Europolitan Vodafone and LunarWorks to form mobile services company

Sweden's most popular youth portal goes mobile Europolitan Vodafone and LunarWorks to form mobile services company Europolitan Vodafone and LunarWorks are forming a joint company known as LunarMobil Sverige AB. LunarWorks is currently managing an on-line meeting place for young people - LunarStorm - with more than half million active members. The collaboration is designed to help LunarWorks' youth portal to go mobile. The mobile services and concepts will be marketed and sold under the LunarMobil brand name. In February this year, LunarWorks signed an agreement with Europolitan Vodafone concerning the purchase of network capacity. The collaboration around LunarMobil is an extension of this agreement. LunarMobil will be an independent company with its own net sales and profitability targets. "The ability to reach LunarStorm's 500,000 regular users is naturally a great opportunity for Europolitan Vodafone. This figure represents 65 per cent of all Swedish young people aged between 15 and 20, and it is young people who are the strongest drivers when it comes to the development of tomorrow's mobile services. Our collaboration on LunarMobil will primarily involve us using our wide range of skills within telephony and mobile services," says Jon Risfelt, CEO of Europolitan Vodafone. LunarMobil will offer both post-subscriptions and pre-paid subscriptions adapted to the unique requirements of LunarStorm members. The idea is to make the services that they find out about at the on-line meeting place available on their mobile phones, so as to meet their requirements for an active and free life while maintaining contact with their friends at LunarStorm. The first mobile services will be available later in the spring. "Since the start-up just over a year ago, the target had been to establish LunarStorm as an attractive meeting place for young people. LunarMobil is the first example of our strategy of collaborating with partners to generate cash flow for the organisation while creating services that are both useful and fun for our members. The operations will be able to capitalise on our brand name, and on the fact that we have an established market channel and strong membership base of over half million Swedish young people who actively use LunarStorm," says Kjell Sallén, MD of LunarWorks. LunarMobil is 51% owned by Europolitan Vodafone and 49% owned by LunarWorks. LunarMobil's registered office will be in Varberg but operations will also be set up in Karlskrona. Mr Martin Åkesson, currently marketing manager at Service Provision at Europolitan Vodafone, is suggested to bee appointed MD of LunarMobil Sweden AB. LunarMobil will employ 10 - 15 people by the end of next year. For more information, please contact: Anders Sjöholm, Director Service Provision, Europolitan Vodafone Tel.: +46 708 33 10 22, e-mail: anders.sjoholm@europolitan.se Martin Åkesson, Marketing Manager, Service Provision, Europolitan Vodafone Tel.: +46 709 61 40 15, e-mail: martin.akesson@europolitan.se Kjell Sallén, MD, LunarWorks Tel.: +46 708 40 25 40, e-mail: kjell.sallen@lunarworks.com Europolitan Vodafone is a mobile operator with a licence to build a 3G mobile telecoms network. Our strength lies in our focus on developing international services, customer service and quality. Europolitan Vodafone employs some 1,400 people. Europolitan Vodafone is listed on the O-list of the OM Stock Exchange's Attract 40 list through Europolitan Holdings AB. The company's principal owner is Vodafone, with 71 per cent of Europolitan Holdings. The remaining 29 per cent is owned by private shareholders, investment companies and pension funds. The Vodafone group is represented on 5 continents and has around 80 million customers (proportionate customers). For more information, please visit www.europolitan.se and www.vodafone.com. www.lunarstorm.se is Sweden's largest web community and youth site. LunarStorm has more than 160,000 individual visitors per day. Members are extremely active and send more than 1.5 million text messages via www.lunarstorm.se every week. LunarStorm's member base is growing at a rate of 25,000 members a week. According to studies performed by Jupiter MMXI, LunarStorm is the site that Swedes on average spend most time on in a month and is also one of the sites that Swedes return to most frequently in a month. For the vast majority of Sweden's young people, LunarStorm is as natural as mobile telephones and clean drinking water. LunarStorm is owned by LunarWorks AB. ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/04/18/20010418BIT00090/bit0002.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/04/18/20010418BIT00090/bit0002.pdf