Phonevalley opens Asia Pacific office
06 Oct 2008
Phonevalley, the world's leading mobile marketing agency, today said that it had expanded its global footprint to the Asian Pacific (APAC) region. Phonevalley's international strategy deploys with the opening of a hub in Singapore and offices in China and India.
Its APAC presence will help the agency offer regional brands and advertisers mobile campaigns which will better fit with their local marketing objectives and clients requirements.
To spahad this strtegy Devashish Sarkar has been appointed Phonevalley's regional director for the APAC region. He has an extensive consumer marketing and media experience in companies such as BBC Worldwide, British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Tupperware, and has worked in China, India, Indonesia and Singapore.
"I am very excited to be joining Phonevalley during the company's expansion phase in Asia and the Pacific area," Devashish said. "The APAC region is critical for innovation in the mobile field, marketers are used to operate SMS campaigns and they now target the most influential and wealthy parts of the population through search and display campaigns. I'm thrilled to help brands and agencies build a strong presence on mobile."
Alexandre Mars, Phonevalley CEO and Publicis Groupe's head of mobile, explains, "We are committed to deliver the best in class mobile advertising campaigns in the Apac region. Being on the ground will facilitate our work and help our clients leverage the great returns that are available through mobile. It will also help us interact more easily with all APAC-based Publicis Groupe agencies. I look forward to building up great opportunities on mobile for our partners and customers in the region."
Asia counts over 1.3 billion mobile subscribers and analysts see mobile as the number 1 device to access Internet. In China for instance, mobile subscribers amount to 600 million individuals, to be compared with a total of 80 millions PCs. The penetration rates of mobile phones and Internet are respectively 42 per cent and 14 per cent.
In India, mobile growth is ramping up and the country won 100 million new subscribers over the last 12 months to total around 290 million people.
Furthermore, analysts foresee that mobile advertising expenditures in key APAC markets all together will total $6.9 billion in 2012, up from $738 million in 2007. This should be higher than the US or Western Europe spends.
