Zed (company)

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Zed Worldwide
Type	Public
Industry	Digital Entertainment
Founded	1996
Headquarters	Madrid, Spain
Key people	Javier Perez Dolset (CEO)
Products	Products and services for mobile phones and Internet
Employees	2,000 - 50% dedicated to R&D + innovation
Website	http://www.zed.com

Zed is a multiplatform digital entertainment company based in Spain that develops and markets entertainment and community products and services for all platforms. The company is the leading mobile phone value-added services (MVAS) player in the world in terms of revenue and geographical footprint. Zed operates in 60 countries, including Europe's largest markets, United States, India and China and holds agreements with 130 wireless operators all over the world, reaching 2 billion mobiles subscribers.

The company is characterized for its development in services in the field of interactive leisure and entertainment, in mobile phones as well as the Internet. The range of products and services of Zed are 85% internally developed and available for the following platforms: Brew, Java, Symbian, Mac and Windows.

Zed belongs to Zed Group, a large organization of privately held interlocking European companies at the forefront of mobile phone and internet entertainment, film animation and video game production. Other important companies of Zed Group are Ilion Animation Studios –production company specialized in computer-generated animation feature films like Planet 51- and Pyro Studios –video game developer including “Commandos”.

History

The Perez Dolset family founded the company in Spain in 1996. The family launched the web portal LaNetro, whose objective was to offer interactive leisure and entertainment content accessible from any device with access to the internet.

In 2002, they decided to focus on value added services for mobile phones. Two years later, La Netro acquired a mobile phone content provider, Zed, from Nordic operator TeliaSonera. The company changed its name to LaNetro Zed and kept Zed as its brand for mobile content and services.

Four years later, in December 2006 Zed acquired Monstermob, one of its competitors based in the United Kingdom.^[1] That same year Zed acquired Alvento, a Spanish mobile phone services company.^[2]

In February 2007, Zed markets the first web 2.0 based platform integrating mobile phones and web services, where members can participate in the creation of content which is then shared within the community. LaNetro Zed becomes Zed Worldwide. Later that year Zed passed a milestone grossing $100 million in revenue in a single month.^[3] In the United States Zed began to offer its content via RingToneJukeBox.com.^[4]

By early 2008 Zed Group established a joint venture with Grupo Planeta to manage the local guides LaNetro.com business. In addition, Zed acquired Netpeople expanding its presence in the Latin American market.

In August 2008, Zed merged with two other companies founded by the Perez Dolset brothers, Pyro Studios (video game developer including Commandos) and Ilion Animation Studios (production company specialized in computer-generated animation feature films).

Besides, Zed has announced an agreement with the NBA to expand the league’s mobile phone offerings reaching basketball fans throughout North America, Europe and countries in Asia.^[5] Also, Zed has acquired Mobitween, a developer and publisher of Flash-based content for mobile and online environments.^[6]

In 2009, Zed acquired Player X,^[7] British mobile media company specializing in Operators Portal Management, games and mobile TV & Video and Temafon, the exclusive content aggregator to one of the “big three” Russian operators Beeline. During 2009 Zed also started operations in Brazil, and holds today operations in 60 countries. Another remarkable step for the group during 2009 corresponds to sister company Ilion Animation Studios, which premiered in November Planet 51, the highest-grossing Spanish movie globally on 2009.

Products and services

One of the Zed’s main B2B business lines is its Master Content Provider (MCP). More than 32 operators worldwide have already partnered with Zed on this one-stop-shop solution that reaches 600 million subscribers worldwide.^[8]

The company provides mobile marketing solutions, consulting services and application development for companies and public sector across its business unit Zed Business Solutions. The Zed B2B solutions are focused on supporting an increase in sales whilst also complementing marketing and communications campaigns.

In 2009, Zed started the Zed TV business unit. Its first format to go live -more have followed and some are in the process to be aired- was a Weekly Reality show. It combined Live TV, SMS and Social Networking gathering 100.000 regular Internet users, 2 million single participants and increasing the average share rate for the channel (Spanish number #3 national TV channel –Antena3). On the D2C segment, Zed owns a cathalogue of games for mobile phones and Internet. It is updated monthly and all of the Zed games are compatible with the greater part of the market terminals, including the iPhone and iPod Touch.

On November, 2009 Zed launched Planet 51 Online, a Massive Multiplayer Online Game available for desktops and laptops, based on the computer-generated animated movie Planet 51. The game allows players to explore an online virtual world populated by other film fans connected via the internet.

References

External links

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