Appear and telent will jointly develop the UK Market

Stockholm, Oct 1st, 2007 – Appear, the leading provider of context-aware mobile software, continues its European expansion with the announcement of a strategic partnership with telent, leader in the provision of ICT services to the UK Transport and Public sectors. Through the partnership, telent will promote, resell and integrate Appear’s enterprise mobility platform for its customers. Telent will also offer consulting services for Appear customers in the UK. To kickstart their collaboration, telent and Appear will jointly exhibit at the upcoming "Transportation Innovation" at NEC Birmingham, on October 10-11, http://www.transportinnovations.com/
When equipping a mobile workforce with PDAs, smartphones and other wireless devices, it is critical to understand how employees will use these devices, and what it will cost to deploy and maintain a mobility solution. It makes no sense to simply transfer desktop applications to wireless devices. Increasingly, organizations want to package and deliver applications and information based on the user’s situation (context) at the time a request enters the system. This translates into increased employee productivity, easier development of new services, and an improved return on the organization’s mobility solution.

A recent study conucted by the research company IDC confirms that European transportation companies are now realising the benefits of context-aware mobile solutions - achieving both operational gains and customer service enhancements. “To move beyond just wireless location-based services, the most crucial aspect of a mobile solution is the user context, the actionable and combined use of location, profile, language, time, type of mobile device, network bandwidth availability. This translates into a system that provides information services that are relevant to specific operative situations and transportation business environments,” states Ivano Ortis, program manager at IDC.
This research supports telent’s choice of Appear’s technology in order to implement enteprise-grade, reliable and efficient mobile application deployments in the transport and public sectors. Telent views Appear’s context-aware software as a key technology to develop its market position. “It is no surprise that the first adopters of Appear’s context-aware technologies were leading European ground transport operators, who face the same challenges: a constantly mobile workforce distributed in disparate geographical locations, a dynamic and complex workflow model, requiring users to share and access real-time information on the job", says Peter Felton, business development director at telent.
The recent deployment of a context-aware mobile solution to 10,000 workers at Netherlands Railways, Europe’s largest deployment of mobile devices over a WLAN network, as well as other successful projects delivered within Europe, such as the Paris Subway, confirms Appear’s position as the transport market leader. “We are extremely pleased to partner with transportation industry experts such as telent. This partnership confirms the interest from UK transport companies to adopt intelligent, innovative and future-proof mobile solutions and allows us to bring our experiences of complex context-aware wireless projects to the UK market,” said Xavier Aubry, chief executive officer for Appear.

About Appear: Appear is the leading provider of context-aware software infrastructure designed to power the next generation of mobile applications and services. Using situational information (context), the AppearIQ suite of products transforms ordinary wireless data networks into rich multimedia channels that deliver information, voice, video and messages to mobile computer users. By collecting and sharing context, Appear’s solutions eliminate information overload and ensure users have exactly the information they need, when and where they need it. With Appear software, devices and applications react in real-time to users’ changing needs. Industry leaders in transportation, retail, telecommunications and government use AppearIQ. Appear has also been awarded three EU-funded research projects focusing on “Mobile and Wireless Systems beyond 3G” and part of the fourth call of the IST Sixth Framework Program: MIDAS (www.ist-midas.org), SIMS (www.ist-sims.org) and MUSIC (www.ist-music.eu). Appear has an extensive partner network including industry leaders Cisco and Intel who along with vertical market specialists work to deliver innovative, end-to-end wireless and mobile solutions. The company is privately held and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and with offices across Europe. For further information please visit www.appearnetworks.com

About telent plc: telent plc supplies a broad range of communications support services to telecommunications operators, as well as to large enterprises and government agencies in the UK and Germany, leveraging its accumulated knowledge of customers’ networks, its expert field force, its scale and reputation for quality. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol TLNT. Additional information about telent plc can be found at www.telent.com

Press Contact Appear:
Mia Falgard, +46 8 545 91 370
mia.falgard@appearnetworks.com