Chikka and fastmobile to develop Chikka Messenger for Globe Telecom

Details: Alec Barton; Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 24 April 2006; 16696 views

Following Developing Telecoms' recent story Globe Telecom signs agreement for launch of fastmobile, fastmobile is to develop a downloadable, mobile-to-mobile version of the popular instant messaging application Chikka Messenger...

The fastmobile-developed Globe Messenger service will put many of the features and functionality of the Chikka IM-PC service into the hands of Globe mobile customers. Users will be able to utilise the Globe messenger application on pre-loaded and existing Nokia handsets, and then seamlessly connect to the Chikka community as easily as with a PC (fastmobile has also created similar mobile messenger clients for Yahoo).

Chikka's user interface and connectivity to carriers in very high SMS-traffic countries have made it one of South-East Asia 's most common IM services. Since launching in 2001 in the Philippines - widely acknowledged as the text capital of the world - the Chikka Messenger IM service has been deployed by mobile operators in Japan , Guam, Thailand and India , where it is supported by 90% of the country's operators. Chikka services are also supported by several US mobile carriers, including Cingular, AT&T, Sprint and Alltell, with services on T-Mobile, Verizon, Nextel and Boost soon to follow.

The fastmobile application will be compatible with mobile handsets that incorporate the Symbian and Java operating system and are compatible with GPRS, EDGE and 3G mobile networks.

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