrology and movies, among others.

Speaking at the launch of this service, Devinder Kishore, Director-Marketing, Nokia India, said, "Ease of use is a key Nokia proposition. As the leader, we are continuously working towards providing featuresand services that simplify the lives of our users. We have once againlaunched a path breaking application -- vernacular news portal -- amobile newspaper in the palm, that enables users to view news updatesin there native languages at their convenience. "Kishore added, "Currently, the Internet penetration is still very low,especially in smaller cities and rural areas.

Services such as themobile newspaper will ride on the larger penetration of mobile phonesand bring the Internet revolution to the masses. With the launch ofthis service, we are transcending the language barriers and extendingthe benefits of the Data services over mobiles to the people who arenot conversant with English."Mariam Mammen Mathew, COO, Manorama Online, said "As the industryl eader in this category, we are pleased to partner with Nokia for thisinitiative.

We are committed to provide our readers newer and innovative way to consume news, and this will help us to further our bond with our consumers. True to the Manorama tradition, we will strive to reach out to all Malayalis, wherever they are -- inside or outside India, on a desktop or on the move.

Additionally with the launch of this mobile newspaper' Nokia bringsthe benefits of all value-added services for the first time in 10 vernacular languages. These include Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya,Assamese, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, in association with leading media houses across India.

This application also supports'search' and 'mobile advertising' , while making the Internet and the'search' facility available to the non-English literates for the first time in the country.

News Clip