Nokia Announces Education-Aimed Joint Venture with Pearson

Leading mobile phone maker Nokia and Pearson, a worldwide leading education company, announced on Monday the establishment of a joint venture meant to support Nokia's premier mobile phone-delivered education service in China, Mobiledu. The new entity, called Beijing Mobiledu Technologies, is aimed at accelerating the growth of the educational service, the two companies reported.

Mobiledu, the mobile service offering materials for the learning of English, along with various other educational content, was launched in China back in 2007, Nokia states. The content delivered via this service comes from a variety of providers directly to mobile phones, the handset vendor added. Customers have the possibility to access the content via a software solution pre-loaded on the handset, or they can do so through visiting the service's mobile website.

The appeal of the service in China is impressive, Nokia notes, with a number of more than 20 million subscribers since the initial launch, and with around 1.5 million people using the service each month. According to the Finnish company, the Mobiledu service will continue to be available for handset users in China via various channels, including Nokia's Ovi Store.

The newly announced joint venture will benefit both from Nokia's world-class expertise in mobile phone and services, and from Pearson's leading assets and expertise in education. The entity will provide a great deal of services aimed at meeting the increasing demand for education in China, the duo stated. Moreover, they also revealed that the Beijing-based company was to begin operations immediately, and that it would have Angela Long, formerly head of Mobiledu at Nokia, as its leader.

“We are proud to have developed a service which is already highly valued. We believe that through this partnership with Pearson, a global industry leader in education, we can offer an exciting future for this service and its customers,” Nokia's Robert Andersson stated. John Fallon, Pearson, added “China is the world's largest mobile phone market and the country with the largest number of people learning English. This is a great opportunity to combine Pearson's English language learning and wider educational services with the mobile technology capabilities of Nokia to meet this demand and help a larger number of people achieve their aspirations.”