i-Free announces China plans at GMIC’2011

May 13, 2011 - PRLog -- The Global Mobile Internet Conference, a highlight of the global mobile VAS and mobile Internet industry, is the biggest forum on these topics. This year’s GMIC was attended by more than 2,700 visitors from across the globe, including CEOs of the major Chinese and Japanese Internet companies.

GMIC is hosted by Great Wall Club (GWC), founded in 2008, which currently unites over 150 CEOs of top IT and mobile Internet businesses from Asia, Europe and the US. i-Free joined GWC in 2009 and is its active member.

At a press conference during GMIC’2011, i-Free unveiled its strategic vision for its Chinese business, announced deals signed in China to date, and presented a range of new products.

i-Free’s business in China goes two ways. One is to help Chinese companies get a foothold in the CIS markets. i-Free has been quite successful in this. A number of foremost Chinese IT companies, including SkyMobil, UC Web and others, are now doing business in the CIS in partnership with i-Free.

Chinese companies eyeing the CIS marketplace were invited to meet with i-Free top management at the i-Free Innovation Room, set up specially for GMIC’2011.

The other side of i-Free’s business in China is the publication and distribution of mobile products targeting the mass market, most notably, Android applications.

“China’s market holds much promise for Android applications, but it’s a very challenging marketplace,” said Evgeny Kosolapov, CEO of i-Free Asia, explaining the i-Free strategy. “There is no Android Market dominance here. There are dozens of independent appstores, alternative payment systems, and a few operating systems based on Android, which, however, are not fully compatible with each other. All this, coupled with the language barrier, makes it very difficult for international developers to access China’s market. Our expertise and our results in China so far, combined with our new partnership deals, have put us in a position to offer developers quality services in publishing and promoting their products in China.”

i-Free, which came to China in 2006, has a strong team of local managers and developers, and does business successfully with many Chinese companies. i-Free is connected to the major payment systems and has deals in place with all the key appstores in China. i-Free also enjoys the status of Best CP of China Mobile (“Best Content Provider for China Mobile”), which gives i-Free a right to publish applications directly on the portal of this leading Chinese mobile operator.

i-Free has by now sealed a number of agreements to publish mobile games and applications in China. Some of the products to be published are: PowerAMP, the world’s best-selling non-game application for Android; and games developed by Alawar and Herocraft, including such worldwide hits as Majesty, Farm Frenzy and others.

In addition to publishing third-party content, i-Free plans to take its own products to China. The company showcased two new China-localized applications at the press conference: Smartive Travel and Pocket Blonde.

Smartive Travel is an application to search for and buy air tickets, with the help of which users can pay for the ticket and store its electronic copy in their smartphones. Smartive Travel has an easy, intuitively plain interface with cool game features.

Pocket Blonde is a Mobile Assistant series application with a radically new interface: a cute girl who “lives” inside the mobile phone, answering user’s questions and providing handy information. Mobile Assistant is a “learning” application. By analyzing user’s queries, it learns to provide additional relevant information and services.

The GMIC’2011 forum took place in Beijing, China, on 27 and 28 April. More information on GMIC’2011 and Great Wall Club can be found on www.gmic.greatwallclub.com.

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About i-Free: i-Free, a Russian innovation-focused company operating in the CIS market since 2001, is a specialist developer and implementer of cutting-edge products and services in mobile technology, electronic finance, digital content distribution, electronic payment systems, micropayments, applications for smartphones and new network devices, B2C digital product marketing, B2B mobile marketing projects, and NFC technology and services.

Outside Russia, i-Free operates successfully and has offices in Kiev (Ukraine), Minsk (Belarus), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Mumbai (India), Beijing (China) and Sao-Paolo (Brazil). i-Free products and services are on the market in over 100 countries.

i-Free, headquartered in St. Petersburg, also has an office in Moscow. The company currently employs more than 350 staff.