The computing and telecommunications sectors have converged towards a digital platform in the past decade, bringing together different technologies to deliver new products and services.

But while the mobile phone industry has identified an opportunity to deliver rich internet-style WAP and 3G services to consumers and the business world, the process has been hindered by a lack of open standards among network operators and device manufacturers. The result is that browsing the internet via your mobile phone is still a complex affair, with the fact that the costs are passed onto users being a major barrier to growth.

A cost-effective solution for mobile operators has been to move to a ‘managed-service model’. Under this system, content management, billing, payment and device rendering (optimising of content for each kind of mobile phone) are handled by a specialist third party.

One company that provides such expertise is AIM-quoted WIN. It boasts the technology to efficiently manage content across many different formats and platforms, including mobile devices and the internet, and is able to handle large volumes of SMS and multimedia messages. WIN supplies all of the UK’s mobile networks and in the first half of this year it signed deals to provide new services to O2 and Vodafone, as well as the leading mobile network operators in Greece and Georgia. In addition, WIN provides mobile messaging services to media customers, such as the BBC, and enterprise customers.

In fact, since the company’s new management conducted a strategic review of the business in late 2006, WIN has focused on supplying interactive mobile services to the enterprise sector. The idea is to help corporate customers engage with consumers via their mobile phones and so far this strategy appears to be working. In the first half of this year, WIN launched new services for the AA, Barclaycard, Centrica and Egg, as well as signing nine new clients including E.on, Transport for London and Capital One.

Looking ahead, WIN intends to continue to focus on its core markets, but it also plans to grow its presence in the media sector by offering media businesses mobile marketing services. WIN has recently added several media clients to its list of customers thanks to its acquisition of Pop-imedia, a provider of entertainment, information and interactive services for mobile media devices.

A notable recent customer win in the media sector is AOL, which will use the company’s technology to ‘mobilise’ chat and messaging services on its UK portal. ‘AOL is a company that we have looked to work with for some time,’ explains WIN chief executive Graham Rivers.

Meanwhile, the company has bolstered its offering to its network operator customers by acquiring Quattrocomm, a Swiss mobile content specialist that manages portals for 30 European network operators, including T-mobile Germany, Vodafone Germany, O2 Germany and Mobilkom and TeliaSonera. House broker Arden Partners believes the acquisition will generate strong cross-selling opportunities for the two businesses.

Last month, WIN indicated that costs would rise in the short term due to it expanding its European service development and delivery team in anticipation of rising demand for the company’s new rich-media content services. While analysts have trimmed their forecasts for the current year, we think the resulting fallback in the shares represents a buying opportunity with WIN trading on forward multiples of just 8.2 and 5.9 times for the next two years.

Win	AIM	£10.33m	102.50p	0.00p
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