Representatives from global entertainment company Sony Pictures Television, Indias fastest growing telco provider, Tata Teleservices and leading global aggregator, mBlox, were voted onto the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) Asia board at its annual general meeting in Hong Kong last week.
Re-elected for a further two-year term were Hungama Mobiles Neeraj Roy, Streamezzos Alexandre Olmedo, and Sun Microsystems Stefan Rust. The new appointments were Faissal Houhou, VP Business Development at mBlox Asia Pacific; Pankaj Sethi, President, VAS Business Unit at Tata Teleservices; and Rosemary Tan, Director, Mobile Entertainment at Sony Pictures, Asia Pacific.
The returning directors and newly-appointed representatives join existing board members Richard Robinson from Dada and Jay Kim from WiderThan. The new board subsequently voted to re-elect Stefan Rust as Chairman and to appoint Neeraj Roy as Vice-Chairman.
The week kicked off with the Mobile TV CXO Summit between MEF and Casbaa (Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia); MEF LIVE, MEFs official annual event for Asias mobile entertainment industry; and the MEF LIVE party featuring the CDG (CDMA Development Group) Awards, applauding the industrys best.
The new Asia board will work to ensure that MEFs global initiatives bring a fresh perspective to local Asian markets, but also impart Asias unique learnings to encourage cross-pollination of new business models and best practices around the world, says MEF Asia Chair, Stefan Rust. We also expect to support local initiatives in Asia with various regional and local cross-industry bodies similar to the activities around Mobile TV with the Casbaa to further advance the mobile entertainment industry.
MEF Chairman Patrick Parodi adds:
Based in Beijing, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Seoul and Singapore, the new Asia board represents some of Asias hottest markets and unites leading players across content, operators, communities, D2C, advertisers and technologies to guide the mobile entertainment industry with a focused agenda. I look forward to working with the Asia board to grow the mobile entertainment industry in a responsible and healthy fashion across this exciting and diverse region.