Eros Multimedia, the Indian arm of Eros International plc ("Eros"), the leading London-listed Indian media and entertainment company, has entered into a two-year minimum guarantee output deal with India's leading digital entertainment media company, Hungama Mobile, for the development, distribution and marketing of Eros's music content for download on mobile phones. Hungama Mobile will repurpose Eros content into desktop wallpapers, ringtones, games, song videos and other content that has appeal on the mobile format and monetise this content by distributing it to handset manufacturers such as Nokia and Motorola and mobile service providers such as Vodafone, Idea, BSNL, Airtel, Reliance, du, SingTel, Verizon, Rogers, T-Mobile and MTN. The deal covers content from some major forthcoming releases from the Eros roster, including the modern day Aladin starring Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Riteish Deshmukh, Toonpur Ka Super Hero, starring Ajay Devgan and Kajol, the much anticipated Kambakth Ishq with Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor, Salman Khan's Veer and Freeze starring Neil Nitin Mukesh and Bipasha Basu. A venture which is currently under production, featuring Deepika Padukone fame and Saif Ali Khan, will also fall under the auspices of the deal. According to a report by PwC, digital music in India grew by 33 per cent. in 2007 and it predicts that it will grow by 26 per cent. CAGR over the next five years to exceed Rs. 2.5 billion by 2012. Mobile music currently accounts for over 88 per cent. of the entire digital music market. This growth is being propelled by the increasing cell phone ownership in India which has already exceeded 230 million handsets and mobile operators are continually seeking the type of content intended by the Eros-Hungama deal, in order to drive up their ARPU (average revenue per user). Commenting on the deal, Kumar Ahuja, Senior Vice-President of Eros's New Media & International Sales said: "Hungama Mobile is an established player in the mobile content distribution space and we are confident of the quality content and innovative products that it will provide to consumers. Through this association, we are looking to maximize the mobile distribution potential from our premium content. The deal allows us to achieve full visibility of our mobile syndication revenues for the next two years from our film slate". Saleem Mobhani, Chief Operating Officer of Hungama Mobile said: "We have been working with Eros for many years as partners on our portal, www.bollywoodhungama.com and this association of exclusive mobile entertainment content for their future releases until 2010 only strengthens this association. Hungama Mobile is the only digital media company that has an established network across 30 countries and will scale to over 60 by the end of this year, giving immense value to studios and record labels for both promoting their films as also realizing revenues via the digital medium." ... read more »