LONDON and HELSINKI, Finland, Oct. 3, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With the mobile social network market predicted to grow from 54 million users in 2008 to 730 million users in the next 5 years, ROK Entertainment Group Inc. (OTCBB:ROKE), the global mobile entertainment company, announces the imminent worldwide launch of GeeSpark, the world's first mobile viral messaging service.
The fastest growth in the mobile social networking market will come from the Far East and China, according to Juniper Research in a report published this week. In addition, Juniper predicts it will be advertising-funded mobile social networks which will drive the revenue growth of user-generated content from $1.1 billion in 2007 to $7.4 billion in 2013.
Following the hugely successful adoption of broadcast messaging on computers, where users share messages with multiple friends at the same time, GeeSpark will enable users to chat, share messages, images and YouTube videos on their mobile phones and forward these to their friends and groups, in a viral fashion.
GeeSpark has been developed by ROK's Finland-based mobile services development company, Geniem. GeeSpark is currently in invitation-only Beta mode and will be advertising-funded. The service is free to join from www.geespark.com and is free to use provided the user has a data plan in their mobile tariff.
"In the past few years, there has been a phenomenonal uptake in, and migration from, the use of email onto instant messaging and now onto multi-person 'broadcast' messaging using PC-based social networking services," said Tuomas Kumpula, Managing Director of Geniem, "and we believe the next evolution in the networking space will be through mobile phones wherein GeeSpark users can share messages, images and videos from YouTube with all of their friends at once, on a viral basis, through their mobile phones."
Commenting on GeeSpark, Laurence Alexander, Group CEO of ROK, said, "To be launching the world's first mobile viral messaging service is tremendously exciting and is another major milestone in the development and deployment of our suite of revenue-generating mobile services and technologies."
About ROK Entertainment Group Inc.
ROK Entertainment Group Inc. (OTCBB:ROKE), founded in 2004, is a global mobile entertainment group.
With approximately 200 staff worldwide, ROK has filed more than 40 international patents for its suite of innovative mobile technologies. With 3.3 billion mobile handsets in use worldwide -- forecast to grow to 5.8 billion within 5 years -- the mobile entertainment industry is a fast-growing, multi-billion dollar business.
ROK TV enables the streaming of live and on-demand TV to mobile phones over mass-market 2.5G, as well as over 3G and Wi-Fi.
The ROK Entertainment Group logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=5361
Forward-Looking Statement
The information contained in this new release, other than historical information, consists of forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these statements. Forward-looking statements regarding the timing of developing, testing and releasing existing and new products, of marketing and selling them, of deriving revenues and profits from them, as well as the effects of those revenues and profits on the Group's margins and financial position, are uncertain because many of the factors affecting the timing of those items are beyond the Group's control.