LONDON, June 30 /PRNewswire/ --

The GSMA today announced new developments in its Embedded Mobile
Initiative, including work to establish standard design guidelines for
embedded mobile applications and the kick-off of a competition to drive
development in the embedded mobile market. The goal of the Embedded Mobile
programme, which was launched in November 2008, is to foster new business
opportunities by bringing the benefits of continuous mobile connectivity to
embedded devices in the clean energy, education, healthcare, transport,
consumer electronics and smart utilities sectors.

"The benefits of embedded mobile to businesses and consumers are nearly
endless, from enabling a travelling family to easily transmit holiday photos
to relatives at home, to helping a vending company automatically track
stocking levels and operating status of its machines, to allowing power
companies to remotely collect data from across meter and power grids,"
commented Michael O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer for the GSMA. "As the
programmes announced today demonstrate, we are keenly focused on reducing
industry fragmentation in the delivery of embedded mobile solutions,
facilitating economies of scale in design and production and driving
cross-industry awareness of module designs."

To further promote the development of the embedded mobile market, the
GSMA has kicked off a competition whose goal is to identify best-in-class
embedded modules across a number of categories, as well as mobile service
applications and solutions. The first stage of the competition, which will
focus on leading embedded modules, will be held at the Mobile Asia Congress
in November 2009. The second stage of the competition will showcase
innovative service applications and solutions at the Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona in February 2010.

"KT is confident that its active involvement in the GSMA's Embedded
Mobile Initiative will create broader opportunities for this market," said
Hyunmi Yang, Executive Vice President & CSO, Personal Customer Group, KT
Corp. "We further believe that the launch of a global competition as part of
this programme will stimulate the growth of the M2M market and will help us
to identify new mobile services that will be of true value to our customers.
The GSMA's Embedded Mobile Initiative will allow immediate communication
means for everyday devices via a mobile network, and we believe that the
mobile network will become the key facilitator for enriching the daily lives
of our customers."

"Potential use of embedded 3G modules are diversified and require
development of unique software for each application," said Ted Matsumoto,
Senior Executive Vice President, SoftBank Mobile Corp. "The cost of modules
is a critical factor in helping make these applications accepted by a wide
range of users, so we should avoid the fragmentation of module hardware
design as much as possible. Working with the device and chipset vendors, the
GSMA will help to achieve this goal."

To facilitate the creation of scores of new embedded mobile applications,
the GSMA also announced that it has initiated a work stream within the
Embedded Mobile programme to develop and publish of a set of design
guidelines for key categories of applications, such as health, automotive,
smart metering and consumer devices. This is a joint initiative involving
mobile operator and module vendor representatives from across the world. The
GSMA expects to make these design guidelines available in November 2009.

For more information on the Embedded Mobile competition, including
criteria and entry guidelines, please visit www.gsmworld.com/embeddedmobile

About the GSMA

The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications
industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world's
mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile
ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers,
Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations. The GSMA is
focused on innovating, incubating and creating new opportunities for its
membership, all with the end goal of driving the growth of the mobile
communications industry.

For more information, please visit http://www.gsmworld.com.