MINDS vision

MINDS (Mobile Information and News Data Services for 3G) is aiming to present innovative information services for mobile phones, to define technical standards and to simplify business processes.

It is the vision of the MINDS partners to remove the barriers that still restrain mobile media services from turning into a mass market. Still a broad diversity of incompatible technical standards, complex and often one-sided business models, or the lack of usability from the consumers perspective prevent the breakthrough of mobile data services in all European countries.

The consortium consists of the coordinator Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) through its information service subsidiary dpa-infocom (Hamburg), and the news agencies of Austria (APA), the Netherlands (ANP), Switzerland (sda-ats) and Hungary (MTI). Complementary partners are the German software company CoreMedia AG, the world publishing association Ifra, the German IT service company arvato systems and the Fraunhofer FOKUS Institute.

The national news agencies are serving both the media and telecommunications industry. The MINDS partners therefore cooperate closely with mobile operators, publishers and broadcasters in order to integrate all players of the mobile media business and to mediate a process of standardization.

The EC is funding MINDS through its "eContent" program. The European Commission has set up this programme to support the production, use and distribution of European digital content.

From the MINDS project to MINDS Int.

MINDS Int. acts as a central sales unit for mobile services and other digital services generated by the MINDS agency partners. It helps the partners to get access to international markets, and it helps the market to get effective content services efficiently working. MINDS Int. USP lies in the joined forces of the news agencies.

The MINDS member agencies select the services that should be marketed by MINDS Int. as the MINDS product portfolio. MINDS starts with the 12 innovative mobile services that were generated during the project. In the next step MINDS Int. will also sell other innovative products created by national agencies, that are given to MINDS Int. for international sale.

MINDS Int. addresses three customer groups:

• MINDS member agencies: exploiting mobile services invented by another MINDS-Partner in another country.
• Other news agencies: exploiting mobile services invented by the MINDS-Partners.
• Transnational content purchasers (e. g. Mobile Network Operators): exploiting mobile services whose major challenge lies in the transnational allocation of content or service